You can listen to the episode by clicking: Episode 149
Sometimes, you have to turn on your friends. After years of friendship and partnership and other kinds of ships, you just have to tell your friend, enough is enough. Sometimes you may be paid to do it, sometimes you have just grown tired of them, and sometimes it is because you have a new knife and you want to see how well it fits in that guys back. With that said….let me tell you about Jeff.
We need to talk about his breath first. You may not know this, but today’s high-tech microphones are all include multi-layered, immersive technology. A lot of the changes are due to more people working in the office. There is a call for additional ways to promote in person interactions, and so we now can smell people in online meetings. This is a problem. I have even bought the guy breath mints.
The dude is a show off. Like every time we go somewhere he is all like, “Look at me and my wonderful beard” and ” Have you ever seen such an amazing toupee”, and also “You all need to eat my broccoli and hot dog casserole!” He is so annoying. You win one county fair casserole bake-off, you think you are a god. Give me a break.
Then there is his wardrobe and fashion. It must be nice to get to wear all those fantastic clothes and costumes. Sometime I would like to be sent the finest t-shirts made. Not everyone has a secret benefactor who keeps you afloat in the latest middle-aged, stay-at-home dad fashion. I do not care that he has a new generic shirt for each hour of the day. UGH.
Here is another thing that annoys me about Jeff…his stupid athletic skill. Just because he mastered lacrosse, water polo, and fencing in high school, does not make him interesting. Do you know how annoying it is to arrive a party with someone who likes to do somersaults across the lawn. You will always pale next to that, trust me.
Being around someone like Jeff is just annoying. He sucks the light from the room and absorbs it onto himself. And then…he struts. He knows what he is doing and he STRUTS. The man cannot even walk like a human. He has to “Tony Manero” his way into every room.
Needless to say, I am done being a little puppet for Jeff to play with. I will not dance on his string any longer. He will not control me, or make me his ….puppet. It is time for me to stand on my own, and to tell him exactly what I think of him.
This is Jeff writing now. I would like to apologize for the mean spirited remarks made by my friend and partner. He has been under a lot of stress from work and running my podcast. Sometime, he just lets himself do too much. Trust me, we are still friends. Our relationship has never been better.
We also have some merchandise over at Redbubble. We have a couple of nifty shirts for sale. https://www.redbubble.com/people/jeffrickpresent/?asc=u
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Eighties Action by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3703-eighties-action
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Music: Figures In The Fog by Lilo Sound
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/5551-figures-in-the-fog
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Jeff and Rick Present 
Now now, come on you guys, it’s the holidays. Peace on earth, good will to men, be nice to big fellas with beards and all that. So if you can get along, I can write some thoughts on this issue.
I’ve been a fan of Tom Grummett’s art since his time on New Titans, and he’s a great fit for this comic. Love to see him here!
My mind’s playing tricks on me about the cover. When I picture it in my head, I remember it being X-23 and White Tiger. But I looked at it just now, and clearly recall thinking to myself, “That’s an interesting gesture by Julie’s left hand.” Not Laura, but Julie! So it’s like I know it’s Julie when I see it, but my mental image fills in Laura to match the dark hair and costume. Quite vexing, I say!
Butterball debuted in Avengers: The Initiative #13 (written by Academy’s Gage) with an incredible one-and-done story how some people’s superpowers might not make a great superhero, and ended with him leaving the program. It was beautiful. He was a character us fans could easily identify with: chubby, not athletic, utterly ordinary, but gifted with a power which instead of transforming him, left him stuck perpetually like that. And his story was done. But then it wasn’t, because he reappeared in The Initiative without any explanation, likely brought back because his issue was such a hit. And that still annoys me because the story was only great BECAUSE it ended his time as a superhero! Not because “he had potential.” But because he realized this was not for him and chose to find something that was! Completely undercut that ending! ARGH!
Speaking of The Initiative, no surprise Gage is keeping some of his plots from there going in Academy, like Hank’s and Tigra’s relationship, and Tigra’s son. I forget if his father was actually the Skrull which impersonated Hank, or someone else, but *that* was a disturbing realization at the time!
Now the big question, and I need your help with this. One of the people Hybrid has captured is Striker. We know there’s an older Striker in the future. Why isn’t Reptil acknowledging that?! He can’t really want Hybrid to kill Striker, because that would ruin his future. So there’s gotta be a reason he’s not making a big deal out of it. I know plenty of reasons for Reptil to play things the way he is. (The easy obvious one is Reptil already knows this is supposed to happen but Striker will be fine.) But I don’t understand why Gage isn’t saying so in the story? It shouldn’t be a secret, compared to the other things we already know. So I don’t get this blatant omission! UGH!
Ok, I think that’s it. Does it mean something that I have more to say about this series than I did about FF? I really dunno. Anyway, Happy Holidays, my Pack-Men!
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Tim!!
We recorded this a while back so I don’t remember how Rick was being mean to me. I will just assume it was because I was amazing and he was jealous of me . 🙂
Yup. I think that it is the desaturated nature of the cover with Julie being in the shadows that leads the mind to believe that it is Laura on the cover. Funny how it is three for three thinking that so far. Wonder how many other people were affected that way?
That was my introduction to Butterball as well. Amazing issue, and I think that I have referenced it once or twice on the show. Will probably mention it again sometime in the future it was so good. I never got into the Initiative comics, so I think that I mentally clumped it together with Academy. Honestly, I was waiting for that issue to pop up in this run. Now I know it won’t. Thank you for the learnings. I agree that him coming back does undercut the other story, but it is still real good.
I am fuzzy on the whole Skrull timeline. I know that it happened to hank, but just not when. Still waiting for the whole green eyed flash of Jessica Jones’s daughter reveal to pay off.
Okay, Hybrid Striker time. Lets no prize this into the dirt. Maybe future Striker had been captured and feed on by Hybrid but he survived it. Reptil knew this and just figured that that was helping to ensure his timeline as he would be able to have Hybrid spit out his meal that he wasn’t supposed to have as they had an agreement. That’s my thoughts on it anyway.
I think it means that there is a lot more nuance in this series and that the ensemble actually feels like an ensemble. FF had a big roster…too big to be quite honest…and very few of those characters seemed to have any character at all. Lots of folk stood around while a few people did things. Heck, most of the characters were just there to occasionally say something, and it didn’t really matter who said it because they didn’t have a personality that you could grab onto. In AA the characters actually feel like individuals and you have a feel for how they would act and what they would say. It is refreshing and nice to see this.
Happy belated holiday to you too my friend. I hope that they were fun and that joy and merriment were had by you and yours.
Until next time. Costumes something!
-Jeff
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I completely agree about the characterization. It’s so good in this series, a huge improvement from FF’s homogeny. It makes this an enjoyable run. I’ve said it before, but thank you both for covering it and pushing me to read it.
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I will let you in on a secret…we only cover comics to trick you into reading them. There, the cat is out of the bag now. We are tricksy tricksters trying to encourage your reading habits. 🙂
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> we only cover comics to trick you into reading them.
I KNEW IT!
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But did you though? I thought we tipped our hand when we had you join us for the yearly crossover event, but you didn’t seem to notice then either. Hmmm, unless of course this has been a long con on your part where YOU tricked US into reading comics so that we would think WE could trick YOU into reading comics! Very diabolical, mate. Very diabolical indeed.
-Jeff
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(Mephisto laugh)
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I KNEW IT!!
-Jeff
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