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The Middle of Culture is what happens when two siblings with too many opinions and not enough chill dive headfirst into movies, music, video games, and whatever else is rotting our brains this week. It’s part pop culture podcast, part sibling rivalry, and fully unfiltered. Expect passionate arguments, niche references, unsolicited rankings, and the occasional moment of unexpected insight. If you’ve ever wanted to eavesdrop on the kind of argument you’d hear at the family dinner table—only with better audio—this is your show.
Eden
00:00
Do not harm the person you can disarm. Do not kill the person you can harm. Like that is Wonder Woman. Welcome back to the Middle of Culture. I'm one of your hosts, Eden.
Peter
00:25
And I am your other host, Peter.
Eden
00:27
Peter. It's March. Has it been coming in with a like a lion or a lamb for y'all out there in Ideho?
Peter
00:34
You know, it actually has been rainy yesterday and today, so I guess I know y'all have needed some precipitation Yeah, I uh I mean this is better than nothing. I do not want to say that I I am begrudging it at all. It is better than nothing, but Holy shit, we needed snow in the mountains and we got none. It is bad.
Eden
01:01
I saw I saw like a an overall map of the country about like comparing it to previous years, and the entire Intermountain West has had the hottest summer ever on record.
Peter
01:14
Yeah.
Eden
01:15
Meanwhile it's gonna be Yeah, meanwhile the East Coast has had like one of the coldest winters they've had in fifty years.
Peter
01:21
Yeah, with so much snow. And it's You know, it's just gonna smell like smoke for a lot of the summer.
Eden
01:29
Yeah, no, it's been it's super dry out where we are too. We there was actually a fire about a week ago, uh out in just out out just outside of town, just like east of town. Uh and it just it was a brush fire and it caught all those empty fields with just a bunch of chaff in them. And that shit goes like nobody's business when it's as dry as it has been. Uh luckily only one barn was destroyed. Not a single house and not a single person was even injured. But we were driving out there uh because we needed to go out there for something. And the amount of melted vinyl fencing I saw was absurd. It felt like all these vinyl fences felt like they were in a Salvador Dali painting as they were like spooched over And like a misshapen. And I was like, oh, the persistence of time, baby.
Peter
02:17
There you go. There you go.
Eden
02:19
Anyway, how how how are things? What you been up to?
Peter
02:22
Uh been doing okay. Um just i it has been busy and I don't feel like I could really explain why. I mean we had a swim meet a couple of weekends ago. We've got another one coming up in not this weekend but the next. Uh Alyssa has been in so so the play she is in went live Friday. So we went Friday night and saw that. But so She had rehearsals for that and then performances Friday, Saturday. She's music directing another production. And so she had rehearsal for that during the day. And then she's going to that rehearsal. She's probably leaving right now. And has that every night this week and then up until she has her performances again Friday and Saturday for her play. So it's been busy, uh, but you know. Not bad. It's uh we're just getting through. How about you?
Eden
03:19
You know, about the same. You know, we've been very busy. Um But that's okay. It was Cassie's birthday yesterday. So, you know, we we celebrated with it was simple, but you know, it was good. It was really good. Made her breakfast, made her dinner. We went out to lunch. It was nice.
Peter
03:35
Very nice. Yeah. Very nice.
Eden
03:37
Well anyway, what you been uh what you been checking out? Anything fun?
Peter
03:40
So I I haven't been checking out a whole heck of a lot, but I do have a couple things worth mentioning. I will say on the music front, a new album from a UK band that I like a lot, Silosis, came out a couple of weeks ago, I think two Fridays ago. I've been listening to it a lot since then. It's really good. It's I don't really know how I would describe them. They're kind of m melodic death metal, but kind of more on the thrashy side of it, and I guess you could say a little metalcore. It's just they're really good. I like their new album, The New Flesh, a lot. I like all of their albums. Uh but it's been it's it's been good to kind of have something with a little bit more edge, a little bit more energy. And it kind of led this week to me going back and checking out The 2025 album Wrath and Ruin from American thrash metal band Warbringer. I've liked Warbringer since their album 4. uh that came out in 2015. But for some reason when Wrath and Ruin came out last year, it came out about about a year ago, I think it was March 2025, I didn't give it a lot of attention or time. And I don't know why. I couldn't really go in and say, you know, I bounced off it or whatever. I I will say that John Kivell, the lead vocalist, he has his voice is an acquired taste. He's not quite like Zetrosusa of Exodus, but he's he's on that spectrum. And so I don't know if that was what put me off, but anyway. I've been listening to some Warbringer and and they're they're really good. And it's interesting because again, and and we talked about this when we talked about things we liked. I talked about it very briefly in a nice little 15-second thing. But again, one of the things I really like about a lot of thrash metal is while it is one of the more aggressive, again, kind of just seems almost Neanderthal in its presentation. It continues to be one of the more politically and socially conscious subgenres of metal. And and I like that. And th they'd always, I mean, it's exploring uh it's exploring interesting themes and i think that that's kind of fun so very cool um been checking out some some some of that lately and then I will say that I I feel like an absolute base a bitch, but I finally started Dungeon Crawler Carl, the first book. And I I you know, I get why it's so popular. It's just a hell it's just a hell of a lot of fun, I think. It's I'm not I'm not taking it seriously. It's just I you know I'm about halfway through the first book. I got halfway through it yesterday because I started and I'm like, okay, here we go.
Eden
06:38
Just you know Yeah, I know a lot of people who love the hell out of that series. And I heard it and I was like, I mean, I guess. And I but I have not been tempted to read it. So I'm interested to hear how you feel about it as you continue reading it. Sounds like it goes down real smooth at the very least And that is the thing about the whole lit RPG like subgenre. Sucker's good and like really a a lot of light novels are also kind of lit RPG adjacent, if not lit RPG outright. They go down real smooth. It's easy reading.
