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Bonus Patreon Release: the Hate-Monger! Featuring Phillip Smith and Molly Lazer! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grand Mulk and Lane Patreon channel.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm your host, Chad Anderson.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: What I'm gonna do a little bit of an intro as we get ready for this episode, for those of you that have been listening to the show, you'll notice that over the last several months, I have been putting little 20 minute episodes that we call conversations about the red skull at the end of each one.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's been an odd place for me to kind of channel existential crisis in America 2025 in a comic book format.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's helping me in a weird way, kind of make sense of history.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, this month on the show, we're leaning full into it, and I promise it's going to be entertaining, not just devastating.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I promise I promise.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we're leaning hard into fascism as the theme on Grimalk and Lade in November.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: All of the character episodes will be characters that somehow are on the periphery of that conversation, with some incredible stories from Marvel Comics along the way, and an incredible lineup of really talented smart guests.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then on the main show, we'll be covering similar content with some really incredible interviews.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then rounding the show out at the end of the month with the trial of Baron Helmet Zimo, who is the leader of the Thunderbolts and a legacy Nazi character.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: So what are these talking?
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: all about this today and we are opening the show up in the weirdest, most serious but also ridiculously silly way possible with the character the hate manga.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to welcome to of my favorite people back to the show just smart talented people that I'm so honored to have back.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dr. Philip Smith joined me for a conversation about Gabrielle Holler sometime ago on the show.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dr. Smith welcome back to the show to everybody a little about you and let me hear your early
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, I've studied various different things including comets and whole-course and genocide studies, so a lot of this sort of overlaps with some of my research.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also studied children's literature, various different things.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I teach over here in Georgia where I'm the chair of liberal law.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I have many thoughts about how you sort of forget how wacky comics from the 60s were.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's an ironful of dinosaurs, there's this is a really sort of interesting read and then seeing how the character developed into the 2020s or how the character was deployed into the 2020s in very different ways.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So looking forward to the next chapter.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, changing messages for sure along the way.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me welcome also, my dear friend Molly, laser back to the show.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, hi, um, glad to be back.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was a editor at Marvel Comics from 2004 to 2008.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I currently teach reading creative writing and drama at a high school and outside of Philadelphia.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing that for the last 16 years.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm also a theater director and performer and lifelong comics fan
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, any comic involving him could be pretty much summed up as it's awful and I hate it.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, the hate-monger forced me to explain Hitler to my children when they were four.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, when you're Jewish, you talk to your kids about the Holocaust early, but I wasn't planning on doing it that early.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we hit that issue of fantastic four when they were only four years old.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they've known for a long time.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was going to ask you about that specifically.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Molly's talked on the show a few times about reading FF comics to her kids, like kind of through the whole run.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're my go to a person for any FF conversation.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is, which is always delightful.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: This has been a really interesting journey for me.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Whenever I am doing like a theme month on the show, I really throw myself into deep into research.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: I read books, I read articles, I explore topics, I write about topics, I watch movies, I collect a lot of information, and then I do a whole bunch of interviews.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: So by the time the month ends, I always feel like,
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: learned a lot this time around.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's always an interesting journey on just the character episodes themselves.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dr. Smith, you and I talked about Gabrielle, for example, which was an amazing journey and an amazing education.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I do all the research then we talk and I learned more.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Marvel Comics, the very first issue with Captain America, shows Cap Punch and Hitler in the face.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that was before Pearl Harbor.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was before the war.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I kind of want to open us here in
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Hitler rose to power as the chancellor in 1933.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And by the time 1940, rolled around, America's coming out of the Great Depression.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's new forms of sound and color and all types of entertainment happening on a culture level, right?
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Wizard of Oz in 1939.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's in technicolor.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of things changing all around the world in this kind of post-World War I era where there's a new generation up in coming.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: By 1940, the world was pretty aware that Hitler was a very, very bad person who was doing very, very bad things.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: But a lot of governments were kind of placating and hoping that he would go away.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, for those of you listening to the Reds call conversations, I've been sharing little snippets about Hitler's weird, weird life, belief systems, family, etc.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: As we kind of have these parallels, we've been drawing a certain modern parallels with certain modern people.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: We all may think about which is an interesting journey itself.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: But for today, I want to focus on Nazism and Fascism in pop culture specifically.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: So opening in 1940, we have Charlie Chaplin, who was one of the world's most famous people.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you look up his life, it's fascinating.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: He put out the movie The Great Dictator.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Charlie was known for his silent films, right?
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Always very, very funny, very, very physical.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: For him to speak on camera, he ended up getting banned from Hollywood by McCarthy later.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: But in this era, he makes this incredible film,
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: that just kind of transforms Hitler into like a bumbling, a his name by the end of the show is Adam Lloyd Hinkle.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it's just really mocking his vanity and absurdity and really playing up it just as a, as a, a physical comedy.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now this is before public knowledge of the concentration camps.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is a little akin to like self-park doing the Donald Trump episode, a little while back, which was so crazy to watch, and I will not show my children, but there's a certain amount of parody that we allow when we're kind of doing, I don't know the right word, a caricature of someone.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: But Naziism also has a really weird place in like comedy fiction as well.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Either as a point that you're trying to make, or as we're just leaning into the dark gallows humor of it all.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you've ever seen the producers from 1967, you've heard this long springtime for Hitler.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: A few years ago, there was the show Jojo Rabbit.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 1963, I think I'm getting the year right, there was a Twilight Zone episode where there's a guy, a dentist hopper played again in Peter Volmer, who's like dreaming of power, and he keeps dreaming more and more and like wishing bigger.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then finally, he makes the wish, like I wanna be like the most powerful man in the world, and it turns him into Adolf Hitler like on the last day of the war.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like a comedic point.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's a really odd space to open this place, but I'd love to hear some of you
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have never really taken comedic depictions of Naziism well.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just, I don't know, I find it very, very upsetting, just in general, like as a Jewish person.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as, you know, as a person, like, I, and that said, though, like, I think there's some importance in making something so portable and serious, making a joke out of it.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think there's something important about that as well, but like in my mind, I have a hard time rationalizing the two things.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was reading through some of these comments in a coffee shop and there was a moment where on my iPad, I like to flip through to a page that had like the full page depiction of Hitler and marching Nazis and I I was very quick to sort of skip past that and I think there is there has been a shift in or perhaps a recognition that depicting these things is harmful even if we are depicting kind of too critique.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are lots of places in the world where having an image of a swastika, like anything other than a history would be illegal.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think there is a kind of repetition there that these are these are harmful images.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: However, we present in a mouse by art's feeble and there is a part where Vladik has father talks about how when
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: RT was born.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The doctor has a break his arm in order to complete the birth in the procedure, and that for a while his arm would kind of gel tough and he said they would all joke that he was doing in Nazi salute.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I talk about this in class, so my students and I were talking like, you know, this isn't really something to joke about, but if anyone had the right to make a joke
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: would probably be the person who, you know, I don't think we could tell him, you're not allowed to joke about this because, you know, for everything he went to, I think humor can be a coping mechanism, I think humor can be a way of deflating power.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that there are there are ways in which this can be deployed, but I also think that whenever we even if we produce an image of something in order to land through this, we are also in some way reinforcing.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: or we are providing the opportunity for someone to kind of work against the intended reading and take something from this that isn't what was intended.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: In a more satire focus, I do think there's some value and power in taking a powerful finger who is a narcissist and just ripping them to shreds.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, I bet South Park Trump thing is, is crazy to watch, but can you imagine how pissed off that melody?
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that part makes me happy, right?
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a certain amount of absurdity when you create a comedy in the back with the backdrop being Naziism.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a one form of telling stories.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a way to find joy and to tell certain types of stories.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: There is certainly a different feel between Jojo Rabbit and Shindler's list, right?
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: These are very different genres, one documenting and witnessing history.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's also kind of an odd genre of Nazi sci-fi, which is interesting.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a cult classic movie from 1968 called, they saved Hitler's brain.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's truly unwatchable.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can go try.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did watch the whole thing because I do my research, but wow, woof.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: But basically, Hitler's head has been kept alive by scientists.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: For watchers of Futurama, do you remember all the heads in the jar in the future?
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's where they got the idea.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: But more famously in 1978, there's a book called The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin, which is a secret kind of society of Naziism who have implanted like Hitler's cloned fetus to several women or zygode, I suppose into several women.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: and they're trying to recreate the circumstances of his upbringing to try to recreate Hitler himself.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: A really bizarre genre of this form, but I think it's very careful to say and we'll be exploring this in different capacities on the show this month.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: But Nazism has really influenced every comic book I've ever read, every movie I've ever seen.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's shaped an entire generation of creative people.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: people.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And millions died, right?
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like the the planet is still kind of reeling with a hundred years later as history feels like it's beginning to repeat itself, which is a bizarre thing.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to jump into the silly of it all, but it's going to be balanced by the serious and we got to give ourselves permission to have both, which is something because I think I don't know mental health professional is my my day job, but we're having to dissociate on a daily basis to kind of get by and that's not great for those of us that need like well mental health.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I think speaking truth and finding
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have either of you ever saying that they saved Hitler's brain?
