Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - Timcast IRL - Democrats DESPERATE To Stop TIKTOK BAN As Ban Seems Likely w-Ethan Van Sciver

00:00:00.000 We got a pretty special Friday for y'all.

00:00:19.000 We got some big news.

00:00:20.000 Democrats seem very desperate to stop the banning of TikTok, which seems likely.

00:00:25.000 I don't know if likely is the right word.

00:00:27.000 Plausible?

00:00:27.000 Possible?

00:00:28.000 Feasible?

00:00:29.000 But we'll see, because we're now starting to see some pretty serious resistance.

00:00:32.000 But along with the cultural manipulation, there's data privacy concerns, though I think the cultural manipulation is the most important.

00:00:39.000 Now, in terms of what we are doing to win this culture war, it goes beyond just whinging on the internet.

00:00:45.000 First, if you caught the Culture War podcast earlier today, I am joining a lawsuit against California for censorship, and this could get big.

00:00:55.000 Minds.com is also a party to this lawsuit.

00:00:58.000 Basically, California is requiring platforms to create terms that would You know, let's just say, effectively interfere with free speech.

00:01:06.000 So, I'm going to be joining that lawsuit, fighting back.

00:01:10.000 I am also, you're usually not supposed to do this, but I'll say it anyway.

00:01:16.000 We are beginning the preliminary stages of filing litigation against Bandcamp for the termination of our account, and I'll explain for a few important things.

00:01:24.000 And again, you know, I'll confer with my legal counsel as to what the right approach is, but here are the personal complaints that I think are legitimate and fair.

00:01:31.000 I don't know if the people who paid for the songs that I've produced have access to those songs, which means I have no idea who my customers are.

00:01:37.000 I have no idea if they need a refund.

00:01:39.000 I have no idea if they still have the product.

00:01:41.000 Some people have said they still have the song.

00:01:43.000 Well, if that's the case, then Bandcamp is hosting my content, my copyright without my permission, and using it to profit off of me by providing that content to individuals in the long term.

00:01:54.000 Well, terminating my account.

00:01:55.000 So I think we've got some very serious problems, plus the withholding of data.

00:01:59.000 I believe it's likely they're withholding money from us because they're not communicating with us, so we're gonna have to go into some very serious litigation against them.

00:02:05.000 So we're gonna be pushing back.

00:02:07.000 But before we get into all of the news and the talk of cultural stuff, there is another big announcement.

00:02:12.000 Today we launched our fourth song, Bright Eyes, to a tremendous response.

00:02:17.000 Head over to TrashHouseRecords.com and you can pick up the song.

00:02:21.000 Notice, we're not using Bandcamp anymore because they removed us.

00:02:25.000 Clearly, whatever it is we're doing in the culture war is effective.

00:02:29.000 We released three songs before this, all three charted on Billboard.

00:02:33.000 That's a 100% song on Billboard rate.

00:02:36.000 I'm sure most bands would love to have reached that.

00:02:39.000 Granted, we put out like three singles.

00:02:40.000 They've all done really well.

00:02:42.000 We're hoping that Bright Eyes, the latest song we put out, hits Billboard as well, and you can help make that happen by going to trashhouserecords.com and downloading the song for, I think the minimum is 69 cents, but you can put in whatever price you want.

00:02:56.000 We want a chart.

00:02:57.000 We want to prove that we are having a cultural influence and an impact.

00:03:01.000 And I think currently we're number 24 on iTunes with zero promotion.

00:03:06.000 So we've put out no, you know, with the last releases, we did promos with, you know, through all the videos throughout the day.

00:03:13.000 We didn't do that today.

00:03:14.000 And we hit number 24 in the top 100 on iTunes already.

00:03:18.000 I'm pretty sure with all of your support right now buying the song, we'll probably hit number one.

00:03:22.000 Maybe we'll see.

00:03:23.000 We hit number one with the past two songs.

00:03:24.000 We even beat out Taylor Swift briefly.

00:03:27.000 I'm hoping that we can once again do it, but it's entirely up to you.

00:03:30.000 If you guys want to support our cultural endeavors, buy the song at Trash House Records.

00:03:34.000 And I think the reason that we got banned from Bandcamp is likely because They don't care that much when we complain on the internet, because complaining does very little.

00:03:42.000 But if we make successful cultural products that influence people and get people talking and become popular, they are actually then losing the culture war.

00:03:52.000 So when all these outlets are like, uh-oh, how are we supposed to ignore the third song from Timcast that has hit Billboard?

00:04:00.000 I mean, it starts to become really weird when people are like, how are they not... I mean, isn't that a big deal?

00:04:05.000 How many bands have pulled that one off?

00:04:07.000 So, if we get a fourth song in a row, we'll just keep trying to do it.

00:04:10.000 So, that's if you think we should.

00:04:13.000 And if you think we should, TrashHouseRecords.com, it would be greatly appreciated.

00:04:16.000 But, of course, we'll promote it more next week, and we'll talk with Carter about the song.

00:04:20.000 And we've got Pete Parada on drums.

00:04:23.000 Phil Labonte, of course, he's been on the show a bunch.

00:04:26.000 He has a guest appearance in the music video.

00:04:28.000 And so it is what it is.

00:04:30.000 Support our work.

00:04:31.000 Don't forget to smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends.

00:04:34.000 Here to talk to us about winning the culture war because, again, it's more than just whinging.

00:04:39.000 It's someone who's actually very successful and has taken a very powerful stand to fight back in that culture war.

00:04:44.000 We have Ethan VanSkyver.

00:04:46.000 Hey, all right.

00:04:46.000 Great to be here on Timcast.

00:04:48.000 Amazing.

00:04:49.000 Thanks for coming.

00:04:50.000 Who are you?

00:04:50.000 What do you do?

00:04:50.000 Okay, so, like you said, my name is Ethan VanSkyver.

00:04:54.000 I'm a 30-year veteran of the comic book industry.

00:04:56.000 As I say in my own show, world's most charming, disarming, elegant, eloquent, and yet humble man.

00:05:00.000 Great big Sopranos fan and trusted member of the media.

00:05:03.000 Not as trusted as you, though.

00:05:04.000 I think that you're more trusted than I am at this point, and rightly so.

00:05:07.000 By the corporate press?

00:05:09.000 Maybe not.

00:05:09.000 Maybe by regular people.

00:05:11.000 That's all that matters.

00:05:13.000 Yeah, I am a comic book artist.

00:05:14.000 I work for Marvel and DC.

00:05:16.000 I've drawn Green Lantern and Flash mostly, some X-Men stuff in my time.

00:05:20.000 I was viciously cancelled for voting for Trump in 2017.

00:05:25.000 Everybody kind of knew that I was a Republican, but when I voted for Trump and Trump won and then I celebrated, That was a bridge too far.

00:05:34.000 The mechanism of cancer culture.

00:05:36.000 You celebrated?

00:05:36.000 I did celebrate.

00:05:37.000 I took a nice picture of myself in a MAGA hat.

00:05:39.000 Wow.

00:05:39.000 Posted on Twitter.

00:05:40.000 People were outraged by that.

00:05:41.000 I didn't understand, because I was so polite when Obama won.

00:05:45.000 Yep.

00:05:45.000 I was so polite, I didn't get it.

00:05:46.000 And so, uh, for people who aren't familiar, you're an artist, and you created The Flash's mom.

00:05:52.000 Yeah.

00:05:52.000 You created Atrocitus.

00:05:53.000 Yeah.

00:05:54.000 Are there any other-?

00:05:54.000 St.

00:05:55.000 Walker, Larfleeze.

00:05:56.000 Like, if you've been reading Green Lantern, and some people in the chat probably have, we did something called the Emotional Spectrum back in 2009 or so, and what it was was we realized that Green Lantern, his green energy represents willpower, then there's yellow energy, which represents fear, and boy, it really seems like those two colors are real close on the rainbow, right?

00:06:19.000 And maybe there are other colors as well?

00:06:21.000 Yeah!

00:06:22.000 So we created red lanterns, orange lanterns, the yellow lanterns, all the way to violet.

00:06:27.000 They all represented a different sort of motivation.

00:06:30.000 Red was rage, blue was hope, yellow was fear.

00:06:34.000 Wasn't there like white, like a combination?

00:06:36.000 There was, and that's why there are now white power rings that are on the market. 0.95

00:06:41.000 Wait, what?

00:06:43.000 We've got to make a villain called... Wait, wait, wait.

00:06:46.000 That's a real story.

00:06:47.000 I remember that.

00:06:49.000 I'm so sorry, DC.

00:06:50.000 I'm so sorry about this, but it is true, and I guess it's part of my legend.

00:06:54.000 You know, look, if there are green power rings and there are white lanterns, there are white power rings, and you can find those on...

00:07:02.000 You can find those on eBay, I guess.

00:07:04.000 So anyway, yeah, I created all that stuff, all those characters associated with that, and did very, very well for DC.

00:07:14.000 All the symbols associated with those characters, t-shirts, baseball caps, all the stuff there.

00:07:19.000 It was a marketing bonanza.

00:07:22.000 Isn't there a Black Lantern Corps as well?

00:07:24.000 Yeah, zombies!

00:07:26.000 All of the DC heroes and villains that died, we resurrected them, we gave them Black Lantern rings and they came back and bedeviled the heroes and the prophecy of Blackest Night.

00:07:37.000 It was so much fun.

00:07:39.000 I mean, we really got people excited because the idea that we gave to DC Comics was this superpower that's transferable to any other character.

00:07:48.000 Imagine How this lights somebody's imagination on fire that, you know, if you get a red lantern ring, you can put it on Wolverine, a Marvel character, and he's suddenly Red Lantern Wolverine and he's spitting up red energy and he's crazy and wild.

00:08:03.000 The Hulk might have a red lantern ring.

00:08:05.000 This is just great for comics.

00:08:07.000 So those are Marvel characters.

00:08:08.000 But it just is great.

00:08:09.000 And DC just loved the hell out of it.

00:08:12.000 They did so much great stuff with, like, the emotional spectrum and all the different colors and all the different rings.

00:08:18.000 But then you voted for Trump, so...

00:08:20.000 Yeah.

00:08:21.000 If you guys are listening, I'd like to make a character called Ultra Violet that has the ring.

00:08:26.000 They already did it.

00:08:27.000 Oh, nice!

00:08:28.000 Does it make him partially invisible?

00:08:30.000 Uh, I don't know.

00:08:30.000 Okay, well, we'll get through this and we'll get into it.

00:08:32.000 We got Brett Daszak hanging out.

00:08:34.000 What is going on, guys?

00:08:35.000 It's been a while.

00:08:36.000 It's been a very long time since I've been on here.

00:08:38.000 Yes, I do Pop Culture Crisis Monday through Friday, 3 p.m.

00:08:42.000 Eastern Standard Time right here on YouTube.

00:08:43.000 You should join us there.

00:08:45.000 I remember that story about the white power rings and all the meat. 0.99

00:08:49.000 There was all these memes being made.

00:08:51.000 It's a guy going and says, like, D.C.

00:08:53.000 headquarters and says, how many days since last time D.C.

00:08:56.000 screwed something up and they tear it off and start it over again?

00:08:58.000 I remember that.

00:09:00.000 Right on.

00:09:00.000 We got Ian's turn.

00:09:01.000 Hi, everyone.

00:09:02.000 Good to see you.

00:09:03.000 Ian Crossan here on a Friday night.

00:09:04.000 Let's steamroll this.

00:09:06.000 What's up, everybody?

00:09:07.000 It's Kellen.

00:09:08.000 Ethan, if you need to, you can move this mic closer to you, further from you.

00:09:12.000 How do I sound?

00:09:12.000 Do I sound okay?

00:09:13.000 Yeah, just put it right below your mouth. 0.94

00:09:15.000 I'm going to use it to cover as much of myself as I can, if that's okay with you.

00:09:21.000 All right, let's jump into this first story.

00:09:24.000 You know, I saw this from Politico, and I don't know if they're gonna ban TikTok, but I personally think TikTok should be banned for a variety of reasons.

00:09:31.000 And there is a difficult question, but, you know, we don't want to curtail free speech.

00:09:37.000 Politico reports, will TikTok be banned?

00:09:39.000 Some Dems say not so fast.

00:09:41.000 A number of House Democrats and at least a few Senators remain unconvinced that singling out the Chinese-owned app is the best course of action.

00:09:47.000 All right.

00:09:48.000 Well, we'll see what happens.

00:09:49.000 I don't know exactly, but let me explain to you why I think this is happening.

00:09:52.000 I think the Democratic Party and the culture war cultural left represent zombification, social zombification.

00:10:02.000 Zombies crave only to spread the zombie disease. 0.95

00:10:05.000 There's no end goal.

00:10:07.000 So if you look at the issue of TikTok, there's legitimate problems with allowing a CCP product into the hands of our children.

00:10:15.000 The cultural manipulation.

00:10:16.000 In China, the kids there, their version of TikTok has educational, science, that kind of stuff.

00:10:21.000 Really great for a young developing mind.

00:10:23.000 In the United States, there's young women who think they're birds saying they're a bird person and their pronouns are bok bok or something like that.

00:10:29.000 There's the woman who's like frog, frog self pronouns. 0.98

00:10:32.000 These things are being propagated on the American version which is literally Harming vulnerable people to the point where you notice a lot of the trans people, the trans species people, people who actively want surgeries are autistic and extremely vulnerable.

00:10:46.000 TikTok is doing that.

00:10:48.000 You then have the data spying component.

00:10:50.000 The fact that Democrats would defend this despite the fact that there are clear, obvious, and objective problems with it.

00:10:56.000 Shows the zombification of the party.

00:10:59.000 If it empowers them, they don't care the damage it causes.

00:11:02.000 They want to extract from the system.

00:11:04.000 So I think it should be banned.

00:11:06.000 And the main reason is not so much the data spying, which I think is a problem, but the cultural influence.

00:11:12.000 And that's probably why the social zombies want to maintain it.

00:11:15.000 It spreads social zombism and mental illness.

00:11:18.000 So this is a big issue right now.

00:11:20.000 If we want to win the culture war, there is a political and technological component right here.

00:11:25.000 Granted, I think creating culture is the number one way to do it and pushing back, but it's hard if the mechanisms for delivering that content are controlled by, say, the CCP.

00:11:35.000 What's interesting is, first of all, I heard earlier, somebody mentioned to us, I mentioned the fact that China has a different algorithm for their version of TikTok than we do, right?

00:11:43.000 And somebody said that Andrew Schultz said that he started that as a conspiracy theory, so that was actually him that started the STEM rumor that they had a different version of the algorithm.

00:11:52.000 Is it even if that's true?

00:11:54.000 It doesn't matter because the damage it's doing here in America, whether China was getting the same stuff as we are or not, I can't say if that's true. 0.63

00:12:01.000 Somebody said that to us when we were on the show earlier.

00:12:03.000 I think a lot of it's also the addictive nature of it.

00:12:07.000 As much as you talk zombification, I talk the addictive nature of phones, of technology, and just how much damage it's doing for people to have to use this technology constantly, all the time, every day.

00:12:19.000 Well, let me just say, I mean, you know, if espionage isn't the issue, I gotta ask then what makes TikTok different from what Tim's talking about than YouTube Shorts, which is basically adopting the same delivery system as TikTok.

00:12:33.000 Highly addictive short videos.

00:12:36.000 I mean, essentially, It's the same thing.

00:12:39.000 It's the same product.

00:12:40.000 So why is that not a problem in TikTokage?

00:12:43.000 That's a good point.

00:12:44.000 And that's why this bill that's been introduced into the Senate, it's called the Restrict Act, is so dangerous.

00:12:49.000 Because there really isn't much of a difference in these companies.

00:12:53.000 If you start generally targeting social media companies for people doing things you don't like on those networks, It gives you carte blanche to just start ending networks.

00:13:02.000 Ending TikTok.

00:13:03.000 Ending Twitter.

00:13:04.000 We're banning Twitter.

00:13:05.000 We're banning YouTube because somebody on YouTube said that the election was fake.

00:13:09.000 Like, I'm reading this bill.

00:13:11.000 It's called the Restrict Act.

00:13:12.000 Maybe we can pull this up at some point.

00:13:14.000 And there's a few sections in the Restrict Act that are completely insane.

00:13:18.000 Section 3.

00:13:18.000 What do we have?

00:13:20.000 Section 3-1-C is fucking insane. 0.98

00:13:25.000 It's Section 3-A-1-C. 0.99

00:13:27.000 What it says is, Oh my god, this is so crazy, dude.

00:13:32.000 This is like the Patriot Act for technology, basically.

00:13:36.000 We cannot allow this kind of power.

00:13:37.000 What does it do?

00:13:38.000 It gives the Secretary of Commerce the ability to... Oh god, it's so... Okay, so let's see.

00:13:44.000 Section 3A.

00:13:45.000 The Secretary, in consultation with the relevant executive department and agency heads, is authorized to and shall take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, Investigate or otherwise mitigate these technologies is what they're saying.

00:13:59.000 If they pose an undue or unacceptable risk of interfering with the result or reported result of a federal election.

00:14:07.000 And they're saying like if a person, this is any covered transaction by any person or with respect to any property subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

00:14:15.000 So any American citizen that says an election was fake on Twitter means that they can go into mitigating any mitigating I don't think that Andrew Schultz thing is true.

00:14:30.000 I mean, the reporting going back talks about how the algorithm is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

00:14:35.000 So I pulled up Fox, multiple sources.

00:14:38.000 I had always heard that they had said that they had a different algorithm in China than we have for our version of TikTok.

00:14:43.000 It was just something somebody said earlier.

00:14:44.000 And I said, I could see somebody like leading with something like that, making a joke like that and it catching fire somehow.

00:14:49.000 There's no even a female.

00:14:50.000 There was also reporting like two or three years ago, which we talked about, so this

00:14:55.000 is probably like two years ago, about how they were specifically trying to ban feminists 1.00

00:14:59.000 and feminist ideas from their schools and stuff like that. 1.00

00:15:02.000 So maybe the specific concept of academia, of STEM content.

00:15:07.000 Yeah.

00:15:07.000 He may have made up.

00:15:08.000 I can't verify that.

00:15:08.000 I don't know.

00:15:09.000 There's no way to know.

00:15:10.000 We don't have access to the algorithms.

00:15:12.000 So Joe Rogan made the claim, which popularized it.

00:15:15.000 Yes.

00:15:15.000 So perhaps Schultz lied to Joe and then Joe ran with it.

00:15:18.000 But there is previous reporting where people are saying Douyin, China's version of TikTok, has a very different algorithm that doesn't allow this kind of content.

00:15:28.000 It doesn't specify STEM or anything like that, though.

00:15:30.000 Think of all the influencers that will be out of a job if they ban it here in America.

00:15:34.000 What will they do?

00:15:36.000 But you don't make real money on TikTok?

00:15:40.000 They push it towards brand deals though, right?

00:15:42.000 A large amount of following gets them more content with other types of products that they sell through their Let me put it this way.

00:15:49.000 You can make money on TikTok.

00:15:51.000 You can make money on Instagram.

00:15:53.000 In terms of social media, I think YouTube is the highest, like, view-to-dollar ratio.

00:15:59.000 And it's still crappy.

00:16:00.000 Podcasts are the best.

00:16:02.000 Audio version podcasts have, like, the best CPM.

00:16:05.000 If you want to make money on ads and sponsorships, it's audio podcasts.

00:16:07.000 Instagram Reels actually do fairly well for mid-level creators and down, right?

00:16:12.000 Probably not for the larger ones because there's a cap on how much you can make per month.

