Vertiguys

Welcome back! Join us for a final tour through all things Sandman with our friends from What’s Lightsabers, Precious?, Ryan and Joanna!

Show Notes

1:17 When we recorded this, it had been just a year since we recorded our Ninja Scroll episode. It has now been closer to a year and a half. Apologies, the pandemic and some personal life stuff that came up beforehand severely impeded our workflow.

2:05 “Imperfect Hosts,” is the title of Sandman #2, in which Morpheus visits the Hecate and is given advice on where to find his lost tools. It’s part of Preludes and Nocturnes.

2:35 As of the time of this writing, What’s Lightsabers, Precious? has not posted a new episode since January.

5:03 Richard Nixon’s head, voiced by Billy West, is a recurring character on Futurama as President of Earth. He is one of several political figures portrayed on the show surviving as heads in jars, along with Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

6:17 Zoboomafoo was created by the Kratt Brothers and originally ran from 1999 to 2001 on public television and continued to appear in reruns and syndication long afterwards. There appears to be a common misconception that Zoboomafoo was also a real lemur; in fact the character was played by a lemur named Jovian. Homestar Runner was a web series created by the Brothers Chaps that debuted around the same time and theoretically continues to this day, though updates have been extremely sporadic since the mid-2000s.

9:53 PK can be heard discussing his love of the scorpion flail here.

12:18 Sandman: The Dream Hunters was first published in 1999 by Vertigo as a novella with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano. It was later adapted as a comic book with art by P. Craig Russell in 2008. We fully intend to cover it in the future.

13:14 Wolverine: Snikt! was a comic book series with words and art by Tsutomu Nihei that ran for five issues in 2003. It was part of Marvel’s short-lived Tsunami imprint, which was all about Marvel characters done in a manga style.

13:58 Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer was a 3-issue series from Amano and writer Greg Rucka that ran in 2002.

13:27 Silent Möbius creator Kia Asamiya provided covers and pencils for Uncanny X-Men #416-420, which were indeed part of the Chuck Austen run. Unfortunately, these issues achieved more notoriety for containing the Juggernaut’s heel-face turn than for the legendary manga artist’s contributions.

25:16 Sam Keith was the artist for the first five issues of Sandman, as I originally suspected. Shoulda had faith in myself.

29:29 The Rebirth-era Batman run by Tom King included art from the likes of David Finch, Clay Mann, Lee Weeks, Mikel Janin, Mitch Gerads, and Joëlle Jones.

33:30 The What’s Lightsabers, Precious? coverage of mpreg can be found here.

47:42 Some insight on how Gaiman intended Matthew’s voice to sound can be found in this interview.

49:20 My favorite running joke in The Big Lebowski is The Dude’s incessant recycling of words and phrases from other characters.

57:36 Not so timely anymore.

1:10:50 I’m referring to this gif. Yeah, I know I say it wrong.

1:15:12 “I Will Survive” is a 1978 disco single by Gloria Gaynor, from her album Love Tracks. It has been covered by Cake and Diana Ross, among others.

1:18:00 “Rhinestone Cowboy” was written and originally recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974 before becoming the lead single from Glen Campbell’s 1975 album of the same name, as well as Campbell’s signature song. “Wichita Lineman” was also a single for Campbell and the title track of another record. It was a sequel of sorts to “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” which was originally by Johnny Rivers, but had been covered by Campbell a year earlier. Essentially, his producers believed that another Campbell song with a city in the title was bound to be another hit.

1:19:00 Joanna told a shorter version of this story at the very end of this episode.

1:22:10 An adult take on Oscar the Grouch, you say?

1:25:01 For the record, we are decidedly not the official Sandman podcast.

1:40:42 We covered the Hellblazer issue with Winnie-the-Pooh in this episode.

1:42:51 Sam Keith created The Maxx and wrote all 35 issues, but received writing assistance from William Messner-Loebs on 21 issues and from Alan Moore on one issue.

1:56:30 Look for Joanna and Ryan’s new show Podda Cast ‘Em All within the next month or so. It should be dropping into the WLP feed.

When the alien secession movement runs up against a civil authority that’s anything but, crusading reporter Spider Jerusalem just has to be there! Plus, we celebrate the 100th episode of Vertiguys, Rob Gordon style. Happy holidays, everyone, and we’ll see you next year!

Show Notes

2:39 – I might have accidentally quoted Love Actually there.

4:25 – As we discussed in our last Transmetropolitan episode, Andre Ricciardi is a friend of Darick Robertson who served as the model for Spider Jerusalem.

5:35 – Helix lasted only from 1996 to 1998 and covered only the first 12 issues of Transmetropolitan. It did have some reason for existing – DC courted a number of science fiction and fantasy authors to collaborate in making the imprint a success, but most of its titles that weren’t cancelled ended up under the Vertigo umbrella anyway.

5:57 – This year, as we’ve discussed, DC has mothballed the Vertigo line and is going all in on DC Black Label instead, despite their being… basically the same thing.

