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Blackheart! With Annie Nocenti and Anthony Oliveira! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hi everybody, welcome back to The Grey Malkin Lane Patreon.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're queer friends and allies gathered to talk about obscure and often overlooked characters in the Marvel Universe.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today I get to sit in with two of my very favorite people and very favorite writers, Annie Nissente, who I have had on the show a couple of times, was probably the most influential writer in my youth.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Anthony Alamara, my current favorite comics writer, I think, I just enjoy to have you both here.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk all about Black Heart, the son of the devil today, which I'm very excited about.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a character that I love.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did write the profile for this guy in the handbooks and on the appendix.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a character that I am familiar with.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that both of you have had your hands in obviously a different points in his history.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me have you both introduce yourselves, tell us a little about yourselves if you'd like with your name and pronouns, and I'd love to hear your initial thoughts on what you love about Blackheart, or about each other, because you're both amazing.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's begin with Annie and Annie.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to Great Mulk and Lane.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, thanks for having me.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Annie Nocente and I've been writing for Marvel Comics for I hate to say it forty years and now I'm focusing on these two babies behind me if and if this isn't if this is a radio not live then this is audio only
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't know what I'm pointing to, but I'm pointing to my books with Karen Burger.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did two graphic novels, the seeds and Ruby Falls, and now I'm working on my third graphic novel with the Masterful Karen Burger.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's phenomenal.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've read the seeds.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have not read the other yet, and I need to.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd thrilled.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: How wonderful.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: queer friendly, girl couple, by a beyondie who is basically resourcing her own relationship.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So really fun, three generations of women, not a lot of, and drawn by a woman, edited by a woman.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a girl book.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: How wonderful.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And let me also welcome the incredible Anthony Olivera.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Anthony.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hi, how's it going?
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, good.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Anthony Olivera.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Any pronouns are fine.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm a writer.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm doing right now.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm in the middle of Avengers Academy where we just brought black cart onto the scene.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: So this is, I mean, it's wonderful to be able to pick and the senties brain about this, but also I was just, I'm such a huge man.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is a real moment for me.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: I grew up reading your stuff.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: I had the novelizations you had.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: You wrote the short story.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: I remember distinctly a moment where Peter Parker is looking in the mirror.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: in a short story anthology you were part of.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's a, I think it's a typhoid Mary story, but I was like, it was so definitive for me because it's like this moment where we think about how hot Peter Parker is.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: And like, that to me is really one of the things I love so much about your work is the way that like, there's a horniness and there's like a male beauty thing that really interests me and I'm really interested in bringing back to comics.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: So this is a real highlight of my life right now.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's an interesting thing to say because, you know, comics are, you know, especially in the nineties when they became like, I don't know, almost like they had a little too much born.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, for me, you know, but women have always been, of course, very sexy in comics.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was thinking about this recently when I did an angel story.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Didn't we talk about angel, Chad?
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, giant size X-Men.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was sort of like, you know, I kind of wanted to deal with just like the gorgeousness of angel, which I had done before with a story with David Massicelli that if he doesn't open his mouth,
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Really sexy.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's really, I think, one of the things that, I mean, as you say, the nineties were such like an ultraviolet, like men are kind of like rough beasts in it.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: And your work always stops to think about like Daredevil, how hot Matt and Murdoch is.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: And like, I mean, part of it is also that you're working with remeta on these books.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it like nothing looks like that.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I'm trying to bring a little bit of that hornyness back to the peachy crap.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, not the rapiness of the mind, exactly.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have a moment on my show where I had Simon Furman on, and then I brought him back for a character episode on the character wire from Alpha Flight, just like this.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in my email, I was like, Simon, if you reread these comics, they are so horny and so queer.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when he comes on the show, he's like, I had no idea what you were talking about until I reread them.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's so many naked men wrestling.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the black heart is, I mean, are you
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're Mormon, right?
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mormon, yes.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not now.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: How about you, Wayne?
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, profound amount of Catholic damage.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's why like the your data will run to me is just like simply to sense.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I was raised Catholic, Cathy Kissman, you know, I got confirmed all that stuff.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I have like the the deep Catholic stuff.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the devil is interesting because it's
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's this whole narrative when you're a kid about how he was kicked out of heaven for being a rebel.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there is like at least a hundred some year history of Lucifer being sort of wrongly viewed because, you know, it's like, is it, what is the famous book?
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Milton Paradise Lost.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wrote my dissertation about it.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think I read like back in the day I probably read like the cliff notes of Paradise Lost and I remember that I don't so you're gonna have to fill us in here because my memory is kind of like
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: God's regime was like us to a certain degree kind of authoritarian.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in the Bible, when you're a kid reading the Bible, if somebody doesn't believe in God, he smights in the whole town.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he burns the town down if you don't believe in him.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so, in some ways, Lucifer, and I think I even don't, I think in those early stories, I even had a character named Lucie.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: You sure did.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was kind of like a Lucifer.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was like a, um, and drogenous.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no dance.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know Janet Talia.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, exactly.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lucie Lucifer.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the stuff you could get away with back then, you know, it was, uh, I think about the eighties.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We could really do whatever we wanted.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, they'd stuff they would definitely cut out now.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the idea was black heart starts out angry and defiant of his father.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he doesn't start out evil, but that was supposed to, I think, if I can remember that long ago, I think it was supposed to echo the narrative of
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: the Bible of the fallen angel, defying the authoritarian god, becoming a symbol of rebellion and revolution, which I think paradise lost gets into that, right?
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember this all coming back when I was teaching film in Haiti,
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: the the black Jacobian book about the original rebellion of Haiti was was there's some like a tangle of stuff there that I'm trying to dig out of my memory so talk to us maybe about paradise lost did you oh yeah i mean that's so funny because that's so uh... before i started working on black hard i knew i wanted a character like this and i've always been obsessed with him and um...
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: but he's been sort of like huge and popular culture like he was in the movies and he was in the video games I grew up with and I hadn't re-read the original stuff and when you go back to that Daredevil two-seventy like everything you just said is right there like it's it's it's an interesting transformation of mafisto too like he suddenly looks different in the and the remida art but also like yeah it is sort of this ancian regime he has a kind of
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: You really lean into like the medieval punishment of hell and black heart looks at this and is like this is so tired I don't understand why you want to rule this way and Mephisto keeps telling him like you're my son and this is how we do things and you do this amazing thing where he's like off-tockiness like he just sort of emerges from the like ground of Christ's crown he sort of born evil in a way that Mephisto
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: At least sometimes seems like he isn't.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like there's dialogue that seems to imply, Mephisto was once an angel, even though this has been retconned and re-retconned so many times.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: But like, you are thinking about the Paradise Austin, and I love the idea of what if a demon rebelled against Satan, for the same reason Satan rebelled.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of a couple hundred years old, I guess.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in terms of paradise lost was written what eight to sixteen sixty seven.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's pretty far back.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, but it's so ahead of its time that it does become sort of the the rallying cry of the romantics in like the the eighteen century the seven the night early nineteen century like William Blake talks about how like Milton was of the devil's party and didn't know it.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: So there is a kind of like way paradise lost kind of creates
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: Byron and Shelley and Blake.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like there is something really avant-garde about this sort of imagining of like what if the devil was a hero?