00:16:17.000 Facebook does way better.

00:16:18.000 So putting your videos on Facebook makes like 10 times the money of Instagram.

00:16:22.000 Like per viewer.

00:16:23.000 That's weird.

00:16:24.000 I don't know.

00:16:24.000 Don't ask me why.

00:16:25.000 And TikTok was completely worthless.

00:16:27.000 That's why I personally think TikTok, in my personal opinion, I believe it is probable that TikTok's followers are fake.

00:16:36.000 and intended to socially manipulate young people.

00:16:38.000 Dude, this is coming out of China, which said that they had zero COVID.

00:16:42.000 They were like, we have no more COVID now.

00:16:44.000 It's all done.

00:16:45.000 Like, they just lie, lie, lie, analytically lie.

00:16:48.000 I think that one of the biggest black pills for me was when somebody on Facebook, like long before I got rid of Facebook, was like, actually said, China's got the right idea by locking people in their homes.

00:16:57.000 I'm like, that's enough internet for today.

00:17:00.000 Like somebody I've known for a long period of time said that.

00:17:03.000 Here's what's going to happen.

00:17:04.000 There's going to be another lockdown.

00:17:06.000 And then someone's going to make a video on TikTok and it's going to say, I feel kind of bad.

00:17:10.000 This doesn't seem like a good thing to do.

00:17:12.000 We shouldn't be locking down.

00:17:14.000 Then the phone's gonna go brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr,

00:17:17.000 and they're gonna look and it's people gonna be saying, they're gonna get a bunch of notifications

00:17:20.000 from people being like, this ain't it bro, you're wrong, are you trying to destroy the

00:17:24.000 planet, bro you are so off, I can't believe I ever followed you.

00:17:28.000 Then they're gonna be like, oh, what's happening, why is everybody mad at me?

00:17:31.000 Then they're gonna make a video and being like, you know I thought about it man, like

00:17:33.000 we probably do need to lock down.

00:17:35.000 And then like, like, like, like, wow, you're so smart, you're so smart.

00:17:38.000 That's what the bots do. 0.85

00:17:39.000 Sargon posted like a poll the other day that said a bunch of people in Britain said when

00:17:44.000 they said like, do you believe that the lockdowns were a mistake and most of them said no.

00:17:49.000 I don't know how big the sample size was in a poll like that, but even with hindsight being 20-20, you're living in a different world than people who intake a different set of news to you.

00:17:59.000 So somebody watching CNN or over there, I guess the BBC, they don't understand things the way you understand about what's been going on in the world.

00:18:06.000 So functionally, they might see another lockdown as a good idea because they just don't get that things are different now.

00:18:12.000 Straight up, it's a manipulation tool, TikTok.

00:18:15.000 We don't have access to the algorithm, so we don't know what it's feeding us, why it's feeding us, what it's feeding us.

00:18:20.000 We don't know what's getting tracked with our data.

00:18:22.000 So that stuff needs to be opened up.

00:18:24.000 We need to see that code.

00:18:25.000 That I understand we could use the government to force open, but to do these dumb, bland, general, legal things where it gives them, they can mitigate any system that, quote, poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States.

00:18:42.000 Are you kidding me? 0.73

00:18:42.000 That's insane. 0.73

00:18:43.000 That is absolutely insane.

00:18:44.000 Do you use TikTok?

00:18:46.000 I have a TikTok, but I don't use it.

00:18:47.000 I'm too much of a boomer.

00:18:48.000 Sorry.

00:18:50.000 I'm on YouTube.

00:18:51.000 I think you're a Gen Xer.

00:18:52.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:18:53.000 That's exactly right.

00:18:54.000 But it's like, you don't need to see the code to know that doom scrolling is bad.

00:18:58.000 You'll find yourself, like, 10 minutes go by and you're like, holy crap, what the hell have I been doing for the last 10 minutes?

00:19:04.000 And like, I go through phases like that, right?

00:19:06.000 Where like, not TikTok, but like, I, there's a difference between posting content and then when you, where you find you've just been scrolling and looking at nothing important for 15 minutes, you're not even really engaging with what you're looking at, but you always feel worse for wear when you're done.

00:19:20.000 And that's just as much as you're talking about as it, it incentivizes people to act or promote bad behavior or to promote unhealthy behavior.

00:19:29.000 It is mentally damaging for your brain, even if you're taking in general content, to sit there and doomscroll for long periods of time.

00:19:36.000 What is that thing called you talk about all the time, apoptosis?

00:19:39.000 Yeah, apoptosis, when a cell programs itself to die because it has no more function in the system.

00:19:43.000 I feel like Democrats are the party of that, right?

00:19:46.000 Like every single thing, I shouldn't say everything, but like most of their policies are just about killing their constituents.

00:19:51.000 Like abortion, sterilization, or now TikTok.

00:19:55.000 It's like promoting the things that maximize the likelihood an individual suffers and then dies.

00:20:02.000 That or just the fact that people who use it tend to vote that way and it encourages them to reach out to more people.

00:20:07.000 That's what I mean, like, if their policies result in people ending their bloodlines, they're like, just basically, the Democratic Party is the great filter of social Darwinism.

00:20:17.000 Well, that's what they talk about with LGBTQIA philosophy, right?

00:20:20.000 They don't give birth, they recruit.

00:20:23.000 And then the people who are resistant to those ideas have families and persist and their bloodlines continue.

00:20:28.000 I worry sometimes, though, like we've talked about how they say Gen Z is going to be the first generation in a long time that will be more conservative.

00:20:35.000 I don't know if that's bared out to be true, but a lot of times I wonder.

00:20:38.000 It's like the power of social media.

00:20:39.000 You can have all the kids you want.

00:20:41.000 That kid is still going to have a phone at 12 years old.

00:20:43.000 If the parents don't do the right thing, that kid's still going to have a phone too young and they're going to have access to material that's very damaging them to have access to if they don't have parents that are showing them the right way to live.

00:20:53.000 Gotta get out of the cities, you gotta home school your kids.

00:20:55.000 But let's talk about some of the stuff that we can do in pushing back.

00:20:58.000 It's not just about complaining on the internet like we often do.

00:21:01.000 So, a few things.

00:21:02.000 We did a podcast episode with The Culture War.

00:21:07.000 Bill Ottman was here.

00:21:08.000 We're talking with James Lawrence, lawyer.

00:21:10.000 We're suing California because California passed a law that has requirements on big tech platforms, basically requiring censorship, which negatively impacts me as a media company and content creator for distribution on these platforms.

00:21:23.000 And then Bill, who's the CEO of one of these big platforms.

00:21:26.000 So we're actually taking those steps to do something because we're not just sitting around doing nothing.

00:21:31.000 We're likely going to be entering litigation, filing lawsuits against Bandcamp for terminating our account because they've created a whole slew of problems for us and all of the tens of thousands of people who've purchased music.

00:21:43.000 I think it may be in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands.

00:21:47.000 So it's created a disaster.

00:21:48.000 And the way we described it is like, if you go to a mall and you sign a contract to open up a mall store and sell a product, and then without breaking any of the rules of the mall's contract or any of the deal, one day you walk up and they've pulled the gate down, locked it shut, they've changed the locks.

00:22:08.000 And you're like, I've got stuff in there.

00:22:09.000 And they're like, too bad, it's ours now.

00:22:11.000 And you're like, yo, at the very least, you have to give me my stuff back.

00:22:14.000 You can't just take my stuff.

00:22:15.000 What was the reason they gave you one?

00:22:17.000 They didn't give you one?

00:22:18.000 So we don't even know if they're still holding our money.

00:22:20.000 We don't know if they're still distributing our content or hosting our copyrighted works without our permission or profiting off of it because they've communicated nothing.

00:22:27.000 So our only course of action is going to be if, like, that's why I'm saying the mall analogy, if they shut the store and we know for a fact our stuff is in there, and we do because we had music on the platform, Well, so, the first thing is, yo, you have to let us in to go and check to see where our stuff is.

00:22:44.000 We own the rights to that.

00:22:45.000 That's our copyrighted work.

00:22:47.000 With the mall, they'd let you go in and say, look, your stuff's not there.

00:22:50.000 I mean, granted, you'd know if you have an ice cream machine and you didn't get it, you'd know it's there.

00:22:53.000 With us, the problem now is we can't contact any of the people who bought from us.

00:22:57.000 Not directly, so we don't know how to refund if they need a refund.

00:23:00.000 So if they don't have the music, then Bandcamp took a percentage of the money that transferred and then took the music away from the people?

00:23:09.000 Okay, that's a problem.

00:23:10.000 Because now we've got a problem.

00:23:12.000 That's like theft or something.

00:23:13.000 I don't know, that's interesting.

00:23:15.000 And then if they didn't take the music away, now I've got a problem because they're hosting my copyrighted content and profiting off of it by hosting it on their platform for people without my involvement.

00:23:26.000 So we've got a legal issue that needs to be answered by the courts.

00:23:30.000 Can a business host my copyrighted content after removing me from the platform if it retains a customer base that they are profiting off of?

00:23:40.000 So there's a real question that has to be answered.

00:23:42.000 I forgot what it's called, but we talked about it.

00:23:44.000 Anyway, we're taking these actions.

00:23:46.000 We're suing.

00:23:47.000 We're also building culture.

00:23:48.000 We released a song.

00:23:49.000 Pick it up at trashhatchrecords.com.

00:23:51.000 But this is what brings us to you, Ethan.

00:23:54.000 You got this comic.

00:23:56.000 Cyberfrog.

00:23:57.000 Cyberfrog 2.

00:23:58.000 That's the second one, yeah.

00:24:00.000 Wrecked Planet.

00:24:01.000 Let's talk about your story first with getting cancelled.

00:24:04.000 So people can understand what Comicsgate is and why they should hear your story.

00:24:09.000 Because I know a lot of people may not be familiar.

00:24:12.000 Where'd my pen go?

00:24:14.000 Is it this one?

00:24:15.000 That is awesome.

00:24:16.000 So basically, you are responsible for some of the most iconic comic book imagery.

00:24:23.000 I like that.

00:24:23.000 I don't know if it's true, but yeah, absolutely.

00:24:26.000 Well, so you created Flash's mother, Nora.

00:24:29.000 Well, that's one thing, yeah.

00:24:30.000 I know, right?

00:24:31.000 But hold on.

00:24:33.000 The movie that's coming out, the Flash movie, it's about him going back to save his mom, is it not?

00:24:38.000 Right, I think so, yeah.

00:24:39.000 It's the Flashpoint paradox?

00:24:40.000 That's a major DC storyline, where The Flash, his mother was killed by Zoom, and then he

00:24:47.000 wants to go back in time because he can run so fast he can do it.

00:24:50.000 So this is a character you created, now so influential, there's a major, massive, you

00:24:54.000 know, blockbuster film about to be released.

00:24:56.000 I think that's important context for people to understand the amount of influence you've

00:25:00.000 had on the industry is large.

00:25:02.000 Plus, in the video game that came out a few years ago, Injustice 2, Atrocitus is a character who is in it.

00:25:09.000 You can play as him, a character that you drew, you created the art for.

00:25:13.000 Yeah, I created the whole thing.

00:25:14.000 I'll take 100% credit for Atrocitus, yeah.

00:25:17.000 I just, I had the name, I said, this is so DC Comics, Atrocitus.

00:25:21.000 It sounds great.

00:25:21.000 So you actually created the character?

00:25:23.000 Absolutely, yeah.

00:25:24.000 And then one day, you said, hey everybody, I voted for Trump, and then they came after you.

00:25:29.000 Well, they knew I was a Republican.

00:25:31.000 I mean they did.

00:25:32.000 I used to, I mean I literally was the only elephant in the room all the time when I went to comic book conventions and everybody looked at me weird.

00:25:41.000 I would have friends, I would make friends with other professionals and then I would, I don't know, we'd spend a little time apart and then the next time I'd see them they'd go, You voted for Bush?

00:25:53.000 And they'd have this look of disgust about them.

00:25:55.000 I was like, yes, I'm a Republican.

00:25:57.000 I voted for Bush.

00:26:00.000 And then that was fine.

00:26:01.000 I think the Obama years were great because, for me anyway, because I wasn't being persecuted.

00:26:08.000 Nobody was worried about anything because Obama was president.

00:26:11.000 They won. 0.92

00:26:13.000 And Trump was a joke.

00:26:14.000 I really didn't think much of Trump in 2015, but he won me over by 2016 and I was a fan.

00:26:20.000 And I love the Pepe memes.

00:26:22.000 I loved all that stuff.

00:26:24.000 So, anyway, it was no big deal until Trump actually won.

00:26:29.000 And when Trump won, I just thought, great, it's our turn.

00:26:32.000 You know, very naive about the culture war.

00:26:34.000 Wore my MAGA hat that was autographed by the president, and I took a nice picture and I tweeted it out.

00:26:40.000 And that's when I started to see, I started to see messages from my peers saying things like, Ethan's MAGA.

00:26:46.000 Ethan VanSkyver's MAGA.

00:26:47.000 Did you see that?

00:26:48.000 Yeah.

00:26:48.000 Well, I guess he's cancelled now, right everybody?

00:26:50.000 He's cancelled.

00:26:51.000 And I didn't know what that was all about, but there was definitely, like, rage over this idea that somebody who was a fairly influential artist at DC Comics was a Trump supporter.

00:27:02.000 And I didn't think it was gonna... You know, I basically talked to a few of them and kind of said, hey, this is the way... Oh God, I'm so naive.

00:27:10.000 I said, this is the way the country moves forward.

00:27:12.000 Right step, left step, you know, basically we all get our turn and hopefully, you know, this is progress.

00:27:19.000 But then I got a message from somebody who said, how could you do this?

00:27:24.000 You voted against all of your queer comrades in comics. 0.95

00:27:28.000 How do you understand that our lives are in jeopardy and you voted for that?

00:27:34.000 Don't you care?

00:27:35.000 And I guess I wrote back to that person and I kind of said, well, I guess I don't care that much about that.

00:27:42.000 I guess I have other priorities.

00:27:46.000 We all have our different issues that we vote on.

00:27:49.000 Anyway, my response to that tweet, or that private message, got shared around to all my peers.

00:27:54.000 And now everybody was furious with me because I'd basically invalidated the lives of my queer associates in comics.

00:28:02.000 And then the final thing was, I was persecuted, people were coming after me.

00:28:09.000 I had a writer I was working with on Batman.

00:28:11.000 I was doing Batman for a little while.

00:28:13.000 This great guy named Greg Hurwitz, and he had a mutual friend.

00:28:16.000 He had a... Jordan B. Peterson was his friend.

00:28:19.000 And he kind of said, have you heard of this guy, Jordan Peterson?

00:28:22.000 I said, yes, he's great, you know.

00:28:24.000 Well, he's seen your work.

00:28:25.000 He likes it.

00:28:26.000 He wants to know if you'll illustrate his upcoming book.

00:28:31.000 And I was just like, well, if I do that, if I do it, I'm going to get a whip in.

00:28:36.000 I know it.

00:28:37.000 That's going to be a big problem.

00:28:38.000 I'm already on the verge of cancellation.

00:28:40.000 I was terrified.

00:28:42.000 My wife and I just had a baby who was diagnosed with autism.

00:28:46.000 And so I needed my job.

00:28:48.000 I really needed my job.

00:28:49.000 But on the other hand, I had this conversation with Jordan Peterson.

00:28:53.000 Where he said something that really impacted me, and I still think about this every single day, and it helps me step forward.

00:28:59.000 It helps me take another step.

00:29:01.000 He said, Ethan, I said, I'm scared.

00:29:04.000 Dr. Peterson, I'm scared to illustrate your book.

00:29:07.000 And he just said, Ethan, you can't let these mobbers back you into a corner.

00:29:12.000 I wish I could do a Canadian accent for you.

00:29:14.000 You can't let these mobbers back you into a corner. 0.88

00:29:17.000 And I just thought to myself, You're damn right.

00:29:22.000 I'm going to illustrate your book.

00:29:24.000 And so I did.

00:29:25.000 I illustrated 12 Rules for Life.

00:29:27.000 It turned out to be a number one bestseller, and that was it.

00:29:30.000 Someone sent me the Korean version.

00:29:32.000 Really?

00:29:33.000 Yeah, I guess it was a joke.

00:29:35.000 I can't read Korean.

00:29:37.000 Though it may have burned some bridges, or seems to have, that it launched your career in so many other ways.

00:29:43.000 That book is huge.

00:29:44.000 It was big, but again, it wasn't really my book.

00:29:47.000 It was Jordan Peterson's book, and people just kind of incidentally go, oh, your name's in that.

00:29:51.000 Like, my little sister Hannah, who's a big fan of yours, she's watching right now.

00:29:54.000 Hi, Hannah.

00:29:55.000 Howdy! 0.99

00:29:56.000 You know, she was shocked.

00:29:57.000 She's like, we love that book.

00:29:59.000 I can't believe my brother illustrated it.

00:30:00.000 Like, I just, you know.

00:30:02.000 So, in any case, like, it's more stuff like that.

00:30:06.000 But what it really did was it just kind of like set my feet in stone.

00:30:10.000 Like, I am now officially, I guess, a culture warrior.

00:30:14.000 Where I didn't even believe the culture war existed until then.

00:30:17.000 Wow.

00:30:17.000 What year was this? 2017?

00:30:19.000 2017.

00:30:19.000 And people were calling me a white supremacist and a Nazi and all these things that in 2017 really hurt.

00:30:26.000 You didn't want to be called a Nazi.

00:30:28.000 You didn't want people to think you were racist.

00:30:31.000 But those are the weapons that they use against creative people and pretty much anyone that they want to destroy.

00:30:37.000 You can't deny that you're racist.

00:30:40.000 Racism is on a spectrum. 0.78

00:30:42.000 So is white supremacy.

00:30:43.000 And if you deny it, that proves it.

00:30:45.000 In a sense, yes it does.

00:30:46.000 You're not even aware that you're racist.

00:30:46.000 The Kafka trap.

00:30:48.000 Let me explain why you're racist.

00:30:50.000 So it really is a nasty situation and in any case DC Comics called me up and it was, I gotta say, DC did the best they could but they were being swarmed by the media over my existence working there.

00:31:07.000 The thing that leftists do that they're so great at Uh, is they have accomplices in the media that will write the articles that you want them to write, that they want them to write.

00:31:17.000 And then those will get published on the Daily Beast or any of these awful, like, uh, websites.

00:31:22.000 Uh, and then they'll refer to those articles as proof that you are exactly who they say you are.

00:31:27.000 And then those get referenced in Wikipedia.

00:31:29.000 Your Wikipedia is soon denouncing you as a whatever it is, a white supremacist or whatever they're calling you.

00:31:37.000 Anyway, so that was that. 0.58

00:31:40.000 DC Comics called me up, and God bless them.

00:31:42.000 They tried to stand by me as much as they could, but somebody who I really liked there, a friend of the family, called me up, and I said, am I okay?

00:31:50.000 Is everything okay?

00:31:51.000 And I could hear them pouring a drink into a little glass.

00:31:54.000 I could hear the ice.

00:31:55.000 And he just said, we can't renew your contract.

00:31:59.000 And he took a big drink and I was like, I have a child.

00:32:02.000 I have a baby.

00:32:03.000 I have a baby with autism.

00:32:05.000 And he said, well, you've got four or five more issues on your contract and then that's it.

00:32:05.000 I need my job.

00:32:11.000 You've got time to find other work.

00:32:14.000 So it was absolutely terrifying.