8:23 – Sean was not, as I first thought, misusing the word “allay,” which means “soothe,” but rather being inscrutably sarcastic.

9:43 – Spider has a line here: “You think professional people are afraid of guns? Do you?” This can be read simply as Spider bragging about his own fearless pursuit of the Truth, or the professionals he’s referring to could be the police, but we also thought it might imply that guns are much more commonplace, and facing them endemic to many more professions, in this future.

11:02 – Destructo Vermin Gobsmack, a.k.a. Martin Peters, a.k.a. Patrick McDonell, a punk rocker turned music manager turned real estate developer who Constantine remembers from his Mucous Membrane days, turned up in Hellblazer Annual #1 and again in Hellblazer #33, “Sundays are Different”.

11:47 – In another incredibly uncomfortable piece of dialogue, Spider taunts Fred that all the transients in Angels 8 are “failures” because they haven’t fully transitioned yet.

17:02 – As we saw in the first issue, Spider uses jumpstart pills to boost his intelligence and make writing easier. It’s not far off from the way that adderall is often abused by students today.

18:18 – Ed Gein killed two women in Plainfield, Wisconsin between 1954 and 1957, and may also have been responsible for the death of his brother in 1944, in addition to stealing many other bodies from graves in order to fashion household objects from the remains. Gein is considered to be the inspiration for the fictional killers Buffalo Bill, Norman Bates, and Leatherface.

24:41 – Sean liked the adherence to aesthetics that has Spider banging out stories on an old-fashioned typewriter instead of a computer, even if his future typewriter has some added features.

31:31 – I meant to say that Spider stopped the crackdown, rather than the riot.

51:28 – Sadly, we are not on Stitcher, though that’s coming soon. The real reason Sean tried to install Stitcher on our mother’s cellphone was so she could listen to the Washington Post’s Presidential podcast.

53:17 – “Nothing clean” is a reference to The Terminator, although I don’t know why Sean was doing Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein voice instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A mage and a dead body walk into a church. That’s not a joke; that’s the comic.

Show Notes

1:48 – The Darkness, created by Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow (an imprint of Image Comics), is a mafia hitman who inherits the embodiment of universal chaos and therefore receives superpowers. The character seems to embody Garth Ennis’s preoccupation the violence of humankind crossing paths with more cosmic-level conflicts, and in fact, Ennis is credited as a co-creator of the character along with Silvestri and David Wohl.

5:45 – Sean means that we can figure out Constantine’s age from knowing his birth year, which is canonically 1953.

5:50 – I was alluding to Al Stewart’s song “Pretty Golden Hair” there, from his 1967 debut Bed-Sitter Images, which also concerns a young man preyed upon sexually by older men.

6:45 – I was reminded of this gag from Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein:

12:31 – In Catholicism, an indulgence is a reduction in the time one must suffer in purgatory for their sins, usually granted in response to prayers or good works. The selling of indulgences for cash was a major complaint of the Protestant Reformation.

16:14 – This may be a reference to the Boomtown Rats’ lead singer Bob Geldof, a fellow Irishman. Geldof is known as a liberal activist, so his friendship with the messianic figure the First describes might not be surprising, but the name is spelled with a second “f” in the comic.

20:15 – Loch Lomond is located between the counties of Sterling and Dunbarton in Scotland, and is the subject of the traditional song “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”.

22:35 – I think I sell the book a bit short here, wanting it to be more continuity-heavy. I should be clear that as a stand-alone story, this is great horror with a truly chilling human element.

26:35 – While I think that fictional exploitation of the Catholic abuse scandal for drama is a cliche, I certainly don’t mean to diminish the trauma of actual victims.

30:00 – Here’s the cover we’re talking about:

31:02 – It happened in Batgirl (5th series) #25.

Celebrate Turkey Day with the Vertiguys by chowing down on the first grim tale from Lucifer’s ongoing series, as the Devil-in-retirement seeks advice, takes in a show, and is generally kind of a prick.

Show Notes

2:09 – The actual line is “flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” and it’s from Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. It’s part of Horatio’s goodbye to a dying Hamlet.

3:10 – We were reminded of Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime series where each half-episode had its own title. To boot, these titles often didn’t match the titles we’d been given in the next-episode bumper.

3:17 – I didn’t have the summary of X-Men (vol. 2) #51 quite right. The person spying on Bishop works for Dark Beast, not Sinister, and doesn’t appear in this issue (that actually happened in issue #49). Sinister is in this issue, though, and was responsible for mutating all the passengers on the train into monsters. Unbeknownst to the X-Men, Dark Beast is in this issue as well – that’s him on the cover posing as Beast. This cover is by Jeff Matsuda and Dan Panosian, also the issue’s interior artists.

4:25 – When we say, “writing for the trade,” we mean practices that de-emphasize the importance of making individual issues readable and rely on readers to read the whole story arc at once (probably in trade paperback form).

5:15 – Loki’s fuckery toward Susano-O took place in Season of Mists.

6:00 – Our discussion here reminded Sean of this Penny Arcade strip.

