Latest / Graymalkin Lane the podcast / The Trial of Laynia Petrovna! Featuring Christie Porter, D'Manda Martini, Derek Nichols, Shawn Porrett, and Tom O'Connor!

Transcript

The Trial of Laynia Petrovna! Featuring Christie Porter, D'Manda Martini, Derek Nichols, Shawn Porrett, and Tom O'Connor! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Mocking Lane podcast where we get to celebrate my favorite episode of the month.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is the last Monday in August, and we are here for the trial of Laney up at Trovna or Dark Star.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now if you've been following along on the main show, we just got the introduction of Dark Star in the Champions recently.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's an amazing character.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to be celebrating her and some of her early appearances all month on the show and over on the Patreon channel we are covering Dark Force themed characters ranging from oblivion to Black Mama.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I hope you are enjoying all of the content as we explore.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now this trial accidentally coincides with Marvel's midnight event.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've had this plan for a little while, but we are seeing not only Darkstar in a newly announced book at the time we're recording this in early August, but we are also seeing Mark Marvel's celebrate all of its Darkforce stuff related to the Queen In Black event and all of its ties to oblivion and kind of the primorial cosmos.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is going to be a fun conversation today with lots of different guests.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me begin with my opening preamble and then I will welcome my jury members.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: One of the most effective ways to telecharacter stories is by discussing the duality in their own nature.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Remember the axis event when a chaos spell inverted the red skull into the white skull, genesis into apocalypse, carnage into an avenger, and saber tooth into a superhero.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you recall, I've talked about this on the show before, but during that event, Rick Remendor basically put together all of the character personality stats like on a D&D sheet and then just inverted them.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's how those characters in versions came to be.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Remember that time and buffy when Willow gave into the darkness in her soul and turned into an evil witch?
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Remember any time Red Cryptonite was brought out of smallville and hero after hero went evil until they were cursed?
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dark stars a character that largely exists in the margins of superhero comics.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's not a lot of focus given to her in any story.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Weirdly, the only time she ever had a book named after her dark star and the winter guard, it wasn't even our dark star, just the essence of her, bonded to another woman.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I think the duality of light and dark in this character, the careful balance within her, is the key to understanding her.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then we added the very complicated world in which she exists, and we see how that character responds, and that is where her magic lies for me.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me stay in advance.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar is not a character that I've given a lot of thought to over the years, but after doing all this research and writing, I might be her number one fan.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me welcome my esteem jury to the trial of Lady of Petrovna.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll have you each introduce yourselves with your pronouns.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tell me what it is you love about Dark Star most.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have a demand of Martini here.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, everyone.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Demand Martini.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think you guys know me pretty well here on the Grey Malkin Lane podcast.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am a Washington DC area based drag performer, cosplayer, theater, artists, I use she hope.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Throw Nouns.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I am so excited to talk about Dark Star today.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have been.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: big fan of hers for a long time.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the very few people.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know two other drag artists that have done a dark star look, but I'm one of the few.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I think there's three of us who have done a dark star cosplay.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I've, I've got introduced to her during the soul skinner arc in X men and then she was on the cartoon and I was like, oh, who is this person and looked into her backstory and I'm like, oh, she's a hot mess.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I love her.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love her.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love her
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: likes her powers anymore in the comics.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think they gave her just sort of very vague descriptions of powers back when she's first introduced like just scrying abilities, just teleportation abilities.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think now they mostly just use her as like sort of a green lantern, ask character where she can just build a contract set of dark force energy.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would really like it if they sort of dealt more into the rest of her stuff.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: My name is Tom O'Connor.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I pronouns are he, him.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a social studies teacher in Massachusetts and I'm so excited to be here doing my first trial ever.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've done a couple of episodes of Great Malcolm Lane before, one in which Chad, Mark Guggenheim and I examined the character Great Malcolm and then Chad Demanda and I did an episode on Unishone or Carmella or
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am so excited to be here talking about Darkstar.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: She is someone I've really admired from afar over the decades I've been a comic fan.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's sort of on the outskirts of mutant dim in a way kind of like quasi-avanger but absolute powerhouse and like serving looks like left and or right.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, she's a bit of a mystery to me, and I've been so grateful to just get to know her better through this whole reading project.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, again, I am so just grateful to be here to talk about Ms. Petrovna and just how wonderful she is.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello, everyone.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: My name is Sean Heade, and I am from the Solving for X-Men Podcast.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: Initially, just like I think most of us, I first encountered Darkstar in X-Men the animated series, and even though she's only in that one episode, like her outfit just looks so cool, and she is like a boss-ass bitch kind of girl, so of course all of this little queer boys were like, I want to be her when I grow up.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_06]: She's pretty cool, so it's been fun getting to learn about her.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hello, my name is Derek Nichols, my pronouns are he in the day.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: I was always fascinated by the character of Dark Star, because like many things X-Men, I was introduced to her and the cartoon way back in the early 90s.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: She was in the Omega Red episode, and I think it's one of those little queer boy experiences where they was a powerful woman who can fly and has long-flowing hair.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, it was immediately grown to her.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Doing this research for the trial, really showed a new light and who she is, and what?
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: all about.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: And her connection to this dark forest in general is interesting.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: All those characters like cloak.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: So what?