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ooh, I love it.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love a cringe film.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love cringe movies.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, my friends came over to watch Zombievers last night, which was Zombie Beaver's terrible.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we laughed.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: They saved Hitler's brain was, just it was just not, it was unpleasant.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, we're going to be jumping into the world of fantastic four.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now we have a Jack Kirby and a Stanley here, of course, who were both infected by the war itself.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: We can have a long diatribe on kind of Jewish creators and how that references like a generation of creatures.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: But one of the things I want to talk about as we're telling this story and this is where we can get slightly serious I think Jack Kirby was drawing this issue Jack Kirby as a Jewish American telling this particular story Which is a crazy sci-fi story, but so I'm gonna do just a brief recap, and then let's pause to talk about it Because this first appearance is the one I think we could spend most of our time on here
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's fantastic for number 21, December 1963, and for context, please realize that Captain America was not revived from the iceberg yet, so this is very early marvel.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a horribly frightening man who graces the cover in Dark Purple.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: His hood is reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan, a conical point rising into the sky, two eerie eye holes as he stares forward a pink, eight, painted on the hat prominently.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: The inhuman eerie creature is bathing the fantastic four in yellow light, fired from a gun,
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nick Fury in shredded clothing stands off to the side.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: The fantastic four, fighting each other under the sinister spell of the hate manga.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Don't dare reveal his true identity after reading this tale.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then on page one, we get a full image of the character.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: The H has gone off his hat and now painted eerily on his chest.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: His tunic ends in pink lines, a brown belt cinches that his waist.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: He has on blue chain mail and brown boots.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And here he's holding a lit torch, which is always a symbol of very dangerous things for people of color in particular
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Behind him, the world burns and we get images of a barbed wire fence, very reminiscent of concentration caps.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: The FF are living just living their lives, but the thing is very annoyed, reading headlines about hate spreading around the world, because causing wars and armies and mobs.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So cotton-picking mad, I gotta do something to let off steam.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've been reading the papers for the past hour, it's enough to make anyone blow his top.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: That crime who calls himself the hate-mogger's been causing trouble wherever he goes, and nobody can stop him, because he's too smart to break any laws.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mr.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fantastic looks at the paper.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's the most dangerous type of menace.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: He preaches class hatred, race hatred, religious hatred,
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sus says, but his activities don't concern the fantastic for her, and the narrator tells us, within a very few minutes, Sus storm his destiny to learn how completely wrong her casual comment is.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, his activities don't concern us, right?
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: The thing repeats.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: A creep like the hate monitors free to say what he wants to, but if I ever want him one, they'd slap me in the pokey.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: How about that?
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Reed says, don't worry, Ben.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: He'll get what's coming to him sooner or later.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Big it's always, do.
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: The torch says, let's go for a walk gang.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, get our minds off that rotten windbag.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the FF go walking down the street and in this world, by the way, Ben and Reed are both World War II veterans.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: They had to fix that with a time travel story later, but that's part of these characters as written at this time.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: The thing says, boy, if I ever got my hands on that hate manga's scrawny hide, I'd really give him something to yell about.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Reed says,
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: His type usually doesn't get very far in a free nation like ours, but they immediately walk up on our rally.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Hatemonger is standing on a raised dais, flanked by men dressed in green, holding torches.
• 14:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: They hear him shout from the crowd.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Long live the Hatemonger, he'll clean up this country for us, down with all foreigners, down with everybody who disagrees with us, hail to the Hatemonger, and as the Hatemonger gestures wildly to the crowd, he yells,
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Those who are not with us are against us.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: They must be destroyed.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: We must drive all the foreigners back where they came from.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: We must show no mercy to those we hate.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Su says, read, it's unbelievable.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: He seems to have the crowd in a trance.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: They are actually agreeing with his un-American sentiments.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: The crowd now armed with rocks and broken pieces of wood turn on the immigrants among them.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: One yells, no, stop.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a citizen.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: The same is you, are you all mad?
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the hate-monger turns his H-ray on the heroes next.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is the acid test.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: If my hatred rate will work against the fantastic fall, then nobody can resist it.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody would stop my master plan.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: No sooner does the h-ray fade away than the fabulous force and begin to fight among themselves.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Not the good nature'd bickering which their fans know so well, but a different type of conflict filled with hostility and raw hatred.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then there are three pages of the three stuages hijinks between the fantastic fall.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: before the team storms away from each other.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the corner, I've done it now with the FF safely under my spell of hate we can proceed.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Before I'm through all of Earth we'll be in the iron grip of the hate manga.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well Nick Fury shows up, a World War II veteran and hero, future a leader of shield, but right here he is with the head of the CIA.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he tells the Fantastic Four about the country of San Gusto, by the way, this is a fictional country and this is the only time it's ever appeared in a Marvel comic.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: San Gusto just this once.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: It turns out the USA has been putting billions there in order to try to turn San Gusto into a democracy.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's been a revolution.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Fiery says that's bad for the United States.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so the fantastic forehead there and it turns out the hate-monger and his men are on an underground rocket thing rushing back to confront them.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Eightmonger has a hate-ray machine that's bouncing signals off the moon, Furies here, the CIA has been wise to you all a long chum.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: We knew what you were up to, but we couldn't interfere in another nation's affairs, but when you start messing with Americans, that's different.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Summing up a few things, but in the end, the hate-monger ends up shot by the locals.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: They can't save him.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: They pull off his mask, and as he's dying, Furie says, it can't be.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: It just ain't possible.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Reed says, and yet it fits, it all ties in, Ben says.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: But he's supposed to have been killed years ago.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: The world thought he was dead.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sus says, I just can't believe that I just can't.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Johnny says, he looks like his pictures.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ain't off Hitler.
• 16:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: The mad fure, the most evil human being the world has ever known.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fury says, the hate ray must have been one of the last achievements of his enslaved Nazi scientists.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Reed says, actually, will never know whether he was the real Hitler, or one of the many doubles the furer was reported to have Fury says, what's the death pal?
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: The main thing is that him and his rotten hate ray are cut and this time it's for keeps.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Reed gives us these parting words.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Until man truly love each other, regardless of race, Creed or color, the hate-monger will still be undefeated.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's never forget that.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Stanley then says, and read Richard's words will never be forgotten, not while the stars and stripes still wave, not while America and Doors.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, wow, a lot just happened.
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of my first thoughts was, obviously the heyday of the first sort of heyday of superhero comics was during World War II.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is when comics will make no part of American soldiers' rations.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: They will need to fit in the size of the tunic pocket of American soldiers in the form.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's because superhero comic, they suited the kind of wartime atmosphere in that they were very good kind of propaganda tools.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were,
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: about an ambiguous fight between good and evil.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were suited for problems which are best solved through violence.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so having these kind of the in total three World War II veteran is fighting Hitler once again is a kind of callback to these kind of glory days of the that first wave of the popularity of superhero comics.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it struck me that incense is a kind of superhero comics have always been fighting
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: The other was how kind of unwittingly prescient some of this is, kind of, reading some of this today, the way that is kind of been mowning the fact that he can't respond to this rhetoric with violence, and he's very sort of relevant to some of the conversations that have been going on very recently.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think Ben wasn't canonically Jewish by this point.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there had been the way the character been written, I think there was a sort of suggestion.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: You could understand for Ben, particularly the way that these images are the kind of the crowds gather in the people that we've been so long.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thiel's very kind of physically threatening to hit in a way that it might not really that way for different type of viewer.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm interested, Molly, what did you get from that?
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I read this for the first time when I was probably like a kid and then, you know, rewrite, have re-read it a number of times, including two my own children recently.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, I mean, going into it many times knowing the ending.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you mentioned how Nazis have consistently been the villains.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: in superhero comics.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've found that too that, you know, since, you know, the, the, the silver age of comics and the golden age up until now.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're looking for like three main villains, it's the Nazis, the Russians and the Chinese.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always like it's always the same.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this, it still feels relevant.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's also, I think for children, a shorthand way of understanding, like Hitler, but also of understanding how hatred can spread.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So shortly after reading this to my kids, I read this in when they were four.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the time they were five, we were having a conversation with the car.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember this because it popped up on my face, both memories recently.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: where we're talking about George Washington and one of my sons asked, oh, George Washington to the president now.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I said, well, no, he hasn't been for a long time.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they said, who's the president now?
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, oh, it's a man who's not very nice.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they said, is it the hate longer?
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yes, I'm off.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: like yes.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, and then they, they just, but they understood what that meant.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so they knew that like it didn't mean Hitler, but they knew that like it gave context.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that it's still unfortunately today gives context to so much of what's going on.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: kind of this discourse about rhetoric and violence.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, and it's very clear, my idea is, again, I think, let's go violence is every useful appropriate.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the historic aware resistance groups have been successful at clasping through non-violent means.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I am, as well as the hatement worries, I'm not even been inside of this, but I just wish you could punch in.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been thinking about for the kind of context of the time.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was the early 60s.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I checked before we recorded and you didn't get so the weather underground, for example, was a group reduced violence for the list of lands during the 60s but they were not active into the late 60s.
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I wonder, I
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been trying to think if there's any kind of context for this where that might have been a public conversation.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't believe it was sort of around that time.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Most of what we know about the civil rights area has started happening much more on a public consciousness than the later 60s.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I wonder then if in some sense Ben's kind of wishing he could just solve the problem the way that's to be here or solve problems, which is, say, by punching someone.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: is divorced enough from kind of actual discourse at the time that it might seem like a more appropriate proposition.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it also seems like you've been talking about the more realistic fact that you can't just go punch somebody.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, it's really satisfying to see Captain America punch Hitler.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, I'll talk about Black Panther later, but like Black Panther socks are not seeing the face.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's really satisfying.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so to see it on the page, it's really cathartic.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I have about 8 points I want to bring up, but you guys are scurting around some of those, so we're going to spend just a few minutes on this one.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Number one, Philip, what you were just referencing, this is a 1963 comic written by two world war two veterans, one of whom is Jewish.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I do not know much about the war histories of San and Jack specifically, but I'm going to presume that these men have seen dead bodies in the fields where they served, maybe even killed people.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm assuming that they have seen the footage from the concentration camps.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: They know what devastation is like.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, we fast forward a generation where the children of these soldiers are now becoming adults.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you almost wonder if they just didn't realize what's happening in the world before, right?
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fantastic four represents the concept of family.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we're showing this family that becomes very disrupted because as Su said, that's not our problem.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it sure is sure as fuck is your problem.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like we have to take a look at what's happening.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: We can see the message being very good.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: clear here as a warning to the youth.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Read turns to the camera, the narrator specifically addresses like, oh, Sue, you're about to learn a lesson here.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's, it's very clearly a certain type of message about the dangers of this.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel good.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm, I'm sorry.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was waving my life goodbye.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's.