6:04 – The wheel of pain is shown to play a formative role in the life of Conan the Barbarian in the 1982 film. It is also, to my horror, a key craftable object in 2018’s Conan Exiles.

8:50 – Pastourma is a form of cured meat that is repeatedly pressed and air dried. Pastrami may be a relative of this. As we suggested, its use here seems to be to show that Lucifer has cultured tastes.

32:52 – I think we’ve made this reference before, but that’s a reference to this Mitchell and Webb sketch.

38:47 – Cardcaptor Sakura is a manga and anime by Clamp which was seen in the late 90s. The plot is quite similar to what we see here – a magical girl has to track down and reimprison a bunch of magical creatures that escaped from a magical deck of cards..

39:20 – See also the Key to Hell in Season of Mists, which caused so much trouble for Morpheus and Remiel. By the way, although Lucifer says angels don’t breed here, we’ve seen evidence that they can – over in Hellblazer, Ellie the succubus had a baby with an angel once. By claiming that he doesn’t breed, Lucifer also distinguishes himself from Paradise Lost’s Satan, who has a daughter, Sin – albeit by the Zeusian method of conjuring her from his brain.

40:35 – Mike Hammer is a fictional private eye who first appeared in a series of novels by former comic book writer Mickey Spillane, starting with 1947’s I, the Jury. The novels were told in the first person and were known for their purple prose reflecting the main character’s deep cynicism.

43:17 – I realized that maybe not everybody is old enough to be familiar with the theme song to the TV show Cheers, which we referenced here.

43:35 – Editors were discussed in Transmetropolitan #1 and our episode here.

44:44 – In 1973’s Live and Let Die, 007 seduces the tarot-reading psychic Solitaire (Jane Seymour!) by stacking a deck, filling it entirely with Lovers cards.

51:41 – A Trip to the Moon was an early science fiction film created by the French auteur Georges Méliès. The rocket’s collision with the moon is portrayed thusly:

1:17:12 – The device Sean incorrectly described here was actually used in issues prior to the death of Superman in Superman (vol. 2) #75. Successive issues leading up to the epic battle between Superman and Doomsday featured dwindling numbers of panels per page, with #75 consisting entirely of full-page panels.

Vertiguys Phase Two continues with another #1! Journalist jerk Spider Jerusalem has three books to write in five years, and zero chance of doing it without returning to his one and only geographical nemesis, the City.

No new episode next week – we’ll be back in two with Lucifer.

Show Notes

2:00 – Warren Ellis was the writer for the first two story arcs of Dynamite’s 2015 James Bond series, Vargr and Eidolon. Don’t listen to Sean; you should read those books because they’re awesome.

2:45 – Darick Robertson confirms Ricciardi’s role in a 2015 tweet.

5:39 – In 1999, while a player with the Atlanta Braves, John Rocker made a number of racist, sexist, and homophobic comments after being asked if he would have any interest in playing for a New York team. Interestingly, he described the experience of being in a diverse city as “hectic” and “nerve-wracking.”

6:44 – Sean is correct. According to Wookieepedia, Han Solo uses a modified DL-44 heavy blaster pistol from BlasTech Industries, favored for its ability to pierce Stormtrooper armor. In real life, the props were built on Mauser C96 Broomhandle pistols and have gone for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.

8:03 – The Unabomber, as he was called by the press, carried out a campaign of mail bombings from 1978 to 1995 that killed three people and injured 23 more, targeting mainly universities and airlines. He was revealed to be Ted Kaczynski, a former assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley who had left modern society to live as a hermit in a secluded cabin. He was also somewhat infamous for his disheveled appearance upon his arrest.

9:11 – Though we know little of the Beast yet, his rise to political power may evoke the Biblical beast from the Book of Revelation.

13:50 – In case this wasn’t clear in the audio, the implication seems to be that these two men have to be dissenting from their culture in order to live as lovers.

14:55 – We’ve discussed him in this space before, but Hunter S. Thompson was a counterculture writer in the 1960’s and 70’s who created “gonzo journalism,” in which the author involves themself in the story they are reporting and eschews the pretense of objectivity. Thompson’s fondness for guns, drugs, and seclusion, as well as his hatred of authoritarianism and conservatism make for obvious parallels with Spider.

17:38 – Mr. Fusion is a “home energy reactor,” presumably commercially available in the year 2015, according to the Back to the Future trilogy. Unlike Spider’s maker, it does not reconfigure matter into other objects, but merely uses it to generate energy. The maker is more like one of the replicator units from Star Trek.

25:26 – From our perspective, Ellis’s English origins are relevant because of that country’s higher baseline level of liberalism and social democratism. English conservatives are more liberal than our conservatives, and English cynicism towards liberal measures is derived from a society that actually is more liberal – in some ways. Certainly, English writers led the charge for more openly political comics at DC, as we’ve seen. Supporting Ellis’s political leanings, we found this. And this.

It’s also possible that we aren’t meant to read Spider as objecting to any of the denizens of the city or the way that they live their lives per se, but rather to the way that the immense variety of people contributes to the feeling of sensory overload. This reading is better, but still somewhat closed-minded, and brings us back to both Rocker and, to a lesser extent, Kaczynski.