Peter
07:12
Yeah. It I will say it is very much kind of what I needed a couple weeks ago. I know we talked about after finishing the dark forest. uh the second book in the three body problem I I just needed something that was lighter. I needed something that would just do just that, just go down real, real smooth, real easy. And definitely so far it seems to be that um I I it's interesting, I will say, because I've I've spent a little bit of time reading it. But I've actually mostly listened to the audiobook and it's one of those where you almost go, oh, you should listen to it. Oh yeah. Uh The the guy who reads it does a phenomenal job with the voice acting. He does all of the voices, including Princess Donut, the sentient cat that goes into the dungeon with Carl. And and he just he does a great job. Like there are times where like I had to look it up because I know people had said, oh yeah, it's all just this one guy. And I had to go and verify that information because I'm like, no, no. Uh but no, he do he does a great job. So it's very fun to listen to because he does such a good job with the different voices. And uh I I am enjoying that. And that's about all I've really been checking out because I've been spending my time uh going down a little bit of a rabbit hole. So you and I talked uh we talked a couple couple weeks ago when we did our tier list. I shared with you my experience making the tier list website. Sure. And once I started last kind of summer, I started doing the the imperfect practice blog slash newsletter in the YouTube channel. And between that and between the podcasts and between working on a novel, I found I had a lot of kind of creative balls that I was trying to keep in the air. And and so I started going in and looking at are there other tools, you know, I've been using Omnifocus as my task manager for a long time, but I didn't feel like it was very well suited to managing these different creative pursuits. So I started looking at other things. I looked at Todoist because it does have a a Kanban view that you can turn on and and use. But there were some issues that I didn't love with that. I I've used Trello and it's you know, we I mean that's all it is. Trello is a Kanban board. And so I used Trello and I've played around with that a little bit. Um there was another one called, I don't know if it was called like Fizzy or something. I don't know. I think it was called Fizzy. Uh it's from the people who make hay email. And it was a free thing that they're doing. And I played around with that. And it's kind of a Kanban board, but viewed a little different. That wasn't working. And ever since last summer, I've had in my head, I'm like, you know what I want? I want a dashboard. And I want this dashboard to have a calendar. And then I want it to just have like these areas that are are my different creative things. So the blog slash newsletter, the YouTube stuff, podcasts, and a few other things. And I want to be able to I want to put things in those buckets and then I want to be able to move them and put them on a calendar and move them around and see them. And Notion kind of would do this and the calendar plug-in for Obsidian would kind of do this, but it wasn't the same in that I couldn't see all of my things over on one side. And then s move them around easily in pieces on a calendar. And so I thought to myself, after trying all these different tools, I thought, hmm, I wonder. So I went ahead, I installed Cloud Code in the terminal, and I started getting geeky and I created a a folder on my desk. I mean, and you know, created a coding projects folder on my hard drive. And I pointed, I opened the terminal in that folder and I started running cloud code. And I said, here's what I want. And it said, okay. And it futzed around a little bit and then it spit out something. And I tried that and I started doing this just all on my machine. You know, it was all local on on my hard drive. And I opened it and I said, well, you know, this isn't quite what I want. Let's do this. Okay. Then I just kept going and refining it. And I got to a point where I had on my hard drive an HTML file so I could open it in Chrome that gave me kind of what I wanted. And I was like, this is cool. Then I thought to myself, but what if I don't just want to use it on my Mac Mini So I went to again Cloud Code and I said, hey, what if we wanted to run this somewhere else? And it was like, well, you could use Vercel. You could build a progressive web app. So I went in. I I ended up doing all that. Like, so now I can say I have a GitHub page with multiple repos And so I set up my GitHub account, I committing and pushing all that up to GitHub. Then from there I connected to this thing called Vercell. Vercell builds web apps. It just looks at my GitHub repo and uses that and says, yeah, okay, we see that this should be a web app. We're going to make it a progressive web app that you can install on anything. Did that and then I was like, well, but I want to sync this. And it was like, all right, we can use this thing called Superbase. Superbase will do this back-end syncing for the a little small amount of data I'm syncing, it'll do this all for free. So I go in and I get that all set up. And it takes a lot of iteration to find the little bugs and be like, nope, this isn't working. And then it goes and it looks in it. But I ended up with I ended up with a dashboard that is exactly what I wanted. And then yesterday I spent a little time after I'd used it for a week or so. I said, okay. Here's a few refinements I want to make. Let's do this. Let's add some color here. Let's desaturate here to give us a visual cue. Let's add in something here. Let's do this. And it just then it just works. And I have this creative dashboard app that syncs. I open it on my iPad, it's there. I open it up on the on whatever. I can open it in the web. I can open up the progressive web app on my desktop. And it just works. It does exactly what I want it to do. Um It's kind of freaking cool. So I had a lot of fun with that. Then are you familiar with the app album art downloader on Windows? No. It is an old app. It's on SourceForge, is where you get it from. It's not, it is not really maintained. It is just you open it. And you put in the artist name and the album name, and then it goes and it looks at all these different sites and tries to pull that, and then you can see the resolution. You click it, you can download it. It's great and it's the most reliable place to just get high resolution, so at least a thousand by a thousand pixels or higher. album art that I can use either to tag, you know, put in the tags of files, or honestly, more often if I'm writing about it, I want to have a nice version of the album art that I can put in there. But guess what doesn't exist on Mac? Any fucking program like that Nothing. There's other things you can do where it's like, oh, well, but you can get the album art in MP3 tag, or you can use music brains, or you can do all this stuff. And I'm like, But that's not what I want. I want to be able to just open a thing, type in artist, album name, and boom, have a bunch of things. And So what I've been doing for a long time, because I do almost all of my writing on the Mac, it's just better for me. It works better. I like it. Most of the apps I use are there. But all of a sudden then I have to Wake up the Windows PC, launch album art downloader, download it, but now I have that file on my PC's hard drive, so then I have to use the local network and transfer it over to the Mac or it's It's just a little point of friction. So yesterday morning, maybe it was Saturday. Anyway, I went to Cloud Code again, created a new folder, opened the terminal, and I said, hey, let's make this. And it went through and it spit something out. And we built it this time an Electron instead of a progressive web app. But we made an Electron app. And then I added a few things and I went in and I said. What about these sources? And it looked at them and it said, you know, these ones will be easy. These ones would be really, really tough. I said, that's fine. I just need a couple sources to make sure I'm pulling enough. But you know, by the end of the morning was up. I now have an app I called Cover Hunter that I just open it and I type in the artist name and the album. and then it will go search iTunes, LastFM, Amazon Music Brains, Kobus, Deezer, and Discogs. And it will spit these out and it'll show me where it's from and it'll show me the resolution. And I click on it and it just downloads it and uh it's kind of fascinating. To have this little app that does exactly what I want. And it took me like three hours to bang it all out. So I have been doing a fair amount of playing with that kind of stuff instead of doing other things.
