Panel by Panel: This Is a Podcast Episode

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Bhophe PERSON. B. B. B. B. B.Bhop. I'm Bhop. Welcome to a new episode of panel by panel, the show that dissect a single comic book panel from the last 85 years of comics history each episode. I'm Siskoid, and our panelist today is Chris last 85 years of comics history each episode. I'm Siscoid, and our panelist today is Chris Pine PERSON. No, not that Chris Pine PERSON, the real Chris Pine.Welcome to the show, Chris PERSON.

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Hi, thanks for having me. This is your very first podcast appearance, am I right?

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Yeah, ever.

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Ever.

Speaker 060.02s - 69.78s

So you're going from fan to voice. Yeah, fan to voice, fan to guest. I think that's probably my limit. You don't want to get into this racket. No. I've listened to Hot Moo PRODUCT.

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It does not sound fun after the recording.

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That's why panel kind of exists because it's always a short show and I get to do the editing really quickly. It's like, there we go. Right. You know. All right. Well, you decided to put yourself to the test. My randomizer had to produce a panel for you, for us to discuss today.So let's get to that randomized series of choices using my database of available comic book materials, which in the digital age is almost everything at this point. It might be physical as well. In this case, you'll see that I do have this comic in my collection. So prior to the recording, we did roll up a year, a month, a comic on the stands that month, a page, and finally a panel, the discrete unit of comic book storytelling.In this case, we rolled the year, 1992, the month of October. Among all the comics out that month, the revolving finger falls on the heckler number two by Keith Giffin, Tom and Mary Byerbaum, and Malcolm Jones, the third, page eight of 22, and panel two of nine, which you'll find in the show notes at fire and waterpodcast.com ORG, along with the full page context, perhaps some other goodies, from the heckler. So was the heckler at all on your radar?

Speaker 2146.32s - 169.56s

I don't think I've ever had a copy of it, but it sounds familiar. So it may have been on the shelves when I was collecting. The 90s, my collecting in the 90s was a little spotty. I think towards the early 90s, I started the tail off a bit, so I wasn't grabbing as many new titles. And probably if the Heckler started probably pretty early, what is a Zip, issue two.So I probably didn't pick it up, but I probably saw that covers. It sounds familiar.

Speaker 0169.78s - 177.1s

What about Keith Giffin PERSON? Were you a fan of his? I know he had like different art styles over the years. Some people like a specific Keith Giffin PERSON.

Speaker 2177.36s - 217.58s

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Keith Giffin PERSON. I probably didn't start out as a big fan because he's very complicated sometimes to get into as a casual reader. Panel layouts, the art styles that he uses, very expressive. And so it took me a little while to kind of get his language. But once I did, I was a big fan.And I think the Justice League was my doorway into Keith Giffin PERSON, where I started reading that book because I followed J.M. DeM. DeMateus PERSON. And then I started collecting more Keith Given PERSON books to see with that kind of humor and style and kind of sardonic wit carried on. And you can definitely tell, I think J.M. PERSON softened him a little because I think some of his other work is a little more briskly,

Speaker 0217.88s - 276.44s

maybe. Yeah, like he's a bit of a bitter pill. Some of these things. For me, my access, I think, was ambush bug. And it may have been Legion of Superheroes type stuff. But me, my access, I think, was ambush bug. And it may have been Legion of Superheroes type stuff. But by the time I got into comics, he was already doing this style. Like the earlier stuff where the characters were more doll-like, very different from the, like, the super close-ups and dark, deep shadows. And you're not even sure what you're looking at.But Ambushbug was probably my real access into Keith Giffin PERSON and the humor element and him writing or plotting at least. And the heckler is kind of a cousin to that, I feel. So, I mean, it ran for only six issues. It's normal that someone might have completely missed it. I call it the bastard child of the creeper and ambush bug.But regardless, I don't want to give too much away because we have this panel here and it's a little mysterious. Mysterious, I guess that's a good way to put it. It's a little nondescript. All right, well, I'll let you describe it for our listenersand then we'll get to discuss it to death.

Speaker 2276.54s - 304.36s

I guess in this panel we're kind of looking over the shoulder of a character. The pencil works very thin. It almost looks like an outline of a person instead of an actual person, almost like it's one stroke. The colors are very basic.You have pink for the head, pink for the hand. They're wearing like a white shirt or a jacket. And they're reading a newspaper or I don't imagine it's a newspaper that only has one word on it, which is headlines, which kind of makes me think of no frills products. I don't know if you're familiar with those. Yeah.

Speaker 1304.6s - 305.38s

Just say cola. And that's kind of what itills products. I don't know if you're familiar with those. Just say cola.

