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Amber A'Lee Frost et. al, "Year Zero #1: A Chapo Trap House Anthology" (Bad Egg, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Michael Vann
Hello, everybody.
- [00:01]
Marshall Po
This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:09]
Michael Vann
Welcome to New Books in History, a channel in New Books Network. I'm your host, Michael Vann of Sacramento State University. Today I'm chatting with Chris Wade and Will Menaker of the podcast Chapo Trap house about year zero, volume one, published by Bad Ag in 2025, which is billed as five scintillating tales of madness, which promises to cross time, genre and good taste. This comics anthology features short stories from Amber Ailey Frost, Chris Waid, Will Miniker. Excuse me, Felix Biederman and Matt Chrisman. With art from comic superstars Simon Roy, Justin Greenwood, David Cousins, Ken Knudsen and Dean Kotz. The promise is that Year Zero, Volume one is the first of three oversized books. I've got both Chris Wade and Will Mediker with me. Chris Wade is a podcast producer who produces Chapo Trap House, Hell on Earth and Hell of Presidents and Introducing and Infinite Cast. He also produced and directed short films, music festivals, and many years ago wrote for Slate.com he co hosted both Hell on Earth and a series on the 30 Years War and Hell of Presidents, a series on Potuses.
- [02:32]
Chris Wade
Potei.
- [02:33]
Michael Vann
Potei, whatever the plural of a Potus is. With Matt Grisman, both with Matt Gritzman. Check out the new book's back catalog for a conversation about Hell on Earth by the Way. This is one of the three times I had the honor of interviewing the great Matt Chrisman. And each time, I made a complete fool of myself, blowing the introduction and dip into the back catalog. Listen to those episodes, and they are indeed comedy gold. Please check them out. So, Chris Waite, welcome back to New Books in History.
- [03:08]
Chris Wade
Happy to be back. Thanks for having me.
- [03:10]
Michael Vann
Yeah. And then Will Menaker is one of the hosts. Maybe the Alpha host, or I don't know if we want to get a little Khmer Rouge host. Brother number one.
- [03:22]
Will Menaker
Host number one. Yes, exactly. I will accept Alpha host as well.
- [03:26]
Michael Vann
Alpha host, okay. Of Chapo Chop House, a political commentary and comedy podcast which debuted in March of 2016. Yeah, yeah. Coming up on almost a decade. Along with his fellow Chapos, he wrote the Chapo Guide to Revolution, which I talked about with Matt Chrisman in one of those episodes. Again, look it up and laugh at me. Will Mediker. Welcome to New Books in History.
- [03:56]
Will Menaker
Happy to be initiated.
- [03:58]
Michael Vann
Yeah. So before we get into the book, I'm going to ask you to say a few words about your podcast. You probably hate this question, and I apologize, but believe it or not, there's a chance some of the New Books listeners might not be familiar with Chapo Trap House. So how do you. How do you explain what you guys have been doing with yourselves for almost a decade to somebody in an elevator?
- [04:23]
Will Menaker
The pithiest way I can describe Chapo Trap House, like the. The best sort of blurb that I could put on the front page of the show to. To sort of explain what it is and capture people's attention was something that was said as an insult towards the show very early in its run. Like within the first year, the first couple of months, probably. Someone described it as Mystery Science Theater 3000 for politics. And I was just so taken with that. I know it was meant to be a burn of the show, but I found it to be entirely appropriate. I mean, that is what the show is. It is three guys, you know, myself and two robots. It's three guys, guys and gals, any number of groups of people, but like, you know, the core hosts of the show. And we sit down in the theater of the absurd that is American politics and culture, and screen for ourselves the movies that make up contemporary life and events and, you know, and comment on it in our satirical caustic wit.
- [05:27]
Michael Vann
Yeah. I don't think calling something MST 3000 insult, that's high praise. Yeah.
- [05:36]
Chris Wade
It goes to show the quality of our critics.
- [05:41]
Michael Vann
How do you justify yourself, Chris?
- [05:44]
Chris Wade
What do You, I, I produce the show, I manage the recordings, I do all the editing, I put in all my stupid little clips and you know, audio jokes and then, you know, I'm occasionally on the show when we're down a host or two. I've helped set up many of our miniseries side projects. That's been one of the main like think ways that we've branched out over the last few years is, you know, the main show is always two episodes a week, one free and one for subscribers that, you know, mainly do.
- [06:15]
Michael Vann
We are a gray wolf family.
- [06:18]
Chris Wade
Thank you. Eight years, you know, that's the main show. But we also, as you referenced, have done a number of mini series that also live on the Patreon that we hope entice and make the Patreon more valuable for subscribers. But you know, it also helps us do that. They explore the things that we're interested in, like me and Matt with various historical topics. Will and our friend Hessa do a movies miniseries movie mindset where they review double features of films. Felix just completed a miniseries, kind of going through the history of quote conservative intellectualism in America, kind of, you know, going through like the 70s, you know, new conservative movement, religious conservative movement as it evolved into the Fox radio online media landscape that we know today and eventually propelled Donald Trump into the White House. So that miniseries is called Seeking a Friend at the End of the World. And I think Felix has a video game miniseries coming out which is, you know, I'm not here to do a sales pitch or anything but you know, just kind of to show or describe all the various facets that the show has been able to spin off into as we, you know, follow our interests down the rabbit hole.
- [07:34]
Michael Vann
Yeah. And for my purposes, I think that's all really important to justify using the new books in history bandwidth right now because so much of what you guys do is historically informed. Yeah, I mean in addition to just having the podcast on the third years War, the podcast on the presidents, there was the project on the Spanish Civil War with Matt that turned into the book, Right, Matt Crispin, Spanish Civil War, but just your guys episodes. I mean as a history professor I'm always delighted because they're really historically informed.
- [08:07]
Will Menaker
I believe myself, Chris and Matt were all history majors in college. Oh hell yeah. Those are our credentials there. We're coming, coming in with my strongest subject.
- [08:17]
Chris Wade
That is true. But Felix has an insane grasp of modern American history, especially like post war kind of deep political history, which I have to think comes from his obsession with reading lore Wikias Yeah, you're talking about a guy who has almost encyclopedic recall of everything that happens in Game of Thrones, but has never touched one of the Game of Thrones books, has only read the Wikipedia.
- [08:43]
Will Menaker
Yeah, that is true. Yeah, He's. He pulls some deep cuts from the books, but he's. He's gleaned it just from the lore. Wikipedia and, you know, really, that's what history is.
- [08:53]
Chris Wade
Yeah, I said knowing the lore of.
- [08:54]
Will Menaker
Is knowing the lore of human civilization.
- [08:57]
Chris Wade
Yes.
- [08:57]
Michael Vann
Yeah. Oh, that's such a charming little tidbit about Felix.
- [09:00]
Chris Wade
Oh, yeah. And I mean, that is the highest compliment because it does. That same passion for just, like, knowing all the details means that, you know, he could probably rattle off, like, every. The names of every member of Nixon's cabinet off the top of his head just from like, going through, you know, various Wikipedia articles and stuff.
- [09:18]
Michael Vann
Well, hey, so, like, in. We will talk about the book, but in the banter of your. Your show. I mean, again, it's all very historically informed. Why. Why is that command of history important to you as political commentators?