• 23:27
  [UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're the one who doesn't know you.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'd love to toss this your way, but let's also take time to talk about the name and the costume.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: The word monger is like, I trade it.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's my currency, right?
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So like, fish monger is someone who works with and trades and fish.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a man who works and trades in hate.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: And these robes that he's wearing are very clearly represent reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan, which almost makes me wonder if Stan and Jack are kind of saying this is what Naziism looks like here, because they're clearly rooting for the immigrant, and saying harming these people is evil.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a very strong message delivered here.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So let me hear your thoughts on this kind of message delivery, and then like the fashion and name of this character.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, let's go Molly and Philip.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I was actually recently reading something that noted that, you know, people are surprised that fascism is in America now, the fascism has always been in America with the clan, with sundown towns and all of this, and so on.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Our country's documents were written as a compromise between slave owners and non-slave owners.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's innocent of the beginning.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I agree with you that it's like this is a like it's a reference to American fascism and you know purple is a bad guy color.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So No, no, no, it's a green or bad guy colors.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're hitting on that there.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it's you see this guy you immediately get him.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I teach a class on the boy who lived in his legacy, which is a, we look through the Harry Potter books.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, this kind of, the shape of the, the costume is very deliberately evocative.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You see, this is well throughout kind of pop culture.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things I'm thinking about was it's the idea of the hate rain.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think has embedded within it quite a hopeful philosophy in that the idea is that human beings defaults is to be compassionate, it's to be understanding.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it is manipulation, but in this case, kind of manipulation by way of a sort of not very thoroughly unpacked, but like some kind of scientific intervention that changes the way that people think.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the idea of being that without this formal manipulation human beings defaults is to be much more understanding of others.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of the fantastic for shape this up and kind of returns of their natural state by being much more kind of tolerance of by another.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think there is a kind of, there's a sort of hopeful message in there.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It struck me that this, this, this simplifies very much a very kind of complicated process.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's, I'm always interested in the narratives of people who have kind of come in from fringe very hateful ways of thinking.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that process of someone kind of disconnecting from the groups that promote certain hateful ideas.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It struck me as it would almost be really quite nice, but it's just the case of switching off a hate rate, and everyone comes back to their senses.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the kind of the imagery, they're told that they immediately recognize hate longer as being a clone of Hitler, although the way his appearances presented, it's just a mustache.
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in later versions of, I noticed in a few of the different comments we talk about, his eye color changes, so like, two references in having blue eyes, nose one point out brown eyes, one point has green eyes.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: If this is a clone of Hitler, he has also spent a lot of time in the gym.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like, the way that they immediately go, oh, this is Hitler, it's just, it's just a mustache.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Arnhem Zola famously transplanted the red skulls minded to a clone body of Captain America.
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, he's giving these awful leaders what they wanted with these perfect Aryan bodies that they craved, you know?
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: The hate rate itself is the next point I wanted to bring up.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's two hate rays.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: One of them is the ray hits you directly and it will make you turn on the people that you love so that we can no longer have discourse, right?
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Which is the modern thing I'm going to talk about that in a second.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then we also have this hate ray in San Gusto, which is bouncing off the moon and kind of blanketing the planet.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Later versions of the red skull and even the hate monger become almost a ma fisto like presence.
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's this great evil that if you tap into it, it will infect you.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's very clearly this like you have to stay out of its path, otherwise it has the potential to take you over and that's a really uncomfortable message in 2025 as well.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to speak sociologically for a moment and we don't have to spend a lot of time here, but I'm always frustrated by people saying these days, why can't we just talk things out?
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like why can't we just understand each other?
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: If we are comparing far left to far right, the far right is called in what I call entrenchment.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's deeply set belief systems where privilege is being challenged.
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And people are saying, I'm a good person and because I'm a good person, why can't I just have a good life, right?
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they're they're asking for all of this kind of understanding.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is not an equal place at the table.
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: When the far left is made up of minority groups who have shared experiences of discrimination and the erosion of civil rights and liberties along the way.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Those are not equal playing fields.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And at a certain point, the way we define a fascist is that the person firing the hate ray is that the person throwing the brick or is it just the person standing in the path like Sue was and ready to not notice anything.
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's a lot of ways to interpret this because where we go at the end of this story and this is a fantastic four book for children.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: The hate manga is shot to death.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's killed, he's murdered in San Gusto and the very clear message of like, it is okay to do violence toward this person
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: which is an odd thing because we're going to see it reinterpreted later.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But that's jarring for a fantastic forebic in the sixties to have a character die on panel by gunshot.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: As you're talking, I was thinking about the kind of the time travel kind of variable like if you could go back and kill hit up.
• 29:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: that I think it's always been generally acknowledged that like murder is wrong, but murdering Hitler would be fine.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think in the same way I was like Martin was saying before, there were certain bad guys where it's like we don't need to worry about like we don't need to feel morally conflicted about killing Nazis.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It seems to be kind of part of the rhetoric of this.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder where whether it's the who's being killed is kind of our relevancy here.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think you're right to kind of locate this within the kind of the shockwaves of World War II, the processing of World War II.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder almost with the superhero genre there is a sort of nostalgia for the way the the comic, the world of the 1960s is much more complicated.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: whereas the 1940s were not a better time to be alive, but there was a very uncomplicated sense of, these are the good guys, these are the bad guys.
• 29:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that being the kind of the arena that superhero comics function in the best, there is the name of the creator will come back to me.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a kind of very often used in class when it's talk about superhero comics.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: where he has a comic where Superman stops and mugging, and the mugger says, wait, wait, I'm only mugging to think my family.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Superman then goes confronts the guy's boss, and the guy's boss says, well, we'd love to pay them more, but the government doesn't incentivize it enough.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So then he goes and confronts the senator, he says, well, I'd love to be able to fix everything, but statisticians don't understand chaos very well.
• 30:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Superman goes and confronts the statistician.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the statistician says, you know, we've got all these economic models and so on, but, you know, reality is complex and and Superman says, well, who do I punch and he says well to get to the game to have an answer, you would need to talk to physicists, economists, philosophers, sociologists and superman just sort of stops him and then goes back and punches the mother.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that this tension between, you know, discourse as an actual way to kind of work through political challenges versus the superhero's job of like, if a problem can't be solved with violence, there isn't really a place for a superhero.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a bunch of people in costume talking.
• 30:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder if part of this is kind of hitting up against the limits of the superhero genre in terms of problem solving.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just looking at the issue now.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I grabbed off myself and I think a couple of things or it's a I think it's worth noting that the hate manga actually gets shot by his own guys once they realize what he's doing.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's thing one, he doesn't get killed by the FF or by Nick Fury or any of their people.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't see how the issue could have ended any other way because you can't let Hitler stay alive.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But while he shot by his own guys, they noted the end of the issue.
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not over.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This will never be over until men truly love each other, et cetera.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, the likelihood of that happening is not high.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like the implication is that, yeah, yeah, yeah, this guy who's Hitler or a clone of Hitler or whatever is dead, but the hate mongers still around.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as we find
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: People of color portrayed as objects of violence in this kind of hate rally, but they're not really people who get to act of their own accord.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: They have to be rescued by the white people who stand against the hatred.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the thing we just have to point out here.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we've got the country of San Gusto here, which literally states, the CIA has interest in liberating this country, because the United States has been funneling millions and millions of dollars for US development interests into making it a democracy.
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's interesting to know and we won't take any time on any of these on this conversation, but listen for other episodes.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: The comics coming out in the years right after this, we have the red skull returning.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: He moves to an island of exiles where it's a bunch of Nazi war criminals who have taken over the local populace.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Captain America returns and his big foe is who has fled to a South American country and has enslaved the people while he lives in a castle.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like there's these stories are really rampant in the way that they're told and people of color are not often given the voice The other thing I'll fast forward through very quickly in a few years, and this is more with red skull than hate monger We have a lot of stories told by Steve Gerber and others where we have go see Molly and I cycle met up to so we have characters who like a black character who's like manipulating people into wanting civil rights when really shouldn't we all just get along
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: or it's like the red skull funding, the black panther party, and they should know better.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like the message that Stan and Jack started with is not what it gets delivered in a lot of comics just a few years later.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I also wanted to comment on Hitler's doubles.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hitler was crazy.
• 33:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: He almost died a bunch of times, you guys.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like a bunch of times.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: But he had people testing his food.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: He had people dressing his head.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm driving off in different cars.
• 33:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: So they're like, boy, I hope it's not just one of his doubles.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It turns out it was a clone.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: get there in a moment.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay we're gonna jump to the next one.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll be a little quicker here.
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna jump to 1969 Nick Fury Agent of Shield and Shield is itself like an international peacekeeping force that has some real world comparisons.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Very high-spide trauma.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is a political intrigue.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very James Bond.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very like there's life model decoys and secret weapons that are stored in whatever.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Nick Fury agent of shield 9 through 11 is from 1969.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: The hate manga is back.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a trio of issues that don't seem to fit together at all.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: But in the first one, he puts a hit out on Nick Fury.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fury leaps into action.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's captured and taken to Hitler's underground base in a world filled with dinosaur's.
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Underground monsters.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very mole man.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: The hate monster removes his mask and begins one of his long rants.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was born to overcome the ignorance masses and to lead the Master Ace to Supremacy.
• 34:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he's gotten ahold of the Psychotron, a machine developed in China.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Basically, a chamber used to describe someone, to drive someone crazy with mental images.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It turns out Hitler plans to nuke the Earth and then rule over the remains, but Agent Laura Brown is there as a double agent and she shoots Hitler dead.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the shield agent's escape and the Nazi base blows up.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: But literally he's back in the next issue.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: The hitmonger has a new costume.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's looking a little less quick like it's kind of a little bit more like medieval executioner here.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: You can see his mouth.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: The robes are pink with a cinched orange belt, which is so clear.