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what's funny, because when I was rereading those stories, which I didn't really have much of a memory of, I think I know what I'm doing.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to say that, and I think I must have talked about this with John and me to junior, because I remember we were talking about how Mithisto and the Marvel Universe was just a guy in red spandex.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we were like, and Johnny was like, if I'm going to do Mifisto, let's give them more gravitas and more reach.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm pretty sure Johnny came up with the idea that he would have his fingers and everything.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so therefore his body literally would have these tendrils going everywhere.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the, I think, yeah, and the, the tendrils going everywhere was literally Johnny because Johnny's also a laps Catholic or maybe even not a laps Catholic probably still a Catholic.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, um,
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The idea that Black Heart noticed that his father's methods were kind of archaic and doorky, you know, like, it's almost like the stuff you hear when a major musical movement gets used to, by another one, like, you know, then rock and roll hits and then punk hits and then the rhythms, the previous rhythms are absorbed into the new rhythms, but they're also kind of like,
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: the older them's kind of lose some of their power.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the black heart's thing from what I could tell from what I was trying to do in those words is that
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very modern in that it's about gossip and bickering like they're always bickering and I first asked like why is everyone bickering in this comic and then I went oh yeah, that's right black hearts making them all turn against each other and bicker and I think Johnny and I carried that on especially the brother against brother
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the, I don't know, Carnack and Gordon aren't really, yes.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're huge naked fight, yeah.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I also think that at that time, the inhumans were given to us as nobody's doing anything with the inhumans, you can use them, use them.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember how much of a command it was, but it was kind of like,
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't use them.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know how it is.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You work at Marvel now.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If somebody's off in another dimension or another realm, you can't touch them.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or characters are overused because obviously, the X-Men at the time and everybody wanted more Wolverine in every book.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess every Wolverine guest star, he would have been in every book because it's partly an understanding of back then if a book sales were dropping.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: But everyone really liked the book.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You would loan them an X-Men so that the sales go up.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it was because you want to draw attention to a good book.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't want it to die because sales are dropping.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you want to give it a little, you know.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's a time Ralph or somebody, my editor Ralph Machio, somebody said use the in humans.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know really much about them, you know.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So let me let me toss a little bit of an introduction.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now at last October on the show, anybody can go listen, we did the trial of Mifisto and it was really fun because I got to do a deep dive not only into my own weird origins but into the history of this character.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mormonism has a weird view, but as we explored the concept of the devil and the way it existed in my life and in the way it exists in the comics, we had this kind of turn in the conversation during the academic panel where we realized the devil is the representation of capitalism, the threat, the sin is any individuality.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what casts you out.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you refuse to play by the system or the rules, the rules are there to keep you present.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I shared a lot of my, again, my weird beliefs that I bring again, the way that the devil played a kind of a presence in my life.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll toss this out here for the two of you.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's follow up after.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Anthony, you should definitely send Annie a copy of Days Bring Your Book.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's brilliant.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to toss out just a quick introduction to the character based on Annie's first introduction of Blackheart in Daredevil number two, seventy.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the only one we'll delve into.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: The rest of today's episode will be topical rather than specific.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We often go appearance by appearance.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dare double two, seventy came out in September, nineteen eighty nine.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: In my opinion, one of the best single issues of all time.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It truly is breathtakingly beautiful.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to read some of the captions and just do a brief presentation.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Go look at this issue, go look at the art and the way it's structured.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's so gorgeous.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: In sixteen fifty-eight, on a crown in a gent, excuse me, on the crown of a gentle hill, Abigail Hausman was brutally irreverently murdered.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Her blood soaked the land for many hours before she was found.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: In those hours, a funneling flock of crows circled the spot like a troubled tornado.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they were just ordinary birds, but they knew something was horribly immis.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Over the next centuries, various crimes were committed on the same grassy crown.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Children begin to avoid the hill and, if they're in their play, one chased a ball or kite into the spot, the child would freeze in fear.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's little heart-tap dancing faster and faster until finally dashing away.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: The grass on the crown began to deepen in color to a blue green and finally a violet.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nearby houses could not keep owners nor tenants, and one by one were left deserted.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Had something been created on this spot, or was it just that humans began to regard the spot as evil?
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in down so and doubt it, excuse me, and in
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: and endown so endowed it with false power.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But no matter how something had stirred, had shifted, and it was not good.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The ground was soaked in blood, the air with screams, and pain seemed to fill even the plants that grew out of the hill.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange plants twisted with a melancholy beauty, romantic tragic roses with a thousand thorns for every blossom.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: The anguish beauty of the place attracted the young and restless teenagers being into dare one another into nightly visits into the spot.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: They held seances or simply held their lovers in their arms, and eventually more tragedies were added to the hill.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we shift to the present day, a woman named Sarah is attacked on the hill among the thorns there that have grown.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: The caption says Sarah screams, and as her screams are added to centuries of screams, some edge is topped, some critical masses reached, something bubbles up spills over.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: and a blast splits the ground apart and black heart emerges.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: His design is shocking, he's a demon with a tail, with unkempt hair like his father, Mufisto, his expression blank.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He emerges fully grown, Evan black like a spill of ink on a pink background.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is power, and yet it is as nodded and twisted as an ancient tree as if the creature is in constant agony.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: His muscles twist like barbed wire, and if so much power could be only so, excuse me.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as if so much power could only be painful.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: His eyes burn red, tragic, hollow, dripping eyes that have never known sleep.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is a stench like that of a smoking, burning ink, yet it's mixed with the sweet scent of rose.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sarah looks in awe at the creature with an almost religious wonder and knows that this burning black amber was flung from the fires of Hades itself.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the blackhearted one turns to, excuse me, and the blackhearted one turns its blinding darkness on them to see who they are.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: The boy is doomed, that is clear, but it sees that the girl is special, is good.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: She knows who she is, and that makes him glad.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's happy, as when a puppy first recognizes its own name being spoken.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: and feels he is the center of the world.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The joy also shows black heart what he must do.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: He lashes out with a tendril and the two humans wither away to husks, and the caption says sacrifice.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: The ones that shine bright, that glow with goodness.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then if this still appears in a frightening new form, he's naked and pink, kind of an androgynous demon with almost like a horse-like face.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: His hair is looking like ripped paper shreds on a homemade doll.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Congratulations, my son, on your first kill.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ha ha, crude, unimaginative kill, perhaps, but nonetheless your first newborn steps.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And not doing it differently, Blackheart men turns to his father eager to kill again.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's this?
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You try to kill again, so soon a feisty child, an eager servant, there truly is a shadow cast over your heart.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Go on, kill me, feel triumph, and then know it's opposite.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am the fisto.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am your father and your better, look into your maker's eyes and know the torments beyond imagination that await you ever again, forget your place.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Feel the glorious surges of power, tingling along a spine, taught as a whip, and then fall with the sickening panic in those moments when your power drains away.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: You will become quite intimate with this pendulum of swinging feelings.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your own dark heart beats this pace for you.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is the pace that comes with reaching for Godhood.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you are an infant to the ways of evil, to merely kill, that is as common as man.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Explore more sublime forms of evil.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you had lured that good woman into killing you, now that would have been victorious.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now relax and allow me to mold your visage.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: You must walk among men in this form for the eyes of men diminish evil if too many see your true form you lose power.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Evil grows in flourishes when hidden and covert dies when exposed and look at.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: excuse me, when exposing and looked at.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he reformed Blackhard into a more human looking form for the first time.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blackhard fights Daredevil, he can smell his foe Daredevil can.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's something burning, something foul yet, a hit of incense, rose incense, and he can sense him, humanoid, but not human.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Radiates some kind of black power.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it a mutant?
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it mysticism?
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sense is reeling, something making me sick, his energy, his stench, so revolting.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Only a few in my life have ever, excuse me, only a few times in my life have I felt this, and always when confronted with something completely evil.
• 20:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: When Spider-Man arrives, he yells, this guy stinks, like old rock, but cheap perfume dumped on top.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Daredevil observes, no matter what we hit him with, he keeps coming.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's confused, like an animal or a child, but too powerful to fool with.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: and powered by something irreparably dark.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Excuse me, irrepressibly dark.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can feel it in my gut, my soul.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: A black heart observes a crowd of panicked humans.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It does look at the people, it has no true memory, and yet it feels some ancient knowledge.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are motions to go through stances to take postures with no meaning for him yet.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is what he must do.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: He must make a mockery of sacrifice.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then after he gets punched by both heroes, the thing reels and remembers the words of the way the eyes of man and knows why it is weak and why the time is not right.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the fistos they're watching the whole time and we close with this scene.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We move back to the hill, now bathed in darkness, and the caption says, Christ's crown, a bristling tortured black heart crumples on the hill, collapsing, melting, sinking into the ground,
• 21:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He cries out an anger to his absent father.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why was he brought forth?
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why was he forced into this?
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why was he forced to, excuse me?
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why was he forced into being in this dark, cruel world?
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: He does not want this, his own birth.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: He does not want to live just to suffer, to die.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: He joins the briars, the thisels, the roses, and thorns of this earth, and hopes his father will forget him, and let him rest in peace.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is a fucking story.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely written by somebody who's been too much time and church.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: That childhood, the child, the way religion seeps into your brain as a child, you know, and all those tortured stories.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm old enough to, I think I, I think the masses were in Latin back then.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The so it was extra, extra tortured.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do remember this kicked in a memory of when I was a kid.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: We did have
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if either of you have any of this kind of memory, but we lived by a forest.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember there were a few spots in the woods that terrified us.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one of them had a bad history.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a kid, a bad kid that used to like skin animals and then like nail their hides to trees and stuff.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when we were kids,
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: we would get up close to this sort of killing ground and you know you'd step in and you'd scream and run away it's that instant kids have for like a bad spot on the planet and I think I just folded that into this story with this childhood fear we had of this
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, patch of rough forest where bad things happened.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's ironic recording this now.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wrote these notes weeks ago, but over the Christmas break, my husband and I watched yellow jackets, which is very this.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's these girls and the woods and there's an entity and there's this question of did their insanity created or is it with them?