30:00 – Sorry, it’s Sandman Universe: Hellblazer.

31:27 – That was a reference to this Penny Arcade strip.

32:40 – Nelson’s Column is a monument to British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson. It’s found in London’s Trafalgar Square, itself named for the battle where Nelson died in 1805.

31:57 – “Kill by demons!” is from the infamous Doom fanfic Repercussions of Evil.

32:42 – Timothy Hunter was created by Neil Gaiman and John Bolton (not that John Bolton) in 1990’s Books of Magic #1. We didn’t mention it, but Constantine is a major character and mentor to Timothy Hunter in the original Books of Magic miniseries, so this isn’t an unprecedented crossover.

33:27 – Check out our coverage of “Dead-Boy’s Heart” for more on John’s disturbed childhood and history of hurting animals.

33:58 – For more on this, check our episode here.

34:47 – And for how John ended up in Ravenscar, see this episode.

36:54 – We covered “Counting to Ten” here. Spoiler warning, though: we didn’t like it very much.

41:50 – Reality Ensues is a TV Trope. It means when something realistic (often bad) unexpectedly happens in a story, instead of something consistent with the story’s genre.

42:00 – It’s worth noting, at the point we’re covering in Hellblazer history, Chas hasn’t been seen in months of both real and in-comic time after John made one too many cracks about his wife and Chas beat him senseless and walked out. Again, not without precedent.

44:04 – Sean was probably thinking of Simon Spurrier’s run on X-Men Legacy volume two, and the prison in Legion’s mind where his alternate personalities are locked up.

Bad memories bounce back to bewilder our buddies in Hellblazer #70-71 – while a brokenhearted Constantine battles the Blitz, his beloved Kit barhops in Belfast.

Show Notes

1:20 – Rick Veitch, who later became the regular writer on Swamp Thing, also contributed to the art during Moore’s run. The recolored pages can be found in Absolute Swamp Thing, which drops later this month. It does not receive our endorsement.

6:05 – A line in Hellblazer #68 confirms that John has been on the street “since summer,” so this issue does indeed take place right after the breakup, six months before the series’ “present day.”

6:50 – Brendan Finn appeared in my favorite, Hellblazer #42.

9:19 – The statue they’re discussing is apparently real, and was recent at the time of the comic.

10:56 – The funeral being presided over by a “Father” is another hint that the Ryans are Catholic.

11:11 – “Knock on Wood” is a song by M. K. Jerome and Jack Scholl. It is sung in Casablanca by actor and singer Dooley Wilson in the role of nightclub pianist Sam.

11:44 – The white Toyota Cresta was the prized possession of Great Teacher Onizuka’s boss, Vice Principal Uchiyamada. At least once per story arc, and usually in the course of some unassailably upright purpose, Onizuka somehow caused the demolition of the beloved car.

13:59 – “Funny oul’ world, innit?” is one of John’s common phrases, hence Kit’s annoyance.

15:29 – Tuborg refers to Tuborg pilsner, a Danish brew popular throughout Europe, especially in the early 90s.

16:25 – Changes to the World Cup rules, including increasing the size of the goal and preventing keepers from using their hands to receive in order to improve scoring chances, were appealing to sponsors but opposed by the European soccer federations. Apparently, the American team was not particularly clear on the eventual rules that were decided, leading to the suspension of midfielder John Harkes.

21:46 – In case it bears clarifying, “da” means dad.

28:20 – “The Mountains of Mourne” is an 1896 song by Irish musician Percy French, based on an older folk tune. It tells of an immigrant’s view of the quirks of London.

28:55 – Cassidy learned that there was “no fuckin’ ground floor in Hell” during his misspent years, as we discussed in our Preacher finale.

30:23 – Given the year, we can conclude that Jamie was fighting Hitler’s Luftwaffe as a part of World War II’s Battle of Britain. This issue’s title, “Finest Hour,” refers to Winston Churchill’s famous speech of June 18, 1940, in which he exhorted full resolve in the face of the offensive.

31:16 – “Yellow-nosed bastards” refers to the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters of the JG 26 German fighter wing, which had their noses painted bright yellow for identification. One is depicted on the cover of Jagers: Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe, an apparently fictional historical work that played a significant role in the plot of Preacher.

32:09 – Yet again, Garth Ennis invokes drinking with the lads as everything worth living for.

34:03 – Mr. Banks is the uptight father character from Mary Poppins.

37:48 – This might be the first time we’ve seen that John has really defeated that black depression that’s always lurking behind him, instead of just rising out of it long enough to defeat one villain. That’s part of what makes this such a feel-good issue, alongside the fact that he did it out of a decision to live his life rather than an immediate necessity.

42:11 – Majestic 12, or MJ12, is a real conspiracy theory that also served as the villain for the 2000 role-playing shooter Deus Ex.