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: The rest is all green and purple.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's every crayon on the box.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a rope hanging from his belt.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: He has an army aboard a satellite and he plans to wipe out all of the, quote, inferior races on Earth.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: By eliminating the world's inferior people's black and yellow and white, I will preserve a world for the peace for superiority of the Master Ace.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, the plan to begin nuclear war and to rule over the remains, and of course he stopped again.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: But he's back again in the next issue, he's in an orbital satellite, ranting about the Master Ace again, and his right to rule,
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: and he's blanketing a hate ray on earth.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: He wants to turn the hippie generation against the older generation, once and for all.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's the parents versus the children.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nick Fury's there and he jettisons Hitler into space where Hitler chokes to death in the atmosphere.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we're watching, we're watching violence done again and again.
• 35:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: One more in the creatures on the loose night at number 35.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's back again in a new base and there's some scientists building him some gold armor and they capture the man wolf and shield attacks like truly don't worry about it.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: they're bringing this character back again and again and then he's gone for about 10 years after that.
• 36:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was interested in this kind of the the anxiety over intergenerational conflict.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It struck me that a lot of Marvel's readers at this time would have been like college age.
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so they probably would have identified more with this this band and the kind of the younger generation characters.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we experience this story through Nick Fury, who is being reminded throughout that he is old.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that he doesn't quite get this kind of the the politics or the the
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: aesthetics of this young generation.
• 36:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I found it interesting a kind of where is the where is our sympathy located in this?
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, is the intention that we are we empathize with Nick Fury or kind of even connect with him?
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wondered if that I have images in the 60s of the way that Marvel comic, I suppose throughout.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The commentary, it's been kind of aligning with the interest of the audience, but erring towards a kind of middle politics of not wanting to be to kind of take too much of a stand anywhere and like during the the Vietnam war, for example, like you had in the letters pages, it would be the
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: readers who will try to initiate this discussion and a lot of the editorial comments are much more kind of we all have to understand each other and try to get along And I wonder if some of that's playing out in this kind of anxiety over into generational conflict and within that the idea that this is not a natural state It's something that's brought on by being exposed by a hate rate
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: These messages become very dependent on, as you start to examine the lives of the writers, the artists, the editors, the editorial teams, what was going on at the time culturally.
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of preachy writers who are kind of dealing with the youth to get wise.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of energy of that in this era.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, please, more.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like I did do that quote right by the way, Molly, I looked it up and he does say inferior people's black yellow and white, but every white person is Aryan, I suppose.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know more than I do sort of biographically about the different writers or the maybe provide some context to that kind of intergenerational stuff that's going on.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was interested in learning more about that.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's interesting because you don't never ever quite know.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Gary Friedrich's the writer on this story.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Gary didn't tell a lot of these kinds of stories, so I think there's the mentality of overwork first of all, because writers are pumping out all these stories a month there.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're putting 22 pages here, 22 pages there, really overworked a lot of the time.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Issue number 10, which is the one with the hate rate, the cover is Christmas ornaments on a tree, each reflecting a face of the characters, so we've got like an ornament of the hate mongered.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then the story is towards the night before Christmas.
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a Nick Fury Christmas story, fighting fascism, where he's yelling about the, you know what I mean?
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think the message that we're seeing at the end here of like hate still has to die is the clear point piece that I'm really latching onto.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, we're gonna jump to 1980.
• 38:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did get to talk about this story, Peter Sanderson, and one of the Red Skull conversations for those of you that I've listed.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this is Superville in team up, 16 and 17.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Peter Gillis and Carmen Infantino.
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a rough story, but it's really intense and it's very effective.
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: They hate longer and the Red Skull are the focal characters, like their names are on the cover.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a superville in book, right?
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're in full masks.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're having a feast with wine, flanked by Aryan, fit.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: guards, and underneath the glass floor are Jewish prisoners in chains begging for their lives underneath them.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So they're sitting at their opulent table on top of slaves or captives underneath them.
• 39:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: They ate longer says to a new era than my deus skull.
• 39:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the red skull says to a fresh beginning
• 39:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: The narrator tells us most tyrants would rather not be reminded that their power is found on the oppression of others.
• 39:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: They call themselves servants or protectors so they can sleep nights.
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: These men know what they are, relish that oppression.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And for their amusement, display it most graphically.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Red School subjects himself to a full workout.
• 39:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's still in his mask.
• 39:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he soon finds the hate-monger waiting.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a literal light of dialogue, y'all.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hate-mongers says,
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Skull, you arrive half dressed in smelling like a stable and the Red Skull replies, it's the very scent of Oregon's sweat, my friend.
• 40:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let Forbes and Dandy's bridal at the smell of a true man.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, wow, the hate manga replies, ah, you are Nazi airscord, but today, when our greatest plan begins, you will review the troops with a towel and a bare chest.
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Red Skull says, it's unwise to mock me hate manga.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Today of all days, I domed the uniform, I have waited to dom for decades.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: But from today forward, I am the Red Skull Supreme Field Mosher of the Master Race.
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, they greet their little army, they raise their arms.
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Later we see the hate monger very heterosexualy painting a shirtless blonde man wearing a red loincloth in Santa Claus boots.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: He has a live Aryan Fabio model.
• 40:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Red Skull says, still wasting your time painting hate monger because
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: it off Hitler, the fashion to himself, a painter, hit manga replies, sometimes you're blind, militarism, the pause made red skull.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I trust everything proceeds according to plan.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes you're cavalier attitude, a pause me.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It makes me wonder why I threw in with you says the red skull.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
• 41:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the headphone reminds Red Skull of his failure of his solo capers.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, you missed me so bad.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: You realized it's for your cunning all your strength.
• 41:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: You missed something all these years.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: You missed the genius, the inspiration of the man who made you what you are, says Hitler.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: You have questioned how it's possible and disbelieved.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now you know all you need to know that it off Hitler has returned to you.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Together, we should never fail again.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very gay, I don't know.
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: But meanwhile, in the background, they're torturing Jews and Nazi hunters, and there's a whole story going on.
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the next issue, we get hate-monger the Red School and Arnhem Zola.
• 41:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if that is not the ultimate fuck-married kill game for anyone who wants to play, I'll let you answer that in your own time, there's a long-term plot to restore the cosmic cube in place.
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And shield storms the island, and the hate-monger rushes to Arnhem Zola, demanding the cube be his.
• 41:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, and forever, I am Adolf Hitler.
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Think back to 1945, when you still the ordinary human arm Zola approached me with your wild ideas.
• 42:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: My AIDS scoffed, but I perceived your brilliance.
• 42:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I allowed myself to have my brain specially energized by your machines in secret.
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then, in Berlin's final days when the original human torch and his companion Toro invaded my bunker and burned my body, your process enabled me to project my mind essence into the waiting brain
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: in the real world Hitler committed suicide, but in the comics human torch killed him.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: The very thought me dad, but death could never claim me now, never.
• 42:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And as the years went by, you designed a new body for yourself.
• 42:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: We refined the techniques until I could transfer from specially prepared body, to specially prepared body, almost at will.
• 42:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get a view of the clones, and there's one of the Nazi-X clone, uh, you go look that up, we talked about it in a red skull story.
• 42:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: It obviously died and lived again many times.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like the ancient gods, I took on human guise when it pleased me.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And now I should become a god and actually a truth thanks to you and the cube in that chamber.
• 42:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he wants to put his mind in the cosmic cube to give himself god powers.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he does, but it turns out the red skull laid a trap.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: So now the hate mongers brain is stuck in the cosmic cube forever, at least for like 30 years.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get the story played up on much further in Marvel continuity.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nazi turning on Nazi once again.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just sounds like there's a lot of like really stupid and dumb stuff going on at the same time that there's all this actual horrible stuff happening again in the issue of secret words that I read it's the same sort of situation where we're trying to like be funny at the same time that like it's awful it also kind of reminds me of what's going on right now in one world where we just discovered that doom is powering his like a sent to emperor hood of the world with by like insolving people in lot of area but keeping an under a dome so nobody knows.
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's impossible to not go here and sorry we take the footage from alligator alcatraz or gaza, but then we pan over to the White House where the Epstein files are hidden in a drawer and like Donald Trump is painting a picture of a shirtless man.
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what I mean?
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like it's it's the comedy of the like ridiculousness of the leaders built on the atrocity of the people that they are overlooking.
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's intense, but brilliant too, the capture of that is
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still look out of all of them I found this one, the part is to read the, because on the one there is that is actually so this is kind of ridiculousness to it, but like overwriting this kind of horrifying backdrop, but also the history that the referencing here was far more grotesque and far more horrific.
• 44:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: than what is portrayed here.
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that I think that we can represent the Holocaust through fiction, but I think there are certain responsibilities that come about and the type that made me feel most uncomfortable are the ones that seek to kind of reference it to drive the plot but not enough so to actually engage with what really
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: occurred.
• 44:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not seeking to educate.
• 44:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just kind of using it as a plot device and that felt this sort of very much that.
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of it's referencing absolutely horrific stuff but within the language and the limits of the types of violence that can be shunned within comics.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did find it parts of this kind of, they say like the the homoral racism part of me whilst I was reading it I was like I was just interested to think about kind of who this is for like who's kind of being
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: it with this, because this is before the 90s turn when superhero comics were really kind of catering for a particular type of audience where I think might do that necessarily during the Wonder Woman comics.
• 45:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He said, this is like early 2000s and he said every time the bikini got smaller the sales back higher and we're not quite there, but I think this is still the time when like female superheroes represented in a certain way.
• 45:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Your Gillis in particular was a writer that put a lot of care into telling diverse stories.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: I really want a lot of Peter's work.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this does feel like an intended comedy to me.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's show the antics of this weird odd couple as the suffering backdrop is over there.
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: It seems very much to be making fun of, if you will.
• 45:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you're talking about this in my little conversations about the red skull, Hitler was injecting himself with bullseemn.
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: He was obsessed with blonde, blue-eyed boys that were day that he would try to make straight by phone calls.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: represent me well today.
