This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work
at MJMunoz.com. Welcome to Red Panda Report Number 15, The Kid Who Knew Too Much.
I'm discussing Red Panda Adventures Number 15, When Darkness Falls. Here is the copy
for it. In the margins of every adventure story, there are stories untold and heroes
unsung. This episode, we step into the spaces between the comic book panels for a very special
story. If you've ever wondered about the Red Panda's oft-mentioned never-seen agents, or
if you've ever simply stared out over the rooftops of your city and dreamed of being
a hero, you won't want to miss a moment of When Darkness Falls, originally aired November
6, 2006, written and directed by Greg Taylor. So, this was a really fun, really fantastic
episode, and I will get into the first bit of it by going over the topics real quick,
and we'll see how long it takes, because I might talk for a while on this. So, this
is the case of The Kid and Instant Sympathy. Oftentimes, well, there are times when children
written into stories like this are irritating. I can think of a big, fat, modern example
that is not irritating and is instead endearing, and that would be Grogu from The Mandalorian.
It was a big surprise to people based on the marketing of that show when Grogu was revealed
to be a part of it, and we learned more and more about this baby Yoda character as time
went on, and he got to be adorable and useful and an interesting living MacGuffin for the
story, and that really added something to it. It set apart The Mandalorian from what
it could have been without the inclusion of that type of character, so it's pretty darn
interesting. I would say that Harry Kelly kind of makes for the same type of character.
Obviously, Harry Kelly preceded Grogu by 2006 to 2014, something like that, and that's impressive.
It's not an idea entirely original to Greg Taylor. In fact, I'm going to mention Lone
Wolf and Cub, which I believe actually Mando kind of pulls from with him having to take
care of a baby, even though he's 50, but whatever. But Harry Kelly kind of offers the same opportunity,
the same instant sympathy, like I mentioned earlier in the topic title, that there's a
kid whose life is in danger who witnessed a murder or the aftermath of a murder who
is earnest and honest and wants to help, and he's fulfilling the promise that he made to
a dying man, and he's at the edge of this bigger thing that he can tell is exciting
and interesting and the most profound thing that he's ever been tangentially sort of related
to in his entire life, which up until now has maybe been insignificant normal kid stuff,
and he sees this opportunity for something more and he wants it, and he is brave enough
or foolish enough, if you listen to Spiro, to want the opportunity and to take action
to seize that opportunity for himself. And again, his life is put in danger multiple
times over the course of the episode, maybe three total. And there's just something magical
about that blend where I like the kid. This is a great kid character in this adventure
story. And you know, I'm an adult. I did like Dick Tracy as a kid, Warren Beatty's Dick
Tracy, which featured the kid who I think they just call the kid through upholding.
I don't even know if he has a name, little redhead guy, right? Or maybe his hair is brown,
whatever. He's like an orphan or something. And somehow he ends up wrapped up in this
mystery with Dick Tracy and his dame, and they go on some adventure and like the kid
has a part of it. In fact, I watched Dick Tracy so much that I actually had a dream
that there were shark gangsters that I was involved tangentially like the kid and Dick
Tracy fighting somehow. And I think I defeated them somehow by getting them flushed into
a toilet or something ridiculous like that. But like this, you know, and Dick Tracy obviously
is pulling from the pulp. So like this pulp icon of the kid helping out, which actually
something that happens in Captain America comics originally. In fact, Bucky Barnes,
well, yeah, Bucky, I think as Bucky as the kid, not the superhero actually works with
a group of kids. And it's like, there's like a token girl, there's a token black kid who's
a coward for some reason, there's a fat kid. It's like this whole little legion of superhero.
They're not really superheroes, but like kids who get into these adventures, mysteries and
stuff. And then fighting one of the Captain America villains, like a one-off villain from
Captain America escapes somehow. And he ends up becoming like kind of a recurring villain
for the this group of kids, as far as I can remember from from, you know, reading the
Cap comics a couple years ago and looking into, you know, looking into how it branched
out because I wasn't going to read the kid comics. But, you know, maybe that was a full
choice of mine. You know, maybe I would have been very entertained by them. But anyway,
I was too focused on Cap himself that I didn't want to read these spin offs. But I knew about
them and I just kind of looked into them for a little bit. And that was the thing. So that's
kind of a iconic pulp thing with some characters. I don't think the shadow has any juvenile
agents and the shadow is very much a major influence on the red panda. But it's there.
It exists. And I don't know, maybe it's maybe the bronze man has kid agents because the
agents play, I think, a larger role for what's that guy's name? The bronze man, whoever,
whatever his real name is, Doc Savage. Maybe the agents play. They seem to, from what I've
researched on Doc Savage, play more of a role. And maybe there's even juvenile agents. I'm
not exactly sure about that at the moment. But anyway, regardless, you get it. I'm impressed
by this kid character who kind of steals the show and is a lot of fun based on I don't
know why this matters to me, but I'm pretty sure Shannon Arnold playing the voice and
she's played like Tufts before and young women and now and she's played Harry Kelly or this
young voice similar to this as like a newsie, I believe in previous episodes. But yeah,
Harry Kelly becomes I'm just going to tell you, Harry Kelly becomes a recurring character.