- [09:33]
Will Menaker
Well, because, like, you know, like, trying to talk about politics or contemporary culture or just current events happening in America or anywhere you live and trying to, like, have an opinion on it or make a joke about it even. Or even satirize it without knowing, you know, on last week's episode, you know, you gotta. You, like, without knowing the story that got to this point, it's. It's like, you know, it's like entering a movie that's like two hours into a two and a half hour movie and being like, all right, I'm locking in. All right, what's going on here? I think this guy, he's the bad guy. But, yeah, like, to me, history is just like the unfolding comedy tragedy of human existence on this planet. And, like, to know. And it's an unfolding story of which we were all characters in, and to understand, like, your role and perhaps what the next scene you're gonna be in is, or just at least to just, like, to be able to have, like, a meta perspective on the story that you are sort of enacting in daily life is like. That's the importance of history to me is just understanding the characters, understanding the story. The story up until this point, rather than, like, and, you know, trying to watch, like, Breaking Bad or something starting in, like, season four, episode six, you want to. You want.
- [10:48]
Michael Vann
You want to avoid the Donnie situation in the Big Lebowski and just walk it. Walk it into the conversation.
- [10:52]
Will Menaker
Right, yeah, yeah, yes, exactly.
- [10:55]
Chris Wade
Mentioned this when I was on the show to talk about hell on Earth, but I think one of my foundational intellectual moments was that I was very lucky to have a high school history teacher who was a fairly didactic Marxist historian. And so learning that heuristic, you know, the dialectical materialist view of history from a very early age, I feel like suddenly you have to have a, you know, a kind of intuitive, clear process through which to understand history. And then you get that once you internalize that, that mechanism for understanding cause and effect, it is increasingly interesting to just layer in new details and follow that stream both backwards and forwards, as Will says, to create a better context, context and understanding of the world today. And then also, as Will says, critically, once you get into it, history is very funny and it's full of absurdities and characters that, you know, it's the ultimate dramatic irony because you know what's going to happen. And yet you still get to dive into these people's mentalities and try to put yourself in the mindsets of the often alien perspective of the past, while also recognizing that everybody, you know, the human, human races, not really that old in, you know, when you're thinking of geologic terms. And so, you know, they are always still us in very recognizable ways, even if the, the society and culture that shapes them is very, very different. They being every human of the past. So that's always something that I quite enjoy and try to find a way in for history is, is thinking about how funny a lot of it is, even if it's also mostly tragedy.
- [12:50]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, one of the things I enjoy about your conversations on the podcast is that it's, it's the, you engage and call out the actors that created these God awful situations that we find ourselves in these days. They're not these things that plugged out of the world that like there's a list of suspects, right? I mean, you, we know who do this, who did this. I mean, I, I don't know. A year or so ago, you guys were invoking Paul Volcker and giving everybody a reminder of just what an awful creature that was. By the way, I just did six weeks of intensive language study in Indonesia with mostly undergraduates and trapped in a classroom. First time. I had been on the other side of the classroom for almost 30 years and the kid next to me, great kid. Paul Volcker was his personal hero. He called him the goat. And as part of the Indonesian the language exercise, we had to write a profile of a great Figure from our country and he did. Paul Volker.
- [13:54]
Chris Wade
Is this an American kid or an Indonesian kid? No, no, no, no.
- [13:58]
Michael Vann
God, that would be something, right? No, no, no.
- [14:00]
Chris Wade
American.
- [14:01]
Michael Vann
Yeah. University of Washington of all places. But maybe the kids are not going to be all right. I was concerned. Hey, one more thing.
- [14:11]
Will Menaker
I mean, okay, I'm going to disagree with him because Alan Greenspan, that's the go chairman of the Federal Reserve, all right. Paul Volcker for Fraudball all the way. Only Mickey Mouse interest rate cuts.
- [14:23]
Michael Vann
He, he had thoughts. He had thoughts and he, he really enjoyed watching my brain explode, especially as I was trying to process it, like in, in Indonesian. Anyway, hey, one more, one more question just about you guys. And maybe, maybe this is the question that is the most annoying. Your co host, Amber Ailey Frost coined the term a dirtbag left in an essay. What does that term mean? Do you find it useful? Are you annoyed by it? What was she trying to get at? Did she still use it?
- [15:00]
Will Menaker
I mean, like. Yeah, well, Amber titled her collection of sort of semi memoiristic essays Dirtbags. So I mean like, yeah, like it's, you know, for better or worse, it has stuck. I think it's an applicable moniker and I think what it, it gets at and what, what, what it, like what it describes about the genesis of the show and our success is I think it describes like young people in this country who are politically engaged or politically ideology ideological of like a left wing to progressive point of view who had something to say or like had opinions. But like that was never reflected by their peers or authority figures or parents and they felt underserved. And I think really to me what it speaks to is a kind of like an independent DIY ethos of like people who were really smart and people who are maybe smart and talented but like didn't necessarily have the career ambition or temperament to be the kind of person who gets a media platform to opine about politics or offer their opinion on the state of, you know, politics in America. Like there's this like people who foregoed or never even considered the kind of credentialing process and like all of the sort of tolls you have to pay to like get inside the room where you're given a platform to share your thoughts and opinions. And it was our just sort of, I think brazenly churlish dismissal of traditional media and like, you know, and traditionally care minded people. That I think applies to the like the dirt bag left ethos.
- [16:37]
Chris Wade
Yeah, I mean as you said, by virtue of my introduction, like, you know, I used to work in more traditional media. I worked at Slate, I worked at New York magazine for a second. I worked@mike.com, if anybody remembers that site. And when the show started up, I think that that was one of the things that was so mind blowing for me. Being inside that media sphere is like the dismissal, the gleeful dismissal of the kind of fake polite comity. Is that how you pronounce that word? That, that defined American political media, where everything had to be mediated through these, these niceties and politenesses. Even though, as we all know, American politics is this theater of cruelty. And yet you only, you could only talk about it in these very polite and staid ways of wearing your suit and tie on MSNBC and saying, well, I'm not quite sure if I agree with my esteemed colleague's position on killing the homeless, but I think that we can, you know, and it, yeah, go.
- [17:40]
Will Menaker
Well, there's just such a narrow bandwidth for what can be made fun of and what can be described as evil in sort of traditional media pathways, especially for commenting on politics. And yeah, like we were, you know, I was sick of that. I think the American government is evil pretty much top to bottom. I think many aspects of like the media that go along with it are complicit and if not active participants in this horror show. And for me, I guess we've always kind of been aware for that. But coming into adulthood in the shadow of 9, 11 and the war on terrorism, that for me was a real departure point because I saw all of the traditional organs of the liberal media all sign up to kiss George W. Bush's ass and talk like, you know, sign America on for this now still ongoing fucking atrocity. So like, like I, I didn't have any real, I don't know, desire to kisses, kiss the asses of these people and pretend I like them.
- [18:43]
Michael Vann
Yeah. And you had your origins in the establishment in the publishing world in New York, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.
- [18:51]
Chris Wade
I mean, you were just, you were just regaling that. I mean, this is, this is a good. Yeah, this is a good example. A good example. On our last episode, we were reading a rather batty article from Paula Pell. Is that her name? Pamela Paul. Pamela Paul. Pamela Paul who? Writing about, you know, conservative women having it all in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, which is a rather hilarious article because it is simply 90s lib feminism re skinned to justify everything that conserv conservative professional women like to imagine themselves but saying, no, it's conservative now to actually do this, but we get to gleefully make fun of that. Whereas Will, in a previous life was chastised for rather accurately describing this woman's politics on Twitter. Is that right, Will? Yeah.