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also just saw Nostvaratu yesterday at the idea of like the
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: cursed lad in the evil being and the rules that that has to operate by.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's fascinating the way we capture this in fiction.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, so again, please.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it's also it is Christ's crown.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the ambiguity of the father betraying the son.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's got the, he's got the crown of thorns and I don't know where the roses came from, but probably, you know, they go along with thorns.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, I'm really curious about that because like,
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: The idea that he smells kind of bad but kind of nice is really fascinating to me and like such a fascinating choice.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, it's being drawn to evil and the, you know, I mean, I guess the master of this stuff would be Stephen King, you know, kind of like, I love how King will make like the dog evil, you know, or the war that could find something incredibly mundane.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has that great book that's all about the ice cream man, you know, the ice cream man is the evil in the whole book.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's even a comic made of it, right?
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ice cream man.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like the evil because you take something that seems to move through so sweetly with the bells and the here's some ice cream and Stephen King turned that into a villain.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I forget where I'm going with this.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just think about the aesthetics of him.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I think you're picking out a lot of different tropes and then you love a character that stinks.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think, I mean, it's funny listening to that.
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, you just don't get pros like that in comics anymore.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, this is one of the things.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I want to encourage it to me now.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: But that's what I like.
• 25:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I think that pros in a comic should be kind of radioactive purple pros.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I'd like the idea that the writer is painting in the same vivid colors that the artists are.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: And the way that you can do, like, what's great about this issue, which is sort of amazing as a one shot, is like, it just feels like a tone poem.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's so, as much as it's thinking about the evil of black heart, it is so, like, Elijah, it's so mournful about the state of him.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: One thing I always wondered when I read this is like, did you always know you were going to bring him back?
• 26:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: Did you always know this was like the launch of a new character?
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because like, the ending leaves it close that we may never see him again.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think that when I first started writing Daredevil and I think maybe Chad and I talked about this it was a I kind of avoided the hero and I the my run opens with a lot of like sort of one shots or two issues about villain villain villain and I think Ralph at some point said
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, Annie, you're going to have to deal with the hero, you know, because hero, once you start dealing with the hero, that's when you have to really do like the deep thought.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he was possibly, obviously, because Daredevil dressed, he's a lapsed Catholic, his mother wasn't his mother and none, right?
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Didn't it Maggie turned out to be his mom and, you know, so he dresses like the devil.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's an obvious thing.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm assuming there were Daredevil and the devil's stories before my run.
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm assuming, but maybe not.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a story I tell in my memoir, which is being adapted to a graphic novel as we speak.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very excited about it's release.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where after I came out, I went to a therapy session where my therapist asked me about my childhood hero, which was a funny question.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the person I brought up is probably someone neither even heard of, because it was a book of Mormon character, not a Bible character.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it was a guy named Abenadi, who was this old man that got sent into this like wicked town to like prophesy, which is like very Noah before the flood, right?
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this guy Abenadi ends up getting burned at the stake.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as he's dying, he's like, if my sacrifice changes one person, then that's worth it.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it does.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It converts one person who goes on to help other people.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I told that story to my therapist who looked at me and he goes, that was your childhood hero, because that's really fucked up.
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I reread this black heart story, there's these moments where he recognizes, oh, these humans have to sacrifice.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: He makes a mockery of sacrifice.
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like this word that you use, which leads me to think, like, mafisto and black heart are created the way they were created.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kieran Gillen picks up on this with mafisto later.
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is how I was created.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have no other choice.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had to have a child that I had to play these games with him almost.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: because that's what God did with his kid and I have no other choice but to reenact that.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really fascinating idea and you hit it from every angle in this one issue.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, I think what happens is Anthony knows when you, when you do a story, you kind of back then we used to get letters because there was no internet.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the internet didn't exist.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the letters would come in and you'd get a bunch of letters of people saying, Blackheart's cool, bringing back and then you say, Ralph, what do you think?
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you say, Johnny, you want to keep drawing them.
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's kind of how it works.
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like,
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the fans didn't react and if Johnny didn't want to draw them again, it probably wouldn't happen.
• 28:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Johnny was really into him.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I do, I do, I was sort of struck by like this weird idea of literally the bickering.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bickering is just, you know, the idea that the devil could be somebody who enters a room and just starts making people bickering.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's kind of the state of the world right now.
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: You could say that people taking one side or the other and going at it is basically like as about as devilish as, you know, it is sort of like that's what would it's Twitter if not people like
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: I hadn't thought of that.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: Blackheart should get really into Twitter.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: That sounds like a good idea.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, that's why I wanted him actually.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: I have this cast of characters who I really like and who really like each other and I was like, I love this friendship and I love how complicated their relationships are, but I want what I wanted was like a seven of nine.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wanted someone who could drop into a scene and everybody kind of hates.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they don't care, really.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love your Black Heart stories.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, not just this Black Heart stories, but they flow so beautifully.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're really, really great stories.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I read everything Chad sent me every issue of Avengers Academy is
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: gorgeous and brilliant.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the book that makes me slow down and appreciate every moment.
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's so good Anthony.
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Artists has the be really uses the inky tendrils of black hearts so beautifully.
• 30:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you really just feel like now where is he sticking his fingers.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm so glad to know that's what you guys were thinking because like yeah the art we've been getting I mean Bayley rose in London that confession issue just like blew us away like and it's weird because we're sort of inventing this kind of newish way to write a comic right like
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: we don't have page turns we're just scrolling endlessly and like thinking about the way you can expand a margin so that the margin itself becomes art which is what something we kind of did with the m plate arc two and now that black heart issue which is like what if the margin is just like a statue of the virgin of Mary or the tracery of the cathedral like um but all of that comes straight out of your work like it's so
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I kept thinking about this thing.
• 31:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this vertical comic that you scroll through was really fun to read.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, being like somebody who's a paper person and old school person, I kept saying, well, now I want to buy the comic.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's true.
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The way they're designed, you couldn't just, you couldn't just make a comic of it.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, it would be tricky.
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it is a problem.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're kind of coming up against.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you'd have to figure out.
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the whole idea of paddle borders, like, I mean, the first
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, it goes way, way, way back.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think Windsor McKay used to do stuff like that with making the panel borders have a artistic thing, but then I think it became really apparent with what was his name, J. H. Williams, right?
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was doing.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was doing Batwoman maybe, and it was like these glorious pages.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I got to work with Trevor McCarthy on Clarian, which was a Kirby character.
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he had been, he was heavily influenced by J. H. Williams.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we literally made the panel borders in every issue, made them a big thing.
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: If it was techno there was like a little viral nanobot insect kind of thing and if there was there was a girl Rapunzel forget her name really but she was based on Rapunzel and so all the panel borders were endlessly long hair and it's it that stuff it's so perfect for
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: for black heart because he's everywhere and nowhere.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as you're describing that, I'm also realizing, I don't know, when Venom was created, but it's very Venom or Carnegie, right?
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the symbiote oozing into things and taking it over.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's an interesting realization because I think they probably debute around the same time.
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you get the same thing with Warlock a lot.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like there was a lot of the Warlock stuff.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: Art Adams especially really loves to like,
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: have this frame structured by the sort of entity that is, again, like his tendrils kind of get everywhere, right?
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like he's sort of the seepiness of his body as part of the character.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I guess that was like, there was a moment when, uh, I sometimes I think of comic art, there are like the simple fires in the complicators, so you have like, I love like Alex's toath sensibility of just a very, very simple graphic storytelling.
• 34:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then there was the rise of the,
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Complicators, you know, Chris.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're a spider man wouldn't just have a web shot.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It would be like thousands of lines, you know.
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was art, too.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was Arthur Adams, you know, he did the first like ornate web shot that then McFarlane went, you know,
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, it's funny reading this issue, like so much.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think like a lot of the McFarlane demons come straight out of this issue, really.
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like Ramita kind of creates that kind of horse-headed demon that will then dominate the image line, like violator, and all of that comes straight out of this black heart issue in the Way of the Fisto.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Suddenly gets an update for the nineties, right?
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, and I think it's, you know, it's evil is something that we have to deal with.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, it's sort of like villains who just want to kill.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's what Mithisto says.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: He said, yeah, your baby took her first baby steps.
• 35:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: You killed somebody.
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you had seduced the good girl and to be bad, that would have been a bigger win.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is that the devil finds
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: turning a good person bad as like that is like the height of his art.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you have, did you, do you have thoughts about Abigail Houseman?
• 35:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like I've, I've been kind of thinking about her a lot lately.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: This sort of character who's, please do whatever you want for.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, okay, it does come out of that thing when I was a kid and this, this,
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the kid was skinny animals and I actually got in a rock fight with him when I was a kid.
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: We used to do rock fights, which is so stupid.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: We throw rocks at each other and I have all these scars on this side of my eye.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: from when when a rock hit me and we just we just decided that this was an evil spot and that's where that all came from and it was also I imagine some kind of fear what else did that kid do?
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which is very American horror story.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the idea of these cursed places where the ghosts get trapped in the evil exists.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I want to cover a couple things quickly, and then I want to hear both of your comments on this.