Eden
16:39
Yeah, that sounds like a lot.
Peter
16:42
You know, it's interesting. It's been kind of empowering and kind of fun, but uh but definitely it's one of these things I was talking to somebody at work about it and I could just see this poor guy's eyes glazing over and I thought, oh, I need to stop now. So So I did. But wha what about you? What you been up to? No, you hadn't been feeling well for a few days.
Eden
17:03
No there See, there's a difference between me and your coworker though. You were saying all that thing stuff and my eyes weren't glazing over my eyes were bugging out a little because I was like On no planet do I give a generative LLM terminal access to my PC.
Peter
17:18
Yeah, well, the nice thing is, is it literally can all it is It is annoying to a degree that you do very much you're having to approve so many different things. And it asks all the time before you approve stuff. Well, that's good at least. Because I've heard that.
Eden
17:38
I've read some of these horror stories about people putting open claw on their devices, and I was like, you played yourself, you idiots.
Peter
17:45
Oh yeah. I mean open claw is nuts. Bonkers. Yes. The reason I felt comfortable doing that with Claude Code is just because So many people have been using it without any security issues that have been reported. And and I listened to a lot of you know, tech podcasts again and and a lot of people who have been very heavily using it and have had zero issues. So that's where I was like, okay, I'm comfortable trying this. Again, when you go in, you open it like So I'll go, I'll open that folder in Finder on the Mac, and then I'll just basically right-click in that folder and say, open a terminal here. So it opens a terminal terminal that is only had that only has access to what's in that folder. And then I'll run cloud code from there. And so it's kind of it's, I mean, I'm sh again, there are times when I'm having to approve it doing stuff outside of there, and I've had to install the GitHub CLI command line interface so that it can commit and it can push uh these files up to my GitHub account and all that stuff. But Again, I felt comfortable doing this one because I know that so many people have been using it and there have been no reports that I am aware of of things going haywire with Claude Code in particular.
Eden
19:06
The only last thing that I'll say is why does Claude's logo look like a little butthole?
Peter
19:12
Why do they all look like a butthole?
Eden
19:15
Every every generative LLM looks like a butthole. What are they doing? It's like you're trying to look like an anus. It's like you're trying to play into my own opinions about these things, guys. What are you doing? Why does every single one of them look like an asshole?
Peter
19:31
They do. They totally do. I don't know why, but they absolutely do. I don't get it.
Eden
19:37
Anyway. Well, sounds like you've been up to a lot of uh a a lot of of generating.
Peter
19:43
Yes. Cool. And and again, it's It has been fun for me because there's the these are tools that I want to do a fairly simple thing, but because they are, it is a small, simple thing that it's doing. It's not worth anybody building this specific thing in a in an app that they're gonna try and charge money for or whatever. So it's been kind of fun.
Eden
20:09
Cool. Well, um, I don't even know what I've been up to. Like I said, I've been sick. So I haven't been thinking a lot about things. Um, do you do you want to see my piles of shame? I do. So uh this is I know this is a a uh m audio medium, but my uh so we have Finally gotten our hands on direct order from a bunch of the publishers that we had not been able to get at from the at the comic shop for a while.
Peter
20:38
Okay.
Eden
20:39
Look at look at all this. What are we doing here? That's a lot of books. That's a lot of stuff I gotta read. So I've been working my way to it.
Peter
20:50
Get to read.