And he has a very interesting story that I enjoy. I think his episodes are some of my
favorites. So anyway, that's enough talking about that aspect of it. When I was talking
about the agents of the red panda generally, I you know, it's interesting, the the copy
tells you that this is going to be about the little guys. And I thought it was interesting.
Red Panda and Flying Squirrel don't show up till like minute nine or minute 10. And it's
just a little it's the fight, right? It's the fight. They knock the guys out. And then
there's a little, you know, organ stinger playing on the organ, the piano type thing.
Anyway, there's a little stinger and then it gets into the then they get wrapped up
into the rest of the episode. Similarly, are interestingly in the shadow novels, the shadow
is almost like a feature player or not a feature player. He's almost like it's almost sometimes
that the shadow novels and I've only read or listened to a couple of them have his agents
doing most of the action. And then in the middle of the book, he comes into the story
in a major way. So it's interesting to me that the same thing is kind of done here.
But Spiro, Andy Parker, Gregor Sampson, and then, you know, little Harry Kelly becoming
an agent too. I love seeing the stories of these guys who have no superpowers. They might
have guns. You know, Gregor Sampson. Well, I don't know what all his skills were. But,
you know, he may or may not have he was proposing as a criminal in the underworld. So he probably
had a gun. But like Spiro, just an old boxer. And anyway, just this idea of like these ordinary
men who have these extraordinary lives and do these extraordinary things under this great
man whose word is law in the red panda is super interesting. And having the flying squirrel
added her unique twist to that whole framework is really interesting, too, because like Andy
Parker seems like he's in love with her. And, you know, Spiro doesn't think she's hideous
and whatever. So it's just really interesting. This like heroic everyman thing. And this
is pre war. So it's post World War One. It's pre World War Two. So we're still in the thirties
in Toronto. So it's interesting to see, you know, I think Andy Parker is way too young
to have been in the war. But maybe Spiro is a veteran. And I don't know about anybody
else. But it's just kind of interesting to think of these normal men, even though Andy
Parker is a cop, like acting active in this extraordinary world and doing these extraordinary
things and being selfless. And like they've all got something to lose. Andy Parker could,
you know, lose his job. He could lose his life because he's more active. Spiro is only,
you know, a middleman, so to speak. But he still gets into danger. As we see in this
episode, he's got a wife to worry about. And so if he has, you know, adult children, if
he has grandchildren, I mean, who knows what his story really is. But it's interesting
that these like I said, these ordinary men are doing these extraordinary things and risking
themselves to do it all. I was really impressed by how gutsy Harry Kelly is. And like I said,
he kind of steals the show. He kind of cares the episode in some ways, you could say, you
know, his friend is too sensible, the cop says, to run down the aisle and check out
the dying man and said he wants to run away. And Harry doesn't want to do that. And then
he's willing to go back there and, you know, lead Andy Parker to the secret message that
Samson had for him. And that's, you know, that's great. And then after that, when he's
with the red pen and flying squirrel at the end, he's talking about how he wants to be
an agent. He wants to be, you know, useful and active and he doesn't care about the danger.
And you know, that's foolhardy, but it's also brave. And that's, that's really cool. So
I like that. I like that a lot. He's very endearing. Okay. So there were a lot of first
appearances in this episode. They are as follows. Not a lot. They're just big first appearances
and I didn't know they all came together. So we've got Harry Kelly, we've got Gregor
Samson slash agent 33. We've got cancer constable Andy Parker is agent 51. And we've got Spiro,
who's the contact man that runs everything. And beyond him, there's a some sort of dispatch
that we don't know of. I don't think I feel like the dispatcher has been mentioned one
time in the episode with the journalist, their friend journalist. Is that what that happened
yet? I don't know. But we'll talk about her later. Her who's her is that the journalists
or is that the other contact person? I don't know. You'll have to find out. Keep listening
to the red panda man. It's good stuff. So that's pretty cool. I like their first appearances.