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like they're all tapping into this forest that's kind of like mysterious.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that makes it exciting.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: And you know, honestly, I don't want to know more about it.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: I just wanted to do her thing.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Chrissy Porter.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see the pronouns.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the thing that sticks out to me the most about dark star.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, aside from she has this very iconic look.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's right to say that she has main character energy, which is strange.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mostly just that she's never really gets to be the main character.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think, you know, she's always trying to do the right thing, even if that causes her legances to shift a lot.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: and at the end of the day, you know, maybe go a little dark when she's finally kind of had enough with being manipulated and misled and possessed.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But her costume's great and only one bad haircut that I saw.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I have to add in an addendum here for listeners.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: We had the entire trial of dark star pre-recorded based on all of our notes and research and normally when you hear these jury trials, you get a lot of banter and interchange between us.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: However, for the first time in my recording history as a podcaster after hundreds of episodes, that entire trial file got corrupted and deleted based on something that was out of my control.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we re-recorded separately, and this episode's going to be stitched together the best we can to celebrate this character, although all of my jury members had to go above and beyond descending individual recordings.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So my apologies in advance, you're accustomed to a certain kind of recording.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: This one will be a little different, but still top quality, I promise.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for joining us, Ed.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here we go.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, let there be light, and there was light.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and the evening, and the morning were the first day.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, I'm not a big Bible guy at this stage in my life,
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there are a lot of biblical references in our comic books, but the idea that the light is birthed from darkness, the creation of the universe and all the realms of darkness that can overwhelm the earth at any point is very biblical.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And a very real thing in our comics, the Marvel Cosmos is insane.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: We started with blackness, but
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: The universe has been rebooted multiple times from one thing into the next.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there is a realm just outside of our living universe or even multiverse or even omniverse.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that is the void of oblivion, separate from the void of death, which has all of the different afterlifes.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: The void of oblivion is the darkness from which life haem.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there is nothing there and oblivion craves his peace.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Go see my oblivion episode out there.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is the
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, this is a character amplified up to the level of eternity, who is the embodiment of life, oblivion is the alternate force.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: So oblivion and his sister death sit opposite of her eternity and his sister infinity with the one above all above everything.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So again, oblivion episode over on the Patreon this month, hope you got a chance to hear that.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Consider all of the marvel events that are linked here.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Things like null, the king and black, now the queen and black are Hela, who is an agent of death, now an agent of oblivion.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we have characters that get tied to these things.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: The recent blood hunt event, the earth got blanket and endarkness.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: The realm of oblivion is always kind of ready to take over everything.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the living tribunal is the judge that sits between eternity and oblivion making big decisions with the one above all as like the god or creator of these forces living in the house of ideas, separate from all versions of reality.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So oblivion's realm is a playable land in the Marvel universe.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a place that sorcerers can draw upon four spells with flowery language, but there are also realms and spaces within the void that can be drawn upon.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thor's black winters tied to this place.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: The fraternity of raptors, who are getting an episode on my Patreon in October, keep their null space and their weird tree over there.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Remember to remember Dark Hawk, and at least one part of the realm of oblivion is the Dark
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: with land underfoot and creatures that wander there and survive.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is separate and distinct from the dark dimension, which is the home dimension of characters like Dormamu, Umar, Clia, and the mindless ones.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's also distinct from all hell realms that Marvel has.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: And even distinct from the various shadow realms, like that of the Muma Dry, a world where dark versions of our heroes exist, almost more astraly.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then we have characters like, no, the living darkness, churnabog, the god of darkness, and the shadow king, who is a literal dark predator from some sort of astral plane.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to know how all of these characters tie in directly to the realm of the living and or the dark force dimension.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: But dark star is connected to dark force.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dark force dimension contains a whole bunch of dark matter, it absorbs light, heat, energy, and life, but also soul.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: The ways this darkness interacts with human minds it intersects with is almost the most fascinating part.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: For example, we meet Marcus Daniels or Blackout in 1976 in Nova 19 and please go look at this cover of this issue, Blackout Blanketing at Nova and Evan Darkness, it's stunning.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he is a character that channels impenetrable Dark Force barriers and is driven mad.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: We then meet the character lady of the throne of Naddark Star in 1977, she channels a dark force through a crystal she wears, and we often see her referencing the dark version of herself that she's drawing upon, even calling upon this entity for assistance.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 1981, we meet Tyrone Johnson or Cloak, the same year we meet his counterpart Dazzler.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is able to teleport people into the dark force dimension to face their greatest fears, but it also threatens to overwhelm him, and only the light can counter it.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have to presume that there is culture and civilians and ecosystems in the dark forest dimension, which can mean predators and parasites and toxins.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I am not covering the dark forest in any depth here, but there are literally dozens of characters who have power sets that connect directly to the dark forest dimension.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: but we also have people in the earth who wield the Dark Force.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm not even just talking about magic users, but by the way, the most prominence of Dark Force magic users is Maximilian Col Ridge or the shroud, but we also see Celine channeling it.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then there's the Dark Hold, yeah, we don't have time.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: But let's talk about some of the ways the Dark Force is used by superheroes.
