4 TWB Connections You May Have Missed
Updated: Jul 30, 2020
Artwork by Keith Talbot
1: Spoons
If you’ve been following The Writers Block Podcast since season/chapter 2, you will have already been acquainted with Dale Doohow from Episode 18 of the same title. Dale may be our most zany character to date and his story was actually inspired by a dream I had about a mysterious truck left in someone’s driveway. In the story Clarence and I end up telling, Dale is an older man confronted with the strange challenge of resisting his own temptations, represented by an old truck a mysterious stranger leaves parked in his driveway one morning.
Artwork by Keith Talbot
But perhaps the most peculiar thing about Dale’s character is his obsession with spoons. Among other things in his trailer park home, a handful of spoons from Dale’s apparently impressive collection have gone missing.
The next time we see Dale in the TWB universe is in Episode 19: "Magic," at the Laissez-Faire hotel in France, where he is seen attending what would prove to be magician Timothy Bublé’s final performance.
We then find Dale in another unlikely place, aboard the loopy transcontinental train of the Chapter 2 Finale: “Tickets, Please!” Here he remains unnamed but it is very obviously Dale as he appears briefly complaining about a shortage of fancy spoons.
The last Dale reference (so far) appears in the first part of season 3’s “Apocalypse” tale (Ep22). In this story, set far off into the future, Brock DiAngelo is taken in by a female robot to a trailer park home with walls lined by various spoons, suggesting that Brock may have stumbled into Dale’s old home.
2: Lankey's Pub
Artwork by Keith Talbot
The infamous Lankey’s goes all the way back to our pilot episode in the story “Suitcase Bomb,” and would go onto become our first recurring trope. Though it has never been fully explained, Lankey’s Pub (located somewhere in Ohio) would go on to become a sort of nexus point for everything occurring in the TWB universe. In the first season, Lankey’s is either visited or referenced in all but part 2 of Jimmy Eagle (Ep7) and the Instructor General Gerber stories (Ep8-9).
In season 2, the focus was shifted briefly from Lankey’s to draw out the creepy atmosphere of Mavericks Insane Asylum (discussed on its own terms next), though the link to the old pub is carried on in spirit through nurse Maddison Lankey, who we can only assume is somehow related to the pub’s owners.
Lankey’s appears once more in Episode 18 as Dale’s apparent hometown bar where we first hear mention of a Mr. Lankey, who is presumably one of the pub’s owners.
Lankey’s appears only twice more in references by way of a flier on the train in “Tickets, Please!” And as Fred Benjamin’s drink of choice in the second story of the “DOUBLE FEATURE.”
Outside of the official TWB universe, Lankey’s beer has also been referenced in erotica writer, Wolfgang Domino’s "Second Skin."
3: Dr. Mavericks Insane Asylum
Artwork by Keith Talbot
It is no secret that Dr. Mavericks is the ultimate villain in the TWB universe, preceded in spirit only by the sinister Syrums United company, and perhaps by Bobby Wings though Bobby is rendered quite useless as anything besides a rambling old madman by the end of Episode 7: “Jimmy Eagle, Part 2." Mavericks and/or his asylum appear in the first three episodes of season 2 (13, 14,15) and then again in “Mr. Boils” as the first story of the DOUBLE FEATURE.
Mavericks will also be the lead antagonist in “The Man with the Light, and The Girl Who Put It Out,” a short story by me to be featured in the upcoming TWB anthology.
4: Jimmy Eagle
Artwork by Keith Talbot
Perhaps the most famous man, let alone pilot, in the TWB universe. Jimmy Eagle first appears in his two-part tale (episodes 6 and 7) as the hero who must confront his own hero (Bobby Wings, or Big Bad Blue) and learn the truth about moral axioms.
We find brief but significant references to Jimmy all throughout the TWB universe. In Episode 16: “Baby Jane Doe,” the then-unborn baby Jane Doe’s mother is depicted as browsing a clothing store where Jimmy Eagle pajamas are sold.
In Episode 19: “Magic,” two kids in a hallway outside magician Timothy Bublé’s room are depicted fighting over a Jimmy Eagle model plane.
Jimmy Eagle is also the first TWB character to make appearances outside of the official podcast format. His famous red biplane appears as a key chain in the mini-van Joe steals in Clarence Carter's “Ticketmen,” and he himself is brought up by Mavericks in my “The Man with the Light, and The Girl Who Put It Out,” both short stories to be featured in our upcoming anthology.
Jimmy and his hero-turned-nemesis Bobby Wings also appear as the lead characters in the first 8Sparks video games, “Little Jimmy” and “Little Jimmy 2: Reloaded” which themselves are also in existence in the TWB universe as suggested in the upcoming Episode 24: “Killer Carnies” when Shelley compares the incessantly jaunty music of the merry-go-round to the music of the Little Jimmy games.
Of course there are many other connections in the TWB universe and we will be listing more off in the next post, but for now see if you can find any for yourself and let us know if we missed any. As always, thanks for following, reading, and listening to the “Coolest Podcast of All Time!”
by Shaun J. Nigro
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