Speaker 2305.64s - 361.08s

And that's kind of what it feels like. And there's a very sort of basic round desk that almost looks like a cardboard box. There's really no distinct character to it or individuality to it. It just seems like a blank slate of an image. And almost like it's a drawing before you go back and you fill in the detail and uh there's a word balloon where due to the lettering and the way it's it the punctuation is just a period after kindof a long sentence in my head i heard it as like now you know it's very monotone it just the way the lettering is it just makes me feel like it's a monotone kind of speaking and he says uh i'm not going to do a hal impression because I don't do impressions. But he says, I perceive this superhero called the heckler. It's being an extreme expression of individuality, which I guess kind of makes sense when you look at the image because this looks very lacking of individuality.

Speaker 0361.08s - 379.88s

Right. It's machine lettering, and it's the same font as the headline, the word headline. So we're living in a world of a particular world where there's a genericness to everything, an unfinishedness to everything. So what's your basic appreciation for this?

Speaker 2379.88s - 447.2s

My initial takeaway is that it just seemed very much like maybe it's a parody because it doesn't seem like something that is a real-world setting, setting up this kind of nondescript image against the words where he's talking about the heckler being expression of individuality. So it made me think of, like I mentioned before, no frills. It made me think that possibly the character himself doesn't really have an identity, almost like, probably like a blank face. It just makes me feel as though there's this sort of individuality versus conformity going on beyond the panel that kind of maybe look at it a little closer,because I wanted to understand why everything was so thin and basic in the picture without being able to see what it's said again. So I wasn't sure if this is like a character, like a Batman PERSON villain where they decorate everything to the theme of themselves or if it's something that they sort of infest their background with where everything is this kind of basic desk and chair and person and headlines and just has a label and not really any depth to it.

Speaker 0447.38s - 585.76s

Yeah, that's a good approximation of what's happening. And I think if I give a little more context, yes, the generic man has no face. And, you know, like he's, he's an outline essentially like this. And he's like a perfect heckler villain in a way because like he says, like he even admits, the heckler seems to be way because like he says, like he even admits the heckler seems to be an extreme expression of individuality. He's got like this crazy costume and like he'svery elaborate. So for this character to be the opposite of that. And it's like a new take on good versus evil. Like we've had in, I'm thinking of Kirby's fourth world where it's like freedom versus it's not good versus evil so much as freedom versus fascism with Dark Side and the anti-life equation and all that. So in this case, it's it's like freedom, it's not good versus evil so much as freedom versus fascism with dark side and the anti-life equation and all that. So in this case, it's, it's another take. It's, it's expression versus lack of expression. It's, it's hard to define because, you know, but it's following the mainstream versus, like it's a flattening out of culture versus specifics, general versusdetailed. I actually, I'm thinking of my literature classes because in the English NORP literature, Western literature at least, the neoclassics of the 18th century, they were basically taking off of all the Greek and Roman NORP works that already existed. And they had this idea that there was a general world. When they wrote poetry about a sheep, that sheep represented all of sheepdom. And then you had the Romantics that came after,and that was about individuality. And to my mind, we're still in the Romantics era. We're still individualistic. We still believe it. Like, that sheep in the meadow, that's a specific sheep. What is beautiful about that one sheep? That was the professor's example. That's why I'm using it. But it was about defining details and being individualistic. And so we're not following the sort of poetics and mechanics of poetry that the ancients were using.We're defining our own way of. And so you get like a lot of different kinds of poets. So that kind of makes me feel like that. Like the heckler is the romantic and the generic person is the villainous neo-classic character. He's supposed to be every supervillain in a way. You know, all of those masterminds and suits, all of those Lex Luthors, those kingpins,he kind of becomes that by being so ill-defined.

Speaker 2586.02s - 616.6s

You're a lot more cultured and refined than I am, because I don't think I would have pulled art history from this. I went more into Keith Giffin PERSON, because that's the only context I had, and I felt like it might have been a statement about his world of comics, where in the 90s, there was a bit of sameness, and everybody was chasing that same audience with the same type of characters. And I could see, you know, and my brain went to Statler and Waldorf PERSON when I heard the name the heckler, which shows where my brain goes.

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Your brain goes to art.

Speaker 1617.6s - 618.52s

Mine goes to the Muppets.

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But I imagine Keith Giffin PERSON almost like them because they threw jabs at, you know, the show,

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but they were also part of the show and they were always there in attendance. So it's almost like Giffin is in this world. He's not going to leave it, but he's going to point things out that maybe he thinks is pretentious. Maybe he thinks are ruining the creativity of comics. And that's kind of where my brain went when I was looking at it.