00:32:16.000 You know what the mistake he made was?

00:32:18.000 Well, you see what the leftists would have done?

00:32:18.000 What?

00:32:21.000 What?

00:32:22.000 They would have immediately started yelling, how dare you touch me!

00:32:24.000 You ever watch Fight Club?

00:32:26.000 Yes.

00:32:26.000 You know the scene where Edward Norton falls on the ground and starts punching himself in the face?

00:32:30.000 Yeah.

00:32:30.000 That's what the left does.

00:32:31.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:32:32.000 So then they walk out, and then people are like, I saw him walk out with a black eye, and then you're like, you're going to renew my contract?

00:32:38.000 That's what they do.

00:32:39.000 Cry bullies. 1.00

00:32:40.000 Right, they say, they accuse the boss of some kind of impropriety, they exploit the law, the EEOC, the labor rights and stuff like that, whereas you, an honest guy, just went, well, I guess my contract's done, I guess I'll leave.

00:32:53.000 Yeah, but you know, one thing I don't like is when people use the word can't.

00:32:57.000 That's really annoying when what it means is, I don't want to, we don't want to, but we're like, we can't refer you to your contract.

00:33:02.000 No, they could.

00:33:03.000 They just chose not to.

00:33:04.000 They could have, but who am I?

00:33:06.000 I mean, they were, DC Comics was in all kinds of trouble.

00:33:09.000 They were trying to sign with AT.

00:33:10.000 I'm making excuses for them.

00:33:12.000 They were trying to sell themselves to AT&T, they were trying to get good press, and they were deliberately, the left was deliberately putting all this stuff in the media to make it look like they were employing white supremacists.

00:33:22.000 They really didn't have, as a business, a choice.

00:33:25.000 And I give them a pass, I do, because they've always been good to my family, up until the end, and they're still writing me big royalty checks for movies like The Flash.

00:33:34.000 Wow, really?

00:33:35.000 That's cool then.

00:33:36.000 It's nice, yeah.

00:33:38.000 And they were barely with AT&T for like a year before getting sold again?

00:33:41.000 Yeah, so I don't don't answer this if you can't I'm curious Maybe you can answer in a more general sense, you know

00:33:49.000 So the flat with the flash movie you're getting like a royalty from that somehow

00:33:54.000 I'll bet, yeah.

00:33:56.000 So, like, how does that... I want to avoid asking anything too personal, but I'm curious, like, a comic book artist who sees their work turn into a movie, like, what kind of money can they make from that?

00:34:06.000 Is it, like, a big deal?

00:34:07.000 Is it, like, you're gonna buy a mansion, or is it, like, you might pay a phone bill?

00:34:11.000 Oh! 0.60

00:34:12.000 No, we bought our house from the Justice League royalties.

00:34:15.000 Whoa, from the movie?

00:34:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:34:16.000 Wow!

00:34:17.000 So, wait, wait.

00:34:19.000 How do you get royalties for that?

00:34:20.000 Because when you drew the pictures, you have the right to that imagery?

00:34:23.000 So, because of the insane exploitation of comic book creators throughout the years.

00:34:29.000 You know, I mean, basically, Steve Ditko doesn't own Spider-Man or Doctor Strange at all.

00:34:34.000 He's got none of that.

00:34:35.000 He should be a billionaire, and he died You know, just a regular middle-class fella.

00:34:40.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:34:42.000 DC Comics kind of woke up to that idea, and they created an incentive program for their creators.

00:34:48.000 If you just want to sit there and draw their characters, that's fine.

00:34:51.000 You'll get a paycheck.

00:34:52.000 But if you want to create something for them, like I always did, I always created new stuff for them, if they look at it and say, this is really good, we're going to be using this in other media, they'll send you an incentive contract that you sign that grants you a percentage.

00:35:06.000 of those media rights in perpetuity.

00:35:08.000 Wow.

00:35:09.000 In perpetuity?

00:35:10.000 That's the way it should be.

00:35:11.000 Yeah.

00:35:12.000 So there are certain things like I own Iron Heights prison from so whenever Flash sends

00:35:16.000 a criminal to jail and they think he's in Iron Heights, I get paid.

00:35:20.000 So it's great.

00:35:21.000 It's terrific.

00:35:21.000 Wow.

00:35:22.000 But I have to imagine it's like one instance in one media thing.

00:35:26.000 It's the combined collection of all the different media mentioning it that makes it substantial.

00:35:31.000 Well, video games are very substantial.

00:35:34.000 I mean, yeah, the combined, that definitely matters, but movies and video games are insane.

00:35:42.000 The royalties we get for video games are great.

00:35:44.000 I hear that for a musician, if they can get their song into a movie, is when they can retire.

00:35:48.000 Yeah.

00:35:49.000 I, I, I, there was a friend of a friend, uh, so, someone I know knows a band that we would widely consider to be a one-hit wonder, and the guy I think made like ten million dollars off of one song that ended up in a commercial.

00:36:04.000 It was a very, very popular song.

00:36:06.000 Most people may have remembered it from the 2000s.

00:36:09.000 But, like, they told me the story where it's like, this guy went from being a middle-class dude playing local shows, building up a following, making a decent living, then one day a phone company bought a song from him, and then he just didn't know what to do and he just had ten million bucks.

00:36:23.000 Like, the money just slapped his account and he was like, eh, that's weird.

00:36:27.000 It kind of, in a sense, destroyed his life, as I'm told, in that A buddy of mine said that, you know, when he first became very wealthy at a young age, he had an existential crisis because you don't know what to do.

00:36:40.000 Everyone around you is in this machine.

00:36:42.000 The relationships that you had were predicated upon, like, your work environment or your school environment, but now you've been removed from that, and you're just some dude who wanders around and doesn't have to work, where everyone else is like... You know, the story is, he'd call up his friend on, like, a Monday afternoon and be like, hey, you want to go out to eat?

00:36:56.000 And they'd be like, bro, I'm at work.

00:36:58.000 And he'd go, oh, when do you get off?

00:36:59.000 They'd be like, I don't know, six or seven, then I'm going home to see my family, and he'd go, oh.

00:37:02.000 So all you rich people out there, when you take your friends out to lunch or dinner or whatever, let them know before the meal that you're going to pay for it.

00:37:08.000 It's so stressful to wonder the entire meal when you're broke.

00:37:11.000 Am I going to have to pay for this?

00:37:12.000 I don't know what I can order.

00:37:14.000 So just let them know ahead of time.

00:37:15.000 It's helpful.

00:37:15.000 And also, be wary of inviting your friends on trips to Europe.

00:37:21.000 Like, I've seen that way too much.

00:37:24.000 Like, people who are wealthier being like, you have any time this weekend?

00:37:28.000 We're going to Prague.

00:37:28.000 It's like, uh-huh.

00:37:30.000 Like, dude.

00:37:31.000 Is it on you?

00:37:32.000 Yeah, right?

00:37:33.000 What are you asking me?

00:37:34.000 I mean, yeah, so I think people need to be cognizant.

00:37:37.000 I think, you know, I know a lot of people who grew up well-off do not understand that's not a normal thing people do.

00:37:42.000 Right.

00:37:42.000 And also, I know exactly what you're talking about, Ian, because, you know, when I worked for, like, these media companies, they'd be like, hey, let's go out to dinner.

00:37:51.000 And they would bring people from the work who are making, like, maybe 80k a year, but they'd want to go to, like, a five-star steakhouse and get, like, Wagyu or something.

00:38:00.000 And then I'm just like, you realize you can't bring that, like, that's not nice.

00:38:04.000 That's, like, a mean thing to do, you know?

00:38:07.000 Anyway, what were we talking about?

00:38:10.000 Well, I mean, maybe a little bit, you know.

00:38:13.000 But no, I mean, listen, it's really nice of them.

00:38:16.000 I'm really happy that DC is taking care of more of their professional creators.

00:38:21.000 Who's your favorite character you created?

00:38:24.000 Um, I guess it's Atrocitus just because he's so popular and I really, I don't know, I just like him.

00:38:29.000 I got the idea, I was watching 28 Days Later.

00:38:33.000 Remember those movies?

00:38:34.000 Yeah, of course.

00:38:35.000 Like the zombies just spit blood and their eyes are red and all of the...

00:38:40.000 The mucous membrane and tears, it's all blood and red.

00:38:44.000 And I just got this idea.

00:38:45.000 This is the Red Lantern Course.

00:38:47.000 I'm sure you guys don't talk to many people like me.

00:38:49.000 This is how I am.

00:38:50.000 But here's the whole thing.

00:38:52.000 Imagine, here's the fantasy.

00:38:54.000 Imagine you are wronged in such a profoundly awful way.

00:38:58.000 Somebody kills your wife, your kid, you know, blah, blah, blah. 0.91

00:39:01.000 You go through the legal system and nothing happens.

00:39:06.000 You can't get your justice, right?

00:39:08.000 And the guy's just laughing at you that did it.

00:39:11.000 There he is.

00:39:11.000 There's Atrocitus.

00:39:13.000 And so, you're so angry.

00:39:16.000 Obviously, you're filled with this rage that you can't even comprehend.

00:39:21.000 But then a little red ring flies down from outer space and looks at you and talks to you and says, put me on and together we'll get the vengeance that you're looking for, that you deserve.

00:39:32.000 Now, do you put the ring on?

00:39:34.000 You do that?

00:39:35.000 Because the minute you put the ring on, you are now overwhelmed with rage to the point where you're spitting up, like, red blood and energy and everything, and now you're entirely consumed by vengeance.

00:39:47.000 You've become the Incredible Hulk, essentially.

00:39:50.000 And yes, you know, you get your revenge. 0.91

00:39:52.000 You can go get this guy and punish him and destroy his whole world.

00:39:57.000 But now you've lost your soul. 0.95

00:39:59.000 And that's what the Red Lantern Corps is all about.

00:40:01.000 Like, it's this Faustian bargain that comes with putting on the ring.

00:40:05.000 Can he take the ring off?

00:40:06.000 The ring leaves you when it's ready to be... when it's destroyed you.

00:40:09.000 You know, it's like it leaves you.

00:40:10.000 Now, somebody like Atrocitus has just mastered the ring.

00:40:13.000 He wears it all the time.

00:40:14.000 It's never gonna leave him.

00:40:15.000 He's the leader of the Red Lantern Corps.

00:40:17.000 See that symbol on his chest?

00:40:19.000 Let me ask you about, you know, before all this stuff went down, did you notice in the industry, before your cancellation, an encroaching wokeness, cult-like mentality, something like that?

00:40:31.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:40:32.000 But I didn't understand what it was.

00:40:34.000 A lot of strange women. 1.00

00:40:39.000 I hate to put it this way.

00:40:43.000 Sorry, ladies. 1.00

00:40:44.000 A lot of strange women kind of suddenly showed up in the comic book business and basically came at us with this criticism that this was clearly a boys' club, it was unsafe for women, and everything that you guys are putting out is sexist and it's racist and it's homophobic.

00:41:02.000 Well, we're going to fix that.

00:41:03.000 If you hire us, and you should hire us, we're going to fix that.

00:41:07.000 Because if you don't hire us, you're sexist.

00:41:09.000 So suddenly all of these women show up and they start basically... 1.00

00:41:14.000 Making changes to this sort of male-dominated hobby.

00:41:18.000 This is a male-driven culture. 0.97

00:41:21.000 Obviously it is.

00:41:22.000 These power fantasies are mostly for boys.

00:41:26.000 But they started to make these changes.

00:41:29.000 The women, suddenly, who used to be beautiful and curvaceous, we used to be able to glorify and exaggerate the female form. 1.00

00:41:37.000 Suddenly we had to cover them up.

00:41:39.000 Breasts became smaller and smaller until they were just sort of pecs. There was actually a weird phenomenon called 0.89

00:41:45.000 the unipec, which was just one breast with like a stretched cloth over it because you didn't even want 0.81

00:41:51.000 to define breasts in any way in superheroes. 0.58

00:41:54.000 And basically everybody got scared and then this other thing happened.

00:42:01.000 Because there were women in the workplace, of course, the men started flirting with the women. 0.98

00:42:07.000 You know, God help them.

00:42:09.000 These guys started to ask girls on dates, and then the girls would say that that was sexual harassment, and that's when cancel culture really started. 0.98

00:42:18.000 I saw some very talented guys get their lives turned upside down because they were stupid enough to ask So and so at the bar at a convention if she wanted to come up to their hotel room. 0.96

00:42:31.000 And this wasn't like a power disparity. 0.99

00:42:34.000 There was one case where an editor with a lot of power was putting his hands on women.

00:42:38.000 I understand that.

00:42:39.000 This was different.

00:42:41.000 This was a case of peers.

00:42:43.000 We're both creators.

00:42:44.000 You're a female. 1.00

00:42:45.000 I'm a male.

00:42:46.000 I'm going to ask you on a date.

00:42:48.000 I feel threatened if I say no to you.

00:42:50.000 All of the stuff that happened to me too hit comics pretty hard.

00:42:54.000 So there was that whole situation which caused everybody to really get in line.

00:42:59.000 You did not want to question these women.

00:43:00.000 You started to realize they were activists.

00:43:03.000 You don't want to question these activists at all.

00:43:07.000 Allow them to make these changes.

00:43:09.000 And then the other thing that happened was there was a guy named Orson Scott Card who was a very, very famous sci-fi author.

00:43:18.000 And he's also Latter-day Saint.

00:43:20.000 I was raised Mormon, so I know that he's Latter-day Saint, and so he shares the values that I was raised with.

00:43:26.000 He came out and said he disagreed with gay marriage.

00:43:28.000 He didn't think marriage was something between a man and a woman, and it was a holy thing. 0.89

00:43:36.000 Gay marriage shouldn't be a thing. 1.00

00:43:39.000 And then DC tried to hire him to do a Superman story, and the entire industry went crazy trying to get this Superman story, a short story, by this legendary Orson Scott Card, look him up, legendary author, cancelled.

00:43:55.000 And that was an amazing thing to me.

00:43:57.000 I was like, why can't we just publish the story?

00:43:59.000 I don't understand why disagreeing with him about this one political idea means that he can't write a Superman story when everybody loves his work.

00:44:07.000 So that's when I started to see woke creeping into comics.

00:44:10.000 And by the time 2015 rolled around, my peers were saying strange things to me.

00:44:18.000 They were saying, you're a capitalist, you're a Republican, right Ethan?

00:44:23.000 You care about money.

00:44:27.000 Imagine this, 50% of the country, 50% of the world is made up of women. 0.99

00:44:33.000 And we're not marketing to them at all, are we?

00:44:36.000 If we started marketing and changing these comics to appeal to more women and hiring more women, do you understand what would happen?

00:44:42.000 We would double our income.

00:44:44.000 We would double our revenue.

00:44:45.000 And you, as somebody who cares about money because you're a capitalist, and I was like, aren't we all capitalists?

00:44:50.000 No, we're not.

00:44:51.000 Okay, just me.

00:44:52.000 That means something to you, I'm sure.

00:44:55.000 And that was the philosophy.

00:44:57.000 That was the big lie that allowed comics to come in and become woke, I think.

00:45:02.000 From there, you hire activists, they hire more activists, and the whole thing erodes from the inside.

00:45:08.000 And then people stop buying.

00:45:09.000 Yeah, when you want to appeal to women, then the guys maybe are not getting appealed to.

00:45:13.000 Like you can't appeal to both, I would think.

00:45:15.000 You might be able to.

00:45:16.000 It's even weirder than that.

00:45:19.000 Lego did a study, which I always cite, and this is amazing.

00:45:23.000 I don't think anybody's thought of it this way, but Lego was wondering why girls don't play with Lego toys.

00:45:28.000 They're boys.

00:45:29.000 They're not really gender-based, they're just bricks. 1.00

00:45:32.000 So why are little boys playing with Legos, but girls aren't? 1.00

00:45:35.000 Why is that?

00:45:36.000 So they got a study together.

00:45:37.000 They got 2,500 kids.

00:45:40.000 1,250 boys, 1,250 girls, and their parents.

00:45:43.000 And they put Lego figurines, let's just say a Batman Lego set, in front of these kids.

00:45:49.000 And they just studied how these boys and girls played with their Lego toys to try to figure out what the missing problem was.

00:45:56.000 What's the missing piece?

00:45:58.000 Well, the boys pick up Batman, pick up a little Batman figurine, and they become Batman.

00:46:04.000 That's the whole thing.

00:46:05.000 Like, they take on those traits.

00:46:07.000 They imagine they're Batman, you know, and that's how boys fantasize.

00:46:11.000 That's how boys play.

00:46:13.000 Meanwhile, the little girls pick up Batman, and Batman becomes them.

00:46:18.000 They project themselves onto Batman, and suddenly Batman is acting like they are.

00:46:22.000 Wow.

00:46:23.000 Which is why Barbie is so popular.

00:46:25.000 What's Barbie's personality? 1.00

00:46:26.000 Who's Barbie?

00:46:27.000 She's whoever the little girl who's playing with Barbie is. 0.94

00:46:30.000 We were just talking about that yesterday.

00:46:32.000 Boys pretend that they are He-Man, and girls pretend that Barbie is them. 0.95

00:46:35.000 That's right.

00:46:36.000 Wow.

00:46:37.000 I used to do that with G.I.

00:46:38.000 Joe's.

00:46:38.000 I would become the guy, Duke, or Scarlet, or whoever the character, and we would act like me and Steve.

00:46:43.000 We'd set them all up, and I'd be like, I'm coming!

00:46:46.000 And he's like, no, look out, look out!

00:46:48.000 And he'd be the Cobra Commander, and we were acting as the characters.

00:46:51.000 I've never put my personality onto a doll before.

00:46:55.000 It's why they say where a lot of the representation stuff comes in, it's a feminine trait that's been learned by males to look at representation as if they have to see their exact selves in another character.

00:47:06.000 I don't know if when I played with Legos and stuff, if I became the character or whatever.

00:47:12.000 Like, if I was playing with Batman, Batman was doing Batman stuff.

00:47:16.000 You know what I mean?

00:47:17.000 Like, I would have, like, Batman and, like, Cyclops, and I'd be, Batman would be, like... But Tim, you knew who they were.

00:47:23.000 You understand?

00:47:23.000 They were themselves.

00:47:24.000 Yeah, they were not me.

00:47:25.000 Batman was Batman.

00:47:25.000 You were acting as them, which is why, as a male... Well, I mean, like, this is what I'm trying to say, like, I wasn't going like, I'm Batman and I will fight you.

00:47:33.000 It was like, I have Batman Cyclops and Batman would be like, yeah, two of two!

00:47:36.000 Like, so they were two distinct characters of themselves that I would have do battle when I was a young man.

00:47:41.000 Were any of them you?

00:47:42.000 No.

00:47:42.000 Okay.

00:47:43.000 See, that's the whole thing.

00:47:44.000 That's what I'm saying.

00:47:45.000 Not that I would be like, I am Batman and walk around and project myself as like, Batman becomes me.

00:47:50.000 I'm saying like, I would view them as them, as their characters.

00:47:54.000 Of course.

00:47:55.000 But for the girls you're saying, they would be like, look, Jenny would be playing with Batman. 1.00

00:47:58.000 She'd be like, this is Jenny.

00:48:00.000 So she'd have the Batman doll and it would be called Jenny and that would be her? 0.58

00:48:03.000 Like that kind of thing?

00:48:04.000 Pretty much.

00:48:05.000 Whatever a little girl's aspirations are, she'll project them onto Barbie. 0.97

00:48:10.000 Does Barbie have distinct traits? 0.96

00:48:12.000 Batman has Batman, has Bruce Wayne, Batman has parents, you know what I'm saying?

