Comic News Recap: Is Marvel Using AI? Will Tariffs Make Comics More Expensive? - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 448

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intro music plays

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Yo, Shortbox Nation. Hello again, welcome back. Hey, look, it's another Wednesday, which means another new podcast. Thanks for pressing play today. If you're new, welcome to the show. My name is Badr, and this is The Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about your favorite comics with the people that put their blood, sweat, and tears into making them. This is episode 448, and today we'll be diving into some recent comic news, some recent headlines that I've been making, some recent headlines in the industry, all handpicked by

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a roundtable of some close friends of mine and familiar voices you might recognize. For starters, I'm joined by one half of the Oblivion Bar podcast, which is another comic podcast you should absolutely get to know and follow if you like short box. Let's welcome Chris Hacker to the show. What up Chris? Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome back, brother. Good to see you, Botter. Good to see you, Edward. Happy to be back on the short box. And my gosh, just doing just a quick teaser, I guess, for the episode.

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Look at some of these topics. It is, it's gonna be interesting everybody. He'll say that. We have some interesting topics that could quickly get hot. But before we tease any further about the topics we got, I wanna say, rounding out this holy trinity of nerds is the return of one of my favorite people, an integral and an integral part of short box history. If you're new to the show, I was on the show. The OG's back. Yeah, there we go Chris. So I am a. The OG's back. Look, it's been a minute.

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member of the show. It's been a minute since I've had the honor of introducing him. But they say good things come to those that wait, and I think it's safe to say we've waited long enough. Let's give it up for the return of Edmund Dansart. Hey. What up, Ed? What's up, man? Damn, it's so nice to see you. I wanna hear something funny, and I'm just giving you a hard time, but when you texted me, I thought you texted the wrong person. I was like, I was like, hey, do you wanna record Sunday, one o'clock? I'm like, is this supposed to be for me? I'll just hold off on it. I mean, he didn't look down.

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the contacts. You meant to send us to Cesar or Ashley? Yeah. Okay. They have a life and kids now. But Chris, funny enough, I was telling Ed, I think the last time that you were on the pod as well was when we did our comic gent. I think we were doing like a comic news recap episode last year, April, 2024, which Ed was on the pod as well. And I remember as I'm wrapping up the podcast, Ed made a joke on it. And he goes,

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All right, I'll see y'all in November. And I was like, nah, it won't be that long until you get back. Not only was it well past November, but it's almost been a damn year. I'm surprised you didn't want to push it to like a one year anniversary. That would be actually. It's like a thing. It was crazy. It seems like the time has flown by. It is wild. Not only recording that episode, but just life in general for everyone listening right now. I'm sure people are feeling like this as we're talking about it. But like going back to October, November of 2024 to now, everybody, we're mid February.

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I don't know when this episode is actually dropping, but we are currently recording this mid-February. It feels like November was a week ago. And we are halfway through the second month of the year. Just crazy to think about. Well, to Chris's point, we're actually recording this episode on Super Bowl Sunday like some real nerds, all right? We're not letting football stop the comics talk. And I guess, Chris, with you being kind of like our resident football correspondent, you definitely are way smarter about football than me and Ed combined. But not as smart as Blythe.

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Not as smart as Blythe. Blythe is, you know, she's not even here, so you're lucky. So right now, you are the smartest football person in my immediate vicinity. Just for shits and giggles, since we are recording this on Super Bowl Sunday, I just want to just quickly hear, what's your forecast? What's your prediction in terms of the game tonight and the score? It'd be fun to look back and see how close or far you are. What's my parlay looking like, Chris? I will say, just firstly off the top, I do like winning smartest person in the room by like,

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less options. I'm glad that all the other smart people, yeah, the default person, the smartest person is not here. You know, it's funny is I don't actually know what the over under is, but here's my guess. Here's my official guess. It's going to be Chiefs 24, Philadelphia 17. That's going to be my official guess. And my hope of all of this, last thing I'll say is if Kendrick Lamar does not perform, not like us at the halftime show, what a missed opportunity or-

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F Donald Trump. One of those two need to be played at halftime because apparently he's going to be there tonight. So yeah, that's my thoughts on tonight. Nice. Let's see how that pans out in retrospect. First disstrack in Super Bowl. Two disstracks is what we need. There's a lot of possibilities for history to be made this Super Bowl. So I'm definitely excited to watch it. All right, well, gents, look, we have a solid list of topics to cover today. The plan is that each one of us will present a news piece, an article, a recent story that's happened in comic books, recap the story.

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then we'll do what we do best. We'll discuss, we'll pontificate, try to keep our emotions in check, hot takes in check. But you know what, we're here to have fun and just talk, you know, catch up with comic news. But before we get into that, I'd like to quickly shout out the people who help me pay the bills and keep the lights on here at Short Box HQ, like Gotham City Limit Comic Shop, the Short Box's longest running sponsor, and Jacksonville's premier shop for comics, collectibles, toys, and more. It's my personal shop that I frequent every week, and I recommend that if you are local to Jax, if you live in Jax,

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Or ever find yourself passing through Jaxx on vacation or a road trip. Go stop by Gotham City Limit on Southside Boulevard, right next to Tencent Town Movie Theater. Let them know you're a friend of the podcast. Hell, drop my name, tell them I bought it from the short black center. I guarantee they'll take care of you and they'll hook you up with some killer deals and discounts. Now, if you're not local to Jaxx, consider checking out their website, GothamCityLimit.com, for store exclusives. And they always post collectibles and other sales. I also want to give a big shout out to our new sponsor this quarter, Collective Con. It's Northeast Florida's premier.

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anime, comic book, sci-fi, and pop culture events. If you're in the Jacksonville area, come March 14th through the 16th, go check them out. It's the 11th year show. I'll be there for sure. It's taking place here in Jacksonville, the Prime Osborne Convention Center. You can buy a single day ticket or a three day ticket for the entire weekend. It's available on their website, collectivcon.com. I also got a link in the show notes if you wanna go straight there. Once again, Collective Con is back. March 14th through the 16th. I'll be there and hope to see you there too.

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And rounding out this nerdy sponsorship trifecta, Trinity and Three is a big theme today, it seems like. I'd like to welcome our newest sponsor this month, Global Comics. It's a free digital reading and distribution platform that helps creators and publishers share and sell their comics and license them globally. You can read thousands of free digital comics on Global Comics with a free account, so you don't even have to pay anything to read some of these comics. But if you want to unlock way more features and get access to thousands more comics.

