You can listen to the episode by clicking: Episode 108
Rick usually does these wacky little stories or diatribes each month, but this time he is doing something different. He is just going to set up the pictures in a random order and let Jeff describe the book or tell a story….or whatever. This is a little social experiment. He is not even going to tell him about this. Let’s hope Jeff edits this one.
Memories, ah yes, the sweet heady feeling we get with the nostalgia of memories. Like looking back at childhood photos and remembering things, I look back weeks ago when I saw Rick’s little social experiment, laughed, made a mental note to get back to it and then moved on with my life. Then Rick text’s me asking if I had done the thing yet…gulp.
Now I have to pretend to be a functioning adult and do some writing to make a deadline of our own devising. This means that I have to cosplay like Julie and Johnny and act like someone that I am not. I hope that the special effects department is a good one to hide the rainbow of deficiencies that I am bringing to the role, as I literally just got woken up to do it.
Yup, that’s right. I was asleep and dreaming on the concrete of my driveway while my daughter drove big circles around me and our car in her peddle car. I was awake enough that every time she passed by me, ringing her bell at me, that I would reach out and boop her nose and play with her until she was ready to start her long slow circle again and I would drift off waiting for her return.
Now you might sit there and look down at me in judgement, but I was exhausted and the game that we were playing prior to that was putting me to sleep on my feet. The game was called red light and it entailed me pretending to be in a car at a red light. She would then drive up behind me, ring and ring and ring her bell at me while yelling at me to move. Eventually she would drive around me and through the red light, but I was stuck at it and couldn’t move. Then she would cycle around and the game would begin again.
So there I was, stuck in my “car” waiting to be allowed to move into the great big exciting world around me and not ever getting that green light. Eventually it all became to much and I pulled my “car” over to the side of the “road” and stretched out.
The warmth of the day embraced me. The podcast I was listening to lulled me to my ease and the knowledge that my entertained and happy daughter was nearby let me drift off to the edges of a pleasant slumber.
Then it all came bwwaaashhhing down. I heard my daughter dump her car and go inside so that she could have a snack and hangout with her mom. Then Rick disturbs my rest with a text, and I wake up enough to realize that I now just look like a person that may have been hit by a car in a driveway that needs help instead of the tired, partially negligent parent that is both playing with his kid and kinda taking a nap in his front yard. So up I get and into the house I go.
Any ways, in this issue Julie outs her and Johnny’s superpoweredness to a movie director to get an acting gig and then said director attempts to sexually assault her because yuck. Also, some other stuff happened with the other characters, but it felt really place holdery so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
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Jeff and Rick Present 
Thanks for staying in touch.
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Not a problem. Glad you touch base with us, and I hope that life is going well for you.
-Jeff
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Thanks for staying i
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Happy Memorial Day gentlemen!
I listened to your latest episode while doing work in the yard on an actually nice and mild day. As always your show is quite enjoyable to listen and formulate responses in my head, only to lose them a couple of days later due to the holiday weekend.
The issue of the mini you discussed at length about felt the most problematic to me as a fan. I realize that some writers really like the “in medias res” trope when plotting a story. In regards to the character of Julie, I felt it was not only a cheat, but also a misinterpretation on a fundamental level regarding the core of her character. Never once had she been written as one obsessed with pictures and stardom. Even Mike Higgins, arguably one of the worst writers of Power Pack, wrote her as a studious, level-headed, and responsible bookworm. The setup for her reappearance just feels half thought. The whole arc of her wanting to be an actress, even in spite of it being a ruse, felt as ridiculous as Nekra’s “costume”. Added to which is the toss off line that getting powers before puberty was hard. That’s true on the surface for the character, yet part of the durability of the Power Pack title is that the siblings love and support of one another no matter how dire things get for them. That’s what makes her on the other coast from her family striking it solo as just asinine. Like early brainstorming in plotting this miniseries and Julie’s appearance is a mere shrug. Maybe there’s some commentary being said that sometimes really smart people have to play it dumb for recognition. I would like to think that was the motivation, but often times it feels like Julie and the majority of female cast members are here for cartoon titillation.
I’m trying to remain somewhat level headed and also trying to keep in mind this miniseries was published over a decade ago. Different times and takes where this didn’t get as much pushback. However, established canon that the character Julie Power is 17, and not only has she been objectified and harassed by a director in this story, she’s been objectified to the reader as well for most of this series. From the very 1st cover image of the miniseries where she’s in the Ringwald pose, costume designed to the bloom of her chest and somewhat seductive look to her face, to the outfits drawn by Karl Moline throughout. Even the Pretty In Pink facsimile cover, bare torso, low riding tights, ample silhouette on display. The color choices draw your eye right to her and then you remind yourself. “Hmm. Character is 17. Gross”.
So let me pause and note this is probably over reactive in a response, you gents have merely recapped and discussed. You didn’t contribute to the overall content, and have expressed dismay on certain parts. I realize this is a fiction that I didn’t have to buy. I think the older I get and the more outright egregious decisions a corporate brand makes for its graying and dwindling fanbase, the angrier I get. It goes back to something I’m sure I wrote about the difficulty in transforming a juvenile art into a mature reader title while retaining certain elements of the core.
The story itself isn’t that terrible overall. The irony of commentary regarding Marvel Studios using roughly 75% green screen in movies is pretty humorous in 2022. This miniseries always feels like its close to telling a really good story, has some interesting moments, but pulls back for reasons.
Well, enough of my complaining. I thoroughly enjoy your show guys. I knew before you even covered this I had issues with it and couldn’t immediately formulate my thoughts in a cogent manner. I look forward to a good summer of fun Power Pack content.
Jeremy
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Hi Jeremy.
Always fun to run ideas and dialogue in your head only to have it all disappear isn’t it? I do that all the time. Still, listening to podcasts while doing yard work is a great combo, as that is something else that I do all the time as well.
I agree with everything that you said about “majority of female cast members are here for cartoon titillation”. But how dare you besmirch Nekra’s costume!?!?! That is what peak performance looks like when you use tape for a costume! Sure, it hurts like a dickens when you take the costume off, but look at the coverage…where it covers in any case. 🙂 Any ways, the writer decided to do a thing with Julie for the story. I don’t agree with it, but it is what it is. I default to the Power kids always being kids…much like Weezie and June do…so any deviation from that always sits wrong with me. I don’t (and do) understand the need to age characters up as there are TONS of older characters to write these kinds of stories about. Sure not a lot of kid heroes to write for though.
All the female characters were objectified at one level or another and this is quite true of Julie as well. I get why they did it this way though. Again, this mini seemed like it wanted to be an edgy, sexy, adulty tale. So, you get objectification. You get sex. You get angst. Did it work? Sorta yes, sorta no. We talk about our over all take aways of the series in #6, so I won’t cover them here.
I didn’t see you as complaining, I saw you as someone that was having serious thoughts and wanting to engage in a serious discussion of said thoughts. Sometimes you have to knock your thoughts around to figure out what you are actually feeling and thinking. It happens to us all the time. We talk and riff and start to recognize some stuff and realize some things. It is a fun journey of self discovery…about comic books.
Glad you are enjoying to show. we are just glad that there are people that enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoy making it.
-Jeff
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