42:23 – Tom Bodett is a National Public Radio regular and spokesperson for Motel 6, on whose behalf he has been delivering the tagline, “We’ll leave the light on for you,” for more than 30 years. Sean’s talking about the D&D live-play podcast The Adventure Zone, which he recommends and I do not.

Happy Halloween, listeners! Departing for the dread domain of Dark Horse Comics, we’re tackling two twisted tales from Sandman scribe Neil Gaiman! First, we learn a sinister secret in Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire, then we solve a murder mystery in A Study in Emerald!

Show Notes

2:30 – Sean’s quoting from Love Actually here.

2:50 – We forgot to mention it, but Nick Filardi did the colors for Forbidden Brides.

4:54 – Mr. Rochester is the Byronic hero and love interest of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a brooding figure who secretly keeps his insane wife locked away in an out-of-the-way bedroom of his creepy-ass gothic mansion even as he courts the title character. He was portrayed by Michael Fassbender in a 2011 adaptation from director Cary Joji Fukunaga.

5:03 – The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a 2018 Coen Brothers western featuring an obstinate coach driver in the last of its six vignettes.

8:50 – Yes, I called him adventury. He may also be plucky; we don’t see enough of him to be sure.

9:51 – The resemblance is there, but it also occurred to Sean later that the brother looks remarkably like the Batman: The Animated Series version of Ra’s al Ghul – played by David Warner.

11:10 – At this point we see a piece of statuary in the manse’s garden, a hooded figure with a book quite reminiscent of Sandman’s Destiny.

11:20 – This is a reference to Big Jule from Guys and Dolls, who cheats at dice rather brazenly by using a set of his own dice with no spots. It’s okay, he says, he remembers where the spots formerly were.

11:35 – The vampire hunter has at this point disappeared without explanation. He will not be seen again.

11:50 – H.P. Lovecraft was an American horror writer who originated the Cthulhu mythos and the associated subgenre, which is distinguished by encounters with cosmic aberrations – creatures so terrifying that the mere sight of them or knowledge of their existence is sufficient to cause madness and despair. We’d also be remiss not to mention that Lovecraft was a virulent and outspoken racist, a fact that taints the positive aspects of his legacy and much of his work.

14:07 – Edgar Allen Poe was a 19th century American writer known for his short stories and poetry, mostly in the horror and mystery genres. Though he has a variety of famous works to his credit, including the short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which is credited with originating modern detective fiction, his signature work is the poem “The Raven.” It features a bird that squawks “Nevermore!” as we see here. It’s also worth noting that Poe was a major influence on Lovecraft, and his work anticipates Lovecraftian horror in many ways.

15:08 – An agony column is another term for an advice column. It can also refer to a “Missed Connections” style space where people place advertisements looking for lost loved ones.

15:22 – He goes on to say a bunch of stuff about “spiral power” and “the drill that will pierce the heavens.”

19:22 – “Forbidden Brides…” was first published in Gothic! in 2004, eight years after the end of Sandman. In the foreword to Fragile Things, though, Neil Gaiman mentions that he had written the first draft 20 years before.

20:26 – I just realized we didn’t describe the cover of either graphic novel, so: the cover of Forbidden Brides, by Shane Oakley, depicts the frightened Amelia holding up a candle; behind her are the silhouette of the mansion and a full moon, and in the foreground three ghouls are sort of emerging from the shadows at the bottom of her dress. The cover of A Study in Emerald shows a well-dressed man (from the neck down, his face concealed) using a handkerchief to clean green blood off a scalpel.

20:35 – We discussed American Vampire in this episode.

21:50 – Springheel Jack was an urban legend of Victorian London, about 50 years before Jack the Ripper. Reports vary as to whether he was a demon or merely a man disguised as one, but he was said to have claws and a phenomenal leaping ability that allowed him to appear and disappear quickly. Like the Ripper, this Jack mainly attacked women, though not fatally.

25:40 – Scotland Yard is an informal name for the London Metropolitan Police, who had their headquarters on a street called Great Scotland Yard in Westminster.

27:25 – A Study in Scarlet was Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, published in 1887. It originally appeared in the magazine Beeton’s Christmas Annual.

27:47 – Ra’s al Ghul was created by Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams, and Julius Schwartz and first appeared in 1971’s Batman #232. As previously mentioned, he was portrayed by David Warner in Batman: The Animated Series. Liam Neeson portrayed the character in 2005’s Batman Begins.

28:32 – That was a quote from the first season of True Detective, which was directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Carcosa actually originated in the works of Ambrose Bierce, but was adopted by Robert W. Chambers and has since inspired many other stories in the Lovecraftian style.

28:44 – “A Scandal in Bohemia” was the first Sherlock Holmes short story, and the third appearance of the character. It contains the only original appearance of Irene Adler and was published in The Strand Magazine in 1891.

30:36 – Gloriana was the title character in Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queene (which is still a pretty good read). Spenser designed his beloved queen character to display the touted virtues of Elizabeth I, who took on the name as a nickname later in life.

32:24 – This Poe-inspired poem might be my favorite thing Penny Arcade ever produced.