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Sign up for a gold membership. And if you use our special promo code, shortbox, one word, you can save 33% on a year of Global Comics gold membership. Guess what? There's a link in these show notes with way more details. It'll take you right there and auto apply the discount. And if you do sign up for an annual plan using our link, send me a screenshot or a proof of purchase and I'll send you a care package with comics and some short box merch as a thank you. Once again, big shout out to Gotham City Limit, Collective Con and Global Comics for sponsoring the show.

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Without further ado, let's catch up with some comic news and talk about what's been going on in the world of comics. Chris, being the resident football correspondent and currently smartest guy in the room, how about you go ahead and kick us off? What's happy you got for us today? OK, so up first here, I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on Marvel denying using any AI in the new Fantastic Four First Steps poster. They put out four posters, one of which, well, first I should say all four look.

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very AI. I think my media literacy alert went off in my head was like, oh, this doesn't look real at all. This resembles zero reality. But there's one in particular where it's a crowd of people and they're all holding up fantastic four flags and signs and such. And one gentleman in the front only has three fingers, which there are people in the world that only have three fingers, i.e. Ben Graham being one of them. Or no, is it four? He has three on top with four fingers.

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It could be Yakuza, you know. Yeah. You don't know. It could be, yeah. A very diverse poster. He shamed his family. He shamed his clan. Yeah. But also, there's a woman in the background. She shows up three times in this poster. Oh, I didn't actually notice that. Yeah. That's somewhat. I noticed that it's got that classic sheen and shine that a lot of AI art has. That was kind of the indicator. And I think there's some instances of some random splotches.

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that don't really make sense on top of a lot of missing fingers. Yeah. A lot of AIR has like almost a white hue behind its figures to sort of, uh, I don't know where that comes from. I'm not, obviously I'm not as a, you know, knowledgeable about the sort of the process of AI, AI generated images, specifically, uh, before I go any further. And I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on this firstly, because as a resident artist here, that's what I'm saying. Uh, you created the cover art for the short box, integral foundational person right here. Right. The OG member.

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I actually used AI. Wait, wait, wait. Say that again, Ed? Nothing, nothing. Ed, do you remember when you made the short box logo? It's been some years now, right? It's been a while. Way before AI. If you're watching the video version, it's over my left shoulder. That's the original piece. That's the OG art right there. That's the mid-journey scan that Ed used. I get it really quick. I get asked a lot, hey, your house is on fire. What are five comic things you'd grab? And Ed, I'm proud to say that is high on the list right there, brother. I appreciate that. But now that I learned that you used AI on, I don't know.

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Might let that shit burn. Burn in hell. Use my own hand like a sucker. Now we've sort of seen the slow and painful destruction of the movie poster, I think, you know, in terms of if you go back to the 70s and well, obviously before that, but I think the golden age of movie posters was the 70s, 80s, 90s. And I think around the 2000s where it slowly started to become giant heads and CGI. Ed, thoughts really quickly on sort of this whole process where we're headed.

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for movie posters and all those things. I think that is, I agree with you, it is a lost art. Cause I do love those, is it Drew Struzan, who did like a lot of those hand illustrated, like a temple of doom, big trouble, little China, Star Wars, all these, all these beautifully crafted poster. And I think it is a lost art. Unfortunately, I think like we even discussed last year, it's just inevitability, you know, because one of the big things is when you deny you're using AI,

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I didn't see any, I've seen all the articles and they could all be probably cut and paste, but out of all the articles I did look, they did not say who did it. There was no artist listed. So that's kind of a big key if you're gonna say, hey, this isn't AI, Potter did these shitty looking poster. I'm just using you as an example. So it's- No, no, no, you'd be right. That's actually, those are the adjectives they would use if I did that poster. And it could be AI, and just from looking at like, especially those.

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those repeated faces, there is, you know, in Photoshop, there is the clone and stamping tools. It could be a poorly use of that just to, you know, fill up the space. Because like looking at it in my phone for like half a second, it's like, oh, cool, Alex Ross did some posters. And then I looked at it, it's like, oh, Jesus Christ, look at the face on this, like giant face on this. It's like it's, and like I said, I'm not about, you know, comic art having to be realistic and Alex Ross all the time. I do like the crazier looking art, but

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It has to have in some direction, there has to be a direction to it and this does not fit what promotional material for this movie. You know what I'm saying? So it is very bizarre and I don't know why they don't just admit it. They've thrown people under the bus before. I don't know why they're not doing it now. Just do that. Yeah. And Ed, to your point, this is not even like the first instance of them, you know, they have a track record of using like AI. And some of the instances I got is...

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The the miniseries secret wars right like that whole opening credits scene secret invasion. Sorry secret invasion You're right, but that opening credits scene, you know is plagued with AI generated stuff I mean, I think we all complained about how bad it looked how shoddy it just looked It was this wonky and then a second instance I was able to find is now grant This is a little different but James Earl Jones had approved, you know Disney to you or clone his voice for future Star Wars using AI so it's not like Marvel or Disney aren't

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you know, haven't used AI or have a tracker. Exactly. But in this particular case, it is interesting that, I don't know, you know, like this is supposed to be the Fantastic Four, you know, the big return to like form like, you know, we're finally introducing the Fantastic Four, Marvel's first family. I mean, the posters, you know, it's a ticker tape parade, you know, it's a celebration. And it is like just a weird call to.

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to just use AI for it. It's looked like the AI looked at some of the old Alex Ross marvels. OK. And that's a good point, because considering that there's an Easter egg right there, front and center on this poster, you know, Philip Sheldon, who is a character in the Marvel University as a photographer and journalist, created by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, 1993, right? The central character in their iconic Marvel series. It's like, why not just have Alex Ross do the poster, considering that, one, he loves the Fantastic Four.

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Two, you're kind of already doing his art style already. Ed, I'm on the same boat as you. At a quick glance at this poster, it is like, oh, that's a cool Alex Ross piece. And so you really start studying it, and you're like, nevermind. That is fake Ross right there. Isn't that AI today, though, in 2025? It is on the surface. People who have little to no media literacy look at it, or taste, let's be honest. They look at AI art, and they go, oh, that's interesting. A owl holding a cup of coffee saying good morning on Facebook.