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you guys would like to follow the comprehensive journey of Blackheart, I'd not only wrote this guy for the appendix and for the handbooks, but you can go to the Marvel Universe appendix and click on the Blackheart profile, written by me, and it's a comprehensive exploration.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Up to date, up to two Avengers Academy,
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: with all of Blackharts' experiences in Cyclopidea style, so feel free to go through.
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's basically three kinds of Blackharts' stories.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's never been one of the focal characters until, except with Annie at the beginning and Anthony now, but he's a frequent villain-used.
• 37:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the first type we often get him as kind of the temperature of souls, the demon that whispers in your ear, tries to turn you evil, right?
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to give you the trolley problem and force you into making the Faustian bargain or corrupt your innocence.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it has to be your choice each time.
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the end result is the altered time or the character resurrected or the person given superpowers.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's Mephisto, but Mephisto Jr.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: instead, right?
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's the guy trying to spite his dad, which brings us to the second story type, which is Blackheart as the son of Mephisto.
• 37:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of stories of him fighting with his dad, trying to overthrow his dad, trying to get power away from his dad,
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to control his own realm of hell, occasionally he'll serve his dad, but often it's just animosity, which is very like Odin with Thor or Zeus with Hercules, those types of relationships.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then that's the third type of story we see often with Blackheart, started by Annie, but never really picked up on consistently.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the idea of Blackheart being banished.
• 37:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a story referenced once in the Falcon series where he was sentenced to a thousand years on a lower realm of hell with no power, you know, in time works different in hell.
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So whatever, in Daredevil one he or excuse me, two eighty two by any though is the first time he's banished to Earth and given a human form and with his to transform them in that very first appearance as well.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's quickly forgotten.
• 38:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a series called Ghost Rider Wolverine Punisher Hearts of Darkness.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: where he's banished to earth and given a human form again and he has to depend on like worshipers for power in a venom volume two black heart is banished to earth again and given a human form called Mr. Degley and now we have the more recent story in Avengers Academy where he's banished and given this more vulnerable kind of heart felt
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: human form, at least we hope that the web that seems more key on redemption.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'd love to hear your thoughts on those types of stories, and Anthony, I would love to hear especially your choice to bring Blackheart in.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like this is a character you've thought about for a long time.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, as with Annie grew up very Catholic and the thing that appealed to me and she was getting at this about the Daredevil stuff, the thing that appeals to me is he kind of has a different origin than most demon characters in that he is not
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: born good.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: He is born bad, which is actually the very Catholic sense of what it means to be born, right?
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, and when you're growing up and they're like, yes, you're born with a original sin, a little black mark on your soul.
• 39:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And every time you lie, your soul is turning black.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's basically, you know, that I got that in spades as a kid.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Me too like that and like and in a book that is so much thinking about I mean it really has sort of several structural ideas but like one of them the main one is what does it mean to be a hero and am I born bad like these are questions that a lot of the characters sort of struggle with like
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: We have Normie Osborn who is the heir to the Osborn legacy and the Green Goblin stuff and all the symbiots stuff.
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: We have Kid Juggernaut who is like our nicest character but his legacy is like you are in service to a demon.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: You are the rage personified.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wanted a character that could get it all that and like obviously like Brio Brooks is a half-part vampire right and but also the queer characters right like Sheila has to ask this about herself because she's trans and like that is a very common queer experience of like I guess I'm just bad my parents say I'm bad
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: And Blackheart is like the ultimate version of that.
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's literally a few seconds old before he's told that you are Blackhearted, you are this demonic thing, and your job is to be bad.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so that's why.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: But what I love about that first story is like, it is already thinking about him being incarnated.
• 40:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I was very aware when I picked him that he had been sentenced to be human before.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: But nobody picked up the ball.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: It always partly because his visual is so tempting, right?
• 40:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's such a great design.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The weird thoughts I was having rereading a story that I had totally forgotten.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, one thought was like Lucy is obviously a trans Lucifer.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I wondered why a Beastie boy shirt.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that must have been John Jay.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I was like, what was I thinking with the Beastie boy shirt?
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm like, I have no idea.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in fast forward to another infamous issue, where Mithisto goes to the bar on Christmas Eve and poses a woman and makes out with Daredevil for a child, which is very much money.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's sort of the other thing, oh, I, on then I had your thought like,
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at the time I got, I was like, why is Silver Surfer suddenly in this series?
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I can't remember why.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then I thought it could be because when he was no longer the herald of Galactus, he was exiled to constantly just spin around earth and can't go home and can't.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a feeling that there was some conscious thought of a parallel there.
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Annie, let me look at it quickly.
• 42:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Mathisto first shows up in silver surfer.
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: He sees the silver surfer in his initial appearances as by Stanley as like the most pure innocent soul.
• 42:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: The one that he needs to corrupt more than any other.
• 42:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's obsessed.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I kind of thought there was a through line of you bringing him back there.
• 42:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: There could be, but also, you know, Ralph Machio was my editor and Ralph is, you know, he's a, uh, comics historian and
• 42:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: uh he might have had he might have decided hey uh bring silver surfer in like i'm not really sure i no longer know could have been johnny i want to draw silver surfer but i i felt like if it was a happy accident or conscious or not there is that parallel of being exiled you know from your kingdom and it's very biblical
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and like the silver surfer is also like Blackheart in that he is a person who is serving this evil entity and then has to decide I actually don't want to do this and like what does it mean?
• 43:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Is there a path to redemption for a character who is like orchestrated the destruction of worlds?
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like the idea that silver surfer is a good person is such an odd idea given how many people he has helped kill.
• 43:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: He is kind of a child of Galactus in that way, right?
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's funny because I just got to be part of this that Marvel's doing this great series of, um, giving the lactose new heralds.
• 43:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got to do rogue.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and our dear friend, Joshua, he'll got to do gambit.
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: What a little one pair.
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know, I want to, yeah, I'm waiting.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope they collect them all so I can read them all, but it really is like,
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, Galactus is an interesting character because he has to do what he does in order for to keep cosmic balance.
• 44:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he serves a purpose that is seems on the surface from our puny little minds to be evil, but it isn't.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, something that he just has to do.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I have rogue, of course, completely defying him and
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, then he breaks her, you know, he has to break her into taking a job.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, so I was thinking a lot about that kind of entity.
• 44:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marvel has entities that are not necessarily evil because they perform a cosmic, you know, whether it's Thanos is the same way and death.
• 44:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm interested in these sort of texts where the supernatural is just part of the every day of the universe for these characters.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: And yet, we never get a closer answer about like, well, is there a God like the Marvel Universe?
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: partly because editorial will not let you be like, here's God, but like there is a kind of way that I did this in the confession story where like black cart for all his power for all his sort of cosmic awareness has no more proof of the existence of God than any of us because like he is part of the same ecology we are where it's like, well, this feels like what my job is and there's powers above me and below me and I will operate
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: as best I can within the infrastructure as I understand it.
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I like the idea of shrinking his perspective down to the human in a very kind of Christ like way and being like, well, now what?
• 45:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: What is your ethos now?
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: What do you think about what you've done and what you're supposed to do now?
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it seemed like a question that is
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: Pregnant in the character's design from the very beginning, even in that panel where Mifista sort of remold seemed to having a human face.
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then I knew other people had done before, but I felt like there was never a story for him.
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just to reflect, Lucifer's tossed out of heaven and black hard as tossed out of hell, right?
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the parallel.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, yeah, that was very conscious and the, you know, the, um, yeah, so I hear what you're saying.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, black heart, well, now you're giving him an actual arc, but I, yeah, I mean, I think that if I had stayed on the book, we might have brought him back, but, you know, um,
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also, I like how Lucifer is, or a mafisto, I mean, mafisto is really impressed by people that can't be broken.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then something about being a human that drives some kind of crazy, like I think silver surfer and Daredevil drive them a little crazy because you can't, you can't corrupt them.
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
• 47:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Anthony give us a give the listeners just a little bit of a peek into the story that you've told with Blackheart thus far and adventures accounting.
• 47:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, so yeah, so I mean one of the things I wanted to do was
• 47:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: Right before Christmas, we did a kind of advent story where we saw Tommy and Billy Maxim off again.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: I keep checking in on those characters because they interest me a lot.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: But one of the parts of their origin story is that they are allegedly pieces of Mephisto's soul.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: So again, I'm interested in characters who are like, well, am I bad because of the nature of my birth?
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: And those two have it in spades, right?
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, they kind of
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: literally their origin is kind of this nightmarish possibility that they were pulled from this like demonic realm to exist to make the scarlet which happy and like I'm actually not convinced that is the case for them, but that's what they think and that's what myth fist oak thinks and it gave me a chance to sort of think about their like quote brother black card was also specifically is mythist o's child
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I wanted, I used them as a kind of foil for black heart as like he looks at these two innocent beings who have the same origin as him and wonders why they get to be good, which he knows implicitly.