Eden
20:50
Yes. I I've been working my way through a bunch of stuff. You know, I got caught up on my girlfriend's not here today. I got caught up on I Wanna Love You Till Your Dying Day. I got caught up on Kase-san and dot dot dot So I've been reading a lot, but like nothing's really worth mentioning in that way. Um I will say I've been watching a fair amount of movies because folks have been getting together to watch movies. So uh coming up this week, we have a a local like uh indie cinema here in town, film scene, and every Wednesday night they do late shift at the grind house. So they show some schlocky movie and have like, you know, trailers and short films and giveaways and all that sort of fun stuff. I don't go very often because the show doesn't start till 10, which means the actual the actual movie doesn't start till 10. 45 or 11, which means you aren't getting home till like 1 a. m. And I'm old as shit. So I'm not the kind of I'm old as shit and need to work the next morning at 7. 30. So I'm not often going to the grindhouse. But I usually go three or four times a year when they're playing something I'm really interested in. So a few weeks ago, a whole bunch of us went together to go see The Thing, because that is one of the great movies. Um, and while we were there, we saw that coming up this week, March 4th. They are playing the nineteen eighties Red Sonya film. And I've never seen a red Sonya film, but I have seen the Conan films, and this is basically like what if a Conan film. We just don't call him Conan this time because the rights are weird, so we'll call him Shmo ma'am, or whatever stupid name they give Arnold, but it's not Conan because they can't. But he's just he's just Conan. But so I'm sitting there next to my friend John, and the fun thing about watching movies with John Is he has seen so few things. That's one we were excited to take him to the thing because he had never seen the thing. And so we got to be there with him as he saw the thing for the first time. Which like seeing that for the first time's got a hit because that movie rules. Um, but anyway, uh he was like, well, I've never I've never seen Red Sony, I've never even heard of Red Sony. Sonya. And I was like, oh, it's great. It's, I mean, just I've heard it's good. I haven't seen it. I've heard it's a lesser good than the Conan movies. He's like, well, I haven't seen the Conan movies either. And I was like, John, you've never seen Conan the Barbarian? And he said, no. Sounds like you gotta fix that. So I did fix it. I hosted Movie Night last two weekends ago. And we did a double feature of Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. You know what movies are well, you know what one movie is absolutely incredible and one is pretty okay? Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. It was delightful. It was very funny. It was the first time Cassie had ever seen it. And also John's wife Emily came and stayed for Conan the Barbarian. She did not stay for The Destroyer. Because even though I was I was hosting, so we started earlier than movie night often starts with my friends. Sure. I was like, come over at six. We'll get the movie started at seven at the latest. Because I need you all out of my house by 11. I'm going to bed. Anyway, his wife Emily came for the first film. And then we were hanging out with them the next day. I well, I woke up the next morning. Cassie stayed awake for Conan the Barbarian. Then she went to bed while the rest of us watched The Destroyer. So the next morning she wakes up and I'm like, hey, how you doing? What'd you think of the movie? And she was like, I didn't like that movie very much. And I was like, well, I guess we need to have a divorce now. Because That's like a top ten best movies. What are we talking about here? No, it was fine. We we we s we survived this bumpy bumpy thing in our marriage. No, just kidding. Uh but anyway, then we saw John and Emily later that day and Emily was like, I hated that movie. And Cassie was like, see? See? Maybe it's just not for women. And I was and then our friend Sarah was there, and our friend Sarah was like No, that's one of my top three favorite movies of all time. You shut the fuck up right now. And I I was like, thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. And then Emma was like, no, it's like one of the great movies. And I was like, okay, you just, y'all don't have a schlocky, a schlocky enough heart. But anyway, it was fun. I love Conan. I'm excited to go see Red Sonya for the first time. I bet it's not very good, but you know, it'll be great. You go see it with friends at 11 p. m. It's gonna be fun. Um and then this last then this last weekend, my friend Jake hosted movie night. And Jake is an eclectic person and has very eclectic tastes in things. So he showed us two movies that I had never heard of, and I do not recommend anyone uh seek out to watch because they were not very good, but we had a delightful time watching them. Um first we watched, I believe it was Indonesian, Malaysian, one of those two, uh, somewhere in Southeast Asia called the Devil's Sword. And it was incomprehensible.
Peter
25:42
I have no idea what happened in that movie. Okay.
Eden
25:44
There was an evil uh crocodile goddess who fucked on the spinning fiery cuck bed. I don't know. These were the jokes we were making. No one could make sense of what this movie was. It was bad. Um, and then the second one we watched was The Boxer's Omen, which equally incomprehensible, was about this boxer who Like got cursed by a devil and had to be a monk for a while and like was able to then defeat the evil wizard as a monk. But then as he went home, he immediately fucked his girlfriend as soon as he walked in the door because she had just conveniently was in the shower when he got home from his trip to Thailand to become a monk for three months. So then he fucked his girlfriend and then he wasn't pure anymore. So then the demons came back. And the bad demons like the like the the the sub w wizards like did the most gross thing I've one of the grossest things I've ever seen in a movie where one of them would chew stuff and then spit it out and pass it to the next one and then that one would put it in his mouth and then put other stuff in his mouth, chew it and then spit it out and then pass it to the third guy. And this included things such as intestines, uh durian, uh banana peel, not the banana, the peel. It was the most disgusting thing. And then they use that to bring a bring an evil lady witch back from the dead, uh, because they incubated her inside of a dead crocodile. There's a real theme of crocodiles.
Peter
27:15
I was gonna say I'm sensing a strong crocodile.
Eden
27:18
And meanwhile the boxer going on. The boxer had to go back to the to the uh monks and was like, oh, I'm being attacked by the bad guys again. You know, the evil spirits are attacking me. And they're like, well, did you stick with the tenants? And he was like, yes. And then the candle blows out and they were like, No, you fucked, didn't you? And he was like, Yeah, I fucked my girlfriend. And they were like, Well then you have to learn tantric Buddhism Hide thee to Nepal! Uh it was it was uh incomprehensible. At the end, like another monk's spirit comes out of a Buddha statue. and attacks the lady who then gives birth to the three wizard uh wannabes who then explode and turn into like little Uh caterpillars with tentacle eye stocks that are shooting lasers at the Buddha statues. So the Buddha statue is shooting lasers back I'm not recommending it, but my God, what a show. What a show. Anyway.
Peter
28:15
It sounds like you've been on a journey.
Eden
28:18
I was on a journey in that one. Anyway, so let's move on to the main event for this week. Um for this episode, I got Peter to read the first two major arcs of Absolute Wonder Woman. Which we'll talk a little bit about the history of and what the absolute universe is and stuff, because I think it's important to situate those things. But before we do, I would love to get your impressions, Peter. A Familiarity with Wonder Woman as a property, as a character. B. What did you think of this reimagining of Wonder Woman?
Peter
28:56
Familiarity of the property. Like all young men of my age, I was madly in love with Linda Carter. Hell yes. and and that version of Wonder Woman. And as I think we have discussed on the uh on the podcast before I liked the first two-thirds to maybe three-fourths of the Wonder Woman movie with Gal Gadot. I did not like the end. I thought that it just fell apart at the end and turned into just the same old drek that we'd been getting. I thought that she was Poorly represented in the other joint movies. And I thought that Wonder Woman 84 was absolute garbage. Yeah. And that is about my experience with Wonder Woman. I don't really have many other touch points. I don't believe I've ever read a Wonder Woman Comic. I don't believe that I have any other experience with Wonder Woman aside from those things. And then again, a I guess a little bit of like the you know, the Justice League cartoons and stuff where which I I vaguely remember, but I but that is it. That is that is my Overall, pretty much experience with I guess I take that back. I guess I did play both Injustice and Injustice 2 and Wonder Woman figures in there.