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that's really funny. Let me send it to my grandma." But people like us here, people listening to the show, they go, we've got freaking Mark Brooks and Michael Cho and Alex Ross and all these people, Phil Noto, all these artists out here who would do this for nothing in Disney money. They would pay them a couple grand maybe, and then they all of a sudden, I don't know, accidentally have an iconic poster in a landscape of terrible movie posters. Chris, good point on the cost too. It's

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Let's just take a ballpark figure. What do you think, and Chris, you might actually have more information on this. What do you think Alex Ross commission goes for? Probably like 10 grand, like in that range, maybe. Probably. At least he's, he's listed a couple of pieces on his website before. Uh, granted they were from secret wars and this was a couple of years ago. These are giant pieces. If you've ever seen Alex Ross's work in person, they're huge. They're like the size of a wall most of the time. And, um, I think at that time he had the.

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a double page spread of Secret Wars number one up for sale and it was $28,000. Wow. Okay. That's double page. Of course that's Secret Wars. It's a big book. I think if you were to like buy, let's say, um, you know, he's doing the Ryan North fantastic for a covers right now, I bet you could probably get a cover of his for 15 grand, you know, somewhere in that ballpark. It would have been well worth whether, you know, and obviously Alex Ross would probably up charge for a company, you know, doing it, you know, at, you know,

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At this level, the awareness and things like that, I think you probably would have charged them a lot more, because it's just smart business. But it would have gone a long way. Their dollars investing in Alex Ross would have went a long way for the fans. And I'm also curious, were they really saving money using AI for a movie poster, considering that they probably used a promotional company or hired some sort of company to produce it? And you know they're taxing Disney as well. It's like, well, look, if you're gonna get taxed,

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You might as well go with a living legend. They basically said, hey, could you AI make this look like an Alex Rouse Marvels deal? And the thing, too, is especially when you're making movies that are based on comic books, a print medium, and you're going to cheap out on the posters that can be used for, hey, a comic that can be published later. You can use these imagery. You can use this imagery. You can.

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sell the posters, you know, who's not going to buy an Alex Ross? Imagine like a set of those as an Alex Ross set. Dude, you're just, I don't get why, what the point is of like saving whatever money you think you're saving or effort at this point, especially when, you know, they're trying to, they're on the bounce back from having, you know, a whole phase of subpar mid-level movies, you know? I think it's also, it's important to consider where we're at in the MCU's history.

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currently too. Before I go on to that really quickly, we're also talking about Alex Ross here. If we were to get Phil Noto, who is incredible himself, Mark Brooks, like I said, Michael Cho, these guys are not Alex Ross. No offense. I mean that respectfully. Alex Ross is Alex Ross. If you were to ask Phil Noto to do something like this, I bet you could probably get him to do all four single characters in a group shot together. You could get all that for five grand from Phil Noto. You can get like, just to kind of go even like a little more old school guy, like a Steve Rood or somebody who can do does painted stuff.

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that's similar to Alex Ross. I don't think he's on that level, but he's up there. That guy's up there. There's so many people that would have done this. I would say just to speak on the sort of where we're at in the MCU, there were years where they were hitting heaters after heaters and we were just eating whatever they were selling. This is a time now where, of course, we've got Deadpool and Wolverine that was a hit, but that could have been a flash in the pan. That character and Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, all of that worked.

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would have been really hard to miss on, I think. I think we can all agree that that movie, had it not worked, we would have been flabbergasted. If you go back on the track record of the MCU of the last couple of years, not to be a super pessimist or anything, but we've hit peaks and valleys. There have been good entries. I'm thinking Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Loki Season 2, and there have been some misses, Secret Invasion being one of them, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantumania, so on. This would be a good get back on board type of move.

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purpose of these promotional material is to get people interested. And what this does to me is it tells me that they are taking shortcuts in places that they shouldn't. And that worries me. Chris, to your point of this being a promotional item, something that's, you know, it was supposed to be a forward facing and, you know, we're probably going to see these posters more than, you know, for a longer time than say like another trailer or things like that. It does feel like we're being short changed with something so forward facing.

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Is there any instance where the use of AI is acceptable in to any part of film? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I will say that like, again, being in the podcasting world, I think we can all say that AI is an interesting tool when you're using it to create content of stuff that you've already created legitimately. So for instance, in these scenarios, if you want to use AI to create shorts on social media,

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you want to use AI to create a press release for new marketing material that you've created authentically. I think it's naive to think that AI is not going to be in film and television in the next five years. We're already seeing it with The Brutalists and the controversy there where the Hungarian language was messed with AI with Adrian Brody's dialect to make it seem more authentic. That movie is a tome of cinema. If you ask people, this three and a half hour movie is considered to be cinema gold.

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it's getting a lot of controversy and could potentially lose out on some awards come Oscar season because of a small use of AI. But again, it's like sports betting in a way. This is a weird analogy, but go back to like five, 10 years ago with sports betting and how this was this industry where you were considered degenerate and you would go across state lines to do it and you'd have a bookie. And now the NFL is the official sponsor of DraftKings. Five, seven years from now, we're going to be looking at AI completely different in

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art, which is both scary and interesting. It's fascinating. And I am seeing, to make a reference here, I'm seeing Doom's hand slowly coming over the earth in a way that's like, there's clarity in it in a way. It's like, I'm dying, but now I know at least killing me. I get it. Chris, good first opening topic here. I'll look to the listeners to chime in.

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One, do you think that there is use of AI in the poster? I think, hopefully, we mentioned this, but the official response from Marvel and Disney is that there is no use of AI in this, despite some of the clear telltale signs. But we have eyeballs. You can't pull a fast one on us. So I guess let us know what you think. Do they use AI in the art? And then where do you draw the line in terms of the use of AI in things like film and movies?

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Do you let something like a promo poster slide, or are you against it? Let us know. TheS or send us some fan mail. I've got the voicemail option in these show notes. All right, Ed, let's pass the baton to you, man. What topic you got for us today? Oh, yeah. So this is, we were talking a little bit before recording, but with the whole Diamond debacle, massive publishing, which is part of the whatnot publishing umbrella, they announced that.

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They have added lunar distribution and launched a new sub distribution initiative called a massive Indies for independent publishers and self published studios. Like I said, this news basically, because a massive publishing was at the time, since like all these publishers were leaving diamond over the last few years, massive publishing, what not publishing were diamond exclusives. But now that diamond owes them a lot of money, it's time to move, move the hell on.