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: He watched Snow White like three times a night certain weeks.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean this this is a ridiculous human and I think it's important for us to recognize that these people were so afraid of a ridiculous at the end of the day.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just I hate manga drawing this kind of this model, but also the way he's like commenting on the red skull's body and his smell.
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is there is something very clear about the relationship between the two of them.
• 46:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, and I think it's interesting that in part, this is kind of the long tradition of in one of the haze code, and so on, of querying the villain, of presenting any kind of villainous character as embodying both masculine, arguably masculine, and absolutely feminine traits, and presenting this as threat.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder if that's part of it, it's just kind of this is how you present a villain.
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, when I skirted over a lot of this, but there's literal imagery of a Jewish woman who's been whipped and tortured, there's an agents being turned in against each other like this is it's a rough story to read it's not pleasant to read from this perspective.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me cover the rest of my section very quickly.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a group in a cap 45 or 45 or 48.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hitler has cosmic cube powers and there's a big fight in the Nazis.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's fight, they're destroyed and the cube gets smashed.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm kind of scared to go over it again.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mark Wade uses the cube cult again later.
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: The red skull comes back with cosmic cube powers, which is the thing we've been talking about over on the other side.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 2000, is where we get Captain America volume 325 through 27.
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Captain America and the Falcon fight the massive artillery and army of a brand new hate-monger, and they're in Idaho, which is often associated with white supremacy.
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a deep black hood this time, purple robes, more tech enhancements.
• 47:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: He has a private chamber filled with swastikas, white hoods, with crosses on them, weapons of war, photos of Adolf Hitler,
• 47:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Symbols of hate, it says, verification of man's potential for evil, instruments of death, testament to man's capacity for carnage, images of atrocity, architect of genocide, icons for a warped tomorrow.
• 48:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is where it gets so home ironic again, because Captain Falcon erupts in so many chains.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like bondage porn with like busting, male superheroes.
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Falcon calls the hate manga out.
• 48:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: The biggest shoveler of hate and racist garbage, this side of Hitler himself.
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he's very
• 48:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: His plan is to launch a war through anthrax, which was a big thing in the early 2000s in the US, and blame a black general in order to start a race war.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, he spray paints a swastika on Captain America's shield, and then a truly racist turn for the early 2000s.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: He strapped the Falcon and this black general to guns on a tank and prepared to fire them.
• 48:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: There are so, so many chains in this issue, you guys.
• 48:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's so many chains.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: The army's defeated, hitmogger jumps in the water and escapes and leaves only his robes behind.
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see him again in 2001 in Cap volume 345 through 48.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: The hatemogger and the Red Skull are working together to foment racial and ethnic violence across the United States.
• 49:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Riot's big superhero battles.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: They turn on each other and the hatemogger blows up in his own machine.
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're seeing a theme in this game.
• 49:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: very clearly.
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me turn it over to Philip to talk about a couple of more modern interpretations of the hate-monger from Captain America 616, which is fun because that's the Marvel universe, no numerical designation.
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then a series called United States of Captain America, where if you guys recall from our friend Joester Heo, we've done a lot of conversations about the Captain America of the Railways Air and Fisher who shows up here.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, you can definitely
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the way that hate mongers present.
• 49:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is kind of ghostly presence.
• 49:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We do not see all the kind of the knots of the winter in this 2021 series which I or at least there's a lot less of it which is something I appreciate it.
• 49:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Reading through this one there's I think if I read it at the time like there's a part where like cap is reflecting on the fact that like these kind of these different diverse versions of Captain America and he's kind of doing some solar searching
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bucky says to him, oh, you know, the fact that you're even thinking about this is why you are you which I think if I've read it at the time I just sort of rolled my eyes that this is like like he's getting a round of applause for recognizing that other people have a different experience from him reading it now.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I it made me as I was reading it.
• 50:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like how do you remember 2021?
• 50:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like do you remember when like even if it was sort of done cynically or even if it was done like clumsily there was a recognition of different perspectives and different experiences and so like I as I was reading through this I sort of always felt nostalgic for the message that this this comment series is sort of communicator that was my sort of initial tape.
• 50:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: The United States of Captain America series specifically has some very clear messages delivered.
• 50:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, I mean, I liked the idea that there was these kinds of, there's these other characters sort of embodying Captain America using Captain America kind of as an image.
• 51:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: also borrowing from that.
• 51:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: It did feel in some sense a kind of a also reinforcement of Captain America's kind of this isn't there where Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson are sharing the shield and the fact that we meet across this are Aaron Fisher who is a gay homeless or unhoused Captain America.
• 51:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get the Captain America of Harrisburg, who is a black woman named Nishal Wright.
• 51:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: In Issue 3, we meet Joe Gomez, who's the Captain America of the Kikupu tribe, like it's a Native American cap.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see villains posing as capture of this as well, but they're forming an entire network.
• 51:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we meet Ariel Agbayani, Ariel Agbayani, who is a,
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: In a grinned character, if I'm recalling correctly, who represents this mythology as well, and they brought on diverse creators to kind of tell this story together.
• 51:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's powerful a form of storytelling and a message of diversity, I think that's really, that's really lovely seeing everyone kind of work together in that way.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It felt like there was part of what the comic is working through is kind of what does Captain America mean.
• 52:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the way they've done that is they have fragmented Captain America so there's like evil people taking on the image of Captain America and there's also all these different kind of identities embodied within Captain America.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The sense that there's kind of struggling with this idea of what does Captain America mean and what should Captain America mean?
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there is that part of the end of what he sort of he elects to step aside in that other people's faith.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in the cap 616 story, we have that kind of random clone of Adolf Hitler, who's Edmund Heidler, who works in an art gallery.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And at the end of this story, this is the kill Hitler as a baby debate again.
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Captain America kind of walks away and lets this character live.
• 52:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like he doesn't remember who he is.
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the second cap turns away, the guy starts painting a swastika at his apartment.
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh,
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wonder what this means to me, the idea to let evil exist in where the line of that is is very interesting in the way these stories are told as well.
• 53:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this is a Frank Terry story, Frank always likes to tell stories about evil people.
• 53:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have that Captain America 616 upstairs though?
• 53:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of want to go grab it and check it out again.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of a short story in the act.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting.
• 53:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then Molly's going to take us on a completely different journey across time.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is the character's HM hunger and Josh Glenn.
• 53:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's some new versions of the HM hunger.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're starting with fantastic 4279 to 281, which I also talked about in the psychoman episode.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to talk about them for a lot less time here, because I talked a lot about it last time.
• 53:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I just managed to get Molly.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know that I call him hate you for that chat.
• 53:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel really dumb because I did not realize until, like, yesterday, aged, um, longer, hey, longer.
• 53:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm really dumb when I realized that yesterday.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, all right.
• 53:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So FF2, 79 is John Bern.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of the issues the fantastic for off-fighting doom, but, of course, at the end of that section, Reed says, what else could go wrong?
• 54:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, oh my god, don't do that.
• 54:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in the last few pages of the issue, we see a blonde man speaking front of a crowd and asking about what is the color of darkness?
• 54:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what is the color of evil?
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the crowd yells back that the answer is black.
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's immediately obvious what kind of meeting this is.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a sign on his podium that says, speak the word and be set free hate.
• 54:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then a priest steps up to stop the hate speech and then the speaker who is H.M. Unger calls him an inward lover and seeks the crown on him and they beat him presumably to death with bats.
• 54:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this is the late 80s, everybody.
• 54:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's 85, I believe.
• 54:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Psychoman is working with younger the entire time in this bunch of issues.
• 54:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Unger can like change forms.
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he looks like different people.
• 54:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he changes form into a black woman to go infiltrate the black women's defense league.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just a really misguided move on John Burns part.
• 54:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to move on from there.
• 54:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The next issue is like the most horrifying fantastic for cover that I've ever seen, where read and sue and she hulken Johnny are crucified on the word hate, and there's a crowd below them like raising their fists and there's fire and it's awful.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: This issue has it all.
• 55:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's got anti-Semitism.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's got racism against Native Americans.
• 55:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's got crystal knock references.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's anti-black racism anti-mutant racism and two turns into malice.
• 55:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, hate mongers been like stoking fires all over the city and most people are infected with hate.
• 55:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He pretty much lurks in the shadows during this issue until Psychoman has him turn into Reed Richards and sent him after Sue, who turns into malice mistress of hate.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, uh, Unger calls Sue's change the greatest triumph of the hate monger.
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 281, hate monger says that hatred is spreading like the black cancer it is.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, we see a man choking his wife.
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We see people running through the streets with
• 55:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: clubs in the city's on fire.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sue has been set against the man.
• 55:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: She hates motest, which per psychoman and the hate manga is read.
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, she.
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure she has complicated feelings towards him, but I have to attribute some of this to like psychoman's influence here.
• 56:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course,
• 56:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: fantastic for realizes Sue's malice because I don't know she is a mask covering have her face, but then read slaps her full in the face and tells her to shut up and somehow that snaps her out of it.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then we moved to secret war two number two, which is actually the conclusion of this story, sort of, um, and this issue is bonkers.
• 56:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: most of the plot is about the beyond or coming to Earth in human form to learn about humanity and he's very confused about food and clothing and Spider-Man has to teach about how to use the bathroom and it's really goofy and it's juxtaposed against these awful things going on elsewhere.
• 56:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't give many texts for Molly Laser but like other texts were like wait did Spider-Man just teach to the other they go to the bathroom.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so the narrations noting that thousands of New Yorkers come to an unnatural force pervading Manhattan, this faithful, faithful night, a force which drives them to hate.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: We get a little redo of the events of FF-281, and after Reed frees Sue from her malice, persona, psycho-man just like, noops away out of there.
• 57:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sue grabs hunger, he begs from her sea, and then some mysterious figure in a trench coat and fedora who is not been grim comes out and shoots hunger with a ray gun to as justice is served hunger melts into pink goo and the guy disappears and like the last we see if the fantastic force reaches being addicted to Sue again, it's a weird ending in a weird issue.