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think that's also a very Catholic experience.
• 48:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like you know this other person you know is good, but you can't help but think of yourself as bad.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I wanted to sort of put him in sharp relief and from that sharp relief, be like, well, you're going to get a chance.
• 48:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so he is incarnated by Mephisto's punishment and then sort of thrust into the space of the Avengers Academy.
• 48:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: And immediately starts causing trouble.
• 48:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: He sort of
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: purposely triggers Captain America's substance abuse problem as a way to sort of drive a wedge between him and kid juggernaut, but also to sort of think about his own existential crisis, which is why I wanted to spend some time with him in the confession story, just going to confession, seeming like he's signing to a priest, but actually looking for Daredevil and trying to triangulate who he is based on this person he knows as the person he wronged first and most, right?
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Now, from there, I want to think about like, well, then what does it mean to be human?
• 49:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: What does it mean to have these friendships?
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're in the middle of a time travel story.
• 49:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I'm sending him back to his origin.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want him to see what it is like to have been, who was Abigail Houseman?
• 49:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: What was for situation?
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: How did, how did all this start?
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: And what does his origin say?
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I said Salem was denied stick it with the witches.
• 49:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, she is a, she is kind of a healer is is what it says and like Christ's crown, she lives there.
• 49:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: She must because she dies there.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, but yeah, there is kind of again, like I want to keep thinking, I might have been a, I think I didn't, I put it in sale and I think just sort of cavalier without it.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, because you think of, you know, there's this phrase, this, one of my friends calls it Necrotorism or people.
• 50:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: go to death spots and if there's a long history of people going to a place where there were a lot of killings be it a Native American genocide spotter now of course genocide everywhere but it's this idea that you go to it go to the place where tons of evil happened
• 50:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And look at it in awe and fear and whatever, and I think that that was the childhood thing that me and my friends had with this spot in the woods where we knew bad things were happening, but we were too young to know.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why?
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember I had this horrible, um, I was reading an article about a serial killer and it turns out he would have been the exact age and lived in the exact town where, where this kid lived to was, uh, skating animals and yeah.
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, like I'm to trees and I thought, I wonder if that was the kid, you know, that kid.
• 51:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: As it's the right age in the right town, I thought maybe that kid I knew grew up to be a horrible serial killer.
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Blackheart origin, it's women that our label does being killed.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's children that can sense the evil, right?
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the interesting piece in tying it to Salem is here's a community that has licensed a group of men to hunt down women that has deemed quote evil.
• 51:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: and here where the roses grow, you know, it's a really fascinating fox experiment.
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and like the idea, I mean, it's it's something and he has been talking about therapy.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: But like the idea that this evil place is called Christ's crown.
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like when I called him the demon of Christ's crown, we got an editorial note of like, I don't know if we can do that.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: I was like, that's the places name.
• 52:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's not.
• 52:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's not the demon of the hat.
• 52:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've only had S&P, you know, we have the standards and practices at Marvel.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've only had it for a couple years.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the first time I got the S&P feedback, it's a learning curve for them because I think it's good because they question everything, but sometimes they don't understand that it is just a comic and that he doesn't have to be, you know, like fact-chipped and triple fact-checked and, you know,
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I definitely some day will tell the story about my ass.
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not on air, yeah.
• 52:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I have a few of those, but they're getting much better now, you know.
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 52:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, it is sort of, I mean, I do think it's important also.
• 52:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: I always think of the Orson Wells thing of like, their job is their job and your job is your job and like you push and push until you lose and you're going to lose some.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: But then again, he died penniless.
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what do you call it?
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Danny O'Neill, who was basically my mentor at Marvel when I was just kid pretty much.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: He used to use a phrase.
• 53:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was like, you always put a yellow tie on a cat.
• 53:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, what are you talking about?
• 53:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes, well, you always give something ridiculous so the editor can feel like they're doing their job by going, why would a cat have a yellow tie?
• 53:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you go, oh no.
• 53:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The editor, let me take that yellow tie off that cat.
• 53:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I love that.
• 53:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm gonna yeah, Gorson Wells did the same thing.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: He would always put in like and now the Orgy and they were like no Orgy anybody I'll lose the Orgy but the blowdog on the other pages and so bad.
• 53:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm fascinated as well.
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we won't spend time here a lot, but the way we write characters who are all powerful and we make them work by giving them some vulnerability, right?
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you go to the Marvel appendix, say, and you read through the power section on black art, that's the thing we had to do on the handbooks is like,
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's write down everything a character can do and how it changes and what it looks like and what are the rules.
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: They got the character claw.
• 54:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember stressing about that for hours writing up the power section because you know it's human sound and like what do you do with that because it's different in every appearance black hearts limitations and the way that they are being written now versus the all-powerful corrupting but only when he has your consent thing right and then how are you setting the limitations on black hearts powers?
• 54:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's funny because it's so easy when there's another Catholic in the room.
• 54:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because I've written, like my book, Dayspring is about Jesus.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: So writing all powerful people in human bodies is kind of a familiar thing for me.
• 54:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so he has kind of the same limitations.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: He can do whatever he needs to do, but he is limited by the fact that he still has all the limitations of a human.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: He needs to sleep, he needs his food.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: you can hurt him, his body is vulnerable.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: So in that sense, his limits, and I think this is true with most marble characters, like Wicked is a similarly extremely powerful character.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: His limits are based on his point of view, like what?
• 55:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: What does he want?
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: What does he nervous about as a person who also struggles with anxiety?
• 55:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: I know that like sometimes I am most limited by the fact that my body has decided I have a limit that is maybe not even true, but I'm going to be really worried about this thing for the next little bit.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: anxious characters are easy with black heart.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's the fact that he doesn't know what he wants that limits him.
• 55:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, he can cast a spell and do this or that.
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: But he doesn't know where he wants to intervene, what he wants to accomplish.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: It does help that Marvel Universe is also populated with demigods.
• 56:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: For the New Year's Eve issue, he was fighting Toto against all the wizards of the Marvel Universe.
• 56:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: I wanted to show he is actually still that powerful even as we move into, but he doesn't know who he is and he doesn't know what he wants anymore.
• 56:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: when he's an antagonist that's easy like when he's trying to corrupt a soul the goal is at this very minute like the difference between Matt Murdox hope and despair is a really fun thing to play at now he's limited by the fact that he doesn't know what he wants yet
• 56:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, you know, it all, I think in that series, I remember being surprised that that I mentioned Gallagher and Lancelot and that was like a thing, because back then we were all reading once in future King.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, that was like the book of the
• 57:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: eighties you know that we were all reading and it was it was um the idea and there that if you're born good it's no big to be good but if you're born bad it's a reach to be good so that's the better story that's the more powerful story and it's also the other thing that I remembered when you mentioned Captain America
• 57:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: to a certain degree like Captain America, his name is Captain America, but which aspect of America does he represent?
• 57:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does he represent America when America is like a mess of a international interventions and toppling like democracies and putting in authority?
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I did one story where Captain America got really mad
• 57:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: at something America was doing.
• 57:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, you know, when you do, when you do mafisto black art stories, it's also, it's that amorph, it's the beauty of the amorphous thing of what is the face of evil?
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is the modern face of evil?
• 58:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, they're, they're,
• 58:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: they resonate, there are types, but they resonate and you can, you can mess with them a lot, you know?
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So for people who would like to follow this character, read Annie and initial run, the only other one that's really powerful.
• 58:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some good ones with Black Heart along the way, but there's a series called Ghost Rider Wolverine Punisher, Cole-in, Hearts of Darkness.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a Howard Mackie genre-me-to-june, your story.
• 58:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It goes back to Christ's crown again.
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's powerful, really interesting.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's from nineteen ninety one Anthony just to point out two moments that I find really impressive from your work with black heart and I'm not going to reference the new Confessional story yet because it's not out what number of going to those I think it'll be out when you drop this though because will but I have chosen not to read it yet you can reference whatever you like but I like to get a line there's a moment where escapade who's a character I'm tremendously fond of who is the trans girl she changed early Jane
• 59:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Charlie, yeah.
• 59:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Love a wonderful Charlie Jane Andrews, an escapade changes places quote unquote with black heart and immediately finds sympathy for him immediately senses the pain in the confusion of his existence and then we've got Captain Marvel Carol Danvers who has kind of just learned to trust these kids and there's a moment where the heroes at the big party are
• 59:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: like black heart fucking fight him in carols like no the kids have made a decision here and i'm gonna stand by the kids and we're given the son of the devil a chance guys let's just how it is i i think these moments with these characters are so powerful and i'm really loving how you play them off of each other just i adore it really truly yeah the and also the the thing about um the trans thing the original trans character that i wrote from marvel back in the age right yeah she she's an MPa
• 1:00:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So she feels the pain of others, acutely, that was her, and she even physically manifests when she's, when she's, you know, empathizing with you, she starts to look like you.