00:48:15.000 Does Barbie have distinct traits that they would even be able to quantify other than what their physical appearance is?

00:48:21.000 Deliberately no.

00:48:22.000 That's why it's so successful.

00:48:25.000 So, now imagine, I don't think men and women change as they grow older in that way.

00:48:33.000 That's a big difference between men and women.

00:48:37.000 So now imagine that you're a creative person who's writing Batman.

00:48:42.000 Now men just go, okay, well I'm going to write Batman as I know Batman.

00:48:46.000 He's going to be Batman.

00:48:46.000 He's not going to be me.

00:48:47.000 I don't want to put myself into Batman.

00:48:49.000 He's going to be Batman.

00:48:50.000 I'm going to do the best Batman story I can do.

00:48:53.000 These ladies... Batman starts getting sassy. 1.00

00:48:57.000 They start to write Batman with more of their own traits.

00:49:00.000 And soon, before you know it, it's like these characters are unrecognizable.

00:49:04.000 They're sitting around having coffee in bars and having chit-chat and stuff.

00:49:09.000 And they seem to be unable to actually... And I'm not saying all of them.

00:49:15.000 There are some ladies who are great. 1.00

00:49:17.000 Anne Nesenti, shout out. 1.00

00:49:18.000 Louise Simonson, great writers.

00:49:20.000 But many of them are just...

00:49:23.000 You know, projecting themselves onto these characters, and maybe it's because they really just don't care that much.

00:49:28.000 Are there specific examples of a character you can think of that was, I guess say, feminized?

00:49:33.000 I don't know if that's the right word.

00:49:34.000 We're kind of talking about masculine and feminine behaviors, not necessarily men and women.

00:49:38.000 Yeah.

00:49:39.000 I'll tell you one thing I don't like, and I don't know if this is actually a remnant of this, but you saw the Batman film?

00:49:46.000 Yes.

00:49:47.000 I absolutely hated it.

00:49:48.000 Really?

00:49:48.000 really because that the new one thing me and you are the only people who didn't

00:49:51.000 like it because batman was totally incompetent it didn't make sense for his

00:49:54.000 character batman batman is something to behold because he is the best of us he

00:50:00.000 is a human being who use light utilizes the best technology strategy so to 0.99

00:50:05.000 create up but it's batman early on He was dumb as a box of rocks. 0.97

00:50:09.000 No, he's always had 10 intelligence. 0.98

00:50:10.000 Was it recently?

00:50:11.000 Not in that movie, that's the point. 1.00

00:50:13.000 In the movie they made him really stupid. 1.00

00:50:14.000 He's the smartest superhero. 0.99

00:50:15.000 And when he's jumping off the building and he falls and gets hurt, I'm like... And then you had the woke, Selina Kyle, white privilege thing.

00:50:20.000 Like, they just ruined what Batman was.

00:50:24.000 That line was particularly bad because the rest of the movie's dialogue was written to be completely evergreen, meaning that it could have taken place at any time, so even if you haven't taken a bathroom break by the time you're at the 2 hour and 37 second point of this extremely overly long and overly self-indulgent art piece masquerading as a superhero flick, that line just takes you out of it completely.

00:50:46.000 Question, Ethan, did you notice when the women would come in and start to change the system, did they have kids? 1.00

00:50:52.000 Or were they childless?

00:50:53.000 They're childless, largely, yes.

00:50:55.000 Something that someone pointed out is that women that aren't mothers tend to try to mother society, and they get into HR, and they'll try and mother the company, they'll try and like protect and nurture and change, and like, no, that's racist, do it this way, do it this, you know.

00:51:09.000 I'll give you my experience working with women, it's very interesting. 0.80

00:51:13.000 I worked at an office, and I was the only male manager, and the office was having problems.

00:51:19.000 And so, revenue was down.

00:51:21.000 My approach was, our revenue is dropping, if we do not reassess and restructure what we are doing, we will cease to exist.

00:51:29.000 Their attitude was, no, everyone bunker down, huddle together, and we'll wait out the storm.

00:51:35.000 And I thought that was interesting because it was like, the women were adamant. 1.00

00:51:39.000 We're going to keep doing exactly what we're doing and just tighten up.

00:51:43.000 And my attitude was, it's not working anymore.

00:51:46.000 This strategy does not work.

00:51:47.000 We have to adapt.

00:51:49.000 So I wonder if that's an element of a difference in the male and female.

00:51:54.000 The male, we have to go out, take the risk and go on an adventure.

00:51:57.000 And theirs was, I mean, think about it in terms of like an old tribal Did you watch the movie Prey on Hulu?

00:52:04.000 to huddle together in the cave to protect each other and the men wanting to go out and

00:52:08.000 venture off and try and find new sources of food or some way to solve the problem.

00:52:13.000 That's what it kind of felt like to me.

00:52:15.000 Fascinating.

00:52:16.000 Did you see the, did you watch the movie Prey on Hulu?

00:52:19.000 Uh-uh.

00:52:20.000 It was the Predator remake that they did last year with the girl.

00:52:23.000 Oh yeah.

00:52:24.000 I was one of the few people that didn't like it because they said her motivation at the

00:52:27.000 time period when that movie came out made no sense, that she wanted to go to be a hunter

00:52:32.000 just to prove she can.

00:52:33.000 I'm like that's not realistic and nobody would be.

00:52:37.000 Let's address the male-female motivation.

00:52:40.000 Captain America versus Captain Marvel.

00:52:42.000 I love this breakdown.

00:52:43.000 Have you seen both movies I imagine, right?

00:52:45.000 Yeah.

00:52:46.000 Captain America.

00:52:47.000 Let's talk about the cultural success, and I want everyone to understand this, and I want you to tell your friends, and I want you to buy the movie, and I want you to somehow make the movie number one on Netflix or whatever.

00:52:58.000 Captain America is a Marvel film from about ten years ago, right?

00:53:02.000 More than that now.

00:53:03.000 It's about a scrawny, A weakling.

00:53:06.000 developmentally like physically a weakling a weakling born with a weak heart perhaps a

00:53:13.000 Like someone suffering from many physical ailments who is so desperate to fight for his country

00:53:20.000 To help others that he tries to cheat his way into the military and he is of such strong heart

00:53:27.000 He is chosen for the super soldier program So here's a guy of good moral character standing and honor who wants to serve his country, fight against the bad guys, and sacrifice whatever it takes for his community.

00:53:41.000 He defends his friends by fighting in the streets, and then there's that scene where he jumps on the grenade.

00:53:46.000 His motivation is to sacrifice himself for everyone else.

00:53:50.000 Self-sacrifice.

00:53:51.000 Self-sacrifice.

00:53:52.000 Captain Marvel's motivation was to benefit herself and to be able to do whatever she wanted. 0.97

00:53:58.000 Captain America, his whole motivation is, we don't trade lives.

00:54:02.000 We're not going to sacrifice one for any.

00:54:04.000 He's a deontological moralist.

00:54:07.000 Thanos is utilitarian.

00:54:08.000 Thanos wants to kill half the universe, save half the life.

00:54:11.000 Captain America says we don't trade lives.

00:54:13.000 Captain Marvel robs a guy in the beginning of the movie.

00:54:17.000 He says you should smile.

00:54:18.000 So she steals his clothes and his motorcycle. 0.53

00:54:22.000 Think about that motivation.

00:54:23.000 That is the woke feminist motivation of I can do whatever I want. 1.00

00:54:28.000 Then, think about the other character motivations.

00:54:30.000 Jude Law's character says, control your emotions, and then finally at the end she goes, NO!

00:54:36.000 And that is her ultimate motivation.

00:54:38.000 The story arc for her is, she can do whatever she wants because she's powerful, and she shouldn't have to listen to any man who tells her to control herself. 0.98

00:54:45.000 Captain America's motivation is, I will die for you so you can live a better life.

00:54:50.000 It is the Hillary Clinton quote personified when she said, women are the real victims of war because their husbands and their brothers and their sons die.

00:54:59.000 That exemplifies it perfectly.

00:55:01.000 That's amazing.

00:55:02.000 Self-sacrifice versus self-validation.

00:55:04.000 That is the difference between the way I was taught to write and draw superheroes and the way superheroes are being presented today.

00:55:11.000 Right there.

00:55:12.000 Everything is a... You know, all of these new superheroes that are coming out of Marvel, they're all selfie-taking, self-aggrandizing narcissists.

00:55:19.000 Eating lunch and dinner together at diners.

00:55:21.000 That's what they're doing.

00:55:22.000 There's no... You know, my book, Cyberfrog, Cyberfrog says in the very, you know, in the very first couple of pages, you know, he just says, because people don't like him. 0.94

00:55:31.000 He's ugly.

00:55:32.000 He's Cyberfrog. 0.99

00:55:33.000 So he says, I've found something to love about humans and I'm willing to die for them.

00:55:37.000 You know, and that's, that's the thing.

00:55:40.000 That's heroism to me.

00:55:42.000 How many modern superheroes are stories of young kids who wish they had superpowers?

00:55:50.000 Modern ones?

00:55:51.000 Not too many.

00:55:52.000 You don't think so?

00:55:53.000 I'm not sure.

00:55:54.000 Well, maybe.

00:55:56.000 Who are you thinking about?

00:55:57.000 I'm thinking about the Captain Marvel... Ms.

00:55:59.000 Marvel?

00:56:00.000 Ms.

00:56:00.000 Marvel.

00:56:01.000 Yeah.

00:56:01.000 Right?

00:56:01.000 So there's a story of like, wow, I've got two powers and I'm gonna be an Avenger too!

00:56:05.000 Well, that's the meta nature of Hollywood now, that everything has to be meta.

00:56:09.000 Shazam.

00:56:10.000 Shazam.

00:56:12.000 No, not so much.

00:56:14.000 Not so much.

00:56:15.000 You don't think he wanted the wizard's powers?

00:56:18.000 Uh, he got pulled in and brought into it.

00:56:20.000 It was different.

00:56:21.000 I'm thinking about, just like, I'm thinking about Ms.

00:56:24.000 Marvel specifically, and I was thinking about Miles Morales, you know, in the new Into the Spider-Verse.

00:56:29.000 He's like, wow, I got spider powers too!

00:56:32.000 And then I was thinking about growing up watching X-Men, and in X-Men, typically the kids who got powers were panicked and scared, and didn't want it to happen, and the parents were freaking out.

00:56:40.000 And the story with, you know, early, the X-Men stuff I grew up on was, it was actually bad to be a mutant.

00:56:46.000 It was scary, it was bad, and they weren't happy about it.

00:56:49.000 It was often depicted as like, your mutant powers were a curse, not a gift, and then Charles Xavier would be like, no, no, don't worry, like, I'm gonna help you through this.

00:56:57.000 Nowadays, the mentality among younger people is more so like, I want to be that.

00:57:01.000 Give me power.

00:57:02.000 Give me power.

00:57:03.000 Yeah.

00:57:04.000 I felt like DC was all, all, maybe not always, but I didn't read a lot of DC, but it felt like DC was more just about raw power, and Marvel was about psychological Did you guys get that vibe?

00:57:18.000 Yeah, DC Comics has aspirational heroes.

00:57:22.000 Heroes to look up to.

00:57:23.000 Heroes to feel hope.

00:57:25.000 They're going to save you.

00:57:26.000 See, that's the thing I love about Superman.

00:57:28.000 They flopped with the new movies.

00:57:31.000 When you see Christopher Reeve You know everything's gonna be okay.

00:57:35.000 You know, like, you're like, oh, Superman's here, finally.

00:57:38.000 I'm terrified of the Man of Steel version of Superman from the Zack Snyder movies.

00:57:42.000 Can I just, can I just complain about the scene in Batman v Superman where Batman is about to, you know, kill Superman and then he's like, you're letting him kill Martha and then Batman goes, your mom's name is Martha?

00:57:55.000 My mom's name is Martha too! 1.00

00:57:57.000 As if anybody actually calls their mom by their name.

00:58:00.000 What should have happened, and I'll say it every single time, is that when Batman had the spear to Superman's neck, what would have made it work is then Batman sang the famous line, let this be the day you never forget, the day I defeated you, and then throw it- Yeah, they should have just recreated that scene from the animated series.

00:58:16.000 And then he throws the spear away.

00:58:17.000 And he says, my intention was always to make sure you knew you were not invincible, not to actually kill you. 0.98

00:58:23.000 And then it would be like, damn, but instead he was like, my mom's name's Martha too. 0.98

00:58:27.000 Wanna be friends? 0.99

00:58:29.000 I was like, oh no.

00:58:32.000 Yes, it was.

00:58:34.000 I could have made it out of a stronger mix of Kryptonite. 1.00

00:58:39.000 I could have made this far stronger and killed you much easier if I wanted to. 0.89

00:58:43.000 Yeah, it should have been, he proved his point. 0.91

00:58:46.000 It was never, because Batman's not a murderer.

00:58:48.000 He wouldn't arbitrarily want to kill Superman.

00:58:50.000 His point was to make sure Superman knew he wasn't a god. 0.76

00:58:53.000 You know, instead... All this like, my mother is your mother, we're brothers, all this crap, this like nepotism, is like European monarchies, they're all cousins, like it's a bunch of this crap, it's like psychological manipulation to make you think it is some value if the guy's your brother. 1.00

00:59:10.000 If he's an idiot, he's an idiot. 0.99

00:59:12.000 This is, uh, what I was always told is that Marvel was people trying to be heroes and DC was heroes trying to be people. 1.00

00:59:19.000 There you go.

00:59:20.000 So, like...

00:59:22.000 I noticed watching the Justice League cartoons, they always refer to each other as their first given names.

00:59:26.000 Batman doesn't call Superman Superman, he calls him Clark.

00:59:28.000 Clark calls him Bruce.

00:59:29.000 They refer to each other as people, but they are heroes.

00:59:33.000 And then the interesting thing is Superman's identity is Superman, Kal-El, and his secret identity is Clark Kent.

00:59:39.000 Whereas in Marvel, often it's like Peter Parker is the person and his secret identity is, or like his, you know, the costume is Spider-Man, whereas for Superman, the costume is Clark Kent.

00:59:49.000 Who are you guys' favorite superhero of all time?

00:59:52.000 Superman.

00:59:55.000 He just is the definitive hero.

00:59:56.000 I believe in him.

00:59:57.000 I think Batman.

00:59:58.000 Batman.

00:59:58.000 You like Batman better?

01:00:00.000 That's why I was really disappointed by the movie.

01:00:02.000 I love the comic fan trope of, given enough time, Batman can defeat anyone.

01:00:09.000 BatGod, they called that at DC.

01:00:11.000 They called it, like, yeah, Batman with enough planning.

01:00:13.000 But I feel like Superman could kill Batman at any time if he wanted to.

01:00:17.000 Nope. 0.69

01:00:17.000 Batman carries kryptonite. 0.69

01:00:19.000 Yeah, but he blasts him from orbit.

01:00:21.000 Technically, I would say technically, but...

01:00:24.000 Yeah, I guess the issue is there are a lot of super-powerful villains who are on par with Superman that haven't been able to take down Batman, because Batman is a figment of our imagination.

01:00:35.000 What makes him a good character is his ability to survive and overcome with no superpowers.

01:00:40.000 That's why I like Batman.

01:00:41.000 Granted, he's a very, very rich dude, and he's able to buy this stuff.

01:00:46.000 You know, it is what it is.

01:00:47.000 The fantasy is we could be Batman.

01:00:49.000 Yup.

01:00:49.000 We could train ourselves, we could have enough money, we could be Batman.

01:00:52.000 That's the whole thing.

01:00:54.000 But you can't, you know, fly, you can't do those things.

01:00:57.000 Batman's just a dude, but he's a martial artist, he trains right, he eats right, he gets beat up, he gets injured sometimes, he gets his back broken, and he rises back up to the challenge.

01:01:07.000 That's a superhero, man.

01:01:09.000 That's fantastic.

01:01:10.000 I mean, early Batman was silly, and they made him really amazing throughout the years.

01:01:14.000 I really love the history of how the Golden Age of Comics was kind of hokey. 0.51

01:01:19.000 Superman could fire little Supermans from his hand, did you know that? 0.96

01:01:22.000 Yeah, it makes no sense, you know, whatever.

01:01:25.000 They invented new powers all the time in the Silver Age.

01:01:28.000 Yeah, whatever.

01:01:29.000 Oh yeah, the Silver Age.

01:01:30.000 The 80s.

01:01:31.000 No, Silver Age was from like the 50s to the 70s, I think, the early 70s.

01:01:37.000 It was the Golden Age before that?

01:01:38.000 The Golden Age was like, yeah, the 1930s, late 30s to the early 50s.

01:01:44.000 But I want to say, the 80s is when things, I think, got really mature, and the writing got really good.

01:01:50.000 And then, actually, I think one of the most profound moments in Comics, but I guess it's technically cartoons, is Mr. Freeze, the story arc, the retconning of his history in the Batman animated series.

01:02:02.000 I think the first cartoon ever won an Emmy.

01:02:05.000 And that was, I think that was, was it really that the first, maybe not the first time, but one of the first times a villain's story arc was sympathetic?

01:02:13.000 It used to be all one-dimensional, I'm gonna rule the world, I deserve power.

01:02:16.000 That's what I love about the old Batman, the animated series.

01:02:18.000 It's actually super anti-corporate.

01:02:21.000 All of them are just generic corporate villains, but Mr. Freeze was actually a fairly three-dimensional character, given the story with his wife in that.

01:02:28.000 Wasn't Clayface's story in the animated series that he was a guy who was negatively impacted by a cosmetic product that turned him into a monster?

01:02:35.000 There were a bunch of different Clayfaces. 0.97

01:02:36.000 One was an actor, you know?

01:02:37.000 I think there were like five different Clayfaces.

01:02:39.000 He was like, he put on a cosmetic and his skin started to melt and he was like... Man Bat was great in that, too.

01:02:44.000 Man Bat was great.

01:02:46.000 Yeah, but... It's Mr. Freeze, right?

01:02:48.000 Yeah, Mr. Freeze.

01:02:50.000 He was always one-dimensional and then they made his story arc that his wife was dying and he would stop at nothing to save her life.

01:02:55.000 And then you're like, you feel bad because he's a bad guy.

01:02:57.000 Plus the delivery on all that dialogue in that episode is so good.

01:03:01.000 They should do an arc where he gets an honorary degree from Harvard, and then they call him—he's like, I'm Dr. Freeze now.

01:03:08.000 No, you're not!

01:03:08.000 It's not even a real degree!

01:03:09.000 No, I'm just kidding.

01:03:12.000 Just wait.

01:03:13.000 There's going to be a comic that comes out soon where Mr. Freeze teams up with Greta Thunberg to reduce the global temperature.

01:03:19.000 They did that!

01:03:19.000 She got the honorary degree.

01:03:20.000 No, that's why I brought it up.

01:03:21.000 Don't give him ideas like that, please.

01:03:23.000 No, please. 1.00

01:03:25.000 I hope they keep producing this garbage and they destroy themselves. 0.99

01:03:29.000 And then, you know, your comics, all caps. 1.00

01:03:31.000 We're here.

01:03:32.000 ComicSkate's here to step in and, you know, that's a good... See, we love comic books.

01:03:37.000 I could talk about this all day long.

01:03:39.000 I grew up with these superheroes.

01:03:40.000 I love these superheroes.

01:03:42.000 I've been a creator.

01:03:43.000 I've worked on these superheroes for most of my life now.