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the hell out of Massive for putting Diamond on Black. They shared a pretty lengthy Instagram post. It was like four pages of just text. But they call out Diamond like, they owe us quite a bit of money at this point. So props to Massive for pivoting and changing direction when they ain't getting paid. Just leave it up to Diamond for anybody who is sort of in the know about Diamond. Just constantly doing the worst. They're literally just.

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forever since the moment they were created, just at the same time providing comics, but also just, again, speaking on cutting corners and all these things, if you've ever worked in a comic shop, you know that very rarely do you receive an order of comics on Tuesday morning and something not either being wrong, missing, or damaged. So anyway, sorry, not to cut you off there, but it makes sense that Massive is like, they should call them out. This is good. I like this. Yeah. As someone who's worked behind the counter at the store, I can tell you the-

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you know, anybody can share those diamond woes, especially when you are at the time in Monopoly, you know, they just shrug their shoulders. Hey, you just threw a bunch of stuff in a box without... Show me on the doll where diamond hurt you. Yeah. And it's like, you think they would know how to package comics by now. But you know, and like I said, to be fair, we did have reps and things were taken care of eventually, but it should never have gotten to that point to begin with. But as long as...

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Book market distribution agreement with Simon & Schuster. So they are all out of the diamond business But as far as the small publishers go from what I'm reading, it's kind of you have to submit I don't know if it's a jury thing or how many Spots are available because they can't take everybody, you know So you basically kind of have to submit like your pitch or your product and they have like the form set up already 42, you know basically get yay or nay, but the good news is as far as

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massive. From what they're saying, they have no editorial control and they're not taking any of your rights or anything and they're not going to edit what your story is. They either say yay or nay, whatever that process is like, we'll see. But like I said, that's kind of the last picking the bones of what's left of Diamond at this point because I don't

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You know, after I think April is, they have like 30, I know they have, uh, there's like an NDA of 30 different people looking to purchase them, but that's not, that's not specifically for comics. It could be something else because we're not, we don't care about the comics, but we do like this factor and we do like their trucks. We do like this infrastructure, but we don't give a shit about comics, you know? So it's, I don't know what's left for time. And after this, if this, if this whole, if this works, if this is successful, and if they're able to.

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you know, help a lot of these small publishers. And I'm sure they're not the only ones that are gonna try to do that. There'll probably be some other distributors that'll try to help out where they can or try to set up some kind of program. But yeah, it's a crazy time right now. Yeah, I gotta give props to Massive for identifying a gap and an opportunity. I think when the announcement that Diamond had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, that...

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some of the discourse was like, obviously, like, well, what does this mean in terms of monthly periodical comics? And I think the answer to that was, well, a lot of Marvel and DC have already shifted to Lunar or Penguin Random House and these other distributors. But I think Diamond was still the primary distributor for a lot of indie creators. I'm thinking like Eli Schwab of Cosmic Lion Productions. He was distributing his books. It was like a big deal when he got that deal with Diamond to distribute.

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the Cosmic Lion books. Well, now this kind of leaves him and other indie publishers and indie creators kind of like, well, what is, you know, it's just, how am I going to get my books out there? Diamond at least was like somewhat cost efficient. So I know that was kind of a big question for a lot of folks. It's like, well, what does this mean for, you know, your Marvels, your DCs, your image are going to be fine. They can find other distributors or figure something out. But what does this mean for, you know, the mom and pops, the indie creators? So to hear that like massive.

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was aware of that and is stepping in to give them an outlet, I think is really impressive. It says a lot about their business practices, but also their emphasis on empowering indie creators and bringing them on board in this new pivot of theirs. Yeah, and from what I'm reading, Diamond owes a lot of people money. And it's part of this. I had no idea that they could just put your business on blast and you'd find. I guess that's part of the deal, right? Yeah, it's out to the public now. It almost even seems like it was a surprise to Massive.

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to find out how much Diamond was holding out on them. I guess the situation is that. Oh, I'm sure they knew. I think it's a surprise. Well, I wonder if the total real value maybe was a wake-up call. I'm sure they were like, hey, Diamond still owes us some money for that last shit. Did you get that check? Did you see that check? I wonder what it was like seeing not only their line item, but other line items and having that sense of like,

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Oh, we weren't the only ones waiting on a check from Diamond. Because they're an independent publisher as well. They're bigger than most, but if they owe them money, imagine someone who has two titles, that couple grand or whatever, that's a life and death for some small publishers. So I guess in the end, what this means, I guess, going forward is so Massive is going to be distributing their monthly titles with Lunar. They're not exclusive to Diamond. It sounds like they're still going to distribute some of their monthly books

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Diamond, but none of their trades will go through Diamond. I think they're trying to completely cut ties from Diamond until they can figure the back payment and things like that. Chris, you got anything to chime in? Yeah, I think it's interesting. Well, firstly, I just love the idea of Massive pulling Wesley Snipes out of wherever he's at and just going up to Diamond's headquarters and going, I need my money on time or else I'm going to put you out there. Just so you know. Put on his blade outfit. Yeah, exactly. But something that really put this whole situation into perspective was

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legend in the comic world, Michael Avon Oming, co-creator of Powers and has done a lot of great stuff just throughout his career, but mostly with Brian Michael Bendez. He had a TikTok, folks out there for all the teeny boppers that have a TikTok account, go check that out. If you're not following him already, please do. But he talked about how comics right now, the moment we're talking about them, are the most popular that they've ever been, but they are also the closest that they've ever been to their demise in the history of the medium.

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just toeing that line, sitting on that fence. You talked about the black and white era of the early 80s, the TMNTs, the Serbius era where it almost destroyed color comics for a while because they're cheaper to make. They were small publishers. People wanted that at that time. You had the speculation boom of the 90s, of course. Now we're in the diamond destruction, the DD, the D squared era of comics. You can do AD after diamond.

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You know, it's interesting. Again, I sort of spoke on sort of my disdain of diamond, but you know, they are integral to our medium and the industry as a whole and things are going to get shaken up. Like this is going to be huge in one way or another. And some folks are going to be on the outside looking in, unfortunately, and that's a bummer. But I hope like it often is because comics are like cockroaches, they will survive in some form. And Ed, you were kind of speaking on this too. Like they have the infrastructure, someone I do think will buy diamond.