• 1:00:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's interesting that the Escapade has a similar empathic narrative.
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Al-Yueng does another character in his immortal Holkran.
• 1:00:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: A character named Charlene McGowan, who is a trans-doctor, non-powered.
• 1:00:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a guy named Zem New the Titan that's corrupting everyone's souls.
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the caption given about McGowan is she's like, I know myself so well, I had to fight myself so hard to be who I am that you can't possibly corrupt me.
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's the one incorruptible character.
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love these trans-enair.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love them.
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love that the trans narrative from the Jesse Drake or whatever she was called an escapade is that their empaths, that their compassionate, you know, which is really nice.
• 1:01:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I think that
• 1:01:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I didn't I didn't create escapade and like I think that part of what makes her so wonderful the character to get to know second hand now like I really I think I'm the second person who's gotten a chance to write her in any great length is well and you're never primary writer you've done more with her than Charlie Jane has
• 1:01:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: which is so strange to think about, but I do feel like I finished my PhD and then I worked at the Glad Day Book Shop here in Toronto, which is like a queer event space for Toronto's queer community.
• 1:01:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: And my experience is that
• 1:01:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: very often, queer people do have to manifest a great deal of compassion.
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: And part of it is also a trauma response.
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Part of it is just like, I am in danger.
• 1:02:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: I must be very conscious of the feelings and emotions of others if I'm going to survive my normal human interactions.
• 1:02:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: having not started therapy myself.
• 1:02:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is kind of like a thing you do, right?
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like I have to know exactly where my parents emotions are to get through day to day.
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: But part of it is that just like as as myself sort of whatever is lapsed, I don't even know the word, Catholic, there does come a moment in your life where you are like,
• 1:02:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I can't be as evil as they're saying I am because I don't either I either you do fall victim to that and you do sort of descend into the despair of that or you learn to realize you've been given an narrative that is not applicable and so you have to develop your own incredibly strong sense of here's who I am and here's here's who other people are
• 1:02:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: stripped of all the garbage and the barnacles that we've been forced to accrue to ourselves.
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: So it was important to me that it is escapade who looks at black hard and says, you're not what the narrative inside your head tells you you are.
• 1:03:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's why I wanted that.
• 1:03:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I played by your rules, I was suffering.
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I left those rules is when I was happy.
• 1:03:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's my little story.
• 1:03:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's really, truly brilliant.
• 1:03:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is really a good angle on to have her see that in him because I think it's a little bit from the very beginning.
• 1:03:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't necessarily want to be daddy's
• 1:03:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: little evil sidekick.
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty clear that he doesn't want to, you know, but he is like punk music hit it.
• 1:03:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like whatever Mifisto's list is probably Wagner, right?
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are we going to, are we going to see the Fista or, or Jezebel as she sometimes called the daughter of Mufisto?
• 1:03:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I mean, I think really book.
• 1:04:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think that one of the interesting things is, I mean, we're budgeted for six to six issues.
• 1:04:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm on issue forty.
• 1:04:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: How much room is left is kind of a question.
• 1:04:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: One of the things, I mean, from the very beginning in that New Year's Eve issue, Black Heart says to Carol, like, why bother standing up for me?
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, they're going, I'm going to go back.
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I'm going to be what I was before.
• 1:04:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: And part of that is me recognizing at a meta level, it is hard to know if this will stick.
• 1:04:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is hard to know if this is Black Heart's new status quo, because the temptation to evil is going to be strong in the meta text, too, right?
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like Marvel may want their
• 1:04:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's that?
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blackheart himself doesn't know exactly is no idea he is like a baby The thing that I just oh I remember when I first got to Marvel and Louise Simonson used to say you know Laps Catholics are just are perfect to write comments.
• 1:05:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you're a Laps Catholic.
• 1:05:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll do fine in this business
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I get it.
• 1:05:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get the metaphysics that you're up against.
• 1:05:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get the early damage, you know, as we were talking about the black souls are black or doomed, you know, the whole thing.
• 1:05:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The original sin.
• 1:05:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're ready.
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're born ready to write a complicated superhero villains.
• 1:05:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I definitely agree.
• 1:05:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: It was fun to get a crack at Daredevil for that one shot for sure.
• 1:05:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's like, oh, I know this guy backwards and forwards.
• 1:05:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: But as far as I like, yeah, I do, I mean, that's a narrative too, right?
• 1:05:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like, I think that many queer
• 1:05:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: X Catholics do have the sibling that stayed in the game right I think it's I'm sure it's a Mormon experience too of like how do you relate to someone who thinks you fucked up by leaving my hope is that black heart this sort of gives black heart an engine
• 1:06:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: I really didn't want to change anything about him.
• 1:06:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I just wanted to show as I do with a lot of these characters.
• 1:06:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: I just wanted to be like, here's what's neat about this character and hopefully we can tell more stories down the road.
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I wouldn't say no.
• 1:06:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: I could write him forever.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's sort of like you throw your toys in the sandbox and that's the game of the shared universe is that anybody who picks up the toy, I mean, we used to say you can borrow this toy, but leave it the way you found it, but actually if it's a great story and it altars the character, that's a good thing.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you for giving me this amazing toy to play with for now.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to tell it.
• 1:06:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to tell a quick weird story that I have never told on the show before.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not when I think about often.
• 1:06:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's nineteen ninety eight.
• 1:06:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Mormon missionary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and boy was that a wild time.
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my companion and I get a call through like the one eight hundred number on the television.
• 1:07:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: there's a guy locally who would like to take the missionary discussions which is always like oh good we get to go teach somebody and get a baptism and then maybe I'll be good enough to make myself straight and we taught this man who like medicine his kitchen uh nice fellow always extremely well behaved he basically told us up front I am not interested in being converted to your religion
• 1:07:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But your religion is noted as at the time at least extraordinary in like getting numbers and like the growth rates or way up.
• 1:07:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to take all of your discussions so that I can study them and he would bring a tape recorder out and like record each one, which technically is against the rules we didn't know at the time.
• 1:07:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: We met them like ten times we taught them all of the lessons we parted on good ways and it was later after my mission when I looked him up his name is Ed Steivender he's a former author who has like a series of books under the title raised Catholic can you tell and I don't know what ever happened with that man but that was my like interface with Catholicism he came to church he took us to his church
• 1:07:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very pleasant, lovely experience overall, but I was like, man, these are very different things.
• 1:08:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because Mormons would always refer to Catholics as, there's a quote in the book of Mormon that we'd talk about, like, there's a vision where there's a, it's like a quote, like, there's a, there's a great horse sitting upon the many waters, corrupting all of the people.
• 1:08:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like that, they would say, like, in Whispers, like, that's the Catholic Church.
• 1:08:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, there are enemy.
• 1:08:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are the ones that we have to fight against mostly.
• 1:08:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, just an odd comparison, but ultimately, we come from the very same place, right?
• 1:08:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah.
• 1:08:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: interesting.
• 1:08:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think that one of the things I wanted black hard to be about and one of the things I work on in my own work and I think I see in Annie's work is I think a lot of Catholics deal with the fact of like this is all wrong the things I've been taught are not true but gosh they're beautiful like there is a way that like
• 1:08:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: The aesthetics and the like the majesty of Catholicism has a draw of its own.
• 1:08:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that I think is part of what that's why I asked right away about the smell of black heart, right?
• 1:09:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like the sort of incense and roses.
• 1:09:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: There is a way of it.
• 1:09:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Catholicism to me is this kind of demonic incense and roses smell.
• 1:09:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also the pantheon of gods, when I was a kid, the pantheon was like Zeus and all those gods.
• 1:09:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then there was a period of time when people were talking about, oh, the pantheon of gods is being replaced by the pantheon of celebrity.
• 1:09:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: where people were worshiping celebrity more than, and they were kind of like, you surping the old gods.
• 1:09:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think it's also like, it echoes times were in, all narratives echo the times were in.
• 1:09:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I definitely write from a place of anxiety about fears I have.
• 1:09:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have a fear about what's coming, as a kid that was raised
• 1:10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, raising the days when we'd have to dive under our desks to hide from nuclear bombs, you know, in the third of that, you know, so you write, if you write from what you're afraid of, that's a good place to start for a narrative.
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last summer, I had the joy of spending a week in New York City.
• 1:10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had a moment with both of you among others that it really truly changed my life.
• 1:10:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm still kind of sitting with the impact of it months later.
• 1:10:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anthony, I had a moment with you and your partner where you acknowledge me as a writer and that sounds like such a silly thing, but it really just hit me in the deepest place.
• 1:10:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Any I had a moment with you at the party where we just got to talk about like people and like this is my childhood hero and I turned around at Bilson Cavages sitting on the other side and like what the fuck is my life and I walked on that night like crying like what is happening it really a chance formative I'm sorry
• 1:10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your Mormon book is really great.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the little excerpt you sent me, I really, really loved it.