- [19:37]
Michael Vann
Yeah.
- [19:38]
Will Menaker
I referred to her as a neo. I'm not. I forget the context of it, but I referred to her as a neoconservative on Twitter. And that was a big no. No, she was. She was very offended by that for, like, because, you know, like, she's one of these people that would of course, claim to be liberal, but, like, somehow finds herself supporting every war this country fights in. And also marrying Bret Stephens.
- [19:58]
Michael Vann
Yeah.
- [19:58]
Will Menaker
So she can be a lib. You can be a liberal and be married to Bret Stevens and not put a pillow over his head. I mean, I don't know.
- [20:06]
Michael Vann
Wasn't she like a big review editor at that point or.
- [20:09]
Will Menaker
Yeah, she was the head of the New York Times Book Review and I was an editorial assistant, and I was like, hmm, I wonder what the prospects for any book that I send her way will be in the coming years if I stick with this career.
- [20:21]
Michael Vann
Yeah. Okay. Well, I think that perhaps the analog in my career of academia for the dirtbag left maybe the mid tier state university tenured faculty member.
- [20:40]
Chris Wade
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- [21:09]
Will Menaker
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- [21:13]
Chris Wade
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- [21:28]
Will Menaker
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- [21:35]
Michael Vann
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- [21:35]
Will Menaker
Excludes Massachusetts.
- [21:37]
Chris Wade
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- [21:46]
Will Menaker
Just like White Claw Surge.
- [21:48]
Chris Wade
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- [22:06]
Michael Vann
I think we have the same sort of career trajectory and so forth. Okay, so, hey, there is a book here. I wanted to talk about all that because I think it situates you guys just sort of your perspective, your sensibilities to look at the comic book. You guys produced the anthology of stories. So you guys. I mean, without blowing smoke up your. You know what, you guys played a major role inventing podcasting as this contemporary art form, entertainment form, right? Mean, major role. Yeah, no, I mean really huge. And you know, you've. You guys did the Chapo Guide to Revolution. You've done a number of other projects. Why. Why turn to a comic book? What. What drew you to the comic genre, to this medium? Chris and then Will. Will.
- [23:05]
Chris Wade
Well, I mean, it might not be the. The most exciting, sophisticated answer, but first and foremost, just because the opportunity landed in our laps, we basically, a friend of the show and kind of professional advisor, I would say, basically knew the good people at Bad Egg Publishing thought that they might be. They are setting up a industry. Not an industry, a business model specifically about bringing online cult creators into the comic space. They were co founded by a YouTuber named Moist Critical, who's very successful there, and he brought an idea over to become their flagship comic. And they were basically looking for new people in that realm. And we got hooked up with them. And I mean, that was the genesis of like the deal in our relationship with the publisher. But pretty immediately, I think all of us rather intuitively were like, oh, yes, this is a great vector for things that we want to do because we have rather ambitious ideas and also some very silly ideas. And comics are such a great way to get an interesting narrative out at a fairly small scale, where also you can depict basically anything, you know, at. At. At. Without any additional cost, you know, so it. I think it.
- [24:26]
Michael Vann
It.
- [24:26]
Chris Wade
It immediately was like, oh yeah, we can do anything in this medium. And I think that that was very attractive to all of us. What do you think, Will?
- [24:32]
Will Menaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, just to go off what Chris said here. I mean, like, yeah, for me, like, comics is a perfect narrative medium that allows us to. To work in genre, right? Like to work in horror or science fiction or a period piece or some combination of the three. And to be like, unbound by budget, essentially. Like, because when you're writing it, you are unmoored from any consideration like that because it's just like what the art. Like, you're only limited by what the artist can depict. And an artist can depict anything. So like, it just, it made perfect sense. It was like the perfect vehicle because it was just like, just create a story like, you know, like no constrictions. Like, it's just what would be like the comic story that you want to write that just like based on any original idea you have and write it and then the artist will like produce it and it'll be like the mix of the visuals and the writing and it's just like, it's so simple, but it's such an effective way to just like, like I said, to create anything you want.
- [25:35]
Chris Wade
And over the years, you know, because one of the long term facets of the show, in addition to political review and commentary, has been cultural review and commentary. And we've done, you know, Will has his movie series and Felix. Oh, another Felix series, is reviewing prestige tv, but also through these and kind of riffing on the nature of television film genre fiction in America. Like, we have just tossed off so many ideas for like our versions of these things, which usually end up with as a funny riff on the podcast that ends, of course, this movie that we're thinking would cost $200 million to produce, so it'll never happen. But then you get the opportunity to put something like Felix's loop jumper on the page and it just flows naturally.
- [26:21]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah. And one thing I was going to say about Will and your co host Hess's podcast on films is I appreciate the way that all the films are historically grounded. You talk about the context that they're made in. I forget what it was. We were talking about something from the 70s and situating that really well. So again, this is new books in history. There is historical significance here. I did a study of colonial Vietnam in the context of world history as a graphic history with Oxford. And what I found is that working with the artist, I was able to pull the. The sort of the historical and geographic scope and scale back and forth very easily. That would have been really difficult to do in conventional prose, like academic prose. How do you go from talking about something going on in a street corner in Hanoi in 1902 to give the global context that's kind of awkward and the visual medium that's really easy to do. And we'll get to your story in a second. Will, I thought you did that really well with recreating colonial or not colonial. Well, I guess colonial and then historic visions of New York City and the way that you can jump through time in the graphic medium much easier than you can in other genres. And like, yeah, if they were independent films, for example, most of these things you guys are doing would have been impossible. Right? I mean, they would have been.
- [27:49]
Will Menaker
Anything set even like 20 years ago. Like, you got to have like the street, you know, the street roped off and all the cars replaced with like, vintage models. And it's just. It is extremely expensive. And you know, like. And like I said, it was just like with comic books, your imagination can go anywhere it's gonna go. And like, that's, that's the thing I found very fun about this project.
- [28:10]
Chris Wade
As the man says, butterfly in the sky. I can fly twice as high. You know, do whatever you want.
- [28:16]
Michael Vann
And I think that there's also, at least amongst American audiences, finally a maturation in attitude of. Towards comics. You know, like, we're finally getting caught up with the Japanese and the French in that regard. Right. I mean, we're.
- [28:33]
Chris Wade
I think we're gonna have to get way, way hornier to get caught up with the French and the Japanese in different ways. You know, as you were just saying about like, that your Hanoi book and thinking about like my experience with comics, I was, I was just remembering being assigned to read in college. There was a graphic novel treatment of the 911 report. Will do you remember that? Yeah, no spoilers.
- [28:58]
Michael Vann
No spoilers.
- [28:59]
Will Menaker
Yes, exactly.
- [29:01]
Chris Wade
Yeah. And it's fairly straightforward. I mean, it's literally just the report itself. But it's such an interesting take on it because using the, the images to situate the report in the real world and give actual, like, characters to the characters, you know, depicted there, and then also the like, small amount of commentary that you're able to create between the, the tension between the text and images. I always thought that that was a very fascinating use of comic book to represent then recent history. I think that came out in like 2007 or something, you know, not that long after. After it. And you know, I, I guess that had always stuck with me as like kind of one of a more inventive thing that you can do with comics. Even though it is fairly straightforward of just be being like, here's this government report text and how can we turn it into something that lives and breathes through the art of comic booking? So I don't know. That just came to me as something.