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes it's used as a physical force.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar will create objects out of light, like tunnels, shields, swords.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes she gets creative like she's green lantern.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: She'll make blackout constructs.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, excuse me, blackout constructs domes of Dark Force historically.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Big shadow boxes that trap entire cities beneath them, impenetrable even by a monochlorambo.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: But L'Ania can fire
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes heroes will teleport through Dark Force as referenced, forming portals or sending teams in and out like magic does with limbo or net crawler with the brimstone dimension, but Dark Force is cloak and like door men's whole thing.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dark Star does this as well.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: She opens little portals, holes in the atmosphere to spy on people, or even taking her team vast distances by wrapping them up in a Dark Force bubble, passing through the Dark Force dimension and exiting somewhere else.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it kind of comes across as that realm in the wheel of time where they pass through like the waves.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a name for that place.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It should I guard the shodara log off or whatever it's called.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's an interesting idea here.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about uses for darks force that we don't see darks start using.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And a few brief examples.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mr.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Negative uses Dark Force to invert someone and twist their motivations.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, he's a breadcrip tonight.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Black Momba summons images of desire from the minds of her targets and twists Dark Force into those images.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the Dark Force creature she summons can kill their victims, draining their lives.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: She also has a second skin that she wears around her that's her Dark Self.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a character in an ecstasy who wields Dark Force and is always talking about how hungry it is.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Henry Galant, the mutant to Silent, once opened a rift to the Dark Force realm and said it forward to kill in his name while also taking over all Dark Force using characters.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Cassie St. Commons or Dusk of the Slingers has most of Laney as abilities, but also kind of a mild precognition about danger.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: The character Quagmire summons Dark Force tar to entrap his foes, and the Mandarin
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that guy, one of his 10 rings fires out black light.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And not only humans get access to Dark Force, consider black light or night side from the Imperial Guard.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you'd like one really interesting on this topic, read Fabianisi as a story in Blood Hunters number four about a lineage of Dark Force wielders on the planet of Idrea.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Perhaps we're just of all though, the Dark Force might be sentient.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see Darkstar at multiple points in her history referring to her dark side, another entity, and in her most recent X-factor appearance, she seems to call out to this entity for retribution.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Cloak, the most explored character on this list, has had to learn how to master the dark force with his own will, using dagger's light during emergencies, but we've also seen dagger corrupted by the dark force.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it cloaks real ability.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Almost works like Ghostbredder's penance stare, as he makes people face their darkest fears,
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's one quick story that seems to suggest that Cloak is some sort of Dark Force appointed Guardian of Earth, but I don't think that's ever really been followed up on.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Another prominent mutant, Janelle Cored, is Silhouette, using Dark Force for Faising and Shadow Melding Primarily.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: The mutant Night Wind of the Rising Suns uses Dark Force to make a sword, Norio of the Rock Shaw fires Dark Force blasts out of his left eye, and, by the way, there's a Rock Shaw episode on my Patreon this month as well.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: and Telford Porter the vanisher passes through the Dumbark Darkforce dimension once in a while.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to know how all of the supplies to Darkstar directly, and frankly, I want the origin story of how she chose her code name.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's interesting to me.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Lady of Petrovna and her twin brother Nikolai Kraylenko were born into wealth and status in Russia to their mother Maria and their father Sergei Kraylov.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: a prominent nuclear physicist who exposed to his pregnant wife to radiation, giving us that common mutant origin story from the 60s and 70s, where they were exposed to radiation and thus more in mutants.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: But upon birth, the Soviet state realized that children were mutants.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Maria died in childbirth, and Sergei was told that the two children had died as well.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: In truth, they were taken to Professor Peter Fobos, who was given the instruction to raise these children as powerful trained mutant operatives for the Soviet state.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he spent the next 16 years raising Lania and Nikolai, a log with their friend Mikhail or Su's who would later become or some major, and other mutants like Snow Leopard were in this mix.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nikolai developed a repulsion field which can repel or redirect attacks, and this, uh, he chose the name Vanguard.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: It dawning himself in the hammer and sickle, he's projecting energy in his attacks and making force fields as Vanguard, Nikolai was dressed in
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you want more on some of the symbology of these characters, go back to my trial of Piozorass Buton or any of the patrons that month that I produced based on Russian characters, for example, the presence and Starlight, who is literally the father of Dark Star and Vanguard, but I digress.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: At some point, Laney had begun dressing in black and yellow, and wore a crystal on her forehead that helped her control her powers that had been given to her by fobos.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: As teenagers, Darkstar and Van Erd were appointed to be state superheroes, and there's definitely a lot to explore about this time and Laney as life, and God what I love to write those stories.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: We first meet her as part of an unnamed Russian team, including Boris Spulsky, the Titanium Man, and Yodipetrovich, the Crimson Dynamo, Darkstar's boyfriend, who has some major
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Turns out he was also taken from his family as a child, not a mutant, but he is the biological son of his father, Ivan Petrovitch, who the Russians have made him hate.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this team is sent to the United States to go after after Russian defectors, Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow, and Ivan Petrovitch.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And now
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: After seeing the life of Black Widow in America, where she's fucking hack, Hawkeye and Daredevil, and superheroes are having fun, and she's leading her own super team, which includes a Greek demigod Hercules, dark star at the end of this adventure, after realizing her boyfriend is kind of not a great person, ends up turning against him and remains in the United States as a member of the champions, defecting for the very first time.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And okay, sure, Iceman got possessive over her like he did with Polaris, but there really isn't much to talk about there.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when the series wrapped up, Darkstar went back to Russia.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now with each Darkstar appearance, we could line up what's happening in Russia at the time as they're happening in publication history.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: For example, Cold War Russia versus the Gorbachev era, versus the Putin era, but we're not gonna do that today.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: But let me recap just her history quickly.