There was I guess maybe the smoke bombs were a first appearance gadget. I don't know about
that. I don't know that counts or not. But yeah, I don't know. It was cool. This this
feels well, let me let me finish up. So gadgets. Okay, so there were sort of gadgets or gadgets
or technologies. There's coded messages. Gregor Samson leaves a coded message for the red
panda. It gets to him eventually. And then he causes things to escalate. And then signs
and counter signs, you know, Andy Parker knocks on the door. And then Spiro knocks with this
ridiculous tapping pattern, which they were like, how ridiculous it is, and how much mental
energy it would take to have that memorized. Reminds me of how in the shadow, the men who
were working for the shadows, his agents would have to listen to messages. And they would
pay attention to words that were emphasized, just so that were hidden in larger messages
that anyway, ridiculous, right? I don't know what it looks like in the script, because I've
only heard the audio versions of that. But that's how the reader emphasized them. And
it was weird. But it was weird, but like super logical. But also, in order to do that sort
of thing, you have to like really think about the message. And it can't just be something
you do on the fly. So it's just like it adds this fun, like spycraft. And like, I don't
know how else to say it, but spycraft is like cool spycraft, like secret agent thing or
vibe, you know, aspect to the stories. And those are just it's fun. It's exciting. It's
like pulpy, schlocky fun. And I really enjoy that. So you know, we don't get it's not that
severe in red panda here. Maybe because Taylor didn't want to steal that specifically from
the shadow and wanted to go his own way and have just, you know, generically, they're
coded messages and we don't get an insight into how they're structured, which I was kind
of expecting we would but we didn't. That's okay. But that was pretty interesting. So
anyway, that's it on first appearances and gadgets. So now I just kind of want to give,
I don't know more of my general thoughts, but more specified in a certain area. And
this is what I'm talking about. For some reason, this episode feels more fun, more adventurous
and more like a superhero story to me than the others have. And I know that's not strictly
accurate. We've had supervillains we've had, you know, the Sphinx is just okay. He's a
sea list supervillain. The Pharaoh of Valadies. Sorry. Like he's okay. Dr. Zombie or Professor
Zombie is a very interesting, you know, big larger than life character with a crazy performance.
We, you know, this episode brings us the the outcome or the the aftermath of the, you know,
body swap and the return of the golden claw, which is interesting because she's not in
it. She's only mentioned in it. And it's like the repercussions of her doing what she's doing.
And you know, the possibility that there are, you know, other corpses of people out there
who have been body swapped or however you want to, you know, body hijacked. Like that's
kind of the threat and then the threat to this kid. And you know, some of Red Panda's
agents but like, it was just tufts and thugs who were after them and who were fought. And
like I said, Red Panda and Flying Squirrel were in, I don't know, maybe they were like,
they were active in about a third of the episode, but it just, it was so good without them.
And that seems, it was so good without them, but the parts where they were there felt more
super heroic than anything else. And maybe because you're seeing it from, maybe you're
seeing through Harry Kelly's eyes and seeing and getting the fact that, you know, these
agents are outmatched in a lot of ways. Like they're outmatched or they're in much more
danger you could say than Red Panda and Flying Squirrel are going up against regular tufts
and thugs. You know, even though Red Panda and Flying Squirrel go up against much tougher
opponents, but you know, it scales to them because that's what they can handle. So they
can, they can fight bigger. They can fight bigger guys because they're worthy of that.
Whereas the agents aren't and it's just, I don't know, it's just really interesting.
And it just felt really dynamic and really fresh and really exciting. And like, I wasn't
scared that they would, I didn't think Harry Kelly was actually going to get killed. Like
not because this is my third time listening to this and not because it felt like that
would happen, but it just, it still felt amazing. Like the, I don't know, it was more of a spectacle.
It was more wonderful. Like I was for more, I was more, I was for more, I was more full
of wonder listening to this episode because I don't know, it's just the way I'm not exactly
sure. There's some, there's some magic in there. I think that Harry Kelly is very much
part of it and the scenario, the way it was written around him. And like, even though
like Flying Squirrel makes a little comment, that's a little racy, you know, it's, it's
fairly well camouflaged and like Harry Kelly picks up on it, but it's like innocent. He's
like, you know, eight, 10 year old kid, whatever. And he's like, you know, he gets that Andy
Parker's kind of sweet on her and he's washing because of her and everything. And like, you
know, she makes her up, you know, she makes a comment to him. Anyway, there's just, there's
comments going around, but like it feels innocent and fresh and sweet as opposed to, you know,
Kit can definitely bring a more adult edge to things if she wants to. And whether that's
through violence or anything else, but that didn't happen. And yet the danger was real.
And I don't know, it's interesting because it was so earnest and so real and yet so kid
friendly at the same time. Like I would have no problem with my kids, you know, listening
to this or seeing it depicted. And I think it's really quality and really entertaining.
Actually, I should do an experiment and have them listen to two random episodes, this and
one other or one other than this and see what they like better. Cause I have tried to get
them to listen to the Red Panda before my eldest is cool with it. The other is not so
much and you know, yeah, nobody's perfect. So it doesn't make me love them any less.
Not at all. Anyway, that's all I have to say. These episodes are running a lot longer than
I want them to, but I'm producing them much more efficiently. Like it's a very trim turnaround.
So maybe I'm okay with that. I really wanted to keep in the 10 minute length, but I don't
know. We'll see what happens. We will see what happens. Maybe I just need to be a little
more choosy with how I discuss the various elements in these episodes. We'll see. So
with that, I thank you for listening. I hope that you're well. And this is MJ signing out.
I hope you enjoyed that. Subscribe to keep up with me, like, and share to help me reach
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conversation until next time. Be well. This is MJ signing out. This has been a story over
everything production.