• 57:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: and secret wars as a weird, yeah, I think that's all we have to say.
• 57:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay.
• 57:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then I read Black Panther 521 to 523.
• 57:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, this was after a long era on Daredevil comics, where there's been a tongue going on, Matt Murdoch stepped away to Chala for some reason.
• 57:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: It a bunch of David List stories moves to Hell's Kitchen and just kind of is living his best life as Black Panther the man without fear.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a fun run actually.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this is also part of the fear itself crossover in these issues.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: We meet Josh Glenn, who's a white guy, stressed about his job.
• 58:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's awful.
• 58:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's saying even the most disgusting, beauty free cousin better than me.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes off the deep end with conspiracies.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's saying the lot of like right thinking people, which I'm taking to mean right wing.
• 58:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think that the heroes murdered the hate manga for speaking truth.
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he calls hate manga a hero and Captain America is a phony patriot for sending hatemongers life energy into space.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then he makes the misguided move of claiming his right to free expression and wearing a hate manga or purple KKK hat to work and challenging his boss who is a Sikh man to punish him.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so Wampwamp, he does.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, because as I explained to my students in our unit on free speech, which we're doing right now is that private entities can punish you for your speech.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Glenn becomes a podcaster.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: He railed.
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we need more.
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why guys with podcast?
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 58:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 58:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he rails against immigrants on the internet.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: His wife kicks him out of the house.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: We see him later on the street holding a sign that says, immigrants stole my job and my wife.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's claiming he's the hate manga.
• 58:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so out in space, the hate manga's consciousness wakes up, comes to earth, and goes right into him.
• 59:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: He starts infecting people.
• 59:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very religious experience.
• 59:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like,
• 59:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when we see him again, he's wearing this fabulous purple suit and he is coming out to work with this racist thug.
• 59:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: While Ticchalla is in Hell's Kitchen, he's working under an assumed name and the white guy who used to run the building where Panthers helping people shows up and tells them he needs to take his act up to Harlem.
• 59:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Josh Glenn shows up behind him with his KKK hood.
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the whole thing.
• 59:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just awful.
• 59:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then American Panther shows up.
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this is some guy we never see, oh no we do, we see his face at the end of the third issue, but he but not until then and he's basically wearing like a star-spangled version of the Black Panther outfit.
• 59:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah like it's a it's a white guy wearing the ceremonial robes of an African king painting it in stars and stripes.
• 59:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: No.
• 59:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: that.
• 59:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so eventually to Chala and his friend Sophia leave and then Homeland Security arrests to Chala and Foggy Nelson.
• 1:00:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's yeah.
• 1:00:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then we find out we do find out more about the American Panther.
• 1:00:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We learned that his father was killed by an illegal immigrant from Sweden who was extradited and allowed to walk on a technicality.
• 1:00:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he says that he decided to pursue justice in places for an end domestic.
• 1:00:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we see him just like beating on nonwhite people.
• 1:00:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: in both foreign and domestic.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's a cop in the domestic imagery.
• 1:00:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he says that the hate manga has unleashed his potential, but at the same time, he also notes that right now, Josh Glenn as hate manga has some sort of hold over him.
• 1:00:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They take over hate manga, and when American Panther take over a police station, at that point I realized that hate manga is basically white supremacist purple man because he has, you know, those persuasive powers where he can
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: he wants.
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's got a care mirror stare, but it's the hate ray all over again.
• 1:00:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a hate manga makes American Panther literally lick his boots and that's gross, but even grocer, another guy who's been working with them, licks the asks to lick the boot to without hate manga having to use his pants.
• 1:01:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: hours on him.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they take over the police station and Black Panther, who's actually wearing his proper costume, show up.
• 1:01:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: American Panther, as they're his he's fighting Black Panther, is clearly not in his right mind, and he thinks Black Panther is the guy who killed his father, hate mongered to Claire's martial law.
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The hate manga ends up escaping the police station and goes and has a little rally in the street.
• 1:01:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Black Panther has a device that he's going to try to read Glenn of the hate manga essence.
• 1:01:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, he's actually able to get the device on Glenn's forehead and do it.
• 1:01:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Glenn gets arrested, but not for being a big hit.
• 1:01:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: He gets arrested for taking over the police precinct.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I was never a more myself than when I was the hate manga, which
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: the police arrest American Panther, but they don't get his costume, which they assume what someone else has and will put on at some point in the future.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, by the end, we see someone else wearing costume.
• 1:02:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's all pretty gross.
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, I found it very realistic.
• 1:02:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's always going to be people who are going to fall under the sway of horrible ideas of racist like Sphingali leaders, but
• 1:02:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are also people who don't need to be controlled to have these ideas and I think these issues show both of those things and there's always more people who are ready to take up that mantle of racist leadership.
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it was just a pretty depressing read overall.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, however, we get to see characters of color.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It both of the stories you guys are talking about, representing themselves and like fighting back in major ways, which I think is really powerful, but they are depressing reads.
• 1:02:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And these stories are transcendent in our comics.
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: These, every story with the sons of the serpent, every story with the secret empire and hydra, et cetera, and on and on forever and ever, the secret empire event is evil Captain America, leading the fascist to world victory, right?
• 1:03:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: These are stories that we see in other mediums as well, it's truly, truly deep.
• 1:03:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want to end us in a particular place and then we'll talk about kind of resin and thoughts.
• 1:03:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: First of all, Josh Glenn, the guy we just talked about.
• 1:03:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's the guy for curricular readers who attacked the marauders in Madrepoir.
• 1:03:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: with the executioner and ominous verendi.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that's the hate manga that the mutant's got to beat up that one time.
• 1:03:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we're going to go to a story that just came out last year.
• 1:03:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a pride special.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's written by Alan Ewing.
• 1:03:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Marvel united pride special number one.
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see the hate-monger sitting on a hydra-themed throne ranting.
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why does everything seem to belong to them?
• 1:03:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: In this debased age, men are soft and effeminate.
• 1:03:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Women are headstrong and wittful.
• 1:03:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: The generosity is rife in our schools, our media.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is why all of hydros forces are striking your cities tonight to free you from all this progression.
• 1:03:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what we built from the rubble will be your world again, your world at last.
• 1:04:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you need money, you would make money.
• 1:04:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you want love, you would be allocated love.
• 1:04:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: As you rise, those who discussed you shall fall for I am your hate manga, and I give you license to hate.
• 1:04:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, the three heroes who get the team up to kick his ass are Escapade, who is an incredible trans woman.
• 1:04:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Created by my dear friend Charlie Jane Anders,
• 1:04:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dr. Charlene McGowan, who is a trans woman created by arguing, and Aaron Fisher, who is a Jewish unhoused gay captain of America, who's very sex-positive created by Jostre Heo, and they just kick his ass.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a gay men and two trans women.
• 1:04:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Loki, the non-binary god of stories, shows up as well, and they channeled a very essence of the trans-elder goddess the never-queen, and they used this kind of ethereal power to banish this entity of hate from our universe.
• 1:04:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: You should not exist at all, and we do exist, so you cannot.
• 1:04:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's queer joy that finally defeats by drawing on queer resources.
• 1:05:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now this is not every version of the hate manga.
• 1:05:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is not every version of every Nazi character and we did not cover every story comprehensively, but I think we see some particular themes.
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: How are we feeling about that most recent queer people beating the hate manga up story first of all?
• 1:05:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's come Molly and then fill up.
• 1:05:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I freaking love it.
• 1:05:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't read that one yet, but now I want to go find it and it sounds amazing.
• 1:05:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's so good.
• 1:05:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't read that one item.
• 1:05:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: It seems very kind of on the notes in terms of engaging sort of different forms of research that are in circulation.
• 1:05:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: So in 2025, we can draw this comparison as educators, as parents, and as citizens of the United States, or even as immigrants, right, if we tell this story from whatever perspective.
• 1:05:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's a really, really rough thing to kind of look at the themes of these stories as we watch them stretch over 60 years.
• 1:05:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So some of the positive themes on an education level, the danger is always right there and it is never gone.
• 1:05:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is always underground.
• 1:06:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: There will always be people who will celebrate this evil.
• 1:06:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, we always see people of color and minority groups as the victims of violence always always always it's always that there's always a clear message that if American democracy specifically focuses or blinks in just the wrong way then fascism can take over it's right there and it's present and there's also kind of messages about you don't have to have sympathy for Nazis.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't need to see a hero's journey for the character Josh Glenn.
• 1:06:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't need to see the redemption of Adolf Hitler at any point.
• 1:06:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's okay to have certain kinds of violence, but it's also okay to unite and fight back.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we're living in these crazy times.
• 1:06:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would love for you guys to answer with whichever hat you're choosing to wear today.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, how are you feeling about the themes as we are living through this in 2025?
• 1:06:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can understand indie World War II concepts.
• 1:06:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: to have hate munger as a character.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was surprised that they have kept on using hate munger as a character.
• 1:07:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is something even when executing with a very clear message about resisting fascism, the idea of having a hitler as a character in the Marvel universe still feels just a little bit distasteful to me.
• 1:07:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not even a little bit.
• 1:07:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It feels sort of
• 1:07:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: still's clumsy and distasteful and I think there are other ways to approach this.
• 1:07:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't surprise me that this character exists in the 60s.
• 1:07:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It does come as a surprise to me that they return to him.
• 1:07:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: This, this reason, and I think there are comics that have done this in other ways.
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: One thing I thought was interesting about the Black Panther issues was that the name Hitler is never mentioned.
• 1:07:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They talk about like the hate manga essence and the hate manga, you know, consciousness and spirit, but it I did read it as like this can affect anybody and I think that's still really relevant.
• 1:07:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I agree with you that like having like that Hitler and Red Skull team up good Lord like
• 1:07:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: just tasteful.
• 1:07:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but that idea that like this couldn't happen with anybody and it's not going away.