• 1:11:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would be thrilled to send you a copy of the memoir if you'd love if you would enjoy it.
• 1:11:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we did get picked up.
• 1:11:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: We, uh, graphic loondies going to be publishing us.
• 1:11:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, thank you so much.
• 1:11:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what an honor to be here with you both.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what a fucking beautiful way to start, twenty twenty five.
• 1:11:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: This year is so full of doom and like rough energy, like we got to create joy wherever we can find it.
• 1:11:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if that means hanging out with two fun friends talking about the devil, then that's what it means to be here with you both.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to hear any final thoughts or any questions you have for each other, as we're wrapping up.
• 1:11:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then where can people find you online?
• 1:11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: What would you like to plug before January, twenty twenty five?
• 1:11:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go Anthony and then Annie.
• 1:11:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, um, we will.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you could pick up Avengers Academy if you are interested in buy cart.
• 1:11:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's where he's at right now.
• 1:11:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, and if you're interested in Catholic damage, you should check out my book Days Pring.
• 1:11:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, and I just want to say again, thank you for having me, Chad, and Annie.
• 1:12:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: This has been one of the great pleasures of my life.
• 1:12:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: You really.
• 1:12:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: You were out there for a little queer kid who was reading these books and being like wow spider-man's hot and and wow like this is I also know what it's like to be the devil and I am so proud to be working in Your tradition and with the characters you created and I'm I try to honor them every time I touch them.
• 1:12:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: So thank you so much.
• 1:12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 1:12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a sweet.
• 1:12:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:12:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Annie.
• 1:12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: What am I supposed to be saying?
• 1:12:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, just anything you want to plug and where can people find you?
• 1:12:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I mean, one of the things there is one of the things I like.
• 1:12:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in this podcast and you're leading me to Anthony's work is great because
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: For me, it's almost like I've written enough stories, so I'm really excited to read the next wave of comics.
• 1:12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's, I felt like that when I did this storm series and my editor set me a bunch of, you know, the, what is it called again?
• 1:13:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Krakow, Krakow, Krakow, Krakow.
• 1:13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I just, I love seeing the next wave of talent in the comic business.
• 1:13:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's super exciting for me.
• 1:13:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I always try to pick up anything new.
• 1:13:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is great.
• 1:13:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I discover your work because
• 1:13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just flows so beautifully, it's so much fun to read.
• 1:13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was actually very impressed because I'd have this weird thing, and it's probably a Catholic thing, that I always want people to get their money's worth.
• 1:13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're paying for it for the public.
• 1:13:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has to be wired and dense, and they have to be profoundly moved, and you know,
• 1:13:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to do all that in a comic.
• 1:13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just a little bit of it, you know, and I think you created a really beautiful balance of big ideas, moving things, but the comic also kind of flows.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like a little bit.
• 1:14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you, you know, a reader doesn't even know they're learning.
• 1:14:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh my gosh, thank you so much.
• 1:14:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: That reading's loud to me.
• 1:14:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, okay.
• 1:14:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blastly I'm Chad Anderson.
• 1:14:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I keep my social media private because I got kiddos.
• 1:14:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: The two of you are welcome to follow me, of course.
• 1:14:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone else can follow me, Graham, I'll come under school land on Instagram most prominently.
• 1:14:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're doing some really special things on the show this year.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're opening the year up with a massive script reading of giant size X-Men number one.
• 1:14:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're closing January with the academic panel for the month, which is simply titled About Criticala.
• 1:14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's Jordan White, Leo Williams, Sarah Centrier and Bob Quinn.
• 1:14:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about radioactive monsters and mutant homelands and everything in between.
• 1:14:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very special.
• 1:14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Three of us cried at the end.
• 1:14:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really, it's really powerful.
• 1:14:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, get Leah and Jordan in a room and have them talk about their curriculum.
• 1:14:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Both do for talented people.
• 1:14:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
• 1:14:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's just amazing.
• 1:14:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was, it was a true joy.
• 1:14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: This has been such a tremendous honor.
• 1:14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you everybody for the ongoing support.
• 1:15:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Watch for, I don't remember.
• 1:15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll do my plug later.
• 1:15:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember what it's come up to next.
• 1:15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: My brain's full.
• 1:15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you everybody so much.
• 1:15:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Anthony.
• 1:15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Annie.
• 1:15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you back here next time on the Grimalk and Lane Patreon.
• 1:15:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
• 1:15:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: In nineteen thirty nine, it'll Hitler issued this quote.
• 1:15:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have issued the command and I'll take anybody who others but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines but in the physical destruction of the enemy
• 1:15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Accordingly, I have placed my deathhead formations in readiness for the present only in the east, with orders to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language.
• 1:15:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: In nineteen forty one, Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued this quote.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world found upon four essential human freedoms.
• 1:16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first is freedom of speech and expression, everywhere in the world.
• 1:16:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way or everywhere in the world.
• 1:16:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: The third is freedom from want, the fourth is freedom from fear.
• 1:16:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is no vision of a distant millennium.
• 1:16:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
• 1:16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's jump to tales of suspense numbers, eighty-nine through ninety-one.
• 1:16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: The cosmic cube has kept the red skull alive in his golden armor at the bottom of the ocean floor and helped him wash up on seagull aisle.
• 1:16:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of Hitler's secret islands left over from the war.
• 1:16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he lures Captain America there with a fake message claiming that Bucky is alive.
• 1:16:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Captain America shocked to see his old foe back.
• 1:16:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: The red skull is you, you're alive.
• 1:16:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the red skull says, of course, you wittless star-spangled simputin' eye
• 1:16:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have mella been toying with you, paying you back in kind for the fate on Yelis Safa due to your bumbling interference.
• 1:17:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: After a fight with a swirly purple robot, Cap fights a fake bucky, and then after trying to kill Cap with a series of death traps, the red skull and a little silver airship, traps an entire square mile of New York City and a plastic bubble, and then lifts it up into the atmosphere with everyone inside.
• 1:17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Skull lets everyone live, but only if cap agrees to admit a national news that he will serve the skull for twenty-four full hours.
• 1:17:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The skull laughs maniacally as they fly past the statue of Liberty, the skull forces cap to reveal the location of a nuclear submarine.
• 1:17:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then he runs a lie detector test to make sure the cap is telling the truth, but cap would never lie, not at the sixties at least.
• 1:17:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Knowing, now that Kappa would have to live with the shame of betraying his country, the Red School then went to the sub and used a little metal hat to take over the minds of his enemies, so Kappa tricks the skull into climbing on board the dread not and then he blows it up.
• 1:17:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And his last words, it is my destiny to rule.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I must be true to my destiny.
• 1:18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then Captain America turns to the reader and says, I'm no more a hero than any man who fights for justice and freedom and brotherhood.
• 1:18:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So long as we cherish liberty, so long as the bitter weed of tyranny can never take root upon our shores than all of us or heroes.
• 1:18:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the dream which is America will long endure.
• 1:18:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me welcome my dear friend, Ben Rab back to the show to talk about this crazy story.
• 1:18:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ben, hi, how are you?
• 1:18:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hi Chad, thanks for having me back, especially for this one.
• 1:18:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a little too many episode.
• 1:18:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm asking everyone this.
• 1:18:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you a red skull fan?
• 1:18:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm not particularly a fan of Nazis per se.
• 1:18:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: However, as a personification of evil that they embody that cap can punch on a regular basis, I'm all for that.
• 1:18:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is this a story you had read before?
• 1:18:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, it is not.
• 1:18:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I didn't realize this was a Stan Gilcane joint.
• 1:18:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was going to be a, you know, I would assume that the fans were, you know, the Stan and Jack.
• 1:19:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I have never read this story.
• 1:19:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, you know, thinking about it, I haven't read a lot of red skull stories.
• 1:19:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now that I come to think of it, you know, this was certainly of a time in a place.
• 1:19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: stacking these up front to back has been a wild journey which people will hear where the episode comes out this is super science red skull he's just you know carving out a chunk of New York and lifting it up in the sky what are your thoughts on the red skull's motivations in this is a wild plot line
• 1:19:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, well, I got to start with the fact that it's funny.
• 1:19:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's in reading it.
• 1:19:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I very much felt the hand of the Marvel method of writing in the storytelling because like early on, as he sort of recounting how he, you know, he almost lost the cousin's cube at the bottom of the ocean and he went to get it, but forgot that he was wearing armor.
• 1:19:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's huge.
• 1:19:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you have a leg.
• 1:19:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, the actual story just before this.
• 1:19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gets the cosmic cube and the first thing he wishes for is a suit of golden armor.
• 1:19:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then he gets knocked into the ocean and the golden armor weighs him down to the bottom.