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and hopefully turn it into something better with comics. Will it? Who knows? I think some dragon dildo company's gonna buy all that shit and start shipping worldwide. They sell fidget spinners, energy drinks, and dildos. Way more margin, way more margin. You can really hike those prices up, yeah. I guess the only thing I really, really like about Diamond, aside from them obviously supplying my favorite comic shop in the world with comic books every week,

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is that the Diamond previews was something I always looked forward to, right? That big ass colossal phone book size catalog of comic book and toy goodness. I was thinking, well, damn, what does that mean for the preview? That was something I always kind of look forward to every month. And it kind of helped me get an idea of the books coming out, how I was going to burn through an entire paycheck on resin action figures and things like that. But I don't know why I said resin. But you know what I mean. But did you know that a lunar has its own?

31:02
website and its own previews catalog that combines. It has the DC Connect previous catalog in there, which I'm not the biggest fan of all of these different publishers having their own catalog. I kind of miss the days where it was just one giant catalog. It's like the stream wars for comic catalogs. Ain't that the truth? Yes, DC's got its own catalog. Image has its own catalog. I think there's another one. But if you go on the Lunar's website, they have their own previews catalog. You get the separate ones.

31:31
Or they have one combined one. And what I appreciate about it is that you can download all of these lunar previews for free as digital copies, which goes a long way for me. I love that word, F-R-E, free. Previews, either you had to buy the physical one for whatever, five, six bucks, which was never a big deal. But if you wanted the digital, it was like five bucks. Used to be free back in the old days. That's the truth. That's what I'm saying, man. My biggest flex as a comic reader is that I've never had to pay for a preview. So I don't know who I know or who likes me, but it's worked out so far.

32:00
Well, if you're smart, you give those out because that's like, you know, you know, you're going to get a big ass order form. Down with diamond. Cheering in the demise of a large distributor is the happiest topic. Yeah. I want to talk about tariffs and how that might impact the comic industry. There's almost no way not to talk about politics about this because it, you know, it directly correlates with, with politics. I also want to emphasize that

32:30
I don't think none of us have a economic degree or a social political degree. So I want to talk more so about how this topic impacts our buying habits rather than trying to break down the specifics and the economical aspects of this. But for anyone that might not be aware, the same week that Diamond announced bankruptcy, which was already kind of a hot topic, I think, you know, there was a lot of kind of gloom and doom about what that would mean to the industry. Diamond being the biggest, you know,

32:58
distributor of comics or just being an important one, what that meant. Well, then we got the second blow to the gut when our president started talking about imposing tariffs on goods coming from Canada and Mexico. I'm not familiar if these tariffs are 100% concrete that they're going to go through or they're just being proposed, but the current proposal is 25% tariffs on goods coming from Canada and Mexico, an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imports.

33:26
Canada then fired back and was like, all right, bet. We'll go out and impose our own 25% tariffs on US goods. Now, how does this impact comics for maybe the layman? Most periodical comics, most monthly comics that you go into your shop and buy are printed in Canada. Who pays that tariff? Would be the publisher to get said goods into the country and distributed. And then even if they're not printed in Canada, let's say that there's a US publisher that prints their own comics, a lot of times they're using Canadian paper.

33:56
So prices are going up one way or the other. I think it's even safer to say if the publisher is now eating this cost, it's safe to say they'll probably pass that down to us, the customers. In some way, once again, not sure what that means in terms of the final price and how much, but the expectation is that prices are going to go up for comics. And this could mean a death blow for a lot of comic shops, for a lot of publishers, a lot of retailers. In addition to comics going up, everything else is going up. Food, energy.

34:25
You know, people are out here trying to make ends meet. And as much as we fucking love comics, at the end of the day, it is a hobby. It's not essential, right? It's not essential like fucking eggs. It's considered like a luxury. Yeah. So, you know, this could mean a change of buying habits for a lot of people. But I want to hear from you guys specifically. You know, what's your line in the sand when it comes to how much you would pay for monthly comics? Let's just use the example that comics are going up $1. $4.99 title is now $5.99, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

34:54
But do you foresee all of this talk of tariffs impacting how you buy comics or how many titles you pull and et cetera? How are you preparing for this possibility? Chris, you want to take that first? Yeah, I think it should be said firstly in my response that the tariffs have been put on hold. Apparently, they've reached an agreement both with Canada and Mexico both because, and I'm going to try my best to try to stay impartial. I think anyone who knows me knows that I have a pretty...

35:24
strict out there response to a lot of these things. You just read between the lines there. But basically what 47 did was he said, we're going to create these different trade wars with these other countries, or at least they're going to say they're going to just to bait them into lowering prices or what have you. It's basically, he's using it as a tactic, as a scare tactic. Negotiation tactics, yeah. Correct. Yeah. Exactly. And what Mexico and Canada both did were like, okay, bet, let's do this then. And...

35:53
He apparently talked to both Prime Minister Trudeau and President Steinbaum, and they all came to an agreement. What I find the most funny before I get into the actual comic part about this is these terms that Trump asked for, both have been in effect both with Mexico and Canada since November. Speaking on November of earlier last year, is that all these things that he wanted, apparently he either didn't know or he wanted to make himself to seem like he created these quote-unquote deals with these countries.

36:22
It's all just a bunch of nonsense. Ed, is that what you've been up to since November? Have you been facilitating these terror conversations? Damn you. Are you solving trade wars? Chris, I'm glad you brought that up. And I think it just echoes what I was trying to nervously get across earlier. It feels like every day the conversation of these terrorists have changed. The article that I'm referencing is from February 3rd by Heidi McDonald, legendary comic journalist.

36:50
So if we're recording what on the 9th, so in six days, it's already changed. So, I mean, once again, I want to emphasize that, you know, I don't think anything is set in stone or concrete yet in regards to these terrors or how they work. Things could change tomorrow. That's the sort of news whiplash that we're currently living in right now at this current administration is that, and to speak of what you're saying there and to give Heidi credit and to give you, bother you credit as well as that the moment that this was announced on the 3rd, it was solved the evening of the 4th. So.