- [30:06]
Michael Vann
And I'm going to assume, I'm going to assume that was pretty straight. Right. But the, the. With the graphic form, there's so many opportunities for some subversive little trickery. Just the little Easter eggs you can put in. So I think in the right hands There could be a lot of, a lot of fun with that. Nine, eleven. I'm sorry, Will, you had a. Oh.
- [30:29]
Will Menaker
No, I mean, like, yeah, just like in the context of, you know, because like you mentioned my, my. My story is sort of is a period piece. It, you know, it takes place in the two different timelines in, in the past. And obviously, I think historical fiction, great authors with an amazing amount of research can create the world of the past for you on the page. But I think with comics, I'm thinking particularly of one of my favorite works of historical fiction ever written. And I would put it up against any straight up novel or piece of literature is Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell. And I don't think any book has ever really captured what Victorian England was like for me, more than that book. And it's just like when you add the visual element to creating or creating or reproducing the world of the past, it's just like, it's just, it's so much more seductive. It's just so much more narcotic to like, to like immerse yourself in not just the research and like the writing, but like the feel and the look and like, almost like the smell of like the East End of London at like the end of the 20th, 19th century.
- [31:36]
Michael Vann
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And when I was working on Great Hanoi Rat Hunt, I had not been trained in how to do a graphic history, right? So I got to spend a year on the couch reading comic books, much to the chagrin of my partner, because I was working, I swear, work. It's work. It's work. And Alan Moore's work, I mean, obviously so important. And when I got to from Hell as an academic historian, what I really appreciated about that book is there's about 50 pages of endnotes at the end of the book. Because he did, I mean, Alan Moore in his craziness did like insane historical research. And at the end of the book, so there aren't notes throughout the graphic portion, but at the end, every page, he labels the primary sources that inform that. And I thought that was such a brilliant way for scholars to do the graphic format with their disciplinary standards and keep their credibility. I think that we could have done a lot better with Rat Hunt in that regard. I tried to push more notes in there, but the editors were like, no, nobody's going to read this. It messes it up. But I'm a. I'm an academic historian. Like, I got a footnote freaking everything. I mean, that's what we do, I.
- [33:06]
Chris Wade
I think that that's one of the things that we. We had the opportunity to talk to Alan Moore on the show a few years ago, which I think was a very significant moment for Will conducted a wonderful interview with Alan. I honestly think one of the better ones that he's ever done. But I. You know, I felt like that was a very significant moment for myself in the show as well, because I'm such a big fan and I do think that. But what Alan Moore brings to comics is something that, as we were talking about our historical background for what we think about in the show, like that way that he writes, where it is, whether it is a work of explicit history, like From Hell or something more fantastical, like, I don't know, is like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or even Watchmen or something. It is always like, you sense that deep sense of him thinking about history and communication with the contemporary world, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. Even something like, you know, Watchmen, which is written in the 80s, but is very much about the recent past as like an. Almost like a re. Chronicling for a future history or something. And I think that that is one of the things that is so compelling about his work across his career is that sense of, you know, added. With his added mysticism of eternal recurrence of things in the past and how the past defines the present in these mystical but, you know, also very concrete ways. Yeah. I've always loved how historically informed More is.
- [34:34]
Michael Vann
And he plays with the documents in both Watchmen and in. You just said it. I'm drawing a blank.
- [34:44]
Will Menaker
League of Restoring Gentlemen.
- [34:45]
Michael Vann
He's got like, you know, there's these breaks and the.
- [34:48]
Will Menaker
Yeah, the supplementary material that are like newspaper clippings, stuff like that. Yeah.
- [34:52]
Michael Vann
Which as a nerd like that, I could spend hours reading that stuff. And, you know, I don't.
- [34:58]
Chris Wade
I don't think it's in the demo version that you got, but there's a little of that in my. In my comic as well. We. I tried to pull from like, you know, supplemental dossier and like, additional material in between the chapters where it's not quite a full panel, but it's like a lab report or an imagine newspaper article or something like that.
- [35:15]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah. And you as a historian, like, I love that because it's for. It's so valuable for teaching because it's showing the students the process that historians work with. What are the documents? What do they look like actually represent them? I appreciate that you mentioned that there actually is a book manuscript, because we should Talk about that. And one of my highest compliments I can give you is that I was super angry that you sent me 14 pages of each story because when I realized I was at page 13, it was only one more page, every story. I was just furious that I wasn't going to be able to read more. They're all super duper engaging and brilliant in really different ways. So let's go through them. And you each authored one of the stories and then your co host authored the other stories. The first story is Loop Jumper, which is written by your co host, Felix Biederman. The art by Rick Joyck, Ken Cudson, Charlie Kirchoff and Dave Sharp. Could one of you do a quick little introduction there? And I'm really curious about what are kind of the themes that each author is trying to engage with the stories.
- [36:30]
Will Menaker
Yeah. Loop Jumper. The genesis of Loop Jumper is that this is based on a treatment that we wrote for a fictional 80s. If you wanted to do an 80s style action movie like Schwarzenegger's Commando or Stallone's Cobra. And we wrote this to perform at a live show that we did at a festival that Chris helped put together, the Frequency Fest. And it was like, what's that? Okay. Yeah. And this was like, mostly Felix was the driving force behind this. And like when it came time to do the comic, this was like, once again, this is like the perfect medium to like make Loop Jumper real. And Loop Jumper is essentially Felix's story about a sort of a down and out ex special forces operator who is enlisted in a mission to combat the American deep state and the cartel, like the drug cartel that is the George H.W. bush Iran Contra Mafia. And then like that would be a pretty good 80s action movie plot on its own, but like through Felix's imagination and I think like his very like Hideo Kojima influence of like Metal Gear Solid, it goes to some truly insane places because like he cracks open this whole science fiction concept of loop jumping and basically going to the past by committing quantum suicide. And you can commit quantum suicide by overdosing on cocaine. Again, like I'm going to get the details of the story wrong, but it is a very insane like science fiction mechanism through which you can send yourself back into the past and enlist copies of like past copies of yourself in the future, in the present to do your bidding. And it's about a time war which starts as a drug war becomes a time war for the main character, Sergeant Gerald Butler.
- [38:21]
Michael Vann
Yeah. And for our purposes, it engages recent American political history nudgement.
- [38:28]
Chris Wade
Yeah.
- [38:29]
Will Menaker
Oh, yes. I believe George H.W. bush in the Iran Contra, like, criminal conspiracy is I don't think the primary antagonist of this story.
- [38:39]
Chris Wade
I don't think I'm giving too much away because it's literally the first image of the comic. But I believe the comic opens with George H.W. bush killing a past version of himself with some kind of quantum handgun.
- [38:52]
Michael Vann
Yeah. Yeah. And for people who don't listen to Chapo the Poppy is one of the main characters of your series over the years and all the times you guys have talked about Bush Sr. Those are absolutely some of my favorite episodes.