01:03:47.000 But, unfortunately, the way things are at Marvel and DC, they're inhospitable.

01:03:52.000 Remember, what was that super woke comic they made with Safe Space and New Warriors?

01:03:57.000 It never came out.

01:04:00.000 They never released that.

01:04:01.000 What is it?

01:04:01.000 The New New Warriors?

01:04:03.000 Yeah, New New Warriors.

01:04:04.000 I wonder if that was a joke.

01:04:05.000 Like, I feel like that whole thing was a hoax.

01:04:07.000 It definitely became one.

01:04:08.000 Yeah, it sure did.

01:04:09.000 Oh, what a horrible concept.

01:04:10.000 Look at this.

01:04:11.000 Okay, for those that don't know, you need to understand that the hugging brother and sister, right?

01:04:16.000 They're brother and sister?

01:04:17.000 Yeah.

01:04:17.000 Snowflake and safe space.

01:04:19.000 And one of them they actually described as being a stereotypical jock.

01:04:25.000 I've never seen a stereotypical jock with pink hair, but that's just me.

01:04:28.000 Wait, wait, the best one is The Door of the Explorer.

01:04:31.000 Yeah.

01:04:31.000 Trailblazer.

01:04:32.000 Is that what they called her?

01:04:33.000 A chubby Inuit, yeah. 1.00

01:04:34.000 Who had a backpack that she could pull anything out of?

01:04:37.000 And the other one had... Pandora the Explorer!

01:04:38.000 And the other one is powered by internet gas.

01:04:41.000 Yeah, the internet.

01:04:43.000 What were... Oh yeah, that guy with the green visor.

01:04:45.000 This had to have been a joke, huh? 0.94

01:04:46.000 It was a troll. 0.59

01:04:47.000 It must have been.

01:04:47.000 It wasn't!

01:04:48.000 Not as bad as Gotham High.

01:04:49.000 It's on the website, introducing.

01:04:51.000 Yeah, it's real.

01:04:53.000 I mean, if they had released it, people would have bought that.

01:04:55.000 I would have bought that.

01:04:56.000 This is an important story for those that don't understand the culture war.

01:05:01.000 What happened, in my opinion, is that Marvel started getting a bunch of emails saying, you need to do this.

01:05:06.000 And then someone went to a board meeting and said, this is what kids want.

01:05:09.000 You've got to sell a product they'll buy.

01:05:11.000 And they went, you're right.

01:05:13.000 Then they made it.

01:05:14.000 And they got roasted and said, we don't understand.

01:05:16.000 They're emailing us saying they want this.

01:05:18.000 Because they don't realize it is a cult of annoying, loud people, and they wasted tons of money, and they're destroying themselves by supporting this.

01:05:27.000 But it's not kids buying these comics, right?

01:05:30.000 The majority of the large-scale audience is still men in their 30s and 40s and 50s.

01:05:35.000 It's us, yeah.

01:05:36.000 Kids have moved on to manga.

01:05:38.000 I mean, the kids, the teenagers are buying manga now.

01:05:40.000 We lost two generations to manga.

01:05:43.000 From crappy storylines?

01:05:44.000 Yeah, but it's because manga storylines are better.

01:05:48.000 I grew up on Batman and DC animated series, Justice League, and X-Men, and all that stuff.

01:05:56.000 And then when it started getting bad, I just went straight to manga stuff, where the storylines were still good.

01:06:03.000 Dragon Ball Z, I grew up with that as well.

01:06:05.000 And so then as I'm getting older and look I'm a big fan of Static Shock, but it was it was preachy.

01:06:10.000 It was okay.

01:06:11.000 I liked the show, but it was very preachy.

01:06:13.000 Then I see Naruto and the only preaching in it is You know, try and save your enemies.

01:06:21.000 Like, the character arc for Naruto is that, I absolutely love this writing.

01:06:27.000 Some of the best writing ever done.

01:06:28.000 Have you ever read or watched Naruto?

01:06:30.000 So, I'll give you the very quick breakdown of the best of my abilities.

01:06:30.000 No.

01:06:36.000 For those that aren't familiar, Naruto is about a world where there are ninjas and they can use inner energy called chakra to do, you know, I guess you'd call them spells.

01:06:45.000 Anyway, Naruto is an orphan.

01:06:49.000 His dad died sacrificing himself to save their village.

01:06:53.000 Naruto finds a teacher, a guy named Jiraiya, who's this legendary ninja.

01:06:57.000 I would call them techniques instead of spells.

01:07:00.000 But they like throw fireballs and stuff.

01:07:02.000 Yeah, and they can like walk on water.

01:07:04.000 So anyway, Naruto gets a teacher.

01:07:06.000 He's this old creepy guy. 0.98

01:07:08.000 He's a pervert. 0.99

01:07:09.000 He wrote several books. 0.93

01:07:12.000 He wrote these books because he was inspired throughout his life.

01:07:16.000 Naruto eventually encounters a villain in the story arc who goes by the name of Pain, and they fight, and you find out that this guy Pain's real name is Nagato, and he is a former pupil of Jiraiya, the same teacher Naruto now has.

01:07:33.000 And then after this great battle, Naruto is like on the verge of defeating this guy and then he says this famous line of you know like I will save the world or something like this like I'm gonna be the hero and make my enemies my friends and I'm gonna not allow the pain and it was a direct quote

01:07:51.000 from Jiraiya, his teacher, who wrote this book about a character, and Jiraiya had been quoting his pupil.

01:07:57.000 So basically what happens is when Jiraiya's younger, he trains this kid who's idealistic, wants to save the world, who says this inspiring line as like a 13-year-old.

01:08:04.000 Jiraiya's so moved by it, he writes this book, which is, you know, he then teaches Naruto.

01:08:10.000 And so I love this because the villain is now facing down this younger, you know, ninja who says his own quote back to him, realizing he's become the villain he swore to fought.

01:08:20.000 and and and naruto now embodies his past ideals and ideology i'm like that was

01:08:20.000 Wow.

01:08:24.000 just brilliant wow it was really really good that's true so like

01:08:27.000 i can't do it justice you have to read it but basically he's like he says the line and then the villains like that's

01:08:33.000 my quote you're saying it to me

01:08:35.000 like that's who i used to be that that's what we're supposed to be doing

01:08:39.000 We're supposed to be teaching lessons like that in comics.

01:08:41.000 We're not supposed to be trying to instill politics or ideology in anyone.

01:08:47.000 We're just supposed to be teaching kids basic morals like that. 0.97

01:08:51.000 How to be a hero.

01:08:52.000 Self-sacrifice.

01:08:53.000 Put others before you.

01:08:54.000 Save the villain, of course!

01:08:56.000 There's very little of that.

01:08:57.000 Like you mentioned earlier with Captain Marvel, that's the funniest part about that, is it's so simple to understand that Captain America telling a story of self-sacrifice and wanting to help his fellow man, and even the idea that you could even tell a story now about an idealistic person wanting to protect or wanting to serve his country, they probably wouldn't even do that story anymore.

01:09:19.000 Let's talk about the first big three of Marvel.

01:09:21.000 Iron Man, a military industrialist who's selling weapons for profit, has a profound experience, and realizes his weapons are being sold to both sides, causing this conflict, and then says, I'm not doing this anymore.

01:09:33.000 And it destroys his company, so he builds himself a suit of armor taken to his own hands, and then he fights the military industrial complex war monger, Iron Monger, To stop it from happening, and then the company does better than ever.

01:09:46.000 They do cheap renewable energy power.

01:09:48.000 Like, that is an amazing arc of a guy who had everything and was this cocky a-hole, who still is, but he then decides it's not worth it to be a part of this problem.

01:09:58.000 Captain America, scrawny young guy wants to serve his country.

01:10:00.000 We should talk about the cultural victories that the first Marvel movies are.

01:10:03.000 Then Thor, an arrogant prince who has everything, gets his powers taken from him and comes to realize humility.

01:10:11.000 I'm like, these are great character arcs.

01:10:12.000 That's Stan Lee.

01:10:13.000 But, yeah.

01:10:14.000 I mean, you know, Stan Lee, I mean, those are his stories.

01:10:18.000 You understand, like, we don't have guys like that anymore.

01:10:20.000 You want to know why Marvel is in the rut that it is?

01:10:23.000 It's because Stan Lee's gone.

01:10:25.000 Why is Disney the way it is?

01:10:27.000 Walt Disney's gone.

01:10:28.000 Why is Star Wars the way it is?

01:10:30.000 George Lucas sold it.

01:10:31.000 I mean, you know, there are rare creative geniuses that come along and they have the heart and the The empathy to be able to write stories that touch people in a unique way and build their childhoods.

01:10:47.000 And then when they leave or they die, J.R.R.

01:10:50.000 Tolkien, gone.

01:10:51.000 Then other people parasitically inherit it and destroy it.

01:10:55.000 These are people who are forged in a world surrounded by war.

01:10:58.000 That's absolutely true.

01:10:59.000 The lessons being told.

01:11:01.000 Now what we have are people who are forged by gluttony.

01:11:04.000 Oh yeah.

01:11:05.000 They're writing stories of what they're owed.

01:11:07.000 When we were reviewing Prey, we were talking about how nobody in this movie looks like they've lived through anything actually difficult in their entire life.

01:11:15.000 Nobody looks like they've lived in the wilderness.

01:11:17.000 Nobody looks like they've ever had to hunt for any type of food in their life, right?

01:11:20.000 So people are trying to write stories now from a world that they just can't understand.

01:11:25.000 Stan Lee, was he Silver Age?

01:11:27.000 Was he around in the early days?

01:11:28.000 Yeah, Stan Lee was interesting because... World War II veteran, sorry. 0.99

01:11:32.000 World War II veteran.

01:11:34.000 Yeah, he was around in the Golden Age too, but the Silver Age, he launched it. 0.99

01:11:38.000 He really did launch the Silver Age, even though before there was Flash and Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, that really launched the Silver Age.

01:11:47.000 Stanley was so disgusted by the politics of comics in the 1950s, with the Comics Code and the way things had become so silly, that he just wanted to quit.

01:11:58.000 And he told his wife, I'm so inspired by this, he told his wife he wanted to quit and his wife said, just do one your way.

01:12:04.000 Before you quit.

01:12:06.000 1961's Fantastic Four number one.

01:12:08.000 That was him doing it his way.

01:12:10.000 Launched the Marvel Revolution.

01:12:12.000 That's when the Silver Age really started.

01:12:13.000 Stan Lee enlisted in 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

01:12:18.000 What a guy.

01:12:19.000 What a guy.

01:12:20.000 It's one of the things like gone are the days.

01:12:22.000 There used to be dozens and dozens of actors all who had served in the military, who had

01:12:26.000 extensive military, whether through draft or because they enlisted because they believe

01:12:31.000 And as that generation of people has died off, you start seeing that less and less of the stories, less and less of our culture's empathy towards its own country is gone.

01:12:42.000 We talk about this every time an actor passes away that was older, right?

01:12:46.000 It's like they were born at a time when there was a relative amount of support for America and they believed in their country and they believed in

01:12:53.000 what it stood for.

01:12:54.000 Now I believe a lot of that has kind of been manufactured in a lot of ways by the media

01:12:58.000 and that there's a lot of problems there, but you don't see that anymore.

01:13:01.000 I think like Adam Driver is like the only one I can think of off the top of my head

01:13:04.000 that's a newer age actor that served in the military, and you just don't see that.

01:13:08.000 And it's going to be, it's going to lead to even more anti-American storytelling

01:13:12.000 whether it's in comics or in film and television.

01:13:14.000 You know what's interesting about manga is that there is a common trope,

01:13:19.000 Um, Black Clover.

01:13:20.000 Have you heard of it?

01:13:21.000 No.

01:13:22.000 Another really great show, really great manga.

01:13:24.000 Um, I've not, uh, I stopped after a while, but in this world, everybody, not everybody, but many people will get a magic grimoire and magic abilities.

01:13:34.000 So one day a grimoire comes to you, and then you have your book of spells, and you can cast certain spells and certain elements.

01:13:40.000 There's one kid who really wants to be a magic knight and work for the, you know, he wants to join the service, basically, but he has no magic powers.

01:13:49.000 So Unity does.

01:13:50.000 He works out until he's so incredibly powerful that when he's in these, like, when he's in the trials to become, you know, a knight or whatever, he has no spells, but he just, like, he's extremely powerful.

01:14:02.000 Like, he jumps and the ground cracks and he shoots in the air super fast and they're like, what? 0.98

01:14:06.000 When they first see him with no magic, they're like, what a pathetic loser. 0.99

01:14:09.000 How could he even try and bother? 0.99

01:14:11.000 But then he's so physically powerful that he actually ends up winning.

01:14:14.000 And then there's like an arc where a book does appear to him.

01:14:18.000 It's an anti-magic book.

01:14:19.000 It's a sword.

01:14:20.000 And all of his capabilities are basically his physical ability to wield it.

01:14:24.000 There's other arcs too, like anti-magic and stuff, but the general idea was you can work hard, and if you do, you can be a magic knight hero too.

01:14:32.000 It's the Rocky story.

01:14:33.000 I mean, it works every single time it's tried.

01:14:36.000 Just a normal guy who's determined, you know?

01:14:39.000 He's an underdog.

01:14:40.000 The underdog story.

01:14:41.000 He works his way up, and through hard work, Through diligence and through faith, all of these things,

01:14:47.000 he becomes a hero.

01:14:48.000 And self-sacrifice.

01:14:50.000 You can tell that story over and over and over again.

01:14:53.000 He beats unbeatable odds, you know, just out of sheer will and determination.

01:14:58.000 Nobody's ever going to get tired of that.

01:15:01.000 You could tell that story with a million different characters.

01:15:04.000 They're doing it in Japan right now. 1.00

01:15:05.000 That's why they're kicking our ass. 1.00

01:15:06.000 They're raising our kids. 1.00

01:15:08.000 Right.

01:15:09.000 I mean, look.

01:15:11.000 I like it.

01:15:12.000 I think a lot of it is really great.

01:15:14.000 Not all of it. 1.00

01:15:14.000 Some of it's stupid. 1.00

01:15:15.000 Not everything is perfect. 0.99

01:15:17.000 Bleach, for instance, also very, very good.

01:15:20.000 More of a reluctant, thrust-into-adventure hero's journey.

01:15:25.000 Still, great story, great ideas.

01:15:28.000 You're not getting beaten over the head with the preaching, you know?

01:15:31.000 It seems like, I'm thinking about the age of comics.

01:15:33.000 We had the Golden Age, we had the Silver Age, which ended in like the 70s?

01:15:35.000 Is that about right?

01:15:36.000 Yeah, then the Bronze Age was like, you know, the 70s through the 1980s.

01:15:42.000 People are saying what this is today is called the Iron Age.

01:15:45.000 That's funny.

01:15:46.000 It's getting worse.

01:15:48.000 No, no, the Iron Age is really independent creators rising up and taking over the culture because we have no choice.

01:15:58.000 I would like to see a Diamond Age, if possible.

01:16:02.000 We're on the verge of Graphene anyway.

01:16:03.000 Also remember a lot of those characters and a lot of these amazing stories were written at a time when these were not major conglomerates that were homogenizing their storytelling down to the most basic, safe, and inoffensive model that they could make for people to watch.

01:16:18.000 So people were willing to take risks with their storytelling in a way that they're not willing to do anymore.

01:16:24.000 Or the ones that are, aren't getting jobs by these corporate conglomerates that are selling these major properties.

01:16:29.000 Yeah, let's talk about taking risks, Ethan, because I want to hear about Cyberfrog, too.

01:16:33.000 What's the story?

01:16:35.000 Okay, so Cyberfrog is the story of an evasion, an alien swarm of hornets that goes from world to world and just There's a world out there called Perdonia that has survived this. 0.97

01:16:47.000 They're the ultimate parasites.

01:16:49.000 They live in these gigantic hive ships that are made of the desiccated and digested flesh 0.99

01:16:55.000 of a million alien races.

01:16:57.000 And they're coming to Earth to make their last stand.

01:17:00.000 And the oxygen-rich atmosphere of Earth is going to allow them to be strengthened and

01:17:05.000 unbeatable.

01:17:06.000 There's a world out there called Perdonia that has survived this.

01:17:10.000 They're the only world that was able to fend off the Vespas. 1.00

01:17:13.000 We don't know how yet.

01:17:14.000 But they get this idea to send an agent with a secret power to planet Earth that'll be

01:17:20.000 able to fend off the Vespas and stop them.

01:17:23.000 Within this being is the ability to push back the Vespas and destroy their invasion. 1.00

01:17:30.000 Uh, that person ends up being Cyberfrog.

01:17:33.000 Uh, through a sheer accident, he accidentally becomes a frog and a machine, Cyberfrog.

01:17:38.000 But he still has the power to stop this invasion, except that he fails.

01:17:43.000 The year's 1998, Bill Clinton gives his speech, confessing that he lied to the American people, and right then, August 16th, 1998, the invasion hits.

01:17:52.000 Bill Clinton's pulled away from the cameras, and the entire world is swarmed by these hornets.

01:17:58.000 I don't want to give too much spoilers, but just as an incentive, I'm on, like, page three, and a guy explodes.

01:18:04.000 Are they, like, mechanical hornets?

01:18:05.000 Are they, like, artificial?

01:18:06.000 No, they're alien hornets.

01:18:07.000 I also don't want to spoil anything. Are they like Mechanical or are they like no, they're they're they're

01:18:13.000 alien hornets. They are very large super intelligent

01:18:18.000 Alien hornets that what they do is they chew up human be they

01:18:22.000 They see humans as cattle, livestock.

01:18:24.000 They chew up human beings and their bones with their saliva.

01:18:27.000 They can make paper like hornets make nests.

01:18:30.000 They paper over our cities with our own bodies. 0.95

01:18:33.000 And they can change with their saliva, change our blood into honey to feed their young.

01:18:37.000 First book's called Blood Honey because of that.

01:18:40.000 So that's the situation.

01:18:41.000 Cyberfrog is absolutely obliterated in the first issue.

01:18:45.000 He has to go into regenerative hibernation, wakes up in the year 2018, and the Vespas have just dominated planet Earth.

01:18:53.000 Humanity's been basically torn to shreds.

01:18:56.000 Like, 90% of humans are gone.

01:18:57.000 10% of them are still around and hiding.

01:19:00.000 And that's where Wrecked Planet picks up.

01:19:03.000 It is Cyberfrog alone versus...

01:19:06.000 The entire world.

01:19:07.000 So Cyberfrog 2, Wrecked Planet.

01:19:09.000 It is a hero's journey.

01:19:12.000 You know, Cyberfrog in that book asks himself how he can make a change.

01:19:17.000 Like, how do I begin to change this?

01:19:19.000 How do I begin to fix this?

01:19:21.000 And, you know, his best friend Heather Swain is living in the woods.

01:19:24.000 She survived those 20 years.

01:19:26.000 She has a daughter now who lost her father.

01:19:30.000 And he just realizes that step one is to try to take the frown off of this little girl's face and try to make her life better.

01:19:38.000 You know, step in for dad and sort of, you know, make her life happier.

01:19:42.000 And that's the first way to kind of save humanity.

01:19:47.000 Uh, this is episode 2 of 4, is that right?

01:19:49.000 2 of 4, but I'm gonna keep going, yeah.

01:19:51.000 Yeah, the next one's called Red Extermination, I'm launching that one on the 4th of July, Independence Day.

01:19:57.000 Now, certainly, going independent and leaving the big, successful industry, certainly you're not making lots of money off of this venture, I'd imagine.