37:19
This is like a quick, you blink and you miss it and it's a complete onslaught of terrible news, crazy news, terrible news, crazy news. It's just everywhere. So point being is that we spoke on this earlier, the comic industry is a game of margins. We're a niche medium of fans that are obsessive. Note if you're watching YouTube right now, the short box over on YouTube, look behind me, there's a lot of books. We are obsessive creatures and our nerds are. So

37:47
For me to speak on my spending habits and the sort of erratic behavior of them, will it change anything? Probably not. No. I'm going to buy eggs regardless of the price. I'm going to buy gas regardless of their price. I often don't even look at those prices. Polished statement right there. That doesn't speak on my financial situation. Chris goes into any store with a blindfold and he's like, that one, that one. But anyway, so point being is that I need this stuff, guys. Let's just be honest. Everyone, let's be completely real with ourselves.

38:17
When I go to a comic shop, I have things that I've pre-ordered, speaking on previews and Bader, I'm going to echo what you said earlier. Big FanaPool box. I think it's a great system and I hope it sticks around in some capacity somewhere. If Lunar buys it or whatever, I don't care. I love the system of that because I can easily pre-order a bunch of trades and what have you for the next four to five months and it's awesome. Bader, I've sent you screenshots of my previews and it's insanity. This threat of tariffs and paper and all these things.

38:47
doesn't scare me off as a consumer. What I am nervous about more so than anything, and I'm not trying to white knight this whole conversation, but it worries me for the creators. We all talk to creators on our individual shows, and if you talk to them offline, a lot of them won't say this out loud, so I'm going to be their voice box. If you talk to them offline, they will tell you that the industry inside is in a flux. There are editors who are not approving as much. There are publishers that are not allowing stories to go past

39:16
two volumes because they just can't afford it or at least can't afford it at the profit that they're currently making them at, which again is very low. So all that to be said, will it change anything for me if these things were to go through? No, but it does worry me for the overall amount of comics, which have been great. Like 2024, 2025, going into 2025, it's been an incredible time to be a comic fan in terms of like the amount of amazing things both created around and over at the big two.

39:45
Well said. And if prices should go up, I think it'll only emphasize what I'm currently doing now where it's like, I'm going to buy, you know, uh, uh, these digital comic platforms for like my mainstream stuff. I might splurge like Ed said on like a nice hard cover. And if anything, it'll make me want to support Gotham city limit even more. Knowing that, you know, Chris, to your point, that comic books is such a thin margin, like the amount of books that, you know, Ben has to sell at the shop to

40:13
break even or even like make a profit. I think, you know, I guess my message here for all listeners and comic fans is like, it's going to get extra tough for your comic shop. Should any of these things come to fruition? It sounds like maybe not, but I think always keep in mind like your local comic shop and how you can support them within reason, obviously, but really, I think just be stringent on the things you buy, you know, I think you can easily get caught up on this idea of FOMO or it's like, oh, this book came out this week. I got to have it. Or, you know, the internet is talking about this book or

40:43
someone's saying this book could be worth a lot. I think it's easy to get into that habit. Next thing you know, you're spending 90 books a week at the shop for the things that you don't really need. So I think really having an honest conversation about your time, the books you really want to read and just being a little tight. I think it's important for comic readers to understand our responsibility. Again, speaking on the margins and the niche medium and all the things,

41:12
Comic stores require us to pre-order, or I guess publishers more so, require pre-orders to know what are people excited about, especially with the smaller two. Now, if you really hate what Zeb Wells is doing with the Spider-Man series, don't buy it. Start voting with your wallet. At the same time, you need to support the series that you really care about. For instance, I'm really excited for, and this is sort of a shameless plug because we just have the creators on the show.

41:41
Out of Alcatraz from Oni Press by Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook. I would never do this for most series, but I've reserved every cover of issue one because I want this to be shown by Oni and the powers that be that this series is wanted. This is a weird transition, but something that really bothers me is Marvel putting out – I went to the comic shop this last week and Marvel has been doing this for a while now and it's so silly to me.

42:11
I think we're in agreeance in this that digital comics should not cost the same amount as the physical comics. Right. That is definitely my comic hot take number one right there. Okay. Here's hot take number two. Why the F are they selling uncanny X-Men number 129 for $4.99 at the, like they're, they're reselling these reprints. These facsimiles. Oh, the facsimiles. Those used to be a dollar. Ridiculous. It literally, I don't know if they've superimposed the price off of the cover or what, but these used to say.

42:39
They use AI. They use mid-journey. And they're putting out foils of this. The most dumb shit ever that they're putting out and people are buying them. It's crazy. So again, I think I'll sort of end my part on this is that as comic readers, as fans of the medium, people that want this thing to exist and we want to support the things that need our support, the medium requires our participation. If we complain about it on the back end and then do nothing about it when we visit our

43:08
then we have no one to blame but ourselves. Well said, man. Or Chris for president, god damn it. Chris Hackett for president. Put me in office. All right, and I think with that being said, boys, I wanna get off the news. I want to get into our last segment of the show, which is Ben's FOC Picks of the Week. I've reached out to Ben Kingsbury, the owner of Gotham City Limit, and I asked him, hey, what are three comic books or things that people should have on their radar? And he sent me three awesome picks this week.

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I want to go to emphasize that he sent in these voice messages after coming back from Megacon. It's Megacon weekend when we record this. So you know, big shout outs to Ben for making this happen. Let's go into his first voice message and pick. And I do want to say I've got his picks listed in these show notes. You could check out some of the previews, some more information on the creators and things like that. But let's get into his first voice message. Live from Jacksonville, Florida, home of your local comic shop.

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Gotham City Limit. I'm Ben Kay. You know, I just got back from one day at Megacon. I'm pretty sure that's all I can handle financially. However, it's amazing to see how the comic books have permeated into modern pop culture. My first pick is an exact example of that. How about Image Comics Presents Grommets? Oh yeah, the 80s coming of age comic series you know and love. Skateboard Dax by Brett.

44:33
Parsons three different ones from the skateboard culture of Rick Remender Brian posh and Brian Parson come Amazing display pieces or if you're into skateboarding they are for you as well When I see them all I can think is gleaming the cube. What an amazing old movie that was I'm going a cover Be bright Parson punk rock look, but there are three choices for you

44:58
awesome for your comic book collection, Grommets Skateboard Decks by Brett Parsons. He came out the gate with some heat. It wasn't just a typical comic pick today. He was actually promoting these skateboard decks based on the Rick Remender and Brett Parsons comic series Grommets, which is, like he said, an 80s coming of age comic series about friendship and skateboard culture set in the 80s. And I'm sorry, Brian Poseyen is also involved with that.