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: She returns to Russia.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: She joins the Soviet super soldiers, fights an alien invasion with Iron Man on the moon.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: We covered that on my show this month.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Later, she sent into the radio active zone to get the presence back and not only other mutants there treated as expendable, but Darkstar learns that her dad has been alive all these years, and is super evil, and then Professor Fobos goes full evil and tries to kill her, turns out he was corrupt the whole time, draining her and the other mutants energies for his own game.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Surprise, they team up with American superheroes to fight off a dire rath invasion, they're sent to arrest Magneto and fight the Avengers, Darkstar Vanguard and Arsa Major defect again, and the Supreme Soviet fight them back hard, knocking them into Columbus, but the three of them get to do a cute little power circuit where they make a big shadowy bear that's amazing.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll talk about this in the trial in a while.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're forcibly returned to Russia.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: They grew, join a group of mutant rebels called the Cyber Force, and then later rejoin the government team, which has become the People's Protectorate.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: But now, it gets renamed into the Winter Guard, which is the one we most often see used today.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: For a time, Darkstar gets pulled more firmly into the X-Men's world.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's mined controlled by a mutant named Black.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: death, then she joins X-Core, gets possessed by weapon 12, killed by Phantom X, who resurrected by Celine, but while she was dead, the Russians find out that the Dark Force crystal that she had can be put on certain women who've been treated appropriately medically, and that will give them access to ladies.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: powers, but the crystal itself seems to have her consciousness within it, or at least her dark side.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's fighting for the control of her replacements.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see two women, Sasha Roderick, Sasha, Rohrick, and Arena Stenical, both women die, and Lanias energies in the crystal are a major part of both their stories.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dark stars back to life, she's back with the winter guard, and then post per co-up, she declares her own mutant nation the X-term, which she runs kind of like silver-sable in some carrier, but boy does that not end well.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll get to that again in the trial.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And with that, let us commence with the trial of Lady of Petrovna.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Each of my jury members has been assigned a specific reading section of Darkstar's history.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll be reading summaries and then the jury member, we assign, will present a prosecution and a defense in each section.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: After that, we'll have a vote using a system ranking of zero, meaning completely innocent, to five meaning completely evil.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: And listeners, I mentioned at the beginning, we had to put this back together with audio clips, which means we will lack the commentary on each other's sections that we normally have during the trial, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Trial.1.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: We are calling first-time defector.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: The key issues here are champion 7 through 10, 15 through 17, and Iron Man 109 through 112.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: The assigned jury member here is Derek Nichols.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: When we first meet Darkstar, she's working with a team of Russian operatives on American soil and a plot against the Black Widow, well known as a Russian defector.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's assigned to work with the titanium man, a military man, an industrial suit of government owned armor, the Griffin, Johnny Horton, a thug who has an animal parts grafted on him.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the Crimson Dynamo, Yoda Petrovich, raised in secret by the Russian government, and now wearing another state-owned suit of armor.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And their mission is to get the Black Widow and another defector, Alexi Bruskin, a former KGB operative back.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a whole adventure.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Black Widow has allied herself though with a team of superheroes called the Champions, and Ivan Petrovich is there.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they are trained assets of the Soviet state.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: During this adventure, Darkstar maintains a Darkforce
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: prison for captives miles underground and an under in an earthquake fault line while also fighting others and keeping an eye on everything all at once.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: If the heroes punch the dark force barrier, it's going to cause an earthquake in California.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: She ends up teleporting her entire team, fading them into darkness and having them appear elsewhere.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: We start to see her strong sense of duty show up, even as she quickly realizes how much more complicated the world is than she was led to believe.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Her loyalties are divided between her former teacher, Bruce Skin, her lover, the Crimson Dynamo, and these new American superheroes who, despite all Ania has been taught, seem to have a very different understanding of the world than hers, and it's not so bad.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar realizes that Yuri has it all wrong, but he refuses to listen as he grows increasingly violent with their prisoners.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: A Russian submarine armed with weapons gets involved, titanium man and Yuri turn on Darkstar, so she releases the champions, making sure that they will her allies will be forced to listen.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when Yuri continued to act chaotic, she realized he was a murderer and turned on him.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: With her fellow operatives defeated, Darkstar suddenly has thrown in with the American superheroes and has defected and she is now on a team making Natasha feel insecure and getting a lot of unasked for attention from Iceman and we can just address this here, the two of them were never dating.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: She is not interested.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: In issue 15 of the champion Stark Stark gets her next big power move by making a deal with the stranger and using her power in new ways as she pays attention to what is happening outside of the direct flight.