Speaker 0642.4s - 671.8s

That's an interesting point because in the 90s, there was a lot of overrendering. And this character here, this villain, is completely under-rendered, unlike the image comics type art, you know. And even the heckler himself is over-rendered. And by that point, I think it's that deep pools of black, et cetera, style for Giffin. But it's also a little more rendered than that, a little closerto what he did with Trencher PERSON at image. There's a lot more detail. So there seems to be like a

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conversation. I don't know on which side he falls, but there seems to be a conversation about

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artistic styles. And in a way, his deep pools of black and super close-ups is minimalistic compared to the fashion of over-rendered straps and pockets kind of

Speaker 1687.18s - 701.54s

stuff. There's that in there? So it's a very interesting point. The Muppet PERSON analogy stands because he's doing both styles. Yeah, I like that. Do you still see Giffin's style in this panel,

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even though he's purposefully moved away from it? When I first looked at it, I felt like it wasn't very Keith Giffney PERSON.

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It just, it didn't give me that because when I think it Keith Given PERSON, my brain goes to a page

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instead of a panel where you see nine panels or he's got a very sort of direct kind of storytelling with those, the way he lays out a page. So it didn't click with me right away that it was Keith Gippen PERSON, although, you know, obviously I knew it was because you told me. So I wouldn't have picked it up if I just saw this image that Keith Giffin PERSON drew this picture, or at least did the layout.

Speaker 0734.74s - 762.84s

It does have that shape. Like you can tell it's part of a nine panel grid. Yeah, with the way that panel is, yeah. But otherwise, yes, because I know it is, now I can see it. You know, like just like the way the fold at the elbow, the fold of the cloth at the elbow, yeah, that's a Keith Giffin PERSON line. You know, the way the skull, the character's bald, hair would define him too much.So the way the, I don't know, it's kind of angular, that's a Keith Giffin PERSON head. You know, so there's things like that.

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Yeah, it's very ambush buggy.

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Yeah, ambush bug has that.

Speaker 2766.82s - 781.96s

It's not a like circular. There are like bumps in it. So that makes it, you know, more like Keith Giffin PERSON. But that's because we know. I think if we saw this completely out of context, you know, we need to be like Chris Franklin or somebody, like an expert in what lines look like.

Speaker 1782.22s - 812.44s

But I see it, hindsight being 2020. And within the image, I do find things that are not part of the story, but that are evoked. Like the suit is so brightly white that I feel like almost, it's almost giving him a sunburn. And that gives us a really pinkish skin tone,which is not the skin tone that we usually see in comics. And it's like a little darker. It's a little pinker. And because of the white, it seems to pop more. Maybe this pink, this pig pink, that's the color of big.

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Might be more generic than a more subtle peachy tone, I guess.

Speaker 1819.76s - 825.18s

Yeah, which is kind of what I was thinking, that it was trying to stay basic with the colors and not do a lot of blending.

Speaker 0825.54s - 828.54s

And it didn't want to, even the desk doesn't look like wood.

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It looks like cardboard to me. It's almost like it's dropped up and it's not a desk that has any kind of design to it or any color or any, even like where you'd see imperfections in wood, that's all gone. So everything just looks very one-note color, no style. And the pink I just kind of bought into as being, this is before we can change it and make it a look, you know, start shading and changing the look of the skin and adding any kind of contours.This is just the one color we have. We have pink, we have white, we're brown, we're black, and that's his world.

Speaker 0864.92s - 888.18s

Yeah, I didn't even, we presume it's a desk. But I was also like, what is this? What is this shape? You know, is it like the hood of a car? And that's a headlight in the bottom, those angles. Was it like a piano? My first thought was it's a piano. And I don't know why I think, well, I guess maybe where you'd put the partition. I just can make it out. You know, obviously the full page will give us a context on this, but at this point, it doesn't.

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Yeah, it makes it look like something that comes with an action figure

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that you put together that's supposed to be part of their set.

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And it's just like a piece of the backing that the figure came in, that you can fold and make into something. That's what it kind of looked like to me with the line in the middle and the line that looked like a drawer to me, but that didn't look and make into something. That's what it kind of looked like to me with the line in the middle and the line that looked like a draw to me, but that didn't look like a functional draw.

Speaker 0908.62s - 961.86s

Yeah, a lot of action figures come with, you know, objects that are just like a solid color. And today they do a better job with that. But, you know, when we were kids, accessories were just the one block of the plastic of a certain color and that's what it was. Kind of could feel like that. There's something about just that,I want to talk about the headline. Because what is he reading into this? And that's where it philosophically took off for me because it's kind of 1992. I mean, the internet does exist in some protoform, but it does seem to prefigure the internet that we know today,the social media, clickbait, where people are just reading headlines and nothing else. And this paper has nothing else but a headline that we can't, obviously, that we can't read. Our culture or public opinion is all down to algorithms that are funneling these headlines that we want to see that we're interested in, you know?