45:27
series as well. Have any of you ever skateboarded Chris? Like ever in life? Ed, what do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What's your relationship with skateboarding? It's not good. I think I tried because when I was little that's when it was really starting to become in the mainstream like with Tony Hawk and all those guys. So the word poser I heard a lot if you didn't skate and I was my weight at the time and skateboarding was not a good combination. So I remember

45:57
trying and basically really busting my ass and then stopping immediately after. It's not for me. I think I played the Tony Hawk game one too many times. Oh, yeah. Oh, I can do this. I can do the pizza man. 1,000 yard rail slide. Yeah, yeah. So that was my relationship with skateboard. I did.

46:21
invest a lot into skateboard shoes like Nike SB. So that's probably the closest I got. I do like skateboard shoes. I guess I was a poser. Yeah, I've been a poser my whole life. I wear the skateboard shoes, but I ain't getting on that, especially at this age. I got too many friends that have jumped on a skateboard, willy-nilly, just seeing if they still got it, and literally have busted their ass and broken their arm. Please tell me C did this. No, that's why C hasn't been on the show. Oh, this is the skateboard injury. Chris, what about you? Did you skateboard as a kid?

46:48
Of course, I think we were all sort of part of that generation where Tony Hawk Pro Skater was so in the culture and we're all listening to Superman by Goldfinger and just, here I am doing all the things. Yeah, don't get me started. Point being is yes, I tried and also like Ed, I failed miserably and I think I broke my radius when I was in middle school and just stopped after that. Yeah. Now I do want to say these skateboard decks, which look like they're...

47:12
$40 a piece is three different versions. Each one of them has art from Brett Parsons, like I said, the series artist of grommets. I think this is a good look. I don't know what you would call this synergy or related. I don't know what you would technically call it. Cross-merchandising? Yeah, cross-merchandising. That's a great word right there. You should work for Disney, Ed. Sweet, my AI knowledge. Just use it. Cross-merchandising like this is a good look. It's like they're going.

47:38
all in into the aesthetic, into the whole point of the comic series. So I can get behind cool stuff like this. And I guess to Ben's point, whether you're an old crusty fuck like us that will never jump on a skateboard again, this makes for a good art piece, or something actually practical. That's just going on the wall. You're not putting any trucks or wheels on those. Hell, I might not even take it out of the plastic. You're not going to grind on this one here. You don't want to ruin that Parsons art on the bottom. For sure, for sure. All right, let's move on to his next pick here.

48:06
I think this one is an actual comic book. Here we go. And next up, Assorted Crisis Event Number One by Image Comics. I'll tell you why I chose this one. Writer Dennis Camp, he's done 20th Century Men, The Ultimates, but I'll tell you why Bodder will choose this one.

48:24
because this is an anthology series. And you know what that means? It's just full of one-shot stories. So you can buy the first issue, you can buy the fifth issue, you can buy the 12th issue, but you don't have to sign up for your poll. And that's magic to botters ears. So here it is, Image Comics presents writer Dennis Camp says, time's having a crisis. We'll find out here. What I don't appreciate is Ben putting me on blast, like I'm diamond and I owe him money. But to his credit.

48:54
the series, Sorted Crisis Events Number 1, which comes out March 12. It's written by Dennis Camp. You got art by Eric Zawadiski, I think. That's how you say it? Zawoski? Something like that, yeah. And colorist Jordy Belair and letterer Hassan Otsman Elhaw. I mean, that's kind of a killer lineup right there. How do you beat that lineup? Exactly, right? Like, you're telling me the writing is going to be good. I'm not familiar with the artist, but if he did the cover art, that's very impressive. You're also telling me the colors are going to be good and the lettering is going to be phenomenal.

49:24
And it's an anthology series that I don't have to exactly sign up or commit to on my pull list. Don't be like me, actually. Go ahead and actually put this shit on your pull list if you like it. Yeah, Sword of Crisis, events number one, comes out March 12. Any thoughts on this? Any reactions to this one? Yeah, I'm a fan of anthology stuff, for sure. So it looks like this one's going to be about, I guess, just different time stories, like stories involving time and crisis. Oh, I guess here it is. An ongoing zigzagging anthology series

49:54
compromised clicks of our clocks full of one-shot stories with both beautiful and ugly, tragic and redemptive, surreal and somehow all too familiar. I mean, yo, that sounds poetic, Dennis Camp. Thank you. Isn't that what he does so well? I mean, anyone who's reading the Ultimates or anybody who's read 20th Century Men, they know. And if you've read 20th Century Men, this is essentially kind of similar to what he did in that book, which is where he told different perspectives of war and people who have been affected by it and such.

50:21
This is just incredible. I mean, again, you could have just shown me the cover and the creative team and I would have been very similar to out of Alcatraz earlier. I'm going to buy every cover because this is the kind of book that you want to support. And I think Dennis Camp is continuing to solidify his place as like the new hotness is that this is very exciting. And yeah, this is going to be great. All right. Well said. All right. So once again, that was a sort of crisis events. Number one comes out March 12th. The FOC final order cutoff is

50:49
February 17th, so that would be next Monday if you're listening to this episode on Wednesday. And we got one more pick from Ben to go through. Here it is, back to Ben. And last but not least, how about a Mad Cave Studios presents Dark Pyramid number one. All right, Mad Cave Studios has been writing a couple of really awesome underground stories. So I'm gonna give this one a shot, why? Well, Dark Pyramids.

51:18
conspiracies, mountains, death, betrayal, monsters. Add Dark Pyramid number one to your poll list ASAP. Well, another week is coming going and I'm still Ben K representing Gotham City Limit, Jacksonville, Florida. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility and always take it to the limit. Done deal. All right, that was a fantastic trio right there. This pick, Dark Pyramid number one also comes out March 12th.

51:48
final order cut off February 17th. This one is being done by writer Paul Tobin and artist PJ Holden. I won't lie, I'm not familiar with either of them, but the cover to this book looks awesome. Mad Cave is definitely a publisher I look out for, especially when it comes to new number one. I almost feel like they've almost, I won't say replaced, because Image still does it really well, but they're in that same tier of like, oh, new number one? And if the art on the cover looks good enough,

52:14
A premise like this, what Ben was saying, conspiracy, it looks like it involves an adventure in Mount Denali, Alaska. Yo, sign me up. This sounds pretty interesting. Do you remember the series from a couple of years ago that was getting some like either cover heat or getting some kind of speculation for bunny mask? Do you remember those? Oh yeah. Yeah, I saw those a lot at conventions. Anyway, that was Tobin. He wrote that. Yeah, and then PJ Holden, he did the art for an anthology, a Kickstarter anthology here recently.