Eden
30:34
Dreadful. Dreadful uh r adaptation of a character in a dreadful game.
Peter
30:41
Yes, well I I agree with the dreadful part. Um So that is it. That is my experience with Wonder Woman. And I will admit that I have justly or unjustly avoided. mm a lot of Wonder Woman stuff because there always just felt something a little off to me. I couldn't quite tell what it was, but there were there were a lot of the the things that I had exposure to felt a little off.
Eden
31:10
Okay. And so then how did you uh how'd you feel about these first fourteen issues of uh Absolute Wonder Woman that I had you read
Peter
31:17
I initially felt a little lost. Okay. And once I got into this story, I am like chomping at the bit, wondering when we're gonna get more and I can read some more because I Thought they were fan fucking tastic.
Eden
31:35
Yeah, this is a good this is a good ass comic book It is either the best or the second best book that DC is publishing right now in my humble IMO. The only book that even gives it a run for its money is Absolute Martian Manhunter. Um and nah it's better than everything else the D C's been publishing. Um it's very, very good I mentioned it on our things episode because I like it so much. I think it is my favorite comic that DC's publishing right now And it is a great encapsulation of what I like about Wonder Woman, while, as you said, missing out on a lot of the cruft, a lot of the messy or weird or or things that I just don't like as much about the Wonder Woman mythos, about the Wonder Woman interpretation. A lot of the side characters are reimagined, I think, a little bit better here. Um And fundamentally, what I like about it is I feel like Kelly Thompson, who is the writer of this book, understands What the best type of Wonder Woman could be, like the best version of this character, and puts her on the page. Even though she is in a situation. That is much rougher, much different, much bleaker than what we usually see in the regular Degular Marv or DC universe. She still has the most heart, the most compassion, the most love. Because that is when when Wonder Woman is done right, that is the essence of it. And that, for example, is what Injustice gets wrong. She is like a big macaroni murder lady in that movie or in that game. She is just like there to be big, tough, and evil. Because she's in love with evil Superman and it sucks. Uh, that misses out on the character entirely. Whenever they make her this like brutal warrior, it misses the character. Because, like, to me. Like Wonder the essence of Wonder Woman is do not disarm who you can, you know. Have dialogue with. Do not harm the person you can disarm. Do not kill the person you can harm. Like that is Wonder Woman. And that is what we see all through this, where she is constantly trying to find a way to do the kindest thing possible. And then when she can't, the Buster Sword comes out and she does what needs to happen.
Peter
34:07
Yeah.
Eden
34:07
But, you know, she avoids that until she can't avoid that. And I think it's really great. So I want to give a little bit of uh backstory to both you, as it sounds like you'll probably be reading more of this, and I recommend that you do. I think three issues have come out since uh what we've finished. uh I think seventeen are out so far, as well as the annual, which was very good as well. Um and I really recommend if you liked these, check out some of the other absolute books, 'cause they're really, really mostly quite good. But so the idea of the absolute universe. is something stupid happens and dark side, you know, mini skirt. Craggy face, Jack Kirby at the height of his powers, and then everyone who draws him after Jack Kirby doesn't understand that you need to put this man in a mini skirt. Uh that is Darkseid to me, dang it. He needs to be in the mini skirt, god damn it. Uh anyway, uh Darkseid conspires to get himself killed in the regular Degular DC universe. Through a magical ceremony that lets him go to another universe and infect it to its core with his evil Omega Dark Side powers. And so that is why in the absolute universe you see very different takes on the heroes who you are used to seeing. You know, for example, the absolute Batman, if you've seen Absolute Batman, you would know it because he's the size of a Mac truck and Built like built like a a power lifter. He's I think he's 6'9, 420 pounds, I think is the exact thing that they say. So like, no, legitimately built like a Mac truck. Um, but importantly, he is not the rich orphan child of of billionaires. His dad is a teacher And his mom is a civil servant. And his dad gets killed at a school trip to the zoo by a bad guy. And so this is working class Batman. He's still got all the brains, he's still got all the talent, but this is not a rich guy. This is a guy who is making do with what he's got. And again, built like a Mac truck. Uh or this version of Superman is not a Superman who got put into a rocket as a baby and then was raised by the Kents. He got put into a rocket as a teen and lived on Krypton with his parents that whole time. And so has a lot more like attachment problems and arrives basically as an adult, like as a young adult on Earth. And so spends very limited time with the Kents and doesn't have that like uh that level of uh uh of like love and and kindness that is instilled in him by the Kents, which we know we talked about when we saw the spot the Superman movie. Like his parents made him who he was and the Kents are his parents. This Superman doesn't have that stuff. So he is just way more isolated, way more lonely, but is also explicitly and specifically fighting For the little guy. He is working with workers who are being mistreated, like going back to the 40s roots of Superman, who was like stopping bosses trying to stop unionization and stuff like that. Um it's really cool. Um and Wonder Woman is, I think, the pinnacle of that because she is still Wonder Woman. This is a Wonder Woman who was not raised on Thymuskira, among the other Amazons. She was raised in hell by the demigod Circe, the witch Circe. And so that puts her in a very different situation than we've ever seen a Wonder Woman before. Um, I think I want to like talk really quickly about what kind of happens here. So I'm gonna spoiler alert if you haven't read these and you want to, I really recommend that you do. It does kind of throw you into the deep end, but I think they're really incredible. Uh I think I I will just say I think Hayden Sherman, the main artist, is doing some of the best work that's ever been done with Wonder Woman in terms of presenting her physicality on the page, giving her a distinctive look. and making sure that that look is kind of maintained. And all of the side artists also do really good work. But most importantly, Kelly Thompson, the writer. Never written a bad comic, as far as I can tell. She is truly like when I hear Kelly Thompson is gonna be on a book, I think to myself, well, that's gonna be, at the very least, extremely good. Because I've never read a bad Kelly Thompson book. Uh and so when I heard that she was going to be on this book, I was very excited and it has not disappointed. But uh yeah, I'm gonna do a quick uh quick recap of what happens in these first two arcs. So uh the infant Diana is left by Apollo with the witch Circe in hell. Uh Circe's like, okay, I'm just gonna put this kid down and let it die. I mean, there's all sorts of e like Powerful monsters and stuff. And so she puts the baby down. And then the snake comes up and tries to bite Diana, and Diana socks that snake into the next zip code. And Cersei's like, oh. May maybe this is going to be a little more complicated than that. And so decides to raise her. And that is how this Diana becomes who she is. She is raised by the goddess Circe. who who in the comics is often one of her biggest arch nemesises, arch nemeses. And here is her mother figure and teaches her to do magic, teaches her how to survive in hell. Um, and she lives there until one day she goes to the regular world because hellish creatures start appearing right outside of Gateway City. First comes the Harbingers, which are, you know, these weird dinosaur looking things. He she fights them on Pegasus, uh the you know, the Pegasus, except he's a bone creature horse. He looks heavy metal as hell.
