3 comments on “Tape #20: Pariah”

1. Isamu Hideaki-Yukinori (ee-SAH-moo hee-DAY-ah-kee YOO-kee-noh-ree) says:

   August 28, 2026 at 12:20 pm

   First off: Uncle Dave, I hope your broken wrist injury fares much better than mine, which happened when I went over the edge of a mountain slope on my bike over a year ago. Because I was living in a rural mountain area, it took a while to arrange the surgery needed to repair the damage, so I am still in physical therapy and cannot currently use the last two fingers of my right hand. (We are also still paying the medical bills, but a few comic book auctions should soon settle those…)

   This was a great discussion with the insightful Mark Russel. My first exposure to his work was THE FLINSTONES comic he wrote in 2016, and I have to admit it didn’t appeal to me then at age 11. I picked it up in the comic store because I was watching my Dad’s DVDs of the television cartoon, and was expecting the comic to be more like that. So I gave it to my dad, and he loved it and ended up buying the rest of the series. In fact, he posted on Facebook how much he enjoyed it:

   “So I read THE FLINTSTONES #1 this afternoon and I must say it is a very brilliant, but a very dark, “real world” comedy take on the modern stone age family. I can understand why my 11-year-old, who was most likely expecting something akin to the original 1960s cartoon programme he had watched on DVD, may not appreciate it.

   “While this was a brilliant read, as I had stated, I am a little on the fence about whether I am happy with this comic’s reimagining of the Flintstones. On the one hand, this comic is making a stone-age Bedrock satire of our modern world in the same way the original cartoon made a stone-age Bedrock satire of the world portrayed in 1960s “regular” television. But on the other side, this comic is also satirizing the issues and sensibilities of our modern world, which 1960s television hardly touched. I do feel that this updated take on the 1960s programme was, again, brilliantly done, just as WATCHMEN and KURT BUSIEK’S ASTRO CITY brilliantly brought modern-world sensibilities to the hokey Charlton heroes and Silver Age comic book tropes, respectively. However, like WATCHMEN and ASTRO CITY, I wonder if this take in THE FLINTSTONES would be better served using analogue characters like ‘Frankie Fieldstone,” etc. that we would know were supposed to represent the Flintstones characters, without actually being said characters…

   “But despite that, I did enjoy the first issue of a comic book that I was originally not planning to purchase. So I suppose I will quell my minor quibble by simply pretending this comic takes place in “Earth-Two Bedrock” for now… I am pleased that there is one more DC Comic that I look forward to reading next month…”

   Of course, now that I am 10 years older and wiser, I now have an appreciation for Mr. Russel’s take on the Flintstones, as well as the silver and bronze age of comics in his brilliant SPACE AGE and DARK AGE series. And I look forward to experiencing his upcoming WONDER WOMAN: GOLDEN AGE and finding out how Pariah will be involved…

   Ah, Pariah… or as George Pérez used to often jokingly sing at conventions: “And they called the wimp ‘Pariah’” (insert “Paint Your Wagon” music track here). When I first read my dad’s copy of the first CRISIS ABSOLUTE EDITION, I asked him if Pariah ever showed up in later DC Comics (this was years before DARK CRISIS), and he mentioned a DC COMICS PRESENTS issue and the WAR OF THE GODS mini-series, though he admitted that he wasn’t reading many DC Comics in the late 1980s and 1990s so he cannot be sure of all of Pariah’s later appearances.

   Dad did tell me his thoughts/theory about how Pariah could had been used post-Crisis: He was originally drawn to another Earth when that Earth’s universe was about to be destroyed, which was the greatest disaster at that time. After CRISIS, Dad felt Pariah’s powers would draw him to whatever the greatest disaster would be in the new post-Crisis universe before it happened so he could warn/save people from it. This could include something as “small” as an inhabited island that would be submerged by a tsunami to something as “large” as a planet across the galaxy whose star was about to go supernova – whatever the “greatest disaster of the universe” is at that moment. Of course, because he is very limited in what he can do to warn or save people, and because there would likely be records of him being present just before many of these disasters, he would gain a reputation across the new DC universe as a “pariah” and possibly be suspected by various authorities across the universe to be the cause of these disasters. This could lead to Green Lantern Corps members or other space cops or perhaps Lobo the Bounty Hunter trying to track him down and “bring him to justice.” These tracking authorities could end up finding Pariah at the site of an impending disaster and actually assist him in saving people or possibly even stopping the disaster that drew Pariah there in the first place (well, maybe not Lobo…).

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2. Martin Gray says:

   August 29, 2026 at 1:59 pm

   Congratulations on finding the one and only fan of Pariah to interview, and it’s an actual comic book writer. It’s almost like Marv Wolfman and George Perez designed him to be disliked – there’s the wet personality, the sub-Jericho outfit and the Weeping Willie personality. What’s to like? Mark Russell and Mike Allred made him interesting by giving him an actually personality and better dress sense.

   Doug, I’m so disappointed to hear that you go in for that ‘anyone but England’ rubbish when it comes to football, no wonder Anj gets on this show four times and I’m stuck in transporter beam limbo (hi Anj!). Heck, I’m even a bona fide author, having written a Peanuts puzzle book for – if memory serves – Korean Airlines.

   I was going to contradict and say we did indeed see Speed Racer in the UK, but thinking on, it was probably Speed Buggy. Or the Funky Phantom.

   Catch you next month!

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3. Bucky749! says:

   August 30, 2026 at 2:03 am

   Just so on my you tube channel I’ve done some
   Cosplay in my videos here’s the characters I’ve bin
   1. Frankenstein my own twists on the characters.
   2. Jughead jones classic version.
   3. Cyclops from x-men 90’s version.
   4. Captain lou Albano (wwf /wwe wrestler and manger first person to play super mario in live action and played Cindy laupers dad in girls just want have fun music video .)
   I’m man of many faces .
   But any ways :
   I just want say to you and dough red , and Doug prime and Dave keep up the great work .
   Also wasn’t there a dc comic that did a twin peaks spoof I know dark wing duck the cartoon show did in episode called “twin beaks “
   The cows are not what they seem .
   Also I have one last thing to say do the Mario Avery one “look it up it’s how they ended the original super Mario brothers super show in America it was special dance maybe Dave can teach it to the doughs .”

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