01:20:07.000 First one made $1.2 million.

01:20:09.000 The second one made $1.45 million.

01:20:12.000 So it's actually doing better.

01:20:14.000 It's doing great.

01:20:15.000 This is crowdfunding.

01:20:16.000 And this is the wonderful thing about it.

01:20:18.000 The comic book industry doesn't have any incentive to make the comics that people want because their parent companies are paying for them.

01:20:26.000 We talk about that a lot.

01:20:27.000 We're in the post-profit age for a lot of these companies that, especially for comics, I think, for Warner Brothers, it's a write-off.

01:20:34.000 They don't know.

01:20:34.000 Yeah, they don't care.

01:20:35.000 They're doing whatever they want to do.

01:20:36.000 I guarantee you Zaslav's like, we have a comics division?

01:20:38.000 He's like, you mean the written ones?

01:20:40.000 Holy crap, not the movies?

01:20:42.000 They see their comics, comics are just sort of going to reflect the political stances of their parent companies, and that's a reason to keep them around for ESG purposes, etc, etc.

01:20:54.000 At ComicSkate, and ComicSkate is basically the term that describes an affiliation of comic book creators and fans who are tired of woke in comics.

01:21:03.000 We love comic books.

01:21:05.000 We're not going to support the mainstream anymore with our money.

01:21:08.000 We're going to make our own comics and we're going to use social media to promote these comics and crowdfunding to be able to fund them.

01:21:16.000 Now, I do want to say there are some really funny spoofs of manga.

01:21:19.000 There's one called Wall Might.

01:21:20.000 So, are you familiar with My Hero Academia?

01:21:24.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:21:24.000 So, it's Donald Trump as, you know, like the main guy, All Might.

01:21:31.000 It's called Wall Might.

01:21:31.000 Right.

01:21:32.000 There's a couple other ones that are really funny.

01:21:32.000 Yeah, I remember that.

01:21:34.000 Oh yeah, the One Punch Man spoof.

01:21:37.000 I can't remember which one it was.

01:21:38.000 We have them over in the other room.

01:21:39.000 I don't know if I have to look at them, but they're really funny.

01:21:40.000 I'm looking at Cyberfrog's first appearance in 1994 in Hall of Heroes.

01:21:45.000 So when I first started in comics, that was the whole thing.

01:21:49.000 Now, I did about 10 issues, 12 issues of Cyberfrog in the 1990s and then went to work for DC.

01:21:55.000 So what's so wonderful about this is the idea of bringing a character that was created with enthusiasm in the 1990s.

01:22:01.000 1990s it's very meta and trying to make him work in 2018 in a world that's

01:22:07.000 infested with woke the Vespas are the woke you understand so you know you've 1.00

01:22:12.000 got a character who's used to existing and thriving in a world of Deadpool and

01:22:15.000 the sarcasm and the ultra violence and he wakes up in 2018 where the world has

01:22:20.000 been utterly taken over by these creatures that disrespect everything

01:22:26.000 that humanity built there Philadelphia looks even worse now.

01:22:29.000 You can see it on the first page of the book.

01:22:31.000 You can see what Philadelphia... Open it up and look.

01:22:35.000 Next page.

01:22:36.000 That's Philly.

01:22:36.000 Boom!

01:22:38.000 Aren't you glad you left?

01:22:40.000 Yes.

01:22:41.000 That's amazing art, man.

01:22:42.000 That's crazy.

01:22:42.000 Does he have powers like jumping?

01:22:44.000 Can he jump super high?

01:22:45.000 Yeah, he can jump.

01:22:46.000 He's got a tongue.

01:22:47.000 Those are his natural abilities.

01:22:48.000 But the whole thing is, his mother is a spaceship, a living spaceship, who represents the internet.

01:22:56.000 And when they're connected together, he can rapidly evolve and change his body to meet any threat.

01:23:01.000 So she's been taken out by the Vespas. 0.65

01:23:03.000 He's offline.

01:23:04.000 through this entire book and therefore he has to rely on his natural abilities.

01:23:08.000 So the cyber aspect is connected to the mothership?

01:23:10.000 That's correct, yeah. And of course that represents the internet and communication

01:23:14.000 and all that stuff. The whole thing is...

01:23:16.000 I guess the issue that I see with all of this is if we make stuff because we like it, we're a bunch of old

01:23:24.000 dudes.

01:23:25.000 How do we get this stuff to younger people to inspire them and share the ideas and ideology that will make their lives better?

01:23:31.000 I think you get through to the parents, and then they end up watching it with their kids sitting on their lap.

01:23:35.000 I'm seeing more of that.

01:23:36.000 I'm seeing a lot of friends of mine who love old comics, love old media, who aren't... They're not watching new Star Trek with their kids, they're watching old Star Trek with their kids.

01:23:46.000 Well, hold on a second.

01:23:48.000 I don't think there's any reason to be really afraid.

01:23:50.000 Understand, we have the internet.

01:23:52.000 I mean, we have the internet.

01:23:54.000 They didn't have that in the early 1990s or anything like that.

01:23:57.000 I mean, people were dependent on these big corporations to get their comics out to people.

01:24:02.000 I'm on your show right now.

01:24:03.000 Probably people are buying Cyberfrog because I'm telling them about it.

01:24:06.000 We have this mass communication device where we can potentially speak to 7 billion people.

01:24:12.000 There shouldn't be any reason to stop us.

01:24:14.000 There shouldn't be a way to stop us.

01:24:16.000 People gotta watch the next generation with their kids.

01:24:19.000 Yeah.

01:24:19.000 Oh, Star Trek Next Gen?

01:24:20.000 Yeah.

01:24:21.000 The best.

01:24:22.000 The best Star Trek in my opinion.

01:24:23.000 I think part of it also, Ethan, is that people need to learn to, the ones who want to go out on their own are going to have to understand there's going to be more work.

01:24:30.000 You don't have the infrastructure that's built up through these mega corporations that do the printing, they do the packaging, they do all this stuff.

01:24:37.000 It's going to be more work, but you'll reap more of a reward and you'll be able to keep the profits because you own the IP.

01:24:43.000 Yeah, owning the IP is amazing.

01:24:45.000 You own your own material.

01:24:46.000 I own Cyberfrog outright, which is the first thing that I've actually owned entirely by myself, which is great.

01:24:53.000 It is a lot of work.

01:24:54.000 I was going to say, we talked about this like a year ago, that we wanted to launch some kind of comic or manga-style portal for TimCast.com, and I've talked to a few people, and the challenge is the amount of work that goes in.

01:25:07.000 Like you said, how many years did it take to make this?

01:25:09.000 Two years to make that, one year to fund it.

01:25:12.000 And in between, we made action figures and a bunch of other stuff as well.

01:25:16.000 I should have bought some.

01:25:17.000 In order to actually make a subscription-based weekly thing is a tremendous undertaking.

01:25:23.000 How many people would you need to put something together?

01:25:26.000 I wouldn't be able to draw it myself.

01:25:28.000 I might be able to write it.

01:25:29.000 But it's not the production, it's the fulfillment.

01:25:33.000 Because we don't have the direct market.

01:25:36.000 Cyberfrog isn't in comic book stores.

01:25:38.000 If you want to buy Cyberfrog, you can look on Google, look up Cyberfrog Dark Harvest.

01:25:44.000 That's the next book on Indiegogo.

01:25:46.000 You can back it there.

01:25:49.000 We basically have to ship everything by hand.

01:25:52.000 But the great thing about crowdfunding is There's no real possibility of loss.

01:25:57.000 You know how many issues that you're going to need to make.

01:26:00.000 You know how much money you have to spend.

01:26:02.000 I knew I had 1.5 billion dollars to spend.

01:26:05.000 I was able to make PVC toys to give away for free, trading cards, bonus comics that came with that for like 25 dollars is the lowest level to back at.

01:26:14.000 And the book looks like that.

01:26:16.000 You don't see comics like that anymore.

01:26:17.000 Yeah, it's like a foil. 1.00

01:26:18.000 We can kick their asses. 0.99

01:26:19.000 Are you guys, is there like a universe of heroes? 1.00

01:26:22.000 Um, yeah, there's going to be.

01:26:23.000 I'm building it out.

01:26:24.000 I'm building it out.

01:26:25.000 Cyberfrog can't do it alone.

01:26:26.000 We need a psychic gorilla from space.

01:26:29.000 But it's too close to Grodd.

01:26:30.000 Gorilla Grodd?

01:26:31.000 I think that it's like, oh, the people that are going to be successful are going to be the ones that are business-minded.

01:26:36.000 And a lot of them, I think the ones that might be working that are, they feel attached to DC, Marvel, even IDW.

01:26:42.000 It's like, they feel like they need to stay there because they need the infrastructure.

01:26:46.000 That's what Comic Skate is meant to do.

01:26:48.000 is going to have to put in the work.

01:26:49.000 And another part of it is like, you've had to become your own promotional arm.

01:26:52.000 A lot of them might not want to be doing live streams, might not want to be out there promoting their stuff.

01:26:58.000 So they feel like they're stuck at these companies because they don't know how to do the promotional aspect.

01:27:03.000 Yeah.

01:27:04.000 That's what Comicscape is meant to do.

01:27:05.000 Comicscape, you've got loud mouths like me.

01:27:07.000 And I'll go, I'll come over, Tim will be nice enough to let me come on his show

01:27:10.000 and talk Comicscape, Comicscape, comicscape.org, go to that website,

01:27:14.000 you'll see a bunch of other creators who have similar stories.

01:27:19.000 Yeah, we have to promote each other, we have to do this as a group, we can't do it as individuals, and hashtag ComixSkate.

01:27:26.000 What's the biggest difference in your daily activities since you've left the big companies, started your own?

01:27:32.000 What does a day look like as opposed to what it used to look like when you're working?

01:27:35.000 I wake up in the morning, I put together 200 packages of that book, I ship them through UPS, then I start drawing and writing, and then at night, usually around 8, 7 or 8, I do this.

01:27:48.000 I livestream and promote people.

01:27:50.000 What was it like before when you were at DC?

01:27:51.000 Nothing but drawing.

01:27:53.000 You know, I would just draw and I'd scan my pages and turn them in.

01:27:56.000 It's a much bigger job.

01:27:57.000 I mean, you know, running your own business obviously is way different.

01:28:01.000 Do you ever draw live?

01:28:03.000 Yeah.

01:28:04.000 Do you ever do time lapses where it's like, zow!

01:28:06.000 I have.

01:28:07.000 I just don't want to bore people.

01:28:08.000 I'd rather people just get the experience.

01:28:10.000 The fact that I'm drawing is not that interesting.

01:28:13.000 It's the final result to me.

01:28:14.000 I want you to enter the world.

01:28:16.000 I want to take you to an annihilated Philadelphia.

01:28:20.000 I want you to visit the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.

01:28:23.000 We can go to an annihilated Philadelphia right now.

01:28:26.000 Only a couple hours drive.

01:28:27.000 It's really close.

01:28:29.000 I want you to go to the Pine Barrens and live with these raggedy survivors. 0.99

01:28:32.000 I want you to... See, Cyberfrog represents everybody.

01:28:36.000 He's not black. 0.99

01:28:37.000 He's not white. 0.51

01:28:38.000 He's not... He's definitely not gay. 0.96

01:28:40.000 He's just a frog.

01:28:41.000 And that means he represents everyone.

01:28:44.000 I want you to see yourself in him because he has, you know, emotions, feelings, you know, ambitions.

01:28:53.000 And he makes mistakes.

01:28:54.000 He's not perfect.

01:28:55.000 He's made a terrible mistake in the fact that he failed in 1998, and the world has suffered for it.

01:29:02.000 Someone mentioned that Deep Space Nine is better than The Next Generation.

01:29:04.000 I just want to say, actually, I agree.

01:29:06.000 I don't like Star Trek at all.

01:29:08.000 Me and you, man.

01:29:09.000 Me and you are the only ones in this world that don't like Star Trek.

01:29:12.000 What do you guys not like about it?

01:29:13.000 It must be difficult being so wrong, you know?

01:29:15.000 What is your biggest problem with Star Trek?

01:29:15.000 What is it?

01:29:17.000 Star Trek?

01:29:18.000 I don't know.

01:29:19.000 I don't want to say I don't want to, you know, get into it too much because I'm sure some Trekkies are watching right now.

01:29:19.000 I just find it.

01:29:24.000 But I was going to buy this comic, but screw this guy.

01:29:27.000 In this world, there are things you're just not allowed to dislike.

01:29:30.000 And that's it's one of the funniest things about it.

01:29:32.000 Like you can say, like, I don't like this.

01:29:33.000 And like, you're you're wrong.

01:29:34.000 Cancel.

01:29:35.000 It's a lot of guys standing up straight and yelling at each other face to face.

01:29:35.000 OK.

01:29:39.000 That's Star Trek.

01:29:40.000 Whereas Star Wars is like running and blasting, like Wookiee screaming and stuff. 1.00

01:29:44.000 Star Wars is dumb. 0.85

01:29:45.000 I am, however, kind of excited to see that Picard season 3 is actually picking up the story for once. 0.98

01:29:52.000 My problem with Star Trek is that you get Deep Space Nine and you're like, wow, this is incredible.

01:29:56.000 And then they're like, okay, for the next 15 years, prequels.

01:30:00.000 And no story development.

01:30:01.000 And I'm like, I'm out.

01:30:02.000 The problem is three seasons in, right?

01:30:04.000 Like you're like, I love the people who are like, dude, you got to watch a show by the third season.

01:30:08.000 It's fantastic.

01:30:09.000 I'm like, dude, they get one episode.

01:30:12.000 You get one.

01:30:13.000 I have the worst ADHD.

01:30:16.000 I shuffle between seven and eight shows at a time where I can maybe get through two to three episodes at a time before my brain needs to put something else on.

01:30:23.000 If you can't hook me to your show in one episode, you get no more from me.

01:30:26.000 I just had a dream.

01:30:27.000 And real quick, sorry, just one thing that bums me out is Picard is finally picking up after the latest developments in the Star Trek universe, but it's all, remember Deanna Troi?

01:30:39.000 Remember Commander Riker?

01:30:41.000 Remember Beres.

01:30:42.000 It's all Remember Beres.

01:30:43.000 This is the problem with all of these creators who didn't realize what was going to happen when they sold their creations.

01:30:49.000 It happens in short time frames as well.

01:30:51.000 years ago, right? He didn't realize that some dude in an office who doesn't have

01:30:56.000 a creative bone in his body was not going to see it as something that's

01:31:00.000 beautiful and artistic and something that elicits human emotion. They just

01:31:04.000 look at it as a way to look at somebody's gonna make memes about this.

01:31:07.000 Look, somebody's going to be able to sell this on social media. It happens in

01:31:10.000 short time frames as well. You take a look at the first Pirates of the

01:31:13.000 Caribbean. How did they do so well?

01:31:16.000 Pirates 1 is an amazing movie.

01:31:20.000 That's just sequel- that's just sequel-itis.

01:31:22.000 But like the famous line, you best start believing in ghost stories, you're in one.

01:31:26.000 It's like meme-able. It's like wow.

01:31:28.000 The ending where he shoots Jeffrey Rush and then he's like, after all these years you waste your

01:31:33.000 shot and goes and then Will turns like he didn't waste it

01:31:35.000 and he drops it and then he turns and dies.

01:31:38.000 And then they went, okay, now we'll take the iconography, we will jam it into a sequel, extend the play, and do it ten times.

01:31:38.000 Masterful!

01:31:45.000 They also turned it into theme parks, which became a big part of it.

01:31:47.000 It was a theme park first.

01:31:50.000 No, you're right.

01:31:53.000 For a lot of this stuff, it's because it cross-promotes into toys, it cross-promotes into other mediums that they use.

01:31:58.000 Johnny Depp, Jack Sparrow wasn't supposed to be all crazy.

01:32:02.000 And then Johnny Depp decided to make him like, listen here.

01:32:05.000 And it worked really well.

01:32:06.000 He still goes to hospitals in uniform as Captain Jack Sparrow to visit kids in cancer wards.

01:32:12.000 The first movie was really well done.

01:32:16.000 And it was just like the lore, it was really interesting.

01:32:18.000 Then the second movie was garbage that made no sense because they just wanted to profit off of it.

01:32:22.000 Third, same, fourth, they just... I think, I think what was the... Dead Men Tell No Tales? 0.71

01:32:27.000 Yeah.

01:32:28.000 I think that one was actually decent.

01:32:30.000 It was like the only other good one.

01:32:32.000 Look what they could have done.

01:32:33.000 J.K.

01:32:34.000 Rowling ruined Harry Potter on her own.

01:32:36.000 She owns everything.

01:32:37.000 She got the last great publishing deal, where after those books were so successful, she has almost full creative control over everything she does, right?

01:32:47.000 But she ended up just ruining herself by being a major feminist. 1.00

01:32:51.000 I'm imagining she's just sitting in her room with her eyes half-closed, and she's like, oh, Dumbledore? 0.99

01:32:58.000 Yeah, he's gay. 0.97

01:33:00.000 She was always a feminist. 1.00

01:33:01.000 Hermione Granger?

01:33:02.000 You know what I thought would be a cool tactic for a movie or a comic, and I'm gonna say it publicly, someone might create it, is if the episode follows a piece of an item, and then it's all the people that pick up the item and get killed with it, and then the item falls, and someone else gets the item.

01:33:19.000 I don't know what the original story is, but I know that American Dad spoofed it with Roger the Alien.

01:33:19.000 That's actually been done.

01:33:26.000 Wait, explain it better?

01:33:27.000 Like, say there's a gun, and the comic book is about the gun itself, and the people that carry it are kind of secondary, but it's about the weapon, or the item, like the data cube, or whatever.

01:33:39.000 So watch American Dad.

01:33:41.000 Roger takes a dump and it's gold poop encrusted with jewels.

01:33:46.000 And then there's an arc periodically throughout the seasons of American Dad that follows the item

01:33:51.000 and the people around it.

01:33:52.000 And so it's like a janitor's cleaning and he's like, what's this?

01:33:57.000 And he finds it.

01:33:58.000 And then his friend goes, he's like, hey Mike, what'd you find there?

01:34:01.000 What you got?

01:34:03.000 Let me see it!

01:34:04.000 nothing and he goes let me see it let me see it and then he clubs him and takes

01:34:07.000 it he goes it's mine and then he runs and he gets in his car then later on

01:34:11.000 abruptly it'll like pan away from Stan and then show the truck driving on the

01:34:14.000 road turns widescreen the music gets eerie and then it shows him driving to

01:34:18.000 like a mountain to like bury it yeah that's good because you can follow it

01:34:21.000 that's been I think the X-Files did something along that lines or something

01:34:24.000 keeps going through pawn shops and it ends up turning whoever buys it evil

01:34:29.000 What I like about it is it shows the main characters as secondary characters and you get to see how they react to the world rather than how they create the world.

01:34:36.000 Like if you did that to the X-Men and there was an item and you just watched each X-Man deal with the item, you'd get like another perspective on their personality.

01:34:43.000 The best recurring characters in television are actually designed to do that.

01:34:47.000 A good recurring character in movies, well not in movies but in television, Is designed to take a main character that you see exist only within the realm of one universe and they have the same interactions with the same people all the time because the world requires it.

01:35:01.000 A good guest, like a guest character or recurring character who lives in a world outside of what they experience every day is supposed to draw out different performances from those characters so you see a different side of them.

01:35:11.000 We are gonna go to Super Chats!