36:44 – The White Witch is a villain from C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series, appearing in 1950’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and 1955’s The Magician’s Nephew. She also appears in Gaiman’s “The Problem of Susan” from Fragile Things.

36:50 – The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Poe’s only finished novel. Published in 1838, it features a climactic ending as the heroes come face-to-face with an enormous white figure in Antarctic waters.

39:25 – That was a reference to this bit from The Simpsons.

43:07 – Professor James Moriarty is the archnemesis of Sherlock Holmes. He was created by Arthur Conan Doyle and appeared in 1893’s “The Final Problem,” which concludes with his apparently having killed the great detective and fallen to his own death in the process. Holmes would later turn out to be alive in 1903’s “The Adventure of the Empty House.”

45:20 – It seems that seditionary and seditious are both correct.

Welcome to Vertiguys Phase Two! This week, the world is ending, the Devil’s on a mission from God and we’re talking antiheroes, cosmology, and the legacy of Sandman in Mike Carey and Scott Hampton’s 1999 miniseries The Sandman Presents: Lucifer.

Show Notes

1:13 – “Sunrise, Sunset” is a number from the 1964 Bock and Harnick musical Fiddler on the Roof. The film version was seen in 1971.

3:23 – I do not know why Sean was talking about Star Trek: Voyager.

4:25 – Although this speech doesn’t turn up until issue 3, we’ll find out much sooner that, consistent with his portrayal in Sandman’s “A Hope in Hell” and The Kindly Ones, Lucifer has a unique lettering style that identifies his voice.

8:12 – It’s Beatrice.

8:50 – The full quotation is, “The descent to Avernus is easy, for the gates of Dis are open night and day. But to step back and escape into the air, that is the labor.” That makes 2019’s Descent into Avernus possibly the first official Dungeons & Dragons module named for a quotation from Virgil.

13:41 – You might’ve thought that as wishes were being granted, Mr. Begai’s fervent desire to see Paul speak would come up, but it really doesn’t.

14:27 – According to apocryphal Christian and Jewish mythology, Lilith was the first wife of Adam (pictured below in a painting by John Collier). Unlike Eve, Lilith was created on the same day as Adam and refused to be subservient to him. She was expelled from Eden and supposedly mated with demons. The words “lilit,” “lilin,” and “lilim” variously refer to her demonic offspring. Lilith previously appeared (and the Lilim were mentioned) in a story told by Eve in Sandman #40, where she was implied to be an aspect of the Hecate or Kindly Ones.

14:58 – “That’ll Be the Day” is a Buddy Holly song from his 1957 album with The Crickets, The “Chirping” Crickets. Inspired by John Wayne and John Ford’s 1956 film The Searchers, the song expresses doubt that a threat of revenge will ever be made good, much like Lucifer is doing here.

15:22 – That was a reference to The Silence of the Lambs.

17:04 – Lethe is one of the rivers in the Greek underworld of Hades; Lucifer no longer having a steady supply may mean that he formerly collected the healing water directly from the source in Hell.

18:20 – The word “velleity” refers to a wish that a person does not act upon, mainly due to its weak, vague, or fleeting nature.

19:35 – Tifa is, of course, a main character from Final Fantasy VII. The 2005 straight-to-video sequel Advent Children saw some significant redesigns for many of its characters and technologies.

21:27 – Remiel broached the subject of Lucifer’s return to Hell in Sandman #60, part of The Kindly Ones.

23:26 – Sean is alluding to this podcast’s favorite Depeche Mode song, “Enjoy the Silence,” from the 1989 record Violator.

23:52 – Thor, Anubis, and Beelzebub were all previously seen in this continuity during Sandman, particularly Season of Mists.

25:24 – Sympathetic magic is a very old concept that covers magic performed using effigies and poppets, among other things, but I was mainly thinking of it as described by Patrick Rothfuss in The Kingkiller Chronicle.

26:48 – Sean’s doing an imitation of Batman from The Dark Knight.

32:25 – As far as we are aware, Diné is the Navajo word for themselves. As such, we use the words interchangeably here.

37:57 – I’m making reference to a line from Guy Ritchie’s 1998 film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

40:27 – Featherfalling is a concept I got from Dungeons & Dragons, though it may preexist in other fantasy literature and gaming. It refers to the magical ability to fall slowly and lightly, like a feather.

40:46 – Lucifer asked Dream to remove his wings using Mazikeen’s knife in Sandman #23, part of Season of Mists.

42:05 – That was a quote from the 90s-as-fuck Mobile Fighter G Gundam, which we do not recommend revisiting, as it is actually incredibly offensive.

44:30 – According to Wikipedia, I rather misused the term “Hobson’s choice” here. A proper Hobson’s choice is one in which something offered may simply be either accepted or rejected. I was using it to mean a choice in which both outcomes are bad, for which the more correct term is a dilemma. Since a wish to resurrect Paul would ultimately lead to his death anyway, when the Velleity destroys the world, this could also be seen as something of a Morton’s fork, a false choice in which two options lead to the same outcome.