Speaker 1962.56s - 1052.6s

They use our search histories and sometimes something you set around your device to funnel things towards you. So like to me, the generic man becomes a sort of, you know, after the case, but becomes sort of warning about just reading headlines, not being completely informedand taking headlines at face value. And like he says, I perceive this superhero called a heckler to be probably something he hates or maybe something he wants because he doesn't have it. We don't know. Yeah, there's no emotion to that statement. No, none at all. You're right. It's completely flat. In the same way, his opinion is flat. And he perceives something, which is not the sameas that thing exists. It's all perception. And again, those headlines are clickbait, the way we were spoken to online. It kind of fits that idea. So obviously, Giffin wasn't actually riffing on this. He was more probably riffing on image comics, overrended comics.I mean, he did create Lobo as a parody of that style, of the anti-hero of the late 80s and 90s. So it's probably what he's aiming at. But I feel like the generic man sort of becomes more as time goes by and as we also only read the headlines. We also only read the tweets and don't click the articles. If he's evil, that is a certain kind of evil that we've come to notice more than probably in 1992. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I know when I looked at it,

Speaker 21052.68s - 1091.36s

I was thinking more that it was, it's not provocative. It's almost in the same type as his statement. And he's reading the headline, but there's no connection to an emotion or to a feeling that it's trying to give you. So I got a lot of that out of it where I felt like this is, you know, a world that is erasing provocative subjects. It's erasing controversy or discussion. It's just here's your headline. Now have your breakfast. Now go to your job. And that's what it. That's the feeling I got when Ilooked at it. I wasn't seeing it as a warning. But when you stated that, that makes a lot of sense, too. Censorship, in a way.

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All these details are censored. We, the reader, see a censored image where we're not allowed to see what he looks like. We were not allowed to see what he's reading about. Make up our own minds about his perception, whether it's right or wrong based on what he's reading because we can't read that. So it creates like a character that is isolated from, from emotion, from facts, from, I mean, his sort of pinioned ears doesn't seem like a good listener, you know.

Speaker 21119s - 1143.52s

Yeah. Yeah, he seems like to be out of context with the rest of the comic book world and maybe making up his own, let's call it an opinion, but it's a very, like you say, there's no passion in there. It's just a statement of fact, but also a perception, so not actually a fact. Right. And because we're looking over his shoulder, it almost feels like he's controlling our perception as well,that he's only letting us see what he thinks is appropriate.

Speaker 01143.88s - 1156.04s

Oh, and I just noticed a pun, headline, and we're seeing a head and a collection of lines that aren't nondescript. It's like head, line. Yes, this is what the panel is.

Speaker 11156.04s - 1161.98s

You could have like a sort of, when they were doing like postmodern art and just you

Speaker 01161.98s - 1182.96s

would have these paintings that just had the description of what was supposed to go on the canvas and the canvas was actually empty. And that was for a while, that was like the fashion in art galleries. I think there's maybe a probable on purpose pun going on here. Like Giffin is smart enough to be doing this on purpose. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense,

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especially the placement of headline, which isn't exactly at the top of the page.

Speaker 01187.62s - 1211.22s

Although at the top of the page would be the newspaper name, right? The newspaper name, headline, and then you'd have lead. And then if we could go zoom in on that newspaper, I bet that's what we would see. I think even this comic, to start giving a little bit context, I think issue two actually starts with a blank page that says splash page. And that's,

Speaker 11211.34s - 1267.76s

you know, so it's playing with those tropes of what we expect in a comic book and deconstructing it in the villain's world because the heckler lives in the so-called real world of detail and expression and individuality. And then you have this character that's completely opposite. So on the site, I will be putting the whole page and I'll put the comic book cover just to remind people of who the heckler was and what he looked like because he's potentially not on this page.Because usually Giffin did this, right? It's like you get a nine panel grid, but it's like a discrete chapter. And then you skip to something else on another grid and another grid and another grid. So I'm betting, without looking at it, I'm betting this generic person. We're in his world on that whole page. And we don't see the heckler there. I'll put those elements at fire and waterpodcast.com. Any last thoughts on this rather, this was possibly a challenge when you get like a sort of minimalistic panel?

Speaker 21268.02s - 1275.42s

Yeah, when I first saw it, I envied the people who got refrigerators. Because at least they could pretend to see condiments and here we had nothing.