Peter
40:16
Oh he does. He's metal AF.
Eden
40:18
Yeah. Is you know, drives away the Harbingers and then the Tetracide appears, which is this huge creature that causes everyone through the sound that it makes to go crazy and feed themselves into its maw. Um she uses her magic powers to deafen the entire city long enough for her to try to go fight the Tetracide Um, which she is able to defeat the Tetracide eventually through various and sundry magical means. Um however, at the end of this, after having defeated the Tetracide, she is dragged back down to hell by the god Hades Who's pissed off at her for having left? Uh, and then we find out about why she left and how she'll be able to leave again. And it turns out that uh she is able to defeat Hades monster. And then Hades is like, okay, pick a door. Behind one door lies certain death. Behind one door lies leaving. And you can never come back and see your mother again. And Circe gestures to her which door she should go through to be safe. Yep. But see the goddesses. The goddesses are all on Diana's side, so she's been hanging out with Persephone, who has given her a single pomegranate seed Which means for one month a year, she is contractually bound to come back down to hell and see her mother. Which is great. Which is just great as hell. But anyway, she saves her mom. She goes back to Earth. The second arc is basically her trying to find more about the Amazons. And she finds out from this evil go gas lady named Dr. Poison that uh there is an Amazon hidden in a in a uh labyrinth. She enters the labyrinth, is able to save a bunch of people there. um kind of jumping quick through this stuff. But she is able to reunite with Ayo, who is one of the Amazons, who is then returned home by leaving the uh the Uh labyrinth because she is not allowed to step foot outside of Thymuschira, but that means she is able to report to Hippolyta, Diana's mother. Diana is alive. And so all of the Amazons now know we're trapped here, but Diana's out there and she's alive. Um and then it la the last two issues are basically There's this kind of weird magical being that has cr been created by Diana's presence in the world. Um, and so she goes down to meet Gaia, you know, the goddess of the whole world. And says, and Gaia explains, well, this is here because you've made an imbalance in the world. And she just says, babe, check this place out. It's already imbalanced. And Gaia goes, Damn! This dark this this dark side motherfucker really fucked this place up, huh? I got I got this magic creature. You go do your good work, lady And just sends Diana on her way. It's delightful. Yep. Um, and sends her as as we saw at the very end of episode or of issue fourteen. Suddenly in Gotham, Hecate or Hecate's symbol appears, and she's like, well, I guess I gotta go to Gotham, which sets you up for issue 15, which you haven't read yet. I think it's delightful. Like you said, it really throws you in in the deep end, but really explains itself quite well by the end of that first start. Like really sets things up and you understand who Diana is, why she is the way she is, who Cersei is, who you know uh Steve Trevor is. You meet Eta Candy and her sister Gia. You meet Barbara Minerva. All these characters who we're gonna see more of. There's some real heavy metal shit. Like smearing blood on her face and losing her arm and then gaining her arm back and all this sorts of cool stuff. I don't know. Tell me tell me your thoughts on it
Peter
44:08
Don't forget, in between losing her arm and gaining her arm back, don't forget robot arm.
Eden
44:13
Cool robot arm forged by Hephaestus himself.
Peter
44:16
Exactly.
Eden
44:17
That's cool.
Peter
44:18
Cool robot arm.
Eden
44:19
That's cool. Anyway, what did you think about this? You said you liked it. Tell me about what you liked and what you thought about it.