• 1:20:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.
• 1:20:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the fact that like it's called out in his narrative of, you know, but in my blind, I'm thinking panic, I forgot that I was wearing a suit of armor.
• 1:20:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, okay.
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this was then must have laid out the plot, Gil King drew it, there was the golden armor as part of it, and it's ten realized, oh shit, wait a minute.
• 1:20:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's gonna get weighed down by his armor if he's in the bottom of the ocean.
• 1:20:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it's just the fact that he had to sort of, like, there's these little moments of bumblingness that you're like, you really undermine the villain.
• 1:20:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, it's interesting.
• 1:20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
• 1:20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love a campy villain plot.
• 1:20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: The red skull has little airship.
• 1:20:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's giving like very early sixties cartoons, like it's much fun.
• 1:20:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of fun in a ridiculous kind of way.
• 1:20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when I open the show with these quotes, where Hitler's like, we must destroy everything.
• 1:20:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like if we just believe in decency, we can conquer anything.
• 1:20:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And both of them feel infuriating.
• 1:20:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's it like hearing the hose in the framework of this fucking story?
• 1:20:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, but in a weird way, they character sort of both embody that, right?
• 1:21:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you got the red film who's once nothing more than to just, you know, want to lead to strike, but it's all motivated by like ego and this like weird sense of like I want people to perceive me as this, you know, superior being and caps, you know, very much the flag waving, you know, optimists that, you know, we, we come to love about him and
• 1:21:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm such a good person.
• 1:21:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't believe you're still alive.
• 1:21:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: or the Red Skull being evil personified that they do speak to these very polarized black and white and ideas of good and evil without the nuance as an excuse to just punch each other.
• 1:22:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The opposing ideals, right?
• 1:22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Human decency versus human evil.
• 1:22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the Red Skull's fashion though.
• 1:22:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the Red Skull is a mask and he's got like this like
• 1:22:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: White Kirchip Ascot, White Gloves, and this green tailored suit.
• 1:22:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's very much like Donald Duck in this era.
• 1:22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a Nazi Donald Duck.
• 1:22:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very weird.
• 1:22:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: One, and I often wonder like, you know, again, obviously creators of Captain America and the Red Skull being Jewish presenting this sort of, I want to say, fathers, because not really fathers, but it is this cartoonish version of what evil is and saying that he's representative of the Nazis that we fought in World War II to stop, and these guys were a fucking joke, you know, and should always be presented in such a way that there is something that you can always laugh at them about.
• 1:22:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's this odd kind of parallel and it's all through the Red Skull's long decades long history where I have to disguise my evil to look like what Americans value.
• 1:23:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we see it first here where the Red Skull has an agent dressed like Bucky to fight cap.
• 1:23:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's Nazism is in the teenage boy form.
• 1:23:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he has to have cap turned to the cameras.
• 1:23:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And say, yeah, I will do whatever the red skull says.
• 1:23:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's this idea of kind of domination that seems almost more important to him than destruction and conquering.
• 1:23:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts on that ideal of Naziism failed in the Americanism?
• 1:23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in today's day and age.
• 1:23:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to my show.
• 1:23:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's the notion, notism is a version of authoritarianism where it's the will of an individual representative of the state dictating everything for the masses.
• 1:23:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: and the masses sort of having to go along with it.
• 1:23:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's very sadistic and twisted, what he does to cap.
• 1:23:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it also he is playing on his sense of virtue.
• 1:23:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he's like, you know, you said, for twenty four hours, you would, oh, baby, you know, and you say you're a man of your word, you have to keep it, that's perhaps weakness.
• 1:24:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's the perception is that integrity is a weakness that fascism can constantly
• 1:24:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: exploit is, I mean, I do feel like it's being born out in the world we live in today.
• 1:24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:24:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Capcom some crazy moves in this.
• 1:24:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gets drugged by the ship through the water for a while.
• 1:24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It climbs a rope and then gets to like put his shield on the end of the rope and swing it around and like hurl it through a window.
• 1:24:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some funny stuff.
• 1:24:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the red skulls like crazy super science, right?
• 1:24:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's giant robots and airships and like nuclear submarines.
• 1:24:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: How can I turn America against itself?
• 1:24:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're quickly seeing the purpose of these conversations already as they're playing out what at a time.
• 1:24:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We open on Captain America in ninety one where he's just standing kind of limbs a Kimbo being buffeted by a bunch of white people who are sobbing and furious and calling him a traitor.
• 1:24:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And somehow that's the worst thing, which is the Red Skull's greatest joy.
• 1:24:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we're now looking in twenty twenty five as Nazi is unveiled as bad patriotism, like right on the surface in our own country.
• 1:25:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a wild thing to consider how that's always been the baseline of evil in the Marvel universe, but here we are experiencing an embryo.
• 1:25:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, again, I mean, these, you know, like I said, the guys at, you know, stand and jack both served during World War II at a time when this was a legitimate real threat that was not just, you know, a danger to Europe and the world.
• 1:25:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: to them as Jews and the Jewish people.
• 1:25:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there was no greater evil.
• 1:25:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was no greater sense of the worst fucking thing that could happen and how we've gotten to a point now where the people in charge don't necessarily see things that way.
• 1:25:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that strategically they see value in any of the ethos or the machinations of what was the greatest evil of the twentieth century as a means to an ends of their own choosing.
• 1:25:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, is incredibly disheartening.
• 1:26:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, again, I can't imagine the generation that fought in that war that might still be alive and is seeing the kinds of things.
• 1:26:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I also can't believe the generation that fought in that war and is still alive and is supporting those things.
• 1:26:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it speaks to either a willful ignorance or an inherent prejudice or easily manipulated minds that basically succumb to whatever they're told through whatever source of media they're following, whether it's truth, social, or Twitter, or wherever the fuck they're getting their news from Fox News or, you know, you know.
• 1:26:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the easily manipulated minds is where the story culminates, right?
• 1:26:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: The red skulls click on a little hat and hypnotizes.
• 1:26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get a little funny view of like Captain America wearing a sailor cap to try to fit in with the guy.
• 1:26:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought you really think you're not going to get noticed.
• 1:26:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then as the Red Skull ship starts to malfunction, we know Cap's decent because he still tries to save him.
• 1:26:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Skull, this is Captain America.
• 1:26:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're in deadly danger.
• 1:26:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have sixty seconds to exit.
• 1:26:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: A man in the ship now will get you up.
• 1:27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hurry, let him blow up, man.
• 1:27:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 1:27:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now it's very weird, like the, that's the hero part of Cap, not the soldier part of Cap.
• 1:27:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like the soldier part of Cap would be like fuck that guy.
• 1:27:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's going down with the ship and the world's going to be a better place for it.
• 1:27:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, again, as a kid growing up, maybe not reading this particular story, but certainly other Captain America comics.
• 1:27:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was just something honest and sincere, and I want to say pure because I feel like that word is not the best word to describe.
• 1:27:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyone know what is under percent pure, but there was a kind of purity to Captain America.
• 1:27:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what he was meant to represent the best of the strongest of the most daring, the bravest, the most compassionate, right?
• 1:27:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like there was a side to him that
• 1:27:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: that a hero is compassionate and cap is always the embodiment of that.
• 1:27:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So promoted and I'll use as they existed in this time period.
• 1:27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 1:27:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's right before civil rights and stonewall and everything, but we're going to track the red school stories through that because we get some real crazy.
• 1:28:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: even to his enemy, there is compassion, even to his, like, which, you know, in this day and age feels like an impossible thing to conceive of.
• 1:28:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very hard to have compassion for your enemies, because they are doing ill to you, so wouldn't you want to do it back to them?
• 1:28:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, in this story, again, it's very playful and silly, but the red skull thing, I will kill a million people and you submit, because I want to destroy it.
• 1:28:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it caps like, yeah, but I still believe that there's good in you, buddy, like, hmm, I don't know, it takes a little too far for me.
• 1:28:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you have any final thoughts of, did you have there any moments in this story that really stood out to you or anything you wanted to eliminate?
• 1:28:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I mean, like I said, it was the campiness of it that I was like, man, this is really on a time in a place.
• 1:28:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it throws everything, everything, but the kitchen sink at it, where it's like, it is robots.
• 1:28:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is duplicates.
• 1:28:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is a city being lifted up in a giant plastic bubble.
• 1:28:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, unbreakable plastic, I was like, come on, that's seriously.
• 1:29:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And just when you think he's dead, it's a reality altering cube that keeps him alive.
• 1:29:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, and again, and again, exhausted.
• 1:29:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you, Ben Rab for joining me for this little vignette.
• 1:29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You are a talented and fantastic ally and much appreciated.
• 1:29:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate my friend.
• 1:29:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate the affirmation.
• 1:29:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much.
• 1:29:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody stay tuned.
• 1:29:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll be right back.