- [39:11]
Will Menaker
Well, Bush Sr. Is such a great villain because he's the first American president that I have conscious memories of was the George H.W. bush administration. I was alive for Reagan, but I have no memories of him being president. And what I think makes George H.W. bush such a compelling villain is just how overlooked he is and how stereotyped as sort of a wimp and an ineffectual guy he is and much overshadowed by his son who was a two term president and universally regarded as a disaster. Whereas everyone kind of forgets George H.W. bush's one term as president, but we also forget that he was vice president for eight years before that and also director of the CIA before that. And the more you dive into George H.W. bush's actual life and career, you find that he is far from being an ineffectual wimp, is like one of the most cold blooded operators in American political history. And through our semi fictional satirical guys, we have advanced the case that he had quite a prominent role to play in the death of John F. Kennedy.
- [40:26]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah, and, and it's, I think you guys talked about it in an episode, but it's, it's just delightful that, you know, he loses to Clinton and then the dynasty comes back with his buffoon son who just pisses the whole thing away.
- [40:41]
Will Menaker
Well, it's like he presided over. Like he, he saw his greatest victory achieved in his lifetime as a cold warrior. He presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of America as the undisputed hegemonic military empire that now had uncontested rule over the entire globe. And then he lived long enough to see his son fuck it all up. And like, you want to talk about the tragedy and comedy of history, it's right there.
- [41:14]
Chris Wade
Yes. First is tragedy. Benazov.
- [41:19]
Michael Vann
Okay, so that first is loop jumper. Second is Clinton Hill Horror. Written by Will Mediker Art by Simone Roy Sergei Nazov Simon Roy Excuse me Simon Roy, Sergei Nazov and Judy Trotman. Apologies for mispronouncing names. This is your story, Will. And I loved it for a couple of reasons. It's very explicitly engaging, several layers of history. Also, I love the artistic style. It's really similar to what Liz Clark did for. For my work. Tell me, tell me about it. What's.
- [41:59]
Will Menaker
Well, I would say, like, this story started because, like, I wanted to do, like, a straight up horror story, and I wanted to do a story that was, like my version of an H.P. lovecraft story. If, like, you put, you know, myself and HP Lovecraft in, like, the Brendelfly teleporter and fuse them together, I would hope that Clinton Ilhara is what would step out of the third teleportation pod. Yeah, and like. And Lovecraft has always been sort of almost a character on the show. Like, we've done a couple of those Call of Cthulhu role playing scenarios.
- [42:32]
Michael Vann
But, you know, you guys got me into Lovecraft. Like, I'd read a little bit as a child, but listening to the podcast, I went back and read a bunch.
- [42:40]
Will Menaker
I mean, like, to me.
- [42:40]
Michael Vann
Racist boy.
- [42:42]
Will Menaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, he was. He was problematic. You know, like, actually right before his death, he did actually distance himself and decry his former scientific racism and essentially embrace the scientific truth of socialism in the process. And. But, you know, he did not live very long. But, like, to me, H.P. lovecraft is one of the most interesting and original American authors. I think, like, his. His influence is so deeply felt in, like, every piece of horror fiction and media that has come after him. And, like, what I find fascinating about Lovecraft is that, like, he really brought horror into the modern era, like, into the 20th century, because, like, it was a marked departure from, like, the gothic horror of, you know, of Dracula or Mary Shelley or, you know, like. Or some of, like, the ghost stories, which are, like, focused more on a kind of a supernatural, sort of a supernatural element. And I think what I find fascinating about Lovecraft's mythos is that it is almost science fiction. In fact, I think it is science fiction because, like, you know, he takes the source of horror from beyond the grave or from monsters to essentially humanity's essential alienation and growing alienation in the modern world. And his. His creatures, you know, these sort of indescribable things that permeate his work, I think are like, you know, become kind of a metaphor for humanity, human consciousness entering a modern, and now, I would say, like, hyper modern era. So the primary influence on the Clintonial horror is H.P. lovecraft. And, you know, he lived in Brooklyn for a short period of time and we produced the story the Horror in Red Hook. So I wanted to do my take on that about the neighborhood that I currently live in in Brooklyn, which is Clinton Hill. And I knew I wanted it to be a period piece because when I think of Lovecraft, I think of the 1920s and the early 20th century. But that being said, the other big influence on this story is perhaps more surprising and it's more of a covert influence, but it's sort of the structure of, of the story. And like, why I chose to like, set it where I did set it comes from Gore Vidal because when we first started, like, thinking about what are we going to do for these stories? And it became time to like, okay, what am I going to write? What's my story? I was reading Gore Vidal's Burr, which is another brilliant, brilliant historical novel. It's like one of the, one of the best works of historical fiction I've ever read. And basically half of that book takes place in the American Revolution as Burr is like, within the book. You read Burr's manuscript that his memoir of his career in politics starting in the Revolutionary War and going all the way through his infamous shooting and killing of Alexander Hamilton over the river in New Jersey. And so I was thinking about that time period and I was thinking about that structure of having a meta, present day narrative that is also in the past, and then through that narrative, discovering a manuscript that unlocks a second timeline even further in the past. And from there I was just like, like I said, I wanted it to be about my neighborhood, about Clinton Hill, and I wanted it to be set during the Revolutionary War, at least part of it. And like, that idea came from thinking what was going on in this part of Brooklyn or in New York City during the Revolutionary War. And right here, just a couple of blocks down the street from me, is Fort Greene park, which was a fort during the Revolutionary War, but is the current home of something called the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument. And like, this to me was a fascinating and like, completely overlooked aspect of the American Revolution that was centered right here in New York City. And basically, like the vast majority of people who died fighting for the cause of independence in the Revolutionary War died in New York City being kept as prisoners of war in either the halls of ships docked in New York, again just in New York harbor, or in the Navy Yard.
- [46:46]
Michael Vann
Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. So, so. And I, I'm a world historian. I pride myself on knowing absolutely next to nothing about the American history, my graduate students like give me tidbits about the, the War of 1812 every now and there's a joke. So the vast majority of Americans who.
- [47:03]
Will Menaker
Died during the Revolution, maybe vast is overselling it, but the majority of people, very large, huge, like yeah, I'm talking, you're talking like 20,000 people or more who just died being kept in unbelievably hellish conditions. Basically either in the halls of a ship or in the basements of place, what were called sugar houses in New York City. And it would be like hundreds of guys just stuffed in a basement or in a hull of a ship and just left to die of disease and starvation.
- [47:30]
Michael Vann
That's not very Mel Gibson. Like.
- [47:34]
Will Menaker
Well, yeah, well, you know, Colonel Tavington was an evil guy. And the British, they're bad people. They're evil people, folks. They're not good.
- [47:42]
Chris Wade
Another little tidbit. One of my favorite things, one of the first military submersibles ever deployed was a sub covert submersible put into New York harbor to try to blow up one of these ships, a one man 18th century submarine called the Turtle.
- [48:01]
Michael Vann
With, with the, the prisoner, the revolutionary prisoners inside.
- [48:05]
Chris Wade
I, I think it was just one of the command ships for, for that. I, I'm not sure if it fully succeeded, but I do, I have always liked that bit. Like, just to emphasize how much of a thing the British warships in New York harbor were as, as a military stronghold during that time.
- [48:22]
Will Menaker
Well, because you know, like Washington took New York City from the British at the very beginning of the Revolution, but they took it back very quickly. And what they took it back is like the British fleet arrives in New York and they just watch this and they say we have no shit. We have got, got no shot. And that, that led to the famous Battle of Brooklyn in which like they were routed, but like there was a rear guard effort that allowed Washington and his forces to escape and get to New Jersey, get to Trenton, which was like, would then be their next like sort of center of command for the Revolutionary War. But like, yeah, they were routed out of New York City and then New York City was returned to British rule, British control. And that is where like the primary, like primary narrative of my story takes place. And I wanted to take, you know, the horror of that prisoner of war experience and then add to that a Lovecraftian element of cosmic horror and you know, sort of a thing. And I'll avoid spoilers, but like, yeah, it is. You know, people are kept in a Basement and hopefully some.