01:35:13.000 If you haven't already, would you kindly smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share this show with your friends, and I guess right now our big thing that we're trying to promote is head over to Trash House Records and purchase the song, Bright Eyes, that we just released.

01:35:27.000 As of today, until next Thursday, that is the time period we have to sell as many songs as possible so that we can try and once again chart on Billboard and then basically give a big middle finger to all of these companies that are trying to put their boot on us because they don't like the fact that we are pushing back and developing culture.

01:35:43.000 So if we can get a decent amount, I think we only need like 10,000 sales because that's like a big number, you know, in one week.

01:35:52.000 But if you want to support our work today, do it.

01:35:54.000 Let's read what you got.

01:35:55.000 All right.

01:35:57.000 Dirty Jimmy says, the pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it.

01:36:02.000 If you know, then you know.

01:36:04.000 I've been actually feeling kind of mixed a little bit, sometimes confident.

01:36:08.000 The fact that the conversations we've been able to have have been expanding.

01:36:11.000 The calling out of the lies, calling out Fauci.

01:36:15.000 We just saw the International Sports League banned males in women's sports, which was massive.

01:36:19.000 I feel like we're actually gaining a lot of ground.

01:36:23.000 I mean, look, if you look at the success of Ethan's comic, a million dollars, you're outside of the big machine and you're more successful.

01:36:32.000 So it's almost like the independent decentralization is actually winning and the cult is being pushed back.

01:36:39.000 Ethan and Eric July are probably two fantastic examples of people that are proving that it can be done on your own.

01:36:45.000 Are you working with Eric?

01:36:49.000 Anyway, listen, it just goes to show.

01:36:54.000 If you listen to the fans and you're paying attention to the fans, you're going to make money.

01:36:58.000 That's what we'd like to impart to Marvel and DC.

01:37:00.000 Hilarious that that's hard to explain to people now that don't understand that listening to the fans is actually just a great way to make money.

01:37:07.000 What happens is people are getting confused by the loud minority and they think that's the fan base, so it's a little bit of a diffusion.

01:37:13.000 S.A.

01:37:13.000 Federali says, Tim, you and Bill's announcement today was epic.

01:37:16.000 He's like Jack's benevolent twin and you're becoming better than Cronkite every day.

01:37:21.000 Walk to walk the walk, dudes.

01:37:22.000 Also, thank you.

01:37:24.000 Check out youtube.com slash timcast and the latest episode of the Culture War podcast where we basically announce we're suing California and then we're, that's like actually happening.

01:37:35.000 It's like the paper, they hand me the paperwork, I sign some papers.

01:37:39.000 As for Bandcamp, we are beginning the preliminary exploratory options of how we take legal action.

01:37:46.000 Someone, I saw several superchats from people saying that they do not have access to the song they purchased, which would mean something weird happened.

01:37:54.000 I mean, you bought a song using their platform, and then they took that song away from you, so did they steal it?

01:38:01.000 Do they owe you the money?

01:38:02.000 I don't have access to any of those people.

01:38:05.000 I don't know their emails.

01:38:06.000 I don't know who they are.

01:38:07.000 I don't know who lost it.

01:38:08.000 I don't know how to get in contact with them.

01:38:10.000 So, this seems like a contract violation between the user and me.

01:38:15.000 Bandcamp should be liable for this.

01:38:17.000 This used to happen a lot on iTunes and stuff, right?

01:38:19.000 You'd buy a movie and it would be on the server, and then when rights would be renegotiated and the movie would be taken off that platform, you suddenly don't have access to the movie you purchased anymore, and you don't know whether they're going to get back or not.

01:38:30.000 That's why you should buy physical media.

01:38:31.000 You always buy physical media, exactly.

01:38:33.000 Shane H. Wilder says, love seeing you and Tom taking over the charts.

01:38:36.000 Keep it going.

01:38:37.000 Rock on, guys, and peace be with all of you.

01:38:39.000 I will say, uh, When we released the other songs, we did a heavy promotion Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and I think we're getting to the point where the music thing needs to just become its own entity and be responsible more for itself, which is what I'm basically saying is I won't be promoting it as heavily, though we will still do, like, promo, shout out, please buy it, throughout the next week of episodes.

01:39:03.000 We gotta get to the point where we just start putting out music and let the machine build itself and the snowballs roll down the hill.

01:39:09.000 So we can't treat every song like the biggest release ever.

01:39:12.000 We can't just try and hyper-focus every single one.

01:39:15.000 No, we put out this song.

01:39:16.000 We've been sitting on it for a year.

01:39:17.000 We'll put another song next month and we'll just let the music be the music and then exist as its library and then hopefully the snowball rolls down the hill.

01:39:24.000 But more importantly, we also need to spread the resources around to start just producing more music from other artists.

01:39:32.000 All right, let's see.

01:39:36.000 Zimemaru says, Ian, please come back to us.

01:39:39.000 What happened to Tim isn't your fault.

01:39:41.000 The real Tim would want you to move on, not spend all of your time in the metaverse reliving Timcast episodes from 20 years ago.

01:39:47.000 That's a message from the future.

01:39:48.000 Thank you.

01:39:52.000 All right.

01:39:53.000 John Kirsten says, some bangers dropped today with Bright Eyes and Dr. James Lindsay Workshop on inclusion.

01:39:58.000 Both left me speechless, like Brandon Caserta's story on being framed by the FBI.

01:40:04.000 It's called Smothered by Memes.

01:40:04.000 Haha.

01:40:07.000 James Ng just said, I requested a refund from Bandcamp.

01:40:09.000 No response.

01:40:10.000 Well, see, here's the issue.

01:40:12.000 If you request a refund from them, but they've deleted my account, I don't know where they get the money from.

01:40:18.000 They've not contacted me, so we got a problem, guys.

01:40:21.000 I don't have a list of the people who need a refund.

01:40:24.000 I have no idea.

01:40:26.000 I'm looking at it.

01:40:27.000 You go to timcast.bandcamp.com.

01:40:29.000 It just shows your name.

01:40:29.000 It's blank.

01:40:30.000 Then you go to the Wayback Machine, and it shows Only Ever Wanted.

01:40:33.000 Yep.

01:40:33.000 That's nasty.

01:40:35.000 That's 10 cent.

01:40:35.000 Are you suing 10 cent?

01:40:36.000 Are you going to sue the owners of Epic Games, which owns Bandcamp?

01:40:40.000 Bandcamp is an entity.

01:40:41.000 And they're based out of North Carolina, I guess.

01:40:43.000 So it's going to be really interesting.

01:40:46.000 But I got, you know, whatever.

01:40:50.000 I hope they should expect it.

01:40:52.000 And I don't know how far this goes, but They try to do this thing, these tech companies, where they're like, you must go to arbitration.

01:40:59.000 And I'm like, that's for a judge to decide.

01:41:01.000 Like, if we file and a judge says it's an arbitration clause, so go to arbitration, I'll say okay.

01:41:04.000 But the judge might be like, no dice.

01:41:06.000 Like, this is, this is, it's up to the judge.

01:41:09.000 So my attitude is simply, I feel wronged.

01:41:11.000 I think all the people who purchased the song from Bandcamp, which is thousands, were wronged.

01:41:16.000 And we may be dealing with something like five to ten thousand arbitration claims.

01:41:21.000 I mean, for the people who... Here's what you've got to understand.

01:41:23.000 It's not just the song.

01:41:25.000 It's that if you were on that page, you could comment and see other fans of the song.

01:41:29.000 You weren't just buying the song.

01:41:30.000 You were using the platform to gain access to a community.

01:41:33.000 That's what you were paying for, and they've taken it away from you.

01:41:35.000 And Bryson Gray.

01:41:37.000 He was unceremoniously removed.

01:41:38.000 And five times August.

01:41:40.000 Yep.

01:41:41.000 Harpy says, checked Bandcamp and no longer have access to song.

01:41:45.000 Alright, well, here's the thing.

01:41:47.000 I never revoked that license from you.

01:41:49.000 I say that if you bought it, you have a right to listen to that song whenever you want.

01:41:55.000 Bandcamp took it from you.

01:41:55.000 That's why there's a lawsuit.

01:41:58.000 Sounds like some kind of theft or something, I don't know.

01:42:00.000 Like, if you went to Best Buy and bought a CD, and then you're like, I have a right to listen to Metallica, and then a guy from Best Buy showed up at your house and took the CD from you?

01:42:07.000 Like, that'd be like a weird thing, you know what I mean?

01:42:10.000 And it's like, well, look, the CD was ours.

01:42:12.000 You bought a license to it.

01:42:13.000 It's like, hold on there a minute.

01:42:14.000 No.

01:42:15.000 The license was from them.

01:42:16.000 I just went to your store to buy it.

01:42:18.000 Yeah, well, you know.

01:42:19.000 I don't know.

01:42:20.000 I think it's weird.

01:42:21.000 At the very least, I don't understand how this will, uh...

01:42:25.000 How this will affect the future of commerce and thus there's some kind of precedent that needs to be explored because obviously Best Buy couldn't send an employee to take a CD from your house.

01:42:33.000 That is your copy of the CD.

01:42:35.000 You don't own the music, you own the right to that copy of the music to listen to.

01:42:38.000 There are certain restrictions on how you can distribute or play it, especially if you're a business.

01:42:43.000 But I'm like, it's... I don't know.

01:42:48.000 And technology changes so fast that the law and precedent never catch up.

01:42:51.000 Let's try it this way.

01:42:52.000 Imagine you bought a ticket to see a movie at a theater, and then when you showed up at the theater, The movie just didn't play anything.

01:43:00.000 You'd be like, hey, dude, I bought a ticket for this movie, and they went, we banned the movie.

01:43:04.000 It's like, well, I bought the ticket from you, dude!

01:43:06.000 I don't know, like, the money for the movie theaters goes to Hollywood, right?

01:43:10.000 60% to Hollywood, 40% to theaters.

01:43:13.000 The theater gets a cut, just like band camp takes a cut.

01:43:16.000 So imagine going to the movies and buying a ticket, and then sitting down and the movie never plays.

01:43:20.000 And they say, well, we banned the movie from the theater.

01:43:22.000 It's like, well, then you owe me my money back.

01:43:24.000 And they go, get out, you're banned.

01:43:27.000 Any chance that you would put a CD out?

01:43:30.000 Vinyl, maybe.

01:43:30.000 Not a CD out.

01:43:31.000 Vinyl?

01:43:32.000 This is what we talk about a lot.

01:43:32.000 Yeah.

01:43:34.000 When you try to call up these tech companies, if you have an issue with Facebook, do you actually get on the phone with Facebook and talk to them?

01:43:41.000 They just assume that you're a problem, that you're just not going to want to deal with the vast bureaucracy and the inability to get a hold of someone and actually take care of these issues, so they end up winning either way.

01:43:41.000 No.

01:43:53.000 Big problem here too.

01:43:54.000 They got bought, Bandcamp got bought March 2nd of 2022 by Epic Games.

01:43:59.000 It was March 17th, two weeks later of 2022, they changed their terms of service.

01:44:04.000 So get a copy of the terms before the sale and then put that up against the terms now and see what they changed and see if it's legal to do that to a customer that signed under the old terms.

01:44:15.000 Yeah, but probably what happened is they sent out an email saying the terms have been updated, you know what I mean?

01:44:19.000 Yeah, which is heinous.

01:44:20.000 But the terms don't matter.

01:44:22.000 People don't understand.

01:44:23.000 Judges aren't robots who are like, let me see here, ah, the code script reads, if this then that, sorry, have a nice day.

01:44:29.000 They're human beings. 0.68

01:44:30.000 And if someone comes in and says, your honor, our terms say that we can take all of your money whenever we want, he's gonna be like, shut up!

01:44:37.000 I can't do that.

01:44:38.000 It's crazy to me.

01:44:39.000 I talk to so many people, and maybe this is something for people who don't understand how business operates and they've not run a company, but they'll be like, well, if you had a contract, then you have to do it.

01:44:48.000 And I'm like, that doesn't mean anything.

01:44:50.000 I can go ask a judge.

01:44:52.000 So people seem to think that if I say, like, hey, let's do a deal, Ethan, where I will distribute the comics, and for every comic I sell, I get a percentage cut.

01:45:03.000 Just sign this document.

01:45:04.000 And then you say, you got a buddy, and you sign it, and the document actually says, I hereby revoke, give all rights to Zimpool. 1.00

01:45:10.000 He owns it 100%.

01:45:12.000 That would not fly in court.

01:45:14.000 You'd go to court and I'd be like, he agreed to give me the full ownership of all of his IP, and then he would just say to the judge, that's not what we agreed upon, and that's insane, I would never have signed that.

01:45:24.000 And then the judge would be like, why didn't you read it?

01:45:25.000 I'd be like, I did, I misunderstood it.

01:45:26.000 The judge would be like, okay, the contract is voided.

01:45:29.000 Like, a judge can simply be like, no reasonable person would actually agree to what you're talking about, you were trying to exploit someone, the contract is voided, I hereby rule.

01:45:36.000 Bang, gavel. 0.99

01:45:37.000 People think judges are like, but there's a contract and you signed it.

01:45:39.000 Sorry.

01:45:40.000 Now, if it was something more reasonable, like, I said, I'll give you, I'll take five percent, but the contract says 20, now you're in trouble.

01:45:47.000 Because you're gonna be like, I never agreed to 20.

01:45:48.000 I'm like, well, you signed 20.

01:45:50.000 Like, now you, you might be lying to me.

01:45:52.000 But to, for something so absurd.

01:45:54.000 So, if in their terms, it's something like, you have no, you can't sue us, a judge might be like, get out of here, they can sue you.

01:46:00.000 I, I, I'm, I'm letting it go.

01:46:02.000 Or they might say no.

01:46:03.000 Depends on what the judge wants to do.

01:46:05.000 Sometimes judges do get real rigid and just say, I'm bound by, you know, statutory law or whatever.

01:46:11.000 But sometimes you get good or bad judges.

01:46:13.000 That's why there's an appeals process. 0.95

01:46:15.000 All right.

01:46:17.000 Fatboy says you have no clue about TikTok apparently.

01:46:19.000 I've been on there two years and have never seen China influence.

01:46:22.000 I did, however, learn more about what happened in Ohio and all the chemical food processing plants blown up, etc.

01:46:27.000 News.

01:46:27.000 That is it!

01:46:28.000 Don't you get it?

01:46:29.000 You don't see the influence.

01:46:31.000 That's the point.

01:46:32.000 Showing you chemical and food processing plant explosions to make you think that there is some inner turmoil in this country is a part of their attempt, in my opinion, to sow discord.

01:46:43.000 It's not about a video popping up being like, China is great, you love China!

01:46:46.000 It's a video that pops up that says, you should sterilize your children!

01:46:50.000 And other people seeing videos saying, your country is falling apart, everything's burning down, quick run!

01:46:54.000 That's the attack on your psyche.

01:46:56.000 If they're showing you tons of chemical food plants and explosions, that is literally it, right?

01:47:02.000 I talked about this with all the food plants burning down.

01:47:05.000 They happen all the time.

01:47:07.000 And everyone kept saying, look at all these, you see all the stories about train derailments?

01:47:11.000 We didn't talk about it because it's not news.

01:47:15.000 East Palestine was news.

01:47:16.000 A major chemical spill explosion, they burned it off.

01:47:19.000 Then all of a sudden everyone started saying, look at all these train derailments that are happening all over the country.

01:47:23.000 And then I looked it up and I'm like, yeah, that's actually par for the course.

01:47:25.000 There's like a thousand, like there's 1700 per year on average.

01:47:29.000 So we're talking about more than a hundred per month that happened.

01:47:32.000 But because of East Palestine, media outlets were like, let's keep showing these over and over and over again because it gets clicks.

01:47:37.000 And I'm like, it's not news that these things happen.

01:47:39.000 So much of our lives now is algorithmically manipulated because so much of your life takes place looking into your phone almost all the time.

01:47:46.000 When you really think about how often you look at your phone on a daily basis, you really are at the whims of what your phone is showing you.

01:47:53.000 And whether that's Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, any of these places, your mood, your state of mind can ultimately be controlled by your phone.

01:48:02.000 Just the radiation coming off the screen, I think.

01:48:05.000 We were just talking the other day, I was like, dude, have there been any long-term studies that tell us that these things aren't going to nuke our brains in 50 years?

01:48:13.000 I don't know.

01:48:14.000 Does that exist?

01:48:15.000 I don't know.

01:48:15.000 But Ethan, do you write on like a Wacom digital tablet or do you write on paper?

01:48:20.000 No, I write on paper.

01:48:22.000 Yeah.

01:48:22.000 Does it free your mind?

01:48:23.000 Do you feel freed from the algorithm when you're working?

01:48:26.000 I just, for me it's a tactile experience that I really need to touch paper and a pen and actually feel the drag of the pen.

01:48:33.000 I can't really put that into words, but it's how I've always drawn and I'm not looking to change that in any way.

01:48:40.000 I see Wacom tablets and everything.

01:48:43.000 Don't hate me for this, fellow artist.

01:48:45.000 I see it as cheating.

01:48:47.000 I mean, it really is, like, you get one shot at it and you can use whiteout and everything like that, but when you can just blow up this part and move this around, it doesn't feel... It's kind of like the digitization of music?

01:48:58.000 Yeah, it just feels a little artificial to me.

01:49:00.000 But no judgment, you know, people do their thing.

01:49:03.000 I'm old-fashioned.

01:49:05.000 All right, what do we got here?

01:49:07.000 Son of a Murph says, is that a Novo guitar hanging behind you?

01:49:10.000 Had the chance to play one today and they're freaking sweet.

01:49:11.000 Enjoy the weekend, everyone.

01:49:12.000 No, it's a Harmony Silhouette.

01:49:15.000 Beautiful machine.

01:49:16.000 Yeah, it's actually one of my favorites.

01:49:18.000 My Strat, the one that I'm, the Strat that I'm playing in the Bright Eyes music video is my favorite guitar, followed by that one.

01:49:25.000 That's, it's amazing.

01:49:26.000 Sounds so good.

01:49:27.000 I love it.

01:49:28.000 Good, good play, good action.

01:49:29.000 So good. 0.85

01:49:31.000 Jeef Fazer says, I said this on Stick, Sex, and Hammer.

01:49:34.000 If TikTok gets banned, Elon needs to jump on this with his own version, or better yet, bring back Vine.

01:49:40.000 Seriously, TikTok is Vine, essentially.

01:49:44.000 Elon, bring back Vine.

01:49:45.000 Bring back Vine, and TikTok is done.

01:49:48.000 We don't gotta worry about it.

01:49:49.000 I wonder if Vine, was it costing them money for hosting?

01:49:51.000 No, they wanted people to use Twitter instead.

01:49:54.000 They wanted people to post the same things they were posting, but on Twitter.

01:49:57.000 But that's not how it works.

01:49:58.000 Remember Periscope?

01:50:01.000 Well, TikTok started as like a karaoke app, right?

01:50:08.000 It started as like people just singing.

01:50:10.000 Is it called Musical.ly?

01:50:11.000 I believe so, yeah.

01:50:12.000 And so I'm wondering if that was by design or if they just stumbled across something like, oh my god, we control 150 million Americans.

01:50:19.000 Like, let's do something with this.

01:50:21.000 This is a powerful tool we have.

01:50:22.000 I don't believe they're real.

01:50:24.000 Like, look at the comments on TikTok posts.

01:50:29.000 And I'm like, I don't think that's real people.

01:50:31.000 We were talking about that because they did the we were looking at the Gotham Knights

01:50:34.000 reviews and all of the it's got like an 18% from critics.