52:44
a death of comics bookcase by Zach Quainton from over there at the beat. And he did a really incredible story in that. So this is interesting. And again, bothered to sort of echo what you were saying there. Mad Cave, it's like Mad Cave, Oni Press, they're in this mad dash to sort of cement themselves as like the new kids on the block. Not that they haven't been around for a while. Of course, they have been, but like, I think both of them are sort of reworking their identities in comics. And I really love the things that they've been doing here recently.

53:12
All right, Ed, obviously all three picks from Ben are fantastic, but if you could only pick one, which one are you going with? We got the Gromit Skateboard Deck, Assorted Crisis Events number one, and Dark Pyramid number one. I think out of these three, they're all interesting. I probably won't get the skateboard deck, to be honest with you. But too many bad memories. Probably the Assorted Crisis Events, because just like you bought her, I do love an anthology series that each issues its own standalone, so.

53:41
I have commitment issues. So. Cosigned for all those same reasons. I have paid way too much for Invisalign to fuck up my teeth again. So I definitely would never get those skateboard decks ever. So a sort of Christ number events number one gets my pick. Chris, what about you? Yeah, I'm also a anthology slut and I love Dennis Camp and what he's doing. And also you had me at Jordy Belair and Hassan Otsman Elhelm. So.

54:07
Let's do it. And also, I've been to say this earlier, but Eric Zawoski, he did a series a couple of years ago called Time Before Time. It was an image series that was pretty good about time travel. So if it's anything like that, I am game. And I'm very, I've, this was already like one of my most anticipated books of the earlier part of 2025. Well said it. Well, big shout outs to Ben at Gotham city limit for providing those. I'll have links to all of that in the show notes. If you want to take a deeper look.

54:32
Ladies and gents, this is the Short Box Podcast, and we just finished talking about the latest comic news with my friends, Chris Hacker from the Oblivion Bar Podcast and the exceptional Edmund Danzart. I'll have links to everything we talked about in these show notes if you want to fact check or dive a little deeper into what we discuss. We would love to hear from you. If you got thoughts, opinions on anything we talked about, you can shoot us an email at thes or text us directly. You can text us fan mail now using the link in these show notes.

55:00
I'll also include links to where you could follow Chris for all of your Oblivion Bar podcast needs, and as well as Ed. Not only does he post fucking awesome artwork, but if you follow his food account and you live in Jacks, that's all you'll need. You'll never have to wonder, what am I going to have for dinner or lunch? Just follow Ed's food. It's Edbot Eats World, right? It's Edbot Eats World. Edbot Eats World. That's right. Chris, what do you got lined up for Oblivion Bar? If people want more comic book podcast content, what do you got lined up?

55:27
Yeah. Yeah. Well, firstly, thank you both for having me on the short box. Again, I always love doing these. Anytime that Botter shoots me a text and asks me to come on to talk about- Oh, Greg is going to be, I just realized Greg is going to be from First Issue Clip, he's going to be so jealous. But it was a conscious decision not to reach out to him because it's Super Bowl Sunday and I'm like- He's busy. You're right. It's like Kansas City. He's in Kansas. He's busy. Oh yeah. But anytime that Botter and crew, they want me on the show, I'll be here 100%.

55:53
So again, if you want a slightly worse version of what Botter and crew do over at the short box, go over to the Oblivion Bar, a comic book podcast, obli Upcoming episodes that we have on the docket, again, I said it earlier, but I'll just reiterate because I love this conversation with Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook about Out of Alcatraz from ONI Press. We also have a review of Captain America Brave New World coming out in a couple of weeks because we're getting that next week. We'll be talking about The Monkey, the new Oz Perkins horror film here.

56:20
upcoming and then we're also going to be having Matt Fraction and Michael Ored on the show at the end of the month talking about their upcoming Minor Threats entry. So a lot of cool things. Also confirmed Kurt Peyers with his new image series, Lost Fantasy, going to be on the show in a couple of months. So a lot of cool things on the docket for the Oblivion Bar. Hell yeah. I'll be checking that out. All right. To everyone else, Short Box Nation, thanks for tuning in. You can be listening to any other podcast, put your press play on this one and that means the world to us. All right. Come back next week for a new episode.

56:49
But most importantly, take good care of yourself. Make time to read a good comic. I'm signing off now, I'm Botter. Peace everybody.

56:59
There you have it short box nation. That's the end of the show. Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for being here and a special shout out if you made it this far. If you enjoyed this episode and you have some thoughts or comments that you want to share with us, write us at theshortboxjaxx at gmail.com and if you really like this episode, help us spread the word. Share this episode with a friend or someone you know that loves comics as much as we do and don't forget to leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

57:28
or wherever you get your podcast. It takes two minutes tops and it would mean the world to us. So leave us a review. Now, if you want more content like bonus episodes or perks like early access and commercial free episodes, and in some cases, free comic books, consider joining our Patreon community at patreon.com slash The Short Box. It's an easy and very affordable way to support the show and get rewarded for being a fan. Once again, sign up at patreon.com slash The Short Box.

57:54
Speaking of our Patreon community, I want to give a big shout out to our current members, including Adam Chaitani, Tony Aupi, RC Gamet, Blake Simone, Blythe Brumleaf, Bo Evers, Brian Brumleaf, Chad Lannenberger, Chris Hacker, Chris Jinx, Kenny Myers, David Morales, Triple D Mystic, Dominique Jackson, Errol White, Edbot 5000, Generation Jaguar, Greg Hopkins, Greg Ligtide, Henry Hernandez, Hershel, Hydrus96 aka Mac J. Sinner,

58:24
Jeff Frimid, Jerome Cabanatan, Joshua Miller, Justin McCoy, Kara Reichardt, Cassie Whitley, Corey Torgeson, Matt Godwin, Amanda Marin, Nick Wagner, Podcasters Assemble, Stephen Gamet, T-Mix, The Wait For It podcast, Thomas Pandich, Thurian, Trey Namo, Walter Gantt, Warren Evans, and Zach Armour. Thanks again to everyone that listens and supports this show. Be sure to come back next week for a new episode. And most importantly, take care of yourselves. Read a good comic.

58:52
and continue to make mine and yours short box. I'll catch you soon. Peace.