• 1:08:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like at the end of those issues, hate manga was not destroyed.
• 1:08:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: His consciousness went up in back in a space.
• 1:08:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It'll be back.
• 1:08:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's never going away.
• 1:08:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that remains relevant if the stories, future stories with hate manga were to do that where it's like this consciousness, but as opposed to being Hitler, I think that would work.
• 1:08:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's so many ways to spin this conversation, but they all end in a really serious place.
• 1:08:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm just going to let us kind of end an enjoyable, let's unite and be hopeful space.
• 1:08:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Figure out where your limits are.
• 1:08:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Figure out where you draw the line and how to advocate.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: One of the things I'm landing on with people is I'm doing local advocacy work for people in trauma.
• 1:08:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: is what's in your control, right?
• 1:08:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can create a safe space.
• 1:08:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can let my neighbors know they are loved.
• 1:08:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can't change policy, but I can fight back in the ways that see that I see fit to do so, right?
• 1:08:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: As we're living our daily lives, but it's my immigrant friends, my disabled friends, my transgender friends that are burying the the largest amount of weight.
• 1:08:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're all welcome by the way, from my German accent.
• 1:09:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I saw both of you just cackling.
• 1:09:04
  [UNKNOWN]: What's that?
• 1:09:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was amazing.
• 1:09:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've made the choice to give both the Red Skull and Hitler in these conversations and the most haunts and fronds energy that I've possibly kept.
• 1:09:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I so respect your talents, your time.
• 1:09:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just appreciate you all so much for having this conversation with me.
• 1:09:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's painful, but it's oddly healing to join with friends in this way, so I really appreciate it.
• 1:09:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: So any final thoughts from either of you and anything you want to plug for early November?
• 1:09:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's go fill in and then Molly.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was difficult content in some sense, but I think it is useful to work through and have conversations about some of this and I think that the way I always present the content we talk about with my students is If something was all good, we wouldn't really have anything to say about it and if something was all bad, we wouldn't really have anything to say about it
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: in it.
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Experience that tension with the things we find challenging and I think we find difficult and the things that we don't think we've done in the way that they should be done.
• 1:10:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what that's what facilitates the conversation and it's really the conversation is the point.
• 1:10:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in that sense I think it is useful for us to read the stuff and talk about it and unpack it and talk about what was the goal here and where was the execution and where is their gaps between the two?
• 1:10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah.
• 1:10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have anything to plug, I'm looking forward to teaching my classes next year.
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: I feel it, thank you.
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody go back and listen to that Gabrielle Holler episode again.
• 1:10:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Another one, painful conversations, but really valuable.
• 1:10:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then Molly, our psychoman one as well.
• 1:10:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a certain vibe on this show.
• 1:10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's funny.
• 1:10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I actually have a friend who listens to the podcast when I'm on it.
• 1:10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think other times as well.
• 1:10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He texted me and he's like, can you ever be on a normal episode?
• 1:10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, the super apes Molly, we get the super apes, but I think that this stuff will never not be relevant and I think it's worth reading and I think it's worth discussing for as absurd but also like relevant it is I also don't really have anything to plug I have a show going up towards the end of November, but that's that's what's going on with me.
• 1:11:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: it's delightful and wonderful to spend this time with you both.
• 1:11:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay everybody watch out on the show on the main show this month you can watch for standard episodes in relation like we have ensemble interviews and issue reviews.
• 1:11:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to be doing what if 6768 which is a what if Captain America were revived today storyline from the late 80s early 90s.
• 1:11:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's really interesting and there's some delicious X men stuff.
• 1:11:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we're going to lean hard into Nazi comedy, which trust me, I promise you'll have fun.
• 1:11:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to go to the world of Marvel zombies destroy where Howard the Duck and a bunch of World War II superheroes blow up a bunch of Nazis across multiple dimensions.
• 1:11:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that will be a ton of fun.
• 1:11:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then again, we're ending the month with the trial of Baron Zimo, which we'll have similar content.
• 1:11:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: The next episode is going to be all about lightning force, which is the evil Chris Claremont Excalibur Nazi mutants from another dimension storyline.
• 1:12:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Andrew demands joining me for that.
• 1:12:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna be doing an episode on Masterman and Warrior Woman.
• 1:12:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: You don't need to know anymore for now, but I promise you'll laugh.
• 1:12:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we're going to end up with the mutant version of this, that's most relevant, Philip Kennedy Johnson and Ken Christopher joining me for a conversation all about the Friends of Humanity.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: So be prepared for that.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you everybody for listening.
• 1:12:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Please take care of yourselves.
• 1:12:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Reach out if you need support.
• 1:12:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Dr. Smith.
• 1:12:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Molly Layzer.
• 1:12:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I will see you all back here next week on The Great Moth and Lane Show.
• 1:12:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: and now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest tonight talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
• 1:12:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Camp Sigfried was one of several youth camps operated in the United States during the 1930s by the German American Boond, a pro Nazi organization that promoted national socialist ideology among German Americans.
• 1:13:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: The camp was located in Yapunk, YAP-H-A-N-K, I'm not exactly sure how to say that, on Long Island in New York, and it opened in 1935.
• 1:13:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: The boond presented this site publicly as a cultural retreat, where Americans of German descent could celebrate their heritage through summer programs, athletic activities, and community gatherings.
• 1:13:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: In practice, however, the camp also served as a center for political organizing and ideological training modeled after youth movements in Nazi Germany.
• 1:13:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: During the summer months, the camp hosted children and teenagers who participated in structured programs inspired by the Hitler youth.
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Activities included marching drills, physical training, and instruction that emphasized German nationalism and loyalty to it off Hitler.
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Adults attending events at Camp Sigfried, often participated in rallies where Nazi symbols were displayed and speeches promoted anti-Semitic and pro-German propaganda.
• 1:13:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: The surrounding areas of Yapank even developed a small residential community linked to the camp where streets were given names such as Adolf Hitler Street and Gerbel Street.
• 1:14:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: You guys, this is a real history.
• 1:14:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Camp Siegfried also became a venue for larger-booned gatherings that drew supporters from across the north-eastern United States.
• 1:14:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: These events featured parades, speeches by booned leaders, and the public display of Nazi flags and uniforms.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: While the boon attempted to frame these gatherings as expressions of ethnic pride and political free speech, they attracted significant controversy and protest from local residents and anti-fascist organizations,
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: who viewed the camp as a propaganda outpost for Nazi Germany operating on American soil.
• 1:14:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: The influence of camp seek freed declined rapidly at the end of the 1930s, as public sentiment in the United States turned sharply against Nazi ideology.
• 1:14:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 1939,
• 1:14:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: leader, Fritz Kuhn, who I have talked about on the show before, was convicted of imbezzlement, weakening the organization's national leadership.
• 1:15:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: After the United States officially entered World War I on in 1941, the boom defectively collapsed and many of its activities ceased.
• 1:15:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Camp SIGFRIED was eventually shut down, though the community that had grown around it remained.
• 1:15:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: leading behind one of the more unusual and controversial chapters of pre-war political organizing in the United States.
• 1:15:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you listen correctly, that kept opened in 1935.
• 1:15:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: We didn't enter the war till 1941.
• 1:15:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're not going to jump to the controversial story of Captain America's Steve Rogers 1 through 5.
• 1:15:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Red School is active in America, acting on behalf of the American
• 1:15:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: What an audience.
• 1:15:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: We grow a number each time I visit.
• 1:15:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, my friends, for your courage and dedication to our costs.
• 1:15:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have just come from Europe, my homeland.
• 1:15:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: In fact, and you know what I saw there.
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was an invading army.
• 1:15:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Those so-called, these so-called refugees, millions of them marching across the continent.
• 1:15:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Bringing their fanatical beliefs and their crime with them, they attack our women and bomb our cities.
• 1:16:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And how do our leaders respond?
• 1:16:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do they push them back and enforce the borders as is our sovereign duty?
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Of course not.
• 1:16:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: They say, here take our food, take our shelter, take our way of life, and then take our lives.
• 1:16:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Despicable.
• 1:16:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it is good to be here when some men still know how to fight.
• 1:16:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: When I was a young man, there was a great war
• 1:16:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And our two countries did not see eye to eye, but all the sides, they all agreed on certain things.
• 1:16:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: The fundamental responsibilities of a nation, protecting the land through strength, preserving the heritage and culture of the people, offering them opportunity.
• 1:16:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, look at the world today, look here, and the dead husk that these United States, how the mighty have fallen.
• 1:16:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Who is protected, I ask you, on my flight, I was briefed about these brave patriots fighting the government's illegal claims to their land, who does the land belong to if not the people?
• 1:17:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is who your government sees as the transgressors?
• 1:17:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: What about the criminal trespasses who make a mockery of your borders?
• 1:17:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, they are protected, of course, but that is only the beginning.
• 1:17:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Your entire culture is under siege.
• 1:17:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: The principles of your country was founded upon lost in the name of tolerance.
• 1:17:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: your religion, your beliefs, your sense of community, or tossed aside like trash.
• 1:17:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: You cannot even speak out against it, unless you recall the bigot.
• 1:17:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And who benefits from all this?
• 1:17:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the Vultures feeding, feasting on the carcass.
• 1:17:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: The bankers who stole your homes are from under you and the politicians they purchased.
• 1:17:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, let them call you what they will.
• 1:17:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I know who you truly are, the beginning of a revolution.
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: The first to see the collapse of the old god and the road to something glorious, the glory of Hydra.
• 1:17:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, now this is the reality where the cosmic cube has become sentient and has been influenced by Nazi propaganda, which is a very scary AI allegory, and has rewritten the history of an alternate Steve Rogers, who is now loyal specifically to Hydra, not the third Reich, but Hydra specifically.
• 1:18:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: is the Third Reich propagating Hydra in this altered world.
• 1:18:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: In issue two, we see the Red Skull kill a man over dinner for serving him bland food.