Peter
44:25
So Uh here's the first thing I'm gonna say, and I hope this doesn't come back and bite me in the ass going forward. Uh I liked that I liked that there weren't any other DC superheroes really that we were running into. I liked that it very much focused on on Diana and her story, and we weren't we weren't mixing things up with others right now because it allowed me. to develop that understanding of who she is. Yeah. And and her her inherent goodness. And it does a lot of Getting her in a situation, and now we're gonna flash back to basically something that happened on the island in hell with Circe that is then going to inform why she's going to do what she's now going to do to face whatever that situation is. And I thought that that was a neat storytelling tool It's not unique in that, I mean, we see flashbacks all the time in all sorts of literature. But I thought it was worked very it was used very effectively in that We start out there, we get a feeling for who she is to a degree, but then it does a lot of we're gonna put her in a situation, it's gonna be pretty fucked. And she's gonna get out of it. You know she's gonna get out of it because you got however many more issues to r to read in front of you. Because she's Wonder Woman. But it I liked that storytelling technique and I thought it was wor it was used very, very effectively to then go back to an experience on the island. And then here is why she is, we see now, this is why she is going to do what now we are going to go and see her do. This is why she is going to approach this problem in this way. And I thought that it was done very elegantly. Flashbacks can feel like cheating when not used well. Sure. And I think that these were flashbacks that were used exquisitely effectively Um I do feel like you know the relationship between Diana and and Steve in this version There's more to it than I think what we've seen, but it gives us enough that it feels believable. It feels it doesn't feel cheap. It feels like they did enough work that it's earned to some degree. We don't really get You know, here's the nice thing. It's not weird and rapey like in Wonder Woman 84. No, you're not wrong. You know. You know, just gonna say. Um, but I think that I I liked that. I did like it pulling in these other people. And these characters who, you know, I don't really know them. Maybe we know them from other versions of other universes. And that didn't matter. That was a thing I liked. I didn't I didn't need to know. I could see something and be like, hmm, I bet this is somebody who other people who know Wonder Woman are like, ah, I like this, but For me, they felt like, hey, look, you know, these are people, Steve's like, hey, you know what? We need some help. Here's somebody who's gonna help us. Yeah. And uh, and so I liked that. Getting back to your earlier comment of she's not going to do X if Y'll solve it and on and on and on. I think you really see that in the labyrinth. Yeah. And there's some fun little rug pulls there where, again, we're in kind of spoiler territory. If you haven't read this. You should. Uh if you're not going to, fine, listen on. Or honestly, I don't know. Maybe in my old age, I go, I don't really care that much about spoilers because it's more the process of enjoying the thing rather than the ooh, what the heck? So You know, here we go. Yeah, I feel the same way. She's in the labyrinth and the first thing we you know, one of the first things we run into is a minotaur Oh crap, we're gonna fight a Minotaur. Oh no, never mind. She's gonna help the Minotaur who's trying to help a siren.
Eden
48:31
Yeah. So all she does is she's like, well, uh, I'm gonna use one of my she has three lassos this time, don't worry about it. She's like, I'm gonna use one of my lassos and uh just try to suss this guy out. And so she just touches him with it and realizes, well, we're not gonna fight. We're fighting these guys because you are the noble one here.
Peter
48:49
Let's go fight some manfish. Yep. And and ultimately you get to, and now I'm blanking on her name. It was right there on the tip of my tongue, but she's from Atlantis. She's kind of this queen of the fish people, the fishman Clea. There we go. Thank you. in the underworld and a whole big thing and there's fighty fighty punchy punchy there's Poseidon's Trident there's a basically I could kill you But no, she's like, hey, yo dog, I punched a hole through the labyrinth. You can get to the Pacific Ocean. GTFO, go home. And don't fuck around again or I'll be back. But giving you a chance. Exactly. And so you see a lot of that. You see a lot of that in this version of Wonder Woman of her Expecting better from the people she runs into than they have given her a reason to, but holding them, putting them to that line and saying, I'm giving you a chance, but no, I can absolutely fuck you if you mess up this chance. And I think that's a really cool way to portray her.
Eden
50:03
I feel like they did a really good job of setting that up in both both uh issues six and seven have two little one-page comics at the end of each of them called Lil Diana. By Dustin Nguyen doing the art, who is this you know great uh watercolorist. And in all of those pages, basically it is little little kid Diana. Just bopping monsters in hell into line. And, you know, they try to eat one of the other ones and she like bops them on the nose and says, uh You gotta act good. We're all friends here. And that is how she sees all of these weird creatures in hell. They are her friends. And she makes friends with them and makes sure they get along with each other. Again, like you said, extending to them the grace that no one else would extend to them because these are creatures in hell. And she's like, no, these are my friends who come and live in my house with me. Sorry, mom. Here's a new little friend. And then he she and then Cersei opens the door and the whole house is just filled with little friends. And just like just guileless in a way that you would not expect someone who had gone through what she has gone through to be like. But that is it her that is Wonder Woman at her best. And that is what Kelly Thompson sees as the nucleus of this character. is that she has that kindness and guilelessness in her, no matter what, even if she was raised in hell.
Peter
51:24
Yeah. Yeah, no, like I say, a lot about it I liked. I will say it was a little weird to me. We we have two artist changes in in in these series. It's like we go through most of volume one and then boom, we get a little artist change. And the same thing in volume two. And it's just it's It was weird for me to all of a sudden be like, oh, this looks different. I liked it. It was interesting to see the different styles, but uh again unique for me in that I had purchased these as kind of the volume one, volume two, all collected together, you know, a couple hundred pages in each one or so. Um so that was a little different, but but I liked the art throughout, even when it made those changes. Yeah.
Eden
52:11
I think that they've put a really talented art team together. Um, again, I think Hayden Sherman, who is the main artist on the book and like the character designer, has given us an all-timer look for Wonder Woman. That evokes evokes what we're used to seeing from her, especially more recently, with like the big W kind of in metal across her chest and all that sort of stuff, but also feels like legitimately like armor in a way that often it feels like she's wearing a leather boustier. Uh yeah. This feels like And it looks a lot more heavy metal. Her cool horn, a horned uh helmet is one of my favorite features of her. Like she looks She looks like she's from hell, dog. Because she is.
Peter
52:53
Yeah.
Eden
52:53
Um and again, it has to be mentioned how cool her arm is. Her left her right arm is covered in these big red tattoos. And you're like, oh, that's a really cool, striking feature. And then in in in issue three The tattooed arm gets wrapped up by the Tetracide, and so she goes, Nope, and her arm dissolves. And it turns out that's a magic arm. Because when she met Steve Trevor, this was not Steve Trevor crashing his airplane and and washing up on the shores of Thymuskira. For some reason, which has not been explained to us yet. Steve Trevor was in hell. Even though he was still alive. He was a living person. He was not dead, but he was sent to hell. And Diana met him there and could not figure out. She was like, is this a test? Is this a gift? Like, why have why has this man come here? And she is convinced that this was a gift basically from the gods to her, the goddesses to her. But then she realizes, no, I've got to help him get home. This was a test. And what it took to get him home was a great sacrifice by a great warrior. So she cut off her own fucking arm. to use as the catalyst for the spell to get him home. And so then, you know, it helps that she's got the most powerful magician of all time for a mom. They do some magic and magic her a new arm. But that means she could lose it for a bit and then put on a cool robot arm from Hephaestus until she could use magic to get her arm back because she was gonna need to be at full strength And so that design choice is so great. Like when she's walking around with just the stump and then out of her magic bag pulls out the robot arm and pops it on, and then it's just going around doing things like normal.