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Seizes the staff of the possessor, elder of the universe, in order to power herself up, and ends a terribly powerful mom that the stranger had built that could have ended all life on earth.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So she saved the day.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar in this story realizes there's a living presence in the dark force,
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: and she thanks her and her teammates for giving her companionship in the end.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 16, when they fight Magneto and Dr. Doom, Laney uses a spear to track Magneto a vast distance and then teleports the entire team to get there in minutes.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Black Widow notes that they need to test the upper limits of Dark Stars powers.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 17, she fights the brotherhood of evil mutants, the Sentinels, and the vanisher.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: She animates a Sentinel during the fight with the Dark Force and accidentally traps vanisher in a half state between dimensions that will later get picked up in a Claremont story.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: As she gets accustomed to a world of superheroes, Darkstar thinks about how her birth story makes her inhuman.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then we see her back in Russia and that Iron Man story where she sent with her twin brother Vanguard and a new crimson dynamo to the moon in a cold war story where they meet Iron Man and Jack of Hearts.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: A fight breaks out as Darkstar rants about all the men around who keep making rush decisions.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And girl, we hear you.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then things get weird.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: The regalians punish her robots, recorder robots, the animal men, knights of one to gore, and this all results in dark star again betraying her government to act as a superhero.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me turn it over to Derek.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so for the prosecution, Liney Patrovanov conducted KGB operations within the United States that resulted in millions of dollars of property damage and attempted murder and a full murder
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: herner teammates cross borders illegally full stop.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: We don't do that here.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: We need to keep our borders secure and close.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: This isn't Europe.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: The acted self-convignighted the Cold War.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: She also knew of Yuri's plan to kill all of the champions and went along with it until she was until it was convenient for her to fly.
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: She broke into that hospital and participated in a battle, but that put the lives of everyone in that building at risk, which is a war crime.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: All stage of fake kidnapping of
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: which is like giving a flamethrower to an arsonist.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: There was no good outcome here.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: And her eyes, best case scenario, was it Stuart blew up with the champions?
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: Worst case, Stuart kills the champions surviving continues on his crunch breeze.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: Finally, we get to Miss Petrovinov's most heinous act.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: She used her powers to prevent the banished from teleporting away, which leaves half of his body right in front of the champions, presumably killing him.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: Mingya is unpredictable, unstable, and untested in her powers.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: She's a menace and her dark force connection could destroy the planet.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: I need to go grab my copy because my girlfriend's gonna make a noise.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, uh, movie under defense How I didn't practice my I haven't practiced my Soviet accent so it's gonna be rough.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hello, I'm American sham trial members My name is Boris, so let's give a zeal again from your naga of the case, but you may call me young girl I am court-appointed lawyer for Lanya proven off.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I put it in multiple reasons why she not guilty.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, yeah, it's woman
• 25:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: She uh, you know, is emotions.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: She felt bad about boy with rampage and she know that he almost dead in her heart.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: She obey court orders from government like good comrade, but she also mixed up in head with her lover going a little rogue and purpose for this trial.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that poem is very different story.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: She'd become hero, yes, she would work with man of iron, man of ice, a writer of ghosts, and jacking of hearts.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Another point of consider, L'Anjo has force of dark in her.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is unknown if it is driving courage to act strangely or in crazy ways.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: She speak with big queen and pass out.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: That does not seem healthy.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then maybe some influence of force of dark that play her with her mind like her female hormones.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: She don't mean the guy in half.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: My American friends.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Al-Lanya is guilty of his b-best thing.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: You should have grateful thoughts for her assistance in solving problems that your capitalist country has created.
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, don't forget to post that a bit.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Go enjoy the McDonald's, UFC Cage matches, and love Island TV show.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's possible.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, and the votes in this Trials Point 1 section, we have Kristy with a 2, Chad with a 0.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Demanda with a one, Derek with a zero, Sean with a one, and Tom with a zero, giving her a four out of 30 in this section.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: That takes us to trial point two.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Facing a complicated world, the key issues here are Marvel team up annual number two, incredible Hulk, 258 and 259.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Contest to Champions 1 through 3, ROM, 45 and 46, and X-Men versus Avengers 133.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Ascendere member here is Demand, a martini.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Activated by Russian General Kutsov, Darkstar Vanguard of the Crimson Dynamo, are set back to the United States to kidnap Daniel Ironwood, who the Russians want to build an anti-matter bomb.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And by the way, this happens to be the father of Sissy Ironwood, who's dating Peter Parker, Spider-Man at the time.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So they return iron would too coots off and Darkstar is immediately suspicious about the lack of American response to this kidnapping.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then guard suspects it's her time with the Americans that is clouded or judgment.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Meanwhile, KGB director, like Alexi Vajn, who I have a Patreon episode out there on, gets the Hulk involved and Laney cries out in pain when the Hulk breaks through her Darkforce barrier.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Soon, Spider-Man intervenes and Darkstar realizes that they'd been manipulated by a corrupt man wanting to build a bomb.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Iron would be a corrupt the whole time.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: When the Soviet super soldiers are called to the Moskva by the KGB, then Dread says they are there to serve the state, but Darkstar adds, quote, and Justice do not forget Justice, their commander Yuriy Brevlov wants them to enter the forbidden zone.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's basically Chernobyl before Chernobyl is getting
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: because they think mutants are well, expendable.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a threat, set a key cry law of the eminent radiation scientist is there and he needs to be investigated.