• 1:18:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought possessing the brain of a gifted telepath like Charles Xavier would be the realization of all life dreamed of.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Instead, it's a nightmare.
• 1:18:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's all also easy, so artificial.
• 1:18:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I yearn for conquest, but only receive submission.
• 1:18:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I want them to gravel at my feet, but I want them to mean it.
• 1:18:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is still the cap that the Red Skull that has Xavier's
• 1:18:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then he realizes the cosmic few cube has taken on the form of the human child, Cobic, and she has rewritten reality, so suddenly the red skull has his own pet, Captain America, and we are getting ready to launch into a series of comics with the skull in the place of Hitler in this storyline of altered history.
• 1:18:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot more that happens, but I'm going to keep my focus there, and welcome my friend, Dean Coburn, to the show, from the mutant studies podcast.
• 1:19:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dean Hello, welcome to Graimalkin later again,
• 1:19:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, I'm very happy to be here.
• 1:19:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the word fan is very complicated there.
• 1:19:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that he works as a villain.
• 1:19:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I like the fact that he has stuck around, and I like the fact that he is very specifically still tied to Nazism, which is still a very real and very present threat.
• 1:19:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: and I think that you can evolve him over the course of publication to become more about modern day fascism in America, specifically.
• 1:19:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I wouldn't say I'm a fan, but I find him fascinating as a character.
• 1:19:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so this was your first time jumping into this particular section of history.
• 1:19:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think you've known about the evil Hydra Captain America for a while.
• 1:19:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: We
• 1:19:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: We sometimes call him Steevele Rogers.
• 1:19:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's known as the Grand Director, lately, late more lately.
• 1:19:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's known as the Flag Smasher.
• 1:19:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tell me your thoughts on jumping into the world of Captain America's Steeve Rogers.
• 1:20:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so certainly when I had heard about these runs initially, a lot of it was based around, I suppose you could just say the discourse about the idea of making Captain America who
• 1:20:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: for a long time has been this symbol of an anti-fascist America and tying him directly to these the Nazi ideologies, and specifically the hydro ideologies of the red skull.
• 1:20:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, I hadn't been reading the comics the time, and so everything that I had seen had been people reacting to it.
• 1:20:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I didn't know that the idea around this was that Captain America was that was a rewritten version of history where in Captain America fell into the propaganda machine of Hydra.
• 1:20:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when I had experienced that initially, I said, oh, that's a really interesting direction to take Captain America.
• 1:20:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think specifically Steve Rogers as a character.
• 1:20:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love Steve Rogers, but I don't read
• 1:21:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: and so I thought that that was a real fascinating angle to explore that even the best among us might still be at risk of falling down these propaganda, these sort of rabbit holes of propaganda, despite whatever, you know, whatever like inherent goodness we might have in our hearts.
• 1:21:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have not had the pleasure to interview Nick Spencer, who's the writer of this title.
• 1:21:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: This all comes out of the big pleasant hill story, where the storyline is Maria Hill, who's the government official you're supposed to be able to trust in charge of shield, has set up a private prison and is putting supervillains in it and having their minds rewritten by a cosmic cube in the name of the greater good.
• 1:21:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, of course, innocent until proven guilty and freedom of speech, and we're like invading people's minds and rewriting their realities without consent.
• 1:21:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So people come out of this event very, very upset and hurt, and there's a lot of things that's been here.
• 1:21:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Next Spencer is a brilliant writer, but this story comes out in 2016, which is a certain year of a certain election.
• 1:22:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: happening just a few months later, and rewriting America as the fascist America is wild, but it's really brilliant storytelling leading toward the larger secret empire event, which will follow where Hydra literally takes over the world, and the heroes have to rise up to stop them.
• 1:22:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was a very interesting direction to take it and again, I agree with you in that I think Nick Spencer handles the heavy subject matter of this idea pretty brilliantly and the idea that any human being can fall into these these propaganda rabbit holes.
• 1:22:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: While also still I think keeping a lot of this sort of comic booky elements and the sort of like fantastical elements still very rooted in the fantastical, I like the idea of the cosmic cube manifesting sentience and then the cube itself falling under, falling under hydropropeganda or falling into the hydropropeganda machine as a way to manipulate reality in the Red Skull's favor and I thought that
• 1:23:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, not even in the red skulls favor, but in hydros favor, specifically, which is interesting in this altered reality, because later than America is going to assassinate this red skull.
• 1:23:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, exactly.
• 1:23:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then finding the angles through which
• 1:23:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think the best Captain America stories present not an idealized version of America, but present a version of America that is true, and I think, again, the fact that this book comes at in 2016 is shockingly precious for where we were going.
• 1:23:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that Nick Spencer really had his finger on the pulse in terms of the direction that America was heading and the direction that
• 1:23:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: American culture was nearing.
• 1:23:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I loved your initial pitch at the beginning of sort of in a modern context making this as sort of re-examining this under the idea of modern day AI and how modern day AI propaganda has become a true blight on society.
• 1:24:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: We take the tool that could be used for good but if it's programmed wrong or made to believe differently then it becomes very dark very quickly.
• 1:24:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:24:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I found that really interesting.
• 1:24:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I do like the fact that even when he is completely subsumed by hydro ideologies, that the idea of the good Captain America is still somewhat present, I think that
• 1:24:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: If this was a, if this was a sort of actively rewriting the history of Captain America's story without any sort of supernatural angles, the story just wouldn't work.
• 1:24:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I do like the fact that the idea of the cap that we know and the Steve Rogers that we know is still in there and is still
• 1:25:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: trying to fight for the greater good.
• 1:25:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he has fallen under the propaganda machine of believing that hydra is the only way towards the greater good.
• 1:25:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought was just really, really fascinating.
• 1:25:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm really, really like these run.
• 1:25:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I almost wonder if Nick Spencer got this idea from the stories that we're going back around then when they tried to launch an AI on Twitter to let it learn from human behavior.
• 1:25:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when the AI like analyzed the AI became Nazi if they had to shut it down I almost wonder if that's where he got that idea and when you make it a comment You then you get those always like soap operable elements of like, oh, there's an evil twin of the character like all the Avengers trust this guy It's similar to what they did with when Dr. Octopus was in Spider-Man's body and then like he joined the Avengers But nobody knew it was Dr. Octopus right or
• 1:25:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: wind-dark beast infiltrated the X-Men.
• 1:25:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Those are always really fun when you get like an evil twin story in that way.
• 1:25:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought that the opening of Issue 3 was so was so fascinating.
• 1:25:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I loved the sort of interstitials that opened each of the issues where we flash back to Sarah Rogers in the 20s.
• 1:26:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I
• 1:26:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: So these stories all open with a young Captain America in the 1920s, who we know is going to become this incredible kid and showing how if reality goes just a little bit differently how he could have become a Nazi, right?
• 1:26:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like it's something that could happen to all kids when they're raised the wrong way, basically.
• 1:26:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think that choosing to have those sequences open each issue to sort of to also say that modern American fascism is not a new concept and that there were there were fascist supporters in America pre-World War II and pre-hour entering of World War II, similar to what you had talked about with the opening historical context.
• 1:26:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, what's the campaign to say, create in the American
• 1:26:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and I, I thought that that was such an interesting framing device around the series that I thought really really worked as a new idea, as a new way to sort of
• 1:27:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've read a pretty still a lot of these little episodes now and I've read a bunch of red skull speeches at this point and every time you're just like, oh, but like writing that speech you gave to the American boon the visiting German and then you picture like the real world implication of American youth being brought to summer camp on Adolf Hitler Street in like northern New York which is a
• 1:27:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: wild, it's okay.
• 1:27:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's it's like it's terrifying and I think again, it's showing, I think it's showing how easy it is for people to fall into these propaganda rabbit holes because I think one of the things that is established in those openings is that Steve's mother Sarah is, you know,
• 1:27:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: mother on the lower east side, looking for community and she finds it, but she finds it within these within this fascistic organization.
• 1:28:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when she finds it, that is when that propaganda can start to spread to her child, which I think is a real, again, for something that was published in 2017, I think is really, really precious.
• 1:28:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, and the way she finds it is she's struggling.
• 1:28:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's a widow.
• 1:28:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's an abuse survivor.
• 1:28:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's a single mother.
• 1:28:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: She can't feed her family and here comes this like organization.
• 1:28:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh, you're white and blonde.
• 1:28:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's take care of you.
• 1:28:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: But now the cost isn't right.
• 1:28:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, which leads me to my question that I ask every guest at the end is how you do it in 2026, my friend.
• 1:28:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Where we're seeing history itself.
• 1:28:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's
• 1:28:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a real, it's a real terrifying time out there.
• 1:28:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have been, it's a real terrifying time, but I think we have to also be reminding ourselves that there are things that we can do.
• 1:28:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it might not fix things within the big picture, but it is important to do to help things in the day to day.
• 1:29:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your neighbors are your allies is a big thing.
• 1:29:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: If there's one thing I can encourage people to do, because I try to do it as much as I can, find a local organization, find some sort of local leftist, anti-fascist, just pro community organization and volunteer for them because one they really need them and two it's a way to make sure that you do not feel completely subsumed by the terrifying reality that is
• 1:29:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: just a living day today in 2026.
• 1:29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, it's how I'm doing is always a complicated question now.
• 1:29:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we're doing our best friends.
• 1:29:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we are doing our best that we can every single day.
• 1:29:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we just have to keep trying to do our best every single day.
• 1:29:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I am grateful for smart and talented and safe friends.
• 1:29:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for joining me this morning.
• 1:29:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody take care of yourselves.
• 1:29:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Living joyfully is an act of defiance in this crazy world.
• 1:29:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're recording this in early March.
• 1:30:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what has happened between now and release, but please take care of yourselves.
• 1:30:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Things are intense out there.
• 1:30:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks to you for joining me.
• 1:30:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks everybody for listening.
• 1:30:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: We will see you back here next week.
• 1:30:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Long time all can late.