Peter
54:42
It's cool. It's a really great design. It is. It is very cool looking. And and like you said, it feels instantly recognizable as Wonder Woman, but not the I don't know. Like you said, just that's one of my issues with so many past and and some of these may be very old. Again, I haven't followed Wonder Woman comics in a long time. But so many of past costumes, and this isn't just Wonder Woman. I mean, this is across a lot of comics, but you just are kind of like, really? I mean, come on.
Eden
55:15
Yeah.
Peter
55:16
Come on.
Eden
55:16
Yeah. Sometimes it leans a little too much into the TNA. And that's not how's she supposed to be fighting in that, Doc?
Peter
55:22
No, and and that's the thing that I really like, is they understood the assignment. They did better.
Eden
55:30
They absolutely did. And uh, you know, it helps that she's like 6'7. It's so funny when she lands on the ground in that first issue and she's like, soldier are you the one in charge? And he goes, what And she goes, that's a no. And she is fully one head taller than that man because she is enormous Which is great. I love that. It is. I you know It is. I love that she has such a distinct it has such distinctive features. Like they've given her a really strong aquiline nose. that all of the artists are able to maintain, which I think is really important. And is honestly one of my biggest complaints with the book is that this is outside of the book itself. DC does a lot of variant covers for things. In a lot of the variant covers, you look at it and you were like, why's she a titted up and where's her aquiline nose? That ain't Wonder Woman. What did you do? You blew you blew it. You blew it. Um so I like that the artists in the book and the artists on the covers, the main covers, if not the variant covers, really understood She's big, she's strong, this is not sexualized, she has these very distinctive features that we're going to maintain in all these different, you know, art styles. It's still there.
Peter
56:45
Yeah.
Eden
56:46
And like you said, I think I can see if if you're a person who hasn't read like monthly comics like this very much, it can feel a little jarring when it changes from one artist to another. But also that's how we can get as much Hayden Sherman as we do, because he takes breaks every two issues or every five issues for a couple months to get caught back up. And as you said, I really like Matias de Julius and Matias Berger Bergara, the two uh fill in, not fill-in, they're they were on purpose. It's not so much a fill-in because that's more like an emergency. But like the two who do the smaller arcs, I think they've got very distinctive, very different, but very cool styles. Like Matia de Julius has a very like painterly style.
Peter
57:27
Painterly.
Eden
57:28
It looks a lot like oil painting. Um Whereas Matias Bergara, he's one of my faves. He does great work, but it's like really sketchy, like really brash features. Um I just I think the book looks great. I think it reads great. I'm very excited to see where it goes. As you said, you're a little nervous about crossovers. It was one issue, baby, and then we were back to the good stuff. And it was a good crossover too. I really liked issue 15. Um, but then you know, Zatanna has shown up and done something. At least in the ones we read today, you're like, okay, Zatanna showed up and cast some sort of spell that we don't know what it is yet. I'm curious to see what that is. I mean, I know what it is because I've read the last three issues. It's very, very it's a cool take on Zatanna. I think Zatanna is cool and also often underserved, number one. Number two, also unnecessarily sexualized. I think she's primo supremo in this book.
Peter
58:27
Cool. No, I really did. I enjoyed it. Uh I I will probably be waiting until volume three comes out, just so I can get it all collected like this. That makes sense. Uh but it's It's on my radar and it's definitely something that I want to read more of because I really, really enjoyed it. I thought that it was uh again, a a fantastic portrayal of a character who in some interpretations in the past, I just don't feel like she's I feel like she's been done a little dirty. Yeah. And and here I'm like This is this is why Wonder Woman is one of the and I I read this and I say, yes, she deserves to be one of the pr like premier superheroes period.
Eden
59:13
Yeah, she earns her place in the Trinity. You see it.
Peter
59:16
Yeah.
Eden
59:17
Yeah, and the last thing I would say is if folks are interested in this, this is a great way to start reading superhero comics. If you've never read a superhero comic before, the absolute line is a great way to get in. Because you know these characters basically. You maybe not know Martian Manhunter. You don't need to, because it's a totally different, absolutely, you know, completely separated take from any version of our Martian Manhunter before. But you should read it because it's the one of the greatest looking books you've ever seen. Javier Rodriguez is killing it on that book. Um, but like, you know, the flash you run fast. The Green Lantern, she make green things with her ring. Like you know who these characters are, at least through clo cultural osmosis. So these can be a good way if you want to start reading superhero comics. These can be a good way to get in and see something from the ground floor. You know, it's only been going for a couple of years, a year and a half, basically. and really dive in and and and experience something new and fun. And I'm really impressed with the way that DC has stuck with it. Because like it's been successful enough that uh they are doing reprints of the first issue still. We just at the comic shop heard People want it still. So we're doing an 11th printing of Absolute Batman number one.
Peter
01:00:34
That's cool.
Eden
01:00:35
Which is great because and we have seen an uptick. Like people have started coming in for these books. This and the ultimate line from Marvel. have really increased foot traffic and people wanting to buy like single issues for the first time and being like, I've always kind of wanted to get into single issues. This is a way I can start getting in, right? And we're like, yeah, it is. Go for it.
Peter
01:00:53
Yeah.
Eden
01:00:54
So it's a great, it's a great place to start if you've ever been interested in these characters. And uh I think that's where we'll uh end for today. Uh thank you all for listening. Uh please leave us a five-star review or uh or five stars or a review on your platform of choice. Um go listen to our other podcasts, Generations and Devotees, if you feel so inclined. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode
Peter
01:01:16
See ya.