44:56 – Vernita Green is a character from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. The protagonist, The Bride, unintentionally kills Vernita in front of her daughter, then gives the child the choice to seek revenge later in life. The implication is that the child’s desire for revenge is equally valid as The Bride’s. Tarantino has periodically discussed the possibility of making additional parts to Kill Bill that document this quest, including as recently as the summer of 2019.

45:50 – Sean’s making a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

52:02 – Mark Russell’s more serious reimaginings of The Flintstones and Snagglepuss are breathtakingly good comics that we highly recommend. He’s also known for a re-telling of the Bible called God Is Disappointed in You and currently writes Wonder Twins for DC.

59:04 – We’re big fans of Mike Carey’s The Unwritten and The Highest House, both with Peter Gross. We discussed the former as a “Hey, Sean!” segment in this episode. Carey has also had runs on Hellblazer, X-Men, and Red Sonja.

This week, join us for Preacher’s last stand! As Starr, the Lord, and Jesse’s plans collide, Tulip faces off with the Grail, Jesse faces the guns, and Cassidy faces the music.

Show Notes

2:55 – Among his many classics, Paul Williams has collaborated with Daft Punk, wrote most of the songs for The Muppet Movie, and wrote “Rainy Days and Mondays” for The Carpenters.

4:08 – Moral Event Horizon is a TV Trope. It means the unforgivable act that marks a character as beyond redemption.

5:30 – That was a reference to this Homestar Runner video. The joke is that the Denver Nuggets are an NBA team, not any kind of object. We had nuggets on the brain.

5:48 – Here we’re recapping Cassidy recapping Breaker Morant. Coming soon: Cassidy film reviews!

6:13 – Jesse fell out of the plane at the end of the War in the Sun in Preacher #37. How he survived was revealed much later in Preacher #49.

6:59 – Jesse got this story from Sally back in issues #55-57, which we covered here. He already knows she did much more than give Cassidy a knowing look, she told him off at a party in the 80s. Not an 80s party. They just called them parties, then.

8:40 – The episode is called “Why We Fight,” and it features the only vampire Angel ever sired after regaining his soul. The guy ended up with a little soul fragment, small enough that he was still evil, but big enough that he couldn’t enjoy it.

8:45 – After 20 years at Dark Horse, the license to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel transferred to BOOM! Studios earlier this year. Whereas Dark Horse built upon the continuity of the series, BOOM!’s series from writer Jordie Bellaire is taking more of a remix approach.

10:03 – Sean’s mention of Dr. Manhattan is a reference to DC Universe: Rebirth, which began the slow integration of Watchmen characters into the DCU by having Dr. Manhattan kill a guy.

12:06 – For the four people left in the world who don’t know, Chernobyl is a miniseries from HBO and Sky UK that dramatizes the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine while also illustrating the cost of lies.

18:10 – There’s a mention here of “being buggered for drugs,” which ties into a comment Sean makes later in the episode about the possible implied homophobia of having this be Cassidy’s lowest moment.

21:39 – Not to ignore the moral failings of the Indian Wars, but as we’ve mentioned before, George Armstrong Custer was “the goat” in his class at West Point, the lowest-scoring student to successfully graduate.

22:40 – Jesse may be referring to the old wives’ tale that masturbation causes blindness.

33:13 – “Smitheroons” is a malapropism from the famously bad Half-Life fanfic Quarter-Life: Halfway to Destruction.

33:23 – I borrowed that joke from the pilot episode of Firefly.

34:42 – The dog had a name. Her name was Jezebel.

35:01 – It’s a bit tricky to count, but we think Starr shoots at Tulip four times in this scene. That means he neglected to reload after killing Featherstone and Hoover. Their little contribution to the battle ended up saving Tulip’s life.

36:17 – Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer-winning 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, about two retired Texas Rangers, is often considered his best work and one of the all-time great Westerns.

36:30 – Garth Ennis and Jesse Custer are both fans of comedian Bill Hicks, who died of cancer in 1994, not long before this series began. Hicks appeared in issue 31 and was actually the impetus for part of the plot: Jesse recounts having met Hicks a few years before, and Hicks’ commitment to telling the truth inspiring him to tell off the rednecks of Annville, Texas the night before he was possessed by Genesis.

41:04 – That was a reference to Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” from her 1985 album Hounds of Love.

46:23 – It was Jacob, Isaac’s son. Sean’s confusion probably comes from Jacob having his name changed to Israel after wrestling with God.

47:12 – Quick riff here on the famous post-credit scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

47:49 – By “Franco Castillo,” Sean means Frank Castle, the Punisher. “I am home” refers to a moment in the first season of Punisher’s Netflix series in which a vision of his dead wife invites him to “come home,” to join her in the afterlife. He replies, “I am home,” meaning he is where he wants to be – and then he wakes up and kills the criminals who were torturing him.

54:54 – We didn’t make this super explicit in the show, but Jesse doesn’t deserve forgiveness for his betrayal of Tulip either. He broke a solemn vow, took away her agency, and devalued her once again. It’s not only the great love between them, but also his demonstration of a newfound capacity for change that saves their relationship in the end.