- [49:26]
Michael Vann
You've said enough. You said enough. So, again, I really love the, the art that, that, that. The art in this piece and the historical detail. How did the artist. Who, who was the main artist in recreating New York in this historical time periods and how did that artist work with images and recreate them? And were you involved in that process?
- [49:51]
Will Menaker
I gave some direction. Simon Roy was the main artist. And to the extent that my story is successful, I really credit it mostly to his artwork because he was my number one choice for who would be the person I would want to draw one of my stories. Because in my head I was imagining Simon's drawings. And when he said he would do it, I was obviously thrilled because I've been a huge fan of his work for a long time. And, you know, Simon is a guy who, like, I gave him like, enough detail in the script itself, but I think, like, he undertook a lot on his own, his own research of, like, several of the buildings that are depicted in this story are real buildings here in Brooklyn. And, you know, he captured it perfectly. But also just like, the details of, like, how a British officer in the, you know, like how a red coat, like what they're. How the different uniforms would go from, like, colonel to enlisted man. And yeah, there's a, there's a. He just. He, he suffuses like, I, I like, he. He takes what I. I wrote and then he goes much further than I even like the, the information I give him, I gave him or the ideas I had in my head to like, to populate each frame with a really incredible wealth of detail.
- [51:01]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah, it's. I, as a history nerd, just absolutely love that, Love the detail and it was great. I've got it a PDF so I was able to blow it up on the screen and look at like, you know, the port and so forth and look at all the details and they're absolutely, absolutely amazing.
- [51:18]
Chris Wade
It's also really gnarly. Simon has some great gory shots in there.
- [51:23]
Michael Vann
Oh, the first head explosion.
- [51:25]
Chris Wade
Yeah. I mean, talk about historical accuracy. What it would look like for a. A ball to rip.
- [51:30]
Will Menaker
Yeah. Great size musket ball going through someone's skull. Yeah.
- [51:34]
Michael Vann
And the page is put together so well because it just, it disrupts the view and experience in a way that a gunshot ripping through someone's head would like. Absolutely astounding. Yeah.
- [51:48]
Chris Wade
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- [52:21]
Marshall Po
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- [52:24]
Chris Wade
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- [52:29]
Will Menaker
To cut through serious dirt and grime.
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Chris Wade
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- [52:38]
Marshall Po
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- [52:40]
Will Menaker
Today at Lowe's. It's the Smuckers Uncrustables podcast with your host, Uncrustables. Okay, today's guest is rough around the edges. Please welcome crust.
- [52:58]
Chris Wade
Thanks for having me.
- [52:59]
Will Menaker
Today's topic, he's round with soft pillowy bread. Hey. Filled with delicious PB and J. Are you talking about yourself? And you can take them anywhere. Why'd you invite. And we are out of time. Are you really cutting me off? Uncrustables are the best part of the sandwich. Sorry, crust.
- [53:19]
Michael Vann
So next up is Amber Ailey Frost's piece, Beat the Dang Devil with art by Justin Greenwood and Judy Trotman. Before you give us a little blurb on that, would you introduce Amber a little bit? We've mentioned her previously. She's a fairly prolific writer and union organizer as well. Could you give her a little shout out to Amber?
- [53:44]
Will Menaker
Yeah, you know, Amber. Amber is someone who, you know, is one of the original co hosts of the show. You know, she is still like, you know, lifelong CHOPPA member. She has, you know, she's taken a step back from being on the, on the podcast day to day, but she still is doing a lot of stuff for our production company and you know, like pursuing her own writing. And you know, Amber is, as you mentioned, like a union organizer, like a writer, a political activist, like, you know, she was someone who was a DSA member, like years before anyone knew what DSA was. So like, you know, Amber was someone who like so much of the original, so many of the original episodes of Chapo and Cometown, if anyone's a fan of that, were recorded in the same apartment and it was at Amber's place. Never.
- [54:28]
Michael Vann
Never heard of it. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, so what is she engaging with? Beat the Dang Devil.
- [54:37]
Chris Wade
Amber's story. I think I, I Rather pithily wrote it up as kind of an Appalachian evil dead. She is writing a story, essentially. I believe I can give away the whole premise of a coal miner who finds himself terminally poisoned from the effects of his work in the mines and sells his soul to the. Decides, chooses to sell his soul to the devil to compensate his family in his passing, only to find out that he miraculously survives his terminal illness and must fight off the devil's minions to regain his soul and prevent the. The.
- [55:25]
Michael Vann
The.
- [55:25]
Chris Wade
The coal company from poisoning more of his compatriots. So it's. It very. I think a great representation of. Of Amber's interested. It intersects both.
- [55:39]
Will Menaker
Like as a labor historian.
- [55:40]
Chris Wade
Yeah, as a labor historian. It intersects labor history. It intersects a kind of Appalachian milieu. It has a horror element, maybe more on the gothic horror side, you know, because it involves like a classic devil as like a guy in a suit who's making you sign contracts. But also in her love of, you know, the same kind of. Of great 80s action movies involves a guy, a coal miner suiting up with a shotgun and a bandolier going off to. To fight some damn demons. So, you know, it intersects a lot of those interests in a really fun way. And I also love her stark black and white art style that she went.
- [56:22]
Will Menaker
With for this, like the. Like the tagline for beat the dang devil. When I was talking to Ember about this. And like, this is like, put this on the one sheet. Hell is not a place, it's a job. And I think that sums up this story very well. And I think it sums up a lot of Emperor's, like, non comic book writing.
- [56:41]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I saw trace of that. Hey, Chris, I owe you a huge apology. Crew Expendable. Your story is actually the first story.
- [56:50]
Chris Wade
And I have to be honest with you, I have no idea where these orders are going in here.
- [56:56]
Michael Vann
All right, well, the order that they.
- [56:58]
Chris Wade
Are delivered to you in the file has bearing.
- [57:02]
Michael Vann
Okay. I was going off the table of contents anyway. I skipped over it, but anyway. You wrote this art by Joel Szyninski.
- [57:13]
Chris Wade
Joel Szynynski is my co writer.
- [57:14]
Michael Vann
Co writer.
- [57:15]
Chris Wade
Okay.
- [57:15]
Michael Vann
Co writer. David Kouzens, JP Jordan and Jody Trotman did the art and the coloring. Right. So what did you and Joel Szyninsky want to do with this piece?
- [57:26]
Chris Wade
Well, I brought Joel in. Joel and I are old, old college friends. We were in the same creative writing class in college together and we've been collaborated. We were collaborators then and have been friends forever. And definitely, you know, still stayed in touch. But I recently moved from LA or from New York to la and you know, we caught back up because he's been living out here for a long time.
- [57:46]
Michael Vann
He actually.