Speaker 01276.06s - 1277.3s

Maybe that is a fridge.

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We'll never know.

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Thank you, Chris PERSON.

Speaker 21279.22s - 1285.12s

I hope you had fun with it. I did. Thank you very much. I appreciate you invite me on and give me this opportunity.

Speaker 01285.32s - 1290.54s

Sure, and I'm sure you'll be back on possibly some of my other shows because I don't like to waste

Speaker 21290.54s - 1295.6s

guests. I appreciate that. I don't like to get wasted. Well, I'll let you go back to the margins.

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We'll listen to a short promo and I'll come back with listener feedback on our previous episode.

Speaker 11301.18s - 1304.7s

So which is the hottest Marvel character? Iron Man PERSON.

Speaker 01305.02s - 1305.54s

Eight men. I can't decide between Professor X and Magneto. So which is the hottest Marvel character? Iron Man. Eight men.

Speaker 11305.74s - 1339.94s

I can't decide between Professor X and Magneto PERSON. So both. Loki PERSON. Is Wolverine Marvel ORG? What about White Tiger PERSON? What about White Tiger PERSON?Dog Samson PERSON. Who is he? Star Fox PERSON. That's a video game. The girls go on a journey to determine every Marvel ORG character's hotness inOhatmu or Not WORK_OF_ART, the official handbook of the Marvel Universe WORK_OF_ART podcast you didn't know you wanted. Available on iTunes ORG and at Fire and Water Podcast.com. And now your feedback

Speaker 01339.94s - 1547.68s

on our previous episode, which featured Daniel Wellett PERSON, and a panel from Punks the Comic number three, comment by comment. Well, we just had Chris Pine PERSON on the show, and he just discovered the program because of the invitation.So here he says, I just finished binging the show, and I'm really amazed at how much I enjoyed it, because the premise seems impossible to execute. Yet, the idea of slowing down and examining one panel in the amount of time it probably takes to read an entire comic out of context really allows you to see stuff you probably gloss over when following the narrative of the story.What this show has done is show me how sometimes I tend to forget how everything in art of any medium is usually purposeful. What you see is supposed to be there, and skipping the details can rob you of some enjoyment. Not being someone with an art background or much knowledge, it was always interesting to hear people discuss the panels from an almost technical point of view and covering some symbolism and allegories. It was also fun to get a more layman's kind of interpretation that didn't dive too deep in each color choice or brushstroke. There was a lot of really fun moments in this run. I felt like I could actually hear Shag PERSON's eyes rollas he got stuck with a slaughtered goat when all he wanted to do was see some whales, and there's probably a gambling website somewhere that has odds on the next appearance of a fridge. Also, where else would you hear the phrase attacking the chicken ferociously?Just an all-around unexpected fun thing to listen to, and these episodes have been funny, interesting, and informative. As far as the latest episode, this one is wild, and for some reason it makes me think of They Might Be Giants. Great band, love They Might Be Giants, Chris PERSON. Specifically, a moment in the song, Snowball in Hell WORK_OF_ART, where they sample dialogue from a self-help organization tape during the bridge. Conry PERSON looks pleased more than anything else with what's going on,and when you get to see the rest of the page with the toothbrush men, the panel of judges, and some of the Baldwin PERSON brothers, it all makes sense and really clicks. I'm kidding. It's bonkers. But I love it and now feel like I want to read the entire thing. And now Chris PERSON has had the experience of the impossible to execute podcast, and he acquitted himself very, very well. So it just goes to show. Notimpossible to execute. And then we have Paul Keene PERSON who thought this was a fun episode. Amazing to put together on such short notice. I had never seen punks before. So that was interesting. And I loved your mini-data comics. I don't get them, but that's the point I think. Or rather, I think, Paul PERSON, the point is you put meaning on them. Of course, in this case, I think there was a lot of French NORP verbiage. Some of them are in French NORP, so yeah, it's harder to put a point across.But that point has not actually put across, it is the reader who imposes it on the comic. I think Punks WORK_OF_ART works kind of the same way. I also had a discussion with Paul about Tintin PERSON recommendations from the previous episode, and based on that, he will try Cigars of the Farrow, which is the third volume, but really the start of the continuity for this series. Before we go, we have to mention the Fire and Water podcast Network Patreon page at patreon.com slash FW Podcasts ORG. If you like our content, please think about making a one-time or monthly donation to help host all of these podcasts. And as ever, a reminder that if you'd like to do one of these short podcasts, drop me a line and we'll arrange it. You will be handed a comic book panel randomly and we'll put it up for discussion. My thanks again to my guest, Chris Pine PERSON. And until we refill that seat, the panel is open.