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Darkstar teleports the whole team there, shields her team from radiation as they face the Hulk.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: She tries reasoning with the monster and when he lashes out against the darkness, she falls.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we meet the presence.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get a story called the family that dies together.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is where we meet Professor Fobos.
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get the origin story.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: He used to run that super school soldier school for the government and had all these children.
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he helped them learn about their powers but he secretly draining them.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get a scene where Laney has a teen and Professor Fobos helps her realize, quote, the Dark Force you possess is some alien manifestation of your consciousness.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: With this dark star, you can control it.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he gives her this stone of mysterious origins that's later going to house her consciousness.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: We still don't have the origin of this stone, by the way, in comics.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: After teleporting the crimson dynamo back to Leningrad to get medical help, Darkstar used all of her efforts to contain the presence and starlight in the Dark Force, but their radiation blasts hurt the alien energy within Darkstar, and they soon knock her out.
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: and then Phobos turns on them.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Turns out he's this purple super villain and he's been draining their power.
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: It turns out also that Crylove is their dad and their mom died in childbirth, but Crylove was full of his kids died.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Phew, okay, so Darkstar removes her crystal, which gives her her full power, so apparently it's holding her back.
• 29:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the presence in Starlight are lost in radiation at the end, and Phobos is killed.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And again, God do I want to write a story about this crystal.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: In contrast to champions, the Soviet super soldiers are fighting the Red Ghost, but they get pulled into the constant of champions instead.
• 29:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we get our heroes selected in their giant cosmic wager.
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar gets paired with a couple of heroes she's never met before.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a giant superhero battle, it's Daredevil and Talisman and Sunfire and Darkstar and the invisible woman.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they get to fight, you know, it's a fun little battle where we get to see super heroes
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Sylvia Super Soldiers later are ordered back into the Furbidden Zone when a threat is detected, and Darkstar wrestlers with wanting to serve the people of her country, and the corrupt government who has so often lied to her.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: They find Rama and Starshine there, and its dark versus light, again, with Starshine being the light character.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: But this time in the fight, it's hinted that Dark Stars powers are a dark version of herself, and they are nearly separated, she and her dark self, in the harsh light of Star Shine.
• 30:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Quote, the female is a single consciousness split between two energy forms, both symbiotically leaked.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, we've never followed up on this.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then the dire rates attack, and the mutants realize that Russia has been infiltrated and declare a new safe zone for themselves in the forbidden zone, with their new teammate, a mutant little known mutant called Gargoyle.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, when Magneto attacks the Soviet submarine Leningrad, it kills many Soviet soldiers.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Later, wreckage from asteroid M rains down on the Earth, killing Russian civilians.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Soviet super soldiers are sent to apprehend Magneto, and end up in a conflict with the Avengers in the X-Men.
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: During the fight, Dr. Druid takes over Darkstar's mind and makes her strike against her teammates, Yuck.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Something Darkstar was actually very upset about and hurt over.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the following battle, we get dark versus light once more as dazzler defeats dark star.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the end, they have to arrest the crimson dynamo, Dmitry Bulkaren, who has betrayed the team and put civilians at risk, and then the story goes on from there.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me turn it over to Demanda.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vades and gentle thames of the jury.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Linia Petrovna is a complicated woman.
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: A woman of constantly changing allegiance to wishy today, a champion, an ex-man, a triple agent, Russian spy.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: If there is one constant in mispatriolvna's life, is that she will continue to go back to her home country and fight for the people's protectorate.
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has proven time and time again that she is willing and able to be an accomplice in the war crimes committed by the Russian
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: state.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes your excuse is that she's fighting for her people, fighting on orders from her corrupt government, or then fighting for the greater good against Meddito.
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But each time she fights with these Russian pawns, she can seize to the consequences of the team's actions as a whole, whether it's kidnapping a scientist to build a bomb.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Against her own suddenly revealed father or fighting against supergroups like the Avengers and the X-Men.
• 32:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ms. Petrovna, more commonly known as her Soberkade Darkstar, has continually been shown to be on the side against her own American democracy and the good of the Earth.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does someone argue that she did fight the whole universe in the so-called contest of champions?
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But do any of us truly know what exactly that whole mess was about aside from say-seating the ego of the so-called grandmaster?
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: one another, Ms. Petrov now will seemingly always come to an offenture country, regardless of where its loyalty's truly lie.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And can we, as an American reading public, really condone that type of behavior, the super per person of dark star, must be guilty.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Members of the jury, you hear my colleague drone on and on about the dangers of the Western state.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But can we even begin to dismantle our own flawed government?
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is a case that is much bigger than what we face today.
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: The trial of Linnea Petrov now, no, in a dark star.
• 33:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will consider shifting the legions as, however, she herself has been quoted as saying that she fights for just do not forget about just this woman has been lied to, abused, I mean, manipulated by all of those who say they want her to fight for them, and each time throughout this section of events, Darkstar has come out on the side of doing what's right, thinking out of the air of kidnapping Dr. Ironwood, fighting against her own father and those who raised her when she realized that she'd been used as a child weapon of the state.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fighting the literal universe during the contest of champions.