01:50:38.000 And if the critics hate it, it means it's either really, really good or even worse than

01:50:41.000 you could possibly.

01:50:42.000 In this case, it's worse than you could possibly imagine.

01:50:44.000 But most of the comments for the positive ones all look extremely fake because the audience

01:50:49.000 score was like 53%.

01:50:51.000 And it's like, it's all the most generic stuff you've ever seen.

01:50:53.000 And most of them, they either have egg, you know, egg avatars.

01:50:56.000 They don't have actual pictures there.

01:50:58.000 No way to know.

01:50:59.000 We got to snag that duet functionality.

01:51:01.000 If we want to make something as good as TikTok, because being able to video respond to someone in the video is so key.

01:51:06.000 Help Bill to do it.

01:51:07.000 On mines?

01:51:08.000 Yeah.

01:51:09.000 Bill, make a video shorts app that rivals what TikTok is.

01:51:14.000 You know, mine's about to build out a sweet video app.

01:51:16.000 That's the way to do it.

01:51:17.000 And ban dancing videos.

01:51:19.000 No dancing videos.

01:51:20.000 And then we'll keep the kids serious.

01:51:23.000 I like the dancing videos.

01:51:24.000 Oh hey, I love the dancing videos.

01:51:26.000 No, I was talking about, you know when you talked a couple weeks ago about the girl dancing in the, in like the Sam's Club?

01:51:32.000 You talked about it on the channel?

01:51:34.000 That girl went on to be like, she has like three million followers now and she does like choreography for like Shania Twain and built an entire like ridiculous career because she used to record those videos, but that's the way it started.

01:51:48.000 Adrienne Curry says, Thank God Stan Lee left us before women destroyed nerddom. 1.00

01:51:53.000 Comic Con, E3, DC, Marvel, and now Lord of the Rings all lost to us because of feminism. 1.00

01:51:57.000 Not only did Stan leave us, he built Stan Lee's Superhumans, one of the greatest shows on television, before he left us.

01:52:03.000 And it's a masterpiece.

01:52:05.000 Hey, by the way, I don't think women destroyed nerdom.

01:52:09.000 I think feminism did, and I think woke destroyed nerdom. 1.00

01:52:13.000 We've had females who understand that mostly when you're writing Daredevil, you're writing it for boys, and they understand that and they do a great job.

01:52:22.000 Women, you're welcome in comics, but understand 95% of your audience is male.

01:52:27.000 It's just knowing your audience.

01:52:28.000 Bear that in mind.

01:52:29.000 This is an attack on masculinity.

01:52:31.000 They hate it.

01:52:32.000 That's correct.

01:52:33.000 During Gamergate, the big thing was they wanted to make walking simulators.

01:52:36.000 They're like, why are games always predicated on violence?

01:52:39.000 And it's like... Sex and violence is what sells.

01:52:42.000 Have you played the new Harry Potter game?

01:52:43.000 No.

01:52:44.000 It's like, it's Harry Potter, but there's combat in it.

01:52:46.000 And it's funny because there's substantially more combat than Harry Potter had in its whole story.

01:52:51.000 Like, granted, there were big battles in Harry Potter, but later on, for the most part, it was like solving puzzles.

01:52:56.000 Well, because that was the structure of the story, right?

01:52:58.000 It made sense for the battles to happen later on.

01:53:00.000 And there is good feminist media. 1.00

01:53:02.000 I will always push people to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

01:53:05.000 If you want to watch actual good feminist television with a feminist character that actually exists in a world where she has emotions, she's a fully fledged person, and she is not somebody that just beats up a bunch of men and makes a bunch of quips, she's actually vulnerable. 0.99

01:53:18.000 Go watch Buffer Games.

01:53:19.000 Yes.

01:53:20.000 No, go to- if you want to get a ComixSkate project by a completely based woman. 1.00

01:53:25.000 Irene Strakowski left Marvel Comics of her own accord to come be ComixSkate, just out of a moral sense. 1.00

01:53:32.000 She's got a book called Fiendish 2 on Indiegogo right now.

01:53:36.000 I promise you, it is amazing.

01:53:38.000 You will love it.

01:53:39.000 Go back to Fiendish 2 on Indiegogo.

01:53:41.000 What if we find a way to team up and we can help distribute the stuff through our website?

01:53:44.000 Tim.

01:53:46.000 Are you that good of a guy?

01:53:48.000 Why are you an angel from heaven?

01:53:50.000 I mean...

01:53:51.000 I'm saying like, we keep talking about how, like, the number one thing we do outside of

01:53:58.000 talking politics is trying to build culture.

01:54:01.000 So, I've said this before, look, I could hire ten more conservative commentators, libertarian commentators, disrespected liberals, and just be talk radio, or we can try and win a culture war.

01:54:13.000 The Daily Wire does that, and they do it very well.

01:54:15.000 They've done a great job of finding personalities who are in this space of the freedom faction to talk about these ideas.

01:54:23.000 They've also done big cultural endeavors.

01:54:26.000 My thing is like, I'm gonna focus strictly on the cultural stuff and try and just build that kind of stuff.

01:54:31.000 So if there was a way that we could create some kind of portal or some kind of hub on TimCast.com that, like I was mentioning before, we wanted to do some kind of like weekly chapter release or something.

01:54:42.000 You know, maybe there's a way to do it Shonen Jump style.

01:54:44.000 Were you talking about, like, digital release?

01:54:47.000 Yeah.

01:54:47.000 Like, uh, cause Amazon did comiXology, right?

01:54:50.000 And then they, they, the infrastructure for it was like really hard to upkeep from what I understand.

01:54:54.000 Ethan, do you know anything about that?

01:54:55.000 Like, uh, comiXology, which was bought by Amazon, right?

01:54:59.000 Yeah.

01:54:59.000 They, they, they destroyed the technology and made it really impractical and hard to use.

01:55:05.000 Here's what I'm thinking.

01:55:08.000 I'd have to know what you guys are working with and what you guys need but my idea is like if we had a way to do like I wanted to do weekly chapters of comics kind of like how Shonen Jump they'd put that release out and then you have like chapters every week the new Naruto would come out and I would read it but if it's too hard to do one chapter of a comic every week as what people said it could be like one chapter every other week and you interlace them so if it takes someone two weeks to do a chapter then you know you put that up and then two weeks later the next one goes up and then in between you're you're you're skipping out or maybe even three weeks or something like that Some way to have like, hey, this Wednesday is the latest release of the chapter of whatever.

01:55:42.000 We have to create stories.

01:55:44.000 This is the thing.

01:55:45.000 I mean, you know, comic books are easy.

01:55:48.000 An easy way to put stories out there.

01:55:50.000 And the problem is right now the left has complete domination.

01:55:54.000 Woke has all of the storytelling that Americans at the West are feeding to their kids.

01:55:59.000 Our kids are hungry for it.

01:56:01.000 They're going to Japan for their needs. 0.91

01:56:03.000 We really do need a way to get our stories out there to more people.

01:56:08.000 This non-woke stuff.

01:56:10.000 I would love to talk to you about that.

01:56:12.000 Let's figure something out.

01:56:13.000 We got Dushadaw says, Superman can beat Goku.

01:56:17.000 Batman proved he can beat Superman.

01:56:19.000 Therefore, Batman is greater than Goku.

01:56:20.000 And everyone that Goku defeated, Batman is the greatest superhero.

01:56:24.000 Let me just pause and say, you don't need to do that.

01:56:29.000 Batman can defeat Goku, and it's not even an argument.

01:56:32.000 Okay, look, if you're gonna be like, who would win in a fight, Batman or Thanos or Batman or name character, you know, Eternity, and it's like, well, here's what Batman would do.

01:56:41.000 No, no, no, no, no.

01:56:42.000 Batman versus Goku is no question, no argument.

01:56:45.000 Batman is a ninja.

01:56:47.000 He is stealth, he is tactical.

01:56:49.000 Goku is overly trusting.

01:56:51.000 It is in Goku's character arc to be extremely trusting and to take advantage of.

01:56:55.000 Batman would walk up to Goku and then do a single move that would incapacitate Goku.

01:57:00.000 He'd like nerve pinch him and Goku would just like fall asleep.

01:57:03.000 Because Batman would trust him.

01:57:05.000 He'd be like, I have no reason to fight you, Batman.

01:57:07.000 You're a good guy.

01:57:07.000 And then Batman would go, whoosh.

01:57:09.000 And then Goku would just go, uh. 0.97

01:57:12.000 But Superman would kill Batman.

01:57:14.000 Nope. 0.97

01:57:14.000 Blast him with heat rays from space. 0.97

01:57:17.000 The thing is, Superman's a good guy, so he wouldn't do that.

01:57:19.000 That's the point of the debate.

01:57:20.000 It's like having the Deathstroke versus Deadpool debate that everyone always has.

01:57:24.000 There's the guy who did the video reenactment of it.

01:57:27.000 But look, so you could say, I personally believe it would be a deus ex machina.

01:57:33.000 for you to say superman could heat blast and kill batman because batman's superpower is actually his ability to escape and solve problems so it's like i i've heard it described as peak human as the way to describe it it wouldn't make sense for batman's character to instantly be taken out by superman yeah he'd be ready for it he thinks ahead Right.

01:57:54.000 He wouldn't always be ready for it.

01:57:56.000 I mean, he'd have to have Kryptonite on his being.

01:57:58.000 He does, though.

01:57:59.000 And Superman, does he?

01:58:00.000 He has Bell, always.

01:58:01.000 Yep. 1.00

01:58:02.000 Oh my god, what a jerk. 1.00

01:58:03.000 Yeah, well. 1.00

01:58:04.000 And then there was the Justice League arc where all of the superheroes' weaknesses are being used against them.

01:58:12.000 Someone stole Batman's counterplans and started executing him against the heroes.

01:58:17.000 And then they find out, they're like, you drafted these strategies to take us all down.

01:58:21.000 Is that from the genius contract?

01:58:22.000 Yeah, I think that's what it was.

01:58:23.000 And then Batman's like, yes.

01:58:24.000 He just says, yes.

01:58:27.000 The best part of that is he says, they all get offended that he has the list of how to defeat them all.

01:58:32.000 And they're all super offended.

01:58:33.000 He's like, I'm not offended.

01:58:34.000 He's like, you're basically like weapons of mass destruction.

01:58:38.000 What do you want me to do?

01:58:39.000 Yeah.

01:58:40.000 I think Bradley Cooper from Limitless could be Batman on the Limitless pill.

01:58:43.000 Oh, which means I have to do my daily show.

01:58:45.000 Watch the Limitless TV show, which is one of the very few examples of a television show that should not be good, but absolutely got one season and then they killed it. 0.99

01:58:54.000 The movie was so dumb. 0.93

01:58:56.000 He's like, this pill's gonna be a super start. 1.00

01:58:58.000 Forgot to pay my bookie.

01:58:58.000 I'm like, what?

01:59:01.000 I guess.

01:59:02.000 The show is great.

01:59:03.000 It's got Jennifer Carpenter from Dexter. 0.92

01:59:05.000 Purple says, Black Clover, Naruto, Dragon Ball, you like all my favorite manga.

01:59:09.000 You can finish Black Clover in manga, it's still going.

01:59:12.000 You need to check out One Piece and One Punch Man, also Attack on Titan.

01:59:15.000 One Punch Man is so good.

01:59:18.000 It is so good.

01:59:19.000 In fact, it was so good, it actually broke into American mainstream, and it was like Vice was writing how good it was.

01:59:25.000 Fantastic.

01:59:26.000 One piece I've heard tremendously great things about, never got into it though, and Attack on Titan is a masterpiece.

01:59:34.000 Seriously, if you are involved in culture war politics, you really need to watch Attack on Titan.

01:59:39.000 It is like, there's that joke where Jordan Peterson says to watch it, but I'm like, I'm pretty sure he would tell you to watch it if he did.

01:59:45.000 Because it's about privilege and like, it covers like, woke politics and post-modernism.

01:59:51.000 It is brilliant.

01:59:52.000 You familiar with Attack on Titan?

01:59:53.000 I've seen it, yeah, but I've not read it.

01:59:56.000 Again, you know, manga is kind of... I've only barely scratched the surface of manga.

02:00:01.000 Alright, we'll grab...

02:00:03.000 We'll grab one more.

02:00:04.000 What do you got?

02:00:05.000 Jasper Plan 9 says, I'm new here.

02:00:07.000 Tim is winning me over with his promoting a parallel economy.

02:00:09.000 Cheers, panel.

02:00:10.000 That's what we're trying to do!

02:00:11.000 So head over to TrashHouseRecords.com.

02:00:14.000 Buy Bright Eyes so we can start creating these.

02:00:17.000 We are but a humble acorn in the ground.

02:00:19.000 We are not a massive oak tree or anything like that.

02:00:23.000 Maybe 10, 20 years.

02:00:25.000 Maybe in 100 years there will be a massive TMG Big parent media corporation that has American values and believes in the family and meritocracy and individualism.

02:00:36.000 For today, we are but a few humble shows.

02:00:39.000 But if we win, and we keep winning, here's what you gotta understand.

02:00:44.000 Three of three songs hit Billboard.

02:00:46.000 I am telling you, there are people out there who wish they were a musician, rock stars, who wish they could get their song charting, and they're like, how do I do it, man?

02:00:56.000 Right now, many of these people are working for woke record labels or signed to them, and they're being told, do as you're told, take the Vax, kick out your band members who vote for Trump, otherwise you will never make it.

02:01:07.000 And they're going, I wish I didn't have to, but I have no choice.

02:01:09.000 Then, off in the distance they look and they're like, that dude on his own got all three of his songs on billboard, what am I doing with these guys?

02:01:17.000 We want to steal them all.

02:01:19.000 We want people who are in that woke machine to be like, there's clearly a way to do this, because that guy's more successful than we've ever been, and we're sitting here bending the knee to these crackpots, and he would never make us do that.

02:01:29.000 That's why I'm like, we gotta win.

02:01:31.000 Now, here's what I think.

02:01:33.000 We can't just keep doing like, here's another one of Tim Pool's songs, which is why we're like, we need to expand.

02:01:38.000 But it's like, we started pushing a snowball down the hill.

02:01:41.000 I think the fact that we got three of three on Billboard gives us a tremendous launching pad to be able to go to people and be like, don't do those deals.

02:01:50.000 They can't get it done for you.

02:01:52.000 Start working with us.

02:01:53.000 We will plant those seeds and your song will be more successful with us than with anybody else.

02:01:57.000 Then you'll start seeing these people be like, I'd sign with you, man, but I'm not confident you're actually going to get my song out there.

02:02:03.000 We're going to do a deal.

02:02:03.000 You're going to forget about the music.

02:02:05.000 If I go do a deal with Tim Pool, I'm going to be on Billboard.

02:02:08.000 My debut release is going to be a hit, and it's going to be top of iTunes.

02:02:12.000 And they're going to be like, no, wait, don't.

02:02:14.000 Be woke.

02:02:15.000 And they're going to be like, nah, I'm OK.

02:02:17.000 We need the Freedom Faction to have these cultural tools.

02:02:20.000 I don't care if it's me or anybody else who's doing it.

02:02:22.000 ComicsGate's clearly doing it.

02:02:24.000 Support ComicsGate.

02:02:25.000 Thank you.

02:02:25.000 Can you say, Hi, ComicsGate?

02:02:27.000 Hi, ComicsGate.

02:02:29.000 This is what we need to do.

02:02:30.000 That's the thing.

02:02:30.000 We need people who work at Marvel and DC to stand up and say, you know what?

02:02:35.000 I don't want to do this anymore.

02:02:36.000 It doesn't make me feel good.

02:02:38.000 And then go independent and win.

02:02:40.000 So, with your support we will.

02:02:41.000 Become a member at TimCast.com to get access to our Discord, our Hangout, where we share a lot of this cultural stuff and beta testing.

02:02:50.000 We're working on basically giving people in the Elite Club early access and then people in the VIP chat room access to our call-in show.

02:02:56.000 So become a member, support our work if you really do believe in it and you want to help us out.

02:03:00.000 The time is now.

02:03:02.000 There's not much time left.

02:03:03.000 We've got to be active, so I really do appreciate your support.

02:03:05.000 You can follow the show at TimCastIRL.

02:03:07.000 You can follow me personally at TimCast.

02:03:09.000 Ethan, you want to shout anything out?

02:03:10.000 Yeah, I'd like to shout out John Malin's Godlike on Indiegogo.

02:03:14.000 I'd like to shout out Shane Davis' Inglorious Rex 2 on Indiegogo.

02:03:18.000 And of course, Cyberfrog Dark Harvest on Indiegogo.

02:03:22.000 If you'd like to buy any of the old Cyberfrog stuff, you can find it on eBay.

02:03:26.000 Just search for Cyberfrog.

02:03:28.000 Our seller name is Cyberfrog9.

02:03:30.000 We ship same day that you order.

02:03:32.000 You'll have it in a couple of days.

02:03:33.000 Thanks for listening.

02:03:35.000 Comicsgate.org and then follow me on Twitter at Ethan VanSkyver.

02:03:40.000 Guys, if you want to follow me, you can follow me on Instagram and on Twitter at Brett Dasifik on both.

02:03:45.000 Remember, Pop Culture Crisis is Monday through Friday 3 p.m.

02:03:48.000 Eastern Standard Time.

02:03:49.000 That is Noon Pacific right here on YouTube.

02:03:51.000 Me and Mary talk about pop culture, celebrities, movies, all that good stuff.

02:03:54.000 Come hang out with us.

02:03:55.000 You guys follow me at Ian Crossland and I just want to shout out Carter Banks for his epic production of Bright Eyes.

02:04:01.000 He did a lot of the work on that.

02:04:03.000 He did a lot of the harmonies too.

02:04:04.000 So I mentioned that I did vocal harmonies on it.

02:04:06.000 Tim, myself, Carter.

02:04:08.000 We all did vocal harmonies on it.

02:04:10.000 It is magical.

02:04:11.000 It was really fun to work with.

02:04:12.000 Carter did a lot of work on that.

02:04:13.000 I'm kind of feeling like I would love to do a Soundgarden cover with Phil Labonte for our next song.

02:04:18.000 We've been listening to Soundgarden before the show.

02:04:20.000 I know, I just love Soundgarden.

02:04:21.000 So good.

02:04:22.000 Chris Cornell.

02:04:23.000 Good!

02:04:23.000 I want to call him Jesus.

02:04:25.000 Jesus Christ Pose.

02:04:26.000 Was that a Soundgarden song or was that Pearl Jam?

02:04:29.000 No, that's Soundgarden, I'm pretty sure.

02:04:30.000 Jesus Christ Pose.

02:04:31.000 That guy, man.

02:04:32.000 What a life.

02:04:34.000 All right, let's move this out.

02:04:35.000 You guys follow me at kellenpdl.

02:04:37.000 Hey, I love this was like one of the best Fridays so far.

02:04:40.000 This was an awesome conversation.

02:04:43.000 And yeah, if you like conversations like this, watch Pop Culture Crisis.

02:04:46.000 That's what it's all about.

02:04:48.000 And I am on there every Wednesday.

02:04:50.000 So yes, kellenpdl.

02:04:51.000 Thanks, guys.

02:04:51.000 We will see you all this weekend with our clips and Monday when we're back for the show.

02:04:56.000 Thanks for hanging out.

Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - March 24, 2023

Timcast IRL - Democrats DESPERATE To Stop TIKTOK BAN As Ban Seems Likely w-Ethan Van Sciver

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