- [57:49]
Chris Wade
You know, he's. He's a screenwriter. He's worked on several shows. He's won a Nichols Fellowship for his screenplay about epic, the Epic Campaign in California, which is. I'm sorry, I always forget this guy's names. The writer Upton Sinclair's failed attempt to win the governorship of California in 1934 for the end Poverty under the socialist End Poverty in California campaign. His screenplay is about the lie factory, the, the spinning up of the pro. The corporate propaganda campaign against him and the origins of modern political media in that moment. And so we have very similar tastes and sensibilities. He also is fascinated by megalomaniacal freaks. And the origin of our thing was basically when Elon Musk took over Twitter and immediately started dismantling everything. Just me kind of staring agog at this megalomaniacal freak taking apart this media institution and thinking to myself, this guy wants to run a Mars colony. And so I got talking to Joel about that and that's basically what we spun out this story about is, you know, the genesis was imagining an already existing Mars colony in the year 2061 that is bought and privatized by a. A eccentric trillionaire. And just what happens to a functioning stable well oil machine situated on a incredibly inhospitable place as it is bent from research and sustaining the people who live there towards profit and the benefit of a single owner. And that also just has let us, you know, do a little sci fi, do a little riffs on some of our favorite kind of like, you know, not too fantastical science fiction, near future science fiction, but also just has been a great vector for us doing jokes about trying to forecast contemporary society into 30ish years into the future.
- [60:10]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah, I love that. With one of these characters in charge, what could possibly go wrong? Yeah, and I think all the great science fiction has elements of the present, but also elements of the past.
- [60:25]
Chris Wade
Yeah, I mean, as I was talking about like that getting that, that heuristic of, of dialectical history of getting. It also just gives you a good sense of like if then. And if you're looking at a sense of the past and thinking histor historically of trying to make sense of the if then of the past that brought us to now, it then also gives you a chance to do if then of now into the future. But then also, you know, as I said earlier trying to imagine the funniest possible outcome, which is often the grimmest.
- [61:04]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah. And then finally, like the most historically explicit and most appropriate for this podcast, if the boss is listening. No passer on. Which is from Matt Crispin's Spanish Civil War. So it's Matt Crispin working with Josh Androwski and Amber as writers, and then Dean Kotz, Danielle Miwa and David Sharp doing the art and coloring, Correct? Yeah. So you worked with Matt on this, this whole series as it's morphed through a couple things. Matt had an issue that, I mean, I understand a portion of the profits from this go to survivors of Havana Syndrome. So, you know, it's cause close to his heart, but his health derailed the project. But how did it start? What did it turn into? And then talk about this iteration of it.
- [62:02]
Chris Wade
Yeah. So I mean, I don't want to get too heavy on this, but, you know, two years ago, Matt was getting ready for the birth of his baby and was planning on taking some time off the show for a paternity leave. And so as part of that, he was working on writing the newest installment of his solo history series, the Inebriated Past. And he wanted to finally take on the Spanish Civil War, which is something that he had been putting off for a long time because he knew, you know, it is, it is a locus of much fascination about the left in a way of like kind of a what went wrong way. Because spoiler alert, the left does not win the Spanish Civil War. But you know, he, he kind of wanted to go in and finally give his take on the political history of this event. So he had written this four part podcast series and we would have recorded three to be put out during his paternity leave. And we had recorded three episodes of it. And then as I was on my way to record the fourth and final episode, I found Matt having suffered a severe stroke, which, you know, was a pretty acute crisis for him, his family, the show, all of us in general. He is now recovering. He is living a good life with his wife and his child. He is back on the show in limited but increasing capacity. But basically right after his stroke, I took these scripts that he had one of them unproduced as a podcast and collected them into a book, I guess a novella length book. It's about 200, 250 pages. We got our friend, editor Jacobin, editor Megan Day to edit the texts. We self published it through a. A book manufacturer out of the Pacific Northwest Gorham Printing.
- [63:59]
Michael Vann
The hard copy is beautiful.
- [64:01]
Chris Wade
Yeah. Go r ham. Look, if you're, if you're doing an independent book project, they were amazing partners. We got our merch company, Warren James, to act as the distributor for it and self release this book. That did phenomenally well. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to report independent books to bestseller lists, but I'm fairly confident that Matt Crisman, Spanish Civil War from last year, is one of the best selling historical nonfiction, if not the best selling historical nonfiction book of the year, just based on knowing how much volume we did. So that's the history book and this is a history books podcast. Unfortunately, because it was a limited run printing, there's no way to really get that book unless you DM me directly because I do have some extra copies. But when we were approached with this, we knew we wanted to include Matt. You know, it wouldn't be a Chapo anthology without a mat story in it. And we had this just put out this big text of his and so we figured that and makes sense because we're hitting so many different genres. You know, every story is a different genre in here, so it makes sense to have a straight up historical narrative. And Matt and our. Or Amber and our friend Josh, who has been another long term friend of the show and hilariously went to high school with my co writer Joel Sinenski, even though that's a complete coincidence.
- [65:20]
Michael Vann
Do they know each other?
- [65:21]
Chris Wade
Yes.
- [65:21]
Michael Vann
Oh, cool.
- [65:23]
Chris Wade
Even though they came, you know, they came to this project from completely different ways. You know, worked with Matt to help him craft a nugget of the story because it is a very sprawling story into a single historical narrative to be illustrated in this text. And I think it was. It's rather beautifully illustrated and I think it's a really interesting way. I mean, going back to some of the other stuff that I was talking about. I mean, obviously not quite as similar as the illustrated 911 report, but, you know, I do think that giving these straightforwardly historical texts the graphic novel treatment does just open that dimension of life to them in a way that a text on a page does not. So I think it's a really beautiful adaptation of what he was putting together with the book and I really compelling narrative of a very complicated but very essential historical moment in the 20th century.
- [66:19]
Michael Vann
Yeah. And he profiles volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Right. Which, you know, that used to be something every sort of lefty American student knew about. I think that sort of slipped from consciousness as times have moved on.
- [66:37]
Will Menaker
But yeah, my great uncle fought in the Spanish Civil War.
- [66:42]
Michael Vann
Oh, really?
- [66:42]
Will Menaker
Volunteer. Yeah, for the Republic. I want to make, I want to make that clear. No, yeah, he. Yeah, he drove an ambulance, like ferrying people across the border with France during the Spanish Civil War.
- [66:56]
Chris Wade
Did he hang out with Hemingway?
- [66:59]
Will Menaker
I don't think he met Hemingway.
- [67:00]
Michael Vann
Okay, yeah, yeah. In those historical references, my family is consistently on the wrong side. Absolutely everything. When I found what I found out about like the very distant Cherokee link in my family tree, which means, it turns out the vans were the largest slave owning Native American family I know, like my one chance to have something cool in the family tree.
- [67:26]
Chris Wade
You know, it's funny, I mean, my grandpa always used to tell me about his assignments in World War II and say that he was in counter espionage domestically and that he would, you know, as he told it to me when I was like in, you know, a little kid, you know, he would go to various factories in America and try to root out like Nazi saboteurs. And that always sounded very heroic to me. But as I grew older, I and kind of knew his politics, I was like, oh, he was, he was union busting, he was fighting. He was finding communists and cracking their, cracking their heads.
- [68:03]
Michael Vann
Yeah. I've got my, my middle, my middle name is after my great grandfather who was a mining engineer in Montana and very successful and helped found Anaconda Copper. And I got contacted by a gun collector a few years ago and not a gun fan. And he had an old crank ads. I've got, you know, I've got the instruction book and it's got your great grandfather's name is this. You know, I just doing the providence of this. And I'm like, yeah, that's him. I'm pretty sure he had that gun. Then he's like, well, I don't understand why a civilian would have this gun in Montana in this time period if he's just working for a mining company. It's like, well, there's some labor history you might want. Yeah, it's just absolutely. This isn't recording, is it? No.