• 33:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yes, I too can see that this adventure is a hot mess.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's not die too deep.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's just know she joined the fight against the ego maniacs of grain.
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: She fought against an alien vision, even though she expressed her concerns with continuing to work for the government.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That has often lied to her.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Turned on her own teammate, the Grims and Dynamo during the super fight between her, the Avengers and the X-Men, when Dynamo betrayed their team and put civilians in danger.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are all actions of someone who fights for what's right and sometimes doing what's right is fighting for justice in a corrupt system.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can we not say the same for our own super teams that have been a part of our government?
• 34:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We must equip Ms. Petrovna so that she can go back to fighting for justice for
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: all people.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, our votes in this section.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Christy 1, Chad 0, demand a 1, Derek 0, Sean 1, Tom 0, which gives us the 3 out of 30 in that section.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And now we'll head to trial point 3, which we're calling second time defector.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: The key issues here are Captain America, 352 and 353.
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: 3.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Soviet Super Soldiers 1, Star Blast 1-3, Quasar No.
• 34:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: 60, Daredevil 369 and 370, an X-Men Unlimited No.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: 28, the Asyndry Remember Here is Sean Perret, Darkstar, Vanguard and Ersemaidure Teleport 2 Avengers Manchin, while Captain America is doing training with gladiatric speedball, Blue Shield and the Makano Marauder, don't worry about it, but it's a fun issue.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: A brief battle breaks out and it goes badly before the Russian heroes tell Captain America they want to defect officially.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: They have emphasized that they have served the people and not the government of Russia, and are now asking for political asylum, hoping the Captain America will represent them.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, he says yes, but later, a group of Avengers, question mark, have to test the trio's powers to see if there were the of defection.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's a savage battle in a combat arena where Darkstar and her allies get their asses kicked.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: But they don't realize it's actually the Soviet super soldiers posing as the Avengers there to bring them back to Russia.
• 35:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's the first appearance of Perun, the new Red Guardian, and Sputnik, and Fantasia, and my word this woman's costume alone is worthy of a lot of comments.
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Badly wounded, Darkstar, Ursa, and Vanguard, end up forming an odd mutant circuit with their powers while they're unconscious.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: It manifests as a giant energy wielding bear, and it ends up defeating the Soviets super soldiers, draining their life forces to restore our three heroes to life.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Captain America intervenes and brings them all back to America legally.
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Later, they wake up in the hospital feeling like it had all been a dream.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, Phoebe and I see as it picks this story up, and so the super soldiers, number one, the trio, are brought back against their will in containment pods to Russia.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And blind faith in his group, by the way, have a blind faith episode out there, and his group of mutant rebels steal the animation tanks.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: the government hires the insane fire fox who's like an old man creepy version of cable with a gun arm and he just starts slaughtering everyone he sees as he's trying to hunt down these rogue mutants.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar is awake now, she helps as many people as possible get away and they hide out in a base and know the severe scare
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's another fight with the military, another escape, another fight with the government, then a decision to launch their own rebellious mutant team, which they called the exiles.
• 36:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: From Siberia, blind faith, concussion, iron curtain, mentac, cybercats, stencil, or someager, vanguard, dark star, and a few others, and this team literally never gets used again.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Next time we see Darkstar as in Star blast, when the moon has moved in orbit, many of the world superheroes go to investigate and they find an alien ship covering its victims and tentacles that invade their orifices.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar protects herself with the Darkforce, but then, the guard gets taken over.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: When Quasar
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: tries grabbing Nikolai, his power repels him and he goes cask getting off into space, hands up getting killed in a crazy battle with some crazy villains, but Darkstar grieves hard.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, we're going to see Vanguard return in an Avengers story later.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: It turns out there was still a light within his mind and his dad, the presence gets to a week in it by activating part of his brain and it turns into a whole Avengers story.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll talk about later.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we need to do a Vanguard Patreon one day.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: In this story, Darkstar also gets to fight Nightside, who wins the fight from the Imperial Guard, who also has an episode of a show.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Members include in this issue includes Steel Guardian, Cybercat, Vostok, Phantasmat, and Surge, and there's a team up with Iron Man to fight the forces of the Mandarin.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: In Quasar, Darkstar returns Van Gards' body to the presence in Starlight.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the presence has found a way to blame Quasar for Vanguard's death, and even though Darkstar had killed the alien responsible for killing Vanguard, she joins with the presence in savagely attacking Quasar, and they believe him disintegrated at the end.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's the end of his series, that epic 60 issues by Mark Gernwald.
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: in a really captivating trio of comics in Daredevil, a new Zarr of a Russian crime syndicate, a general scorer of, also called the Snow Wolf, captures Dark Star and uses her disappearance to make bad things happen, as he manipulates Vanguard and Ursa Major while they're looking for her.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: He tries to exploit her powers, but she ends up getting rescued.
• 38:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, an expert on limited Darkstar was mentally manipulated into attacking the X-Men, but when Jean Grey freed her mind, Darkstar let them mutants back to rebirth island where they met, where they met black death or even Kivetoki, Yvonne Kivetoki.
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm mutant who could use the power of suggestion to control minds who had been badly manipulated by the Russian government, a testing facility, let me turn it over to Sean.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: Of course she should be behind bars.
