Warning, this episode contains spoilers for a bunch of the comic books that we are going to discuss.

And these are comic books from across a spectrum of publishers, including Marvel, DC, Image, and Oni, and much more.

So you have been warned.

Hello, my name is Jason Concepcion. Welcome to episode 10 of X-Ray Vision, the crooked podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.

To mark our first double digit episode, we're bringing on a double hit of co-host today.

Up first on previously on, I'll be covering all the news that's happened in the past week.

And then it's time for an extended airlock where we talk about comics, comics, comics, comics, and to do that, we're bringing on our comics connoisseurs, writer Rosie Knight, and Cody Ziggler.

First, let's hit the news on today's previously on first up, the book of Boba Fett trailer is out. How best to describe this?

So it's like Boba Fett in his role as the new crime lord of Tatooine, now the job is out of the picture.

I kept wanting to hear the soprano's theme under it because it's like a lot of, you know, Boba Fett meeting with the various coppers of Jabba's Forber Cryb Empire and getting them all in line with the help of Mignolens Fennekshand.

This will start streaming December 29th on Disney Plus, of course, EP by Dave Filoni and John Favreau. This looks super fun.

Next, the trailer, long awaited trailer for Morbius from Sony in conjunction with Marvel Studios has been released. It stars Jared Leto as the famed Spider-Man villain, Morbius the living vampire.

He is a physician who has a blood disorder and he is like, how do I cure this thing? So he goes down to an area where there are a lot of vampire bats and guess what? He becomes a fucking vampire.

It stars Matt Smith, Jared Leto, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal and Tigris Gibson. It is directed by Daniel Espinoza from a script by Matt Sazama and Burke Sharpless.

This trailer has come out two years after the first teaser trailer was released and four years after the project was announced. Obviously a lot has changed in that time and it is laden with references from Sony's various Spider-Man offerings, including an appearance by Michael Keaton's Vulture.

There is a shot of the Oscorp building. There is a mention of Rhino and Black Cat from the cover of a Daily Bugle. There is a mention of that thing that happened in San Francisco, which is clearly a reference to Venom.

So lots of Spider-Man from all versions of Sony's Spider-Verse happening here. Be interesting to see how this ties into the MCU if at all. I'm gonna watch it.

And then finally, nine employees of image comics have announced that they are going to form a comic book workers union called comic book workers united. The decision announcement reads in part, quote, our workforce and the comic book and publishing industry as a whole is overtaxed and undervalued. This is detrimental not only to general staff, but also to the creators.

We were paid to serve in the audiences. They entered work to entertain. We love what we do, but loving what you do doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't ask for improvements to your working conditions. And it was signed by the image staffer is Ryan Brewer, Liana counter, Marla Isaac, Drew Fitzgerald, Melissa Gifford, Chloe Ramos, Trisha Ramos, John Schlaffman and Erica Schnaz, somewhat ironic since image was formed in 1992 by disaffected comic book creators.

From DC and Marvel, who wanted to benefit from the success of their creations in a way that working at the big two simply wouldn't. So the fact that this is happening with image is interesting and I hope they succeed. I hope they succeed.

This builds on a history. There's been a lot of like a boarded attempts to kind of unionize the comics industry going back to the Academy of comic book artists from the 70s, which was an organization that Stan Lee created that in his mind was would act as like a promotional arm for the comics book industry, but for younger creators more militant creators at the time, including Neil Adams and Archie Goodwin.

They thought, okay, we should turn this into basically a comic book union that will go out there and fight for the interests of creators for better pay, more equitable profit sharing, better work hours, better working conditions, et cetera. And that one kind of broke down because there were a lot of disagreements, obviously one about what the ACBA would actually do.

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