1:08:27 – Yup.

This week, the consequences of Constantine’s recent battles come home in three soul-shattering issues, as John receives heartbreaking news and an old enemy stops by for a drink. Plus, Constantine shares a tale of (slightly) happier days in Vertigo Jam #1.

Show Notes

4:37 – We covered Hellblazer #62 here.

5:32 – Indeed, a mausoleum is a building. According to Wikipedia, “gravestone” is the proper term for a slab that covers the entire grave, though “gravestone,” “headstone,” and “tombstone” are often used interchangeably today.

6:00 – The song is “Blue Carolina,” from Alkaline Trio’s 2003 record Good Mourning.

7:20 – The Troubles began in the late 1960s and continued until the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Belfast was considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world throughout the 70s and 80s. Though the peace process had already begun at the time this issue was published in mid-1993, the Downing Street Declaration and Provisional IRA ceasefire were still yet to come.

9:45 – That was a reference to Shaun of the Dead.

12:06 – John’s referring here to Chas’s wife; they’ve been married as long as we’ve known Chas in the series. Although she’s been established as something of a terror who keeps Chas under her thumb, John obviously crossed a line here by insulting her.

15:40 – I was quoting Home Alone.

17:00 – The similarity between the pose in which we find Constantine and the one in which he left Gabriel may be intentional, a more subtle way of revisiting the theme that John deserves his misery for his refusal to abandon the world of magic, and for the misery he has inflicted on others.

17:08 – The word “meths” here refers not to methamphetamine, but methylated spirits, or denatured alcohol. Though ethanol based, denatured spirits have toxic additives intended to discourage human consumption. The implication is that many homeless alcoholics drink them anyway when they become desperate enough.

17:21 – This issue’s title is a bit of a line from “A Rainy Night in Soho,” from the Pogues’ 1986 extended play Poguetry in Motion.

18:03 – We learned a bit more about these fish in Hellblazer #50. Apparently, they’re blind and their movements are often consulted as oracles by the vampires.

18:33 – “Tabs” likely refers to tablets of LSD.

18:44 – I was quoting the 1997 PlayStation masterpiece Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

19:10 – “The Calibraxis possession” was depicted in the “Royal Blood” story arc. Here, as in that arc, the Prince isn’t referred to by name, but anyone passingly familiar with the royals can decipher which one Ennis means.

20:01 – The waiter’s name was Thompson, not Tom, and unlike others to share his character design, he didn’t die, at least not on-panel.

27:32 – Though I had never heard of it, Bell’s Scotch Whisky is apparently not only a real brand, it is the best-selling brand of whiskey in the United Kingdom.

29:46 – This isn’t the first time the term “rough trade” has appeared in this series, nor the first time it’s been used as an apparent pun on an unexpectedly violent end to a scene. In Hellblazer #6, homophobic punks attacked Nergal in a public men’s room, saying, “ ‘ope yer like rough trade.” Before ripping them to shreds, Nergal replied, “Oh yes, please… The rougher the better.”

31:27 – By an “Inniskilling,” the narration means a member of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. We also saw these guys deployed against the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, during Cassidy’s origin story in Preacher. By the way, Kev’s narration in this scene mentions that William Constantine already has a son back home, little Tom – that’d be John’s father, Thomas Constantine, which confirms that Kev hasn’t actually killed any subsequent Constantines.

34:50 – Despite having played through the opening hours of Final Fantasy VII dozens of times, I got this wrong. The first mission, the one with the 10-minute countdown, takes place at Midgar’s Sector 1 Reactor. The party later passes through Sector 4 on their way to strike the Sector 5 Reactor, but the Sector 4 Reactor is never seen.

37:26 – That was meant to be “the King pounces,” although he is the first vampire. Neither the First of the Fallen nor the First Man are in this scene.

37:37 – Nergal gave John a transfusion of demon blood way back in Hellblazer #8.

38:15 – The KOV’s death parallels that of the unfortunate vampire Jimi, who he mentioned earlier – instead of LSD, Kev’s vice that distracted him from eluding the dawn was getting revenge on Constantine (and gloating beforehand).

39:40 – Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition successfully reached the South Pole, but not until more than a month after Roald Amundsen’s team. Furthermore, Scott and the four-man party he took with him to the pole were all killed trying to make it back to base camp. This quote is specifically attributed to Lawrence Oates (pictured below), though an absence of corroborating sources outside of Scott’s diary suggests that Scott may have made it up himself.

43:03 – “Back for the Dead” is a TV Trope. It refers to instances where a previously prominent character is killed off in a subsequent guest appearance after a period of absence.

46:53 – Sean’s referencing A Goofy Movie.

50:20 – The Third of the Fallen first appeared in Hellblazer #45.

56:38 – Sean admits that he may be giving Constantine too much credit by suggesting he had any kind of plan to deal with the King of the Vampires, but he certainly made a decision that if he was going to die, he was going to be impertinent as hell first.

57:00 – Sean’s talking about The Authority: Kev, a one-shot published by WildStorm (by then a DC imprint) in 2002.