- [68:53]
Chris Wade
Okay.
- [68:55]
Michael Vann
Hey, you guys have been super generous with your time. I've got two final questions. These are the standard new books, debriefing questions. Hopefully this first one is catch you flat footed because I should have prepped you for it. But can you offer two books for our audience that you suggest? It could be on anything. In the spirit of the conversation, Will, you've already mentioned a couple books, but two books that you'd like to pitch for our audience.
- [69:28]
Will Menaker
Well, I mean, I'll pitch Gore Vidal's Burr if you're a Fan of historical fiction. I don't think any book has ever captured the founding of America and the founding Fathers in such vivid and often funny detail as Gore Vidal does in that book. So I will pitch Gore Vidal's Burr. And if you want to go even further into the past, I would pitch Gore Vidal's Julian, about the Roman emperor Julian, the apostate who tried to rehelanize an already by that point, Christian Roman Empire.
- [70:02]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah.
- [70:03]
Will Menaker
Like two of my favorite, favorite works of historical fiction by Gore Vidal and.
- [70:07]
Michael Vann
One of my absolute favorite literary political figures, Gore Vidal. I mean, absolutely amazing character. Great.
- [70:14]
Chris Wade
Okay, Chris, I'm trying to think of two comic books. I'll start with a comic book that I read recently that I really enjoyed, Dennis Camp's 20th Century Men, which is kind of an alternate 20th century Cold War history with superheroes, kind of, that takes a lot of place a lot in like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and has a lot to do with. With kind of the, the failed heroics, I guess, of the Cold War. And I think that if people are. Have listened to this much of this conversation, that would be a highly recommend for a good comic book that, that, that addresses, that really engages with history with, with recent history in a really fascinating.
- [71:09]
Michael Vann
What is 20th century men?
- [71:11]
Chris Wade
20Th century men by Deniz with a Z. Deniz Camp, who is one of the gods of contemporary of current comic booking. I could recommend another comic book. Constantine is one of my favorite comic book series, which is very like kind of a Lovecraftian horror series, but why don't I do this again? I kind of play not obeying your prompt, but I will recommend a podcast that I found quite literary, which is Mike Duncan's most recent series of his Revolutions podcast, which I was terrified to learn because I was just announcing our book when it was launching, but is also an imagined future history of Mars. He wrote a fictional historical depiction of a revolution of Martian colonies 200 years in the future and delivered it as a podcast series. And I think it is a phenomenal work of fictional historiography.
- [72:17]
Michael Vann
Wait, this is. This is the Revolutions guy saying a.
- [72:21]
Chris Wade
Fictional history of a future podcast or of a future revolution. And it is wonderfully well observed. Builds off of everything that he has Learned from doing 13 other seasons of covering every major revolution of the liberal era.
- [72:39]
Michael Vann
And in incredible detail.
- [72:41]
Chris Wade
In incredible detail. And it is just incredibly well done. I think it is a kind of a mini masterpiece of the historical podcasting form. So that is the most recent season of the Revolutions podcast, the Mars Revolution.
- [72:58]
Michael Vann
Once you listeners Are done going through all the new books, episodes and Chapo, then you can get to that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Hey and finally Chris, what are you working on now? What can we hope to see from you next?
- [73:12]
Chris Wade
Next thing you're going to see from me is a baby. My first daughter is. Or my first child is due in nine days, eight days from now. So I once I'm getting this comic book out and then I am stepping away the pod for a little bit to be on paternity, but then hopefully coming back not necessarily well rested but you know, re energized to do the, do the show and find out what the next thing is. And I mean we've got three more volumes of this comic coming, so.
- [73:36]
Michael Vann
Yeah, so wait, there's three more volumes.
- [73:38]
Chris Wade
Or two more volumes?
- [73:39]
Michael Vann
Two more volumes. Okay. I wonder.
- [73:40]
Chris Wade
Three volumes in total.
- [73:41]
Michael Vann
Okay. Okay. And just. Hey, one more thing. The. I haven't seen the hard copy but it's, it's large format bound.
- [73:48]
Chris Wade
Yeah. As I understand it, it's, it's like.
- [73:51]
Will Menaker
The large magic size.
- [73:52]
Chris Wade
Yeah. It's a rolling stone, but it's also like 122 pages. It's going to be quite a hefty volume.
- [73:57]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Hey and Will, what do you.
- [74:03]
Will Menaker
Well I have a. I have nothing to announce but I would like to take this segment to the show to issue a correction on myself. Department of corrections. Before your history minded listeners get too mad at me or you, I should say I had to look this up. It was during the revolutionary war. Roughly 20,000Americans, American colonists were held as prisoners of war. Of them about 10,000 died and that's out of the 25,000 who died in what we think of as like you know, the war or battle part of it. So like basically half of the people who died in the Revolutionary War, 10,000 of them, the vast majority of them dying of just disease and squalor and starvation. Happened right here in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.
- [74:47]
Michael Vann
New York, baby. Yeah.
- [74:49]
Chris Wade
Number one.
- [74:49]
Will Menaker
Oh, Yankees.
- [74:52]
Michael Vann
Okay, well thank you for that. Are you working on anything or are you just going to be chatting?
- [74:57]
Will Menaker
Yeah, I got nothing to announce at this point. No plans, no projects at the current time being.
- [75:03]
Michael Vann
Okay, well people know where to find you. Where can people find your 0? Volume 1 published by BAD Egg Badegg.
- [75:13]
Chris Wade
Co Badegg Co online. We just completed our pre sale of it which my understanding is the pre sale guarantees you shipping of the original book. But then it also like our pre sale numbers guide how much we're actually going to print. So There will be a more on sale in September at Badegg Co, but that will be of a limited supply, so get them while you can.
- [75:38]
Michael Vann
Is that why the pre sale is so important for the publisher making decisions?
- [75:43]
Chris Wade
Yes, I wish. I hope I impress this enough on people. We did.
- [75:49]
Michael Vann
I don't think you guys mentioned it on the podcast.
- [75:52]
Chris Wade
Well, you know, that's the point is kind of, kind of doing the sleight of hand and saying like this is your only time to get it. Just do it. Just get it down.
- [76:00]
Michael Vann
It's always fun to learn about the business side of publishing because as someone who publishes in academic literature, nobody buys anything. So it just disappears into an Orwellian memory hole. Hey, Chris Wade, Lil Medeker, thank you guys so much for chatting with me. But more importantly, thank you for keeping me sane and making me laugh through what have been some really awful years. You guys, sensibility without, without tearing up, man. I just really want to thank you guys sincerely. You guys matter and we appreciate it.
- [76:39]
Chris Wade
Thank you so much.
- [76:40]
Will Menaker
Yeah, you're very welcome. And thank you for the very kind words.
- [76:42]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah. So this, hey, this has been a conversation with Chris Wade and Will Mediker of the podcast Chapo Trap house about year zero, volume one, published by Bad Egg in 2025. It's just about to come out. This is their comic anthology. This was an episode of New Books in History, a channel in New Books Network. I'm your host, Michael Vann of Sacramento State University, and thank you for listening.