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: Look how easily people can control her mind and make her a weapon against humanity and don't even get me started on her trying to kill Quasar.
• 39:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: She had every intention and intention which are two different things.
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: To kill Quasar, a hero who's not a stinking mutant, the thing that makes her guilty is she's a mutant and that's how she was born.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: She remembers, in Dark Stars Defense.
• 39:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: She has always strive to do what's right.
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: Look at how many heroes she's teamed up with.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: Look how many times she's fought against her own homeland in the name of justice.
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: In this case, in this period of time, she was manipulated.
• 39:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: She was controlled by men.
• 39:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: She was literally her mind was taken over and she was forced to commit crimes.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: The only time her mind wasn't taken over was when her parental figure, her father, convinced her to enact revenge on Quasar, because he manipulated her and thinking that Quasar was the one who killed her brother Vanguard.
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: But in the end, Quasar faked his own death for his own means.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: So even though dark star did go in with the intent to kill, we don't know if she actually would have gone through with it.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: We don't know, had quays are not disappeared that she would not have changed her mind.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: So should we really hold her liable for that?
• 40:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is a woman who helped save the universe.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: She's helped save the planet.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: She is a wonderful human being.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Look at that outfit.
• 40:43
  [SPEAKER_06]: God damn, Carl.
• 40:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, the votes in this section.
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have Christy one, Chad two, Mandy two, Derek one, Sean two, Tom zero, which gives us an eight out of 30 in that section.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: proud point four we are calling not my dark star key issues here are new x men one twenty eight through one thirty whole winter guard number one dark star and the winter guard one through three iron man and the armor wars two through four and the soldier remember here is Tom and
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And welcome to dark star joins the next mutant team as they launch X-Core, bantering with cannonball, multiple man, siren, and M on missions.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: She soon faces weapon 12, the Huntsman, a viral hive mind who takes over the minds of victims, kind of like the brood, it turns them that operatives.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar has her mind taken over, so Phantom X shoots her dead, claiming that there was no way she could be rescued.
• 41:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So in Hulk Winterguard, we see Sasha Ororek, who has been given Darkstar's power crystal, and now has Darkstar's powers.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's on the Winterguard, and the presence attacks wondering who this woman with his daughter's name is.
• 41:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: He summons a radioactive monster and Sasha summons a monster of darkness to fight back, and eats the radioactive monster right up.
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, power upgrade, she's got Lenny as DNA inside her, and she can feel Lenny's presence and memories showing up.
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the Dark Star Limited series, Rina Stana-Koff is here, as serving with the Winter Guards alongside Red Guardian, Ganning Anton, Ursa Major, and a new Crimson Dynamo named Galena Neymarovsky.
• 42:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're fighting the agents of Atlas, Warlord, Crying, and again, the presence.
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Meanwhile, Vanguard has started dating Starlight, who is his stepmother now, and it's delicious.
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're on the protectorate team with power surge, Elarian Ramskov.
• 42:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: They faced the terrorist threat of Agamemnon and the sort of judgement, and we soon learned that Phantasm is one of the dire rathes, which is there's a lot of fun in this series.
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Rina gets killed by a dire rath and the Dark Force ends up returning Lainia to life.
• 42:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, the Red Barbarian, made an old 60s villains.
• 42:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: steals a bunch of old Ironman armors and gives them to his friends, including one to Dark Star.
• 42:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not super remarkable, but it is interesting.
• 42:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: She gets an Ironman armor briefly.
• 42:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: She ends up helping to free the Red Barbarian, excuse me, to free Ironman, and then fights to face to save civilians while Ironman defeats the Red Barbarian.
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me turn it over to Tom.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Frasication, folks of the jury, we are not trying to decide whether Elania Protovna is powerful.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are not trying to figure out whether she is suffered.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are asking him much simpler question.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Has she consistently exercised moral judgment?
• 43:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: The evidence says no.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: From one, she repeatedly chooses loyalty to questionable organizations over independent moral judgment.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I argue that throughout these stories, Elania got
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: are dubious at most.
• 43:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: First, ex-corporation, then the winter guard, while neither organization is evil, both repeatedly involved themselves in dangerous political conflict.
• 43:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ms. Petrovna never asks whether the mission is right, she asks where she's needed.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which sounds admirable, fair, unless the people are giving the voters our wrong.
• 43:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: When Tony Stark comes to Russia seeking his own stolen technology, what is Langley doing?
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's actively running with a rogue faction of Neo-Soviet, hiding behind military generals and harboring war criminals like Omega Red.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: She fights first and asks questions later, defending intellectual property thieves and military despots until the ship is already completely sinking.
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Secondly, she's ultimately more of a soldier than a hero.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the themes of Linia's life and professional career is that she rarely drives the events herself.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Instead, she serves.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: When weapon 12 appears, she follows the mission.
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: She line herself with F. Scorp Paris, a highly bureaucratic, heavily criticized expansion of
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: a mutant quarterback and soldier acting as the fist of an institution rather than the hero of the people.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: When the winter guard mobilizes, she follows orders.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: When Iron Man becomes involved, she fights with side her team.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is all a clear lack of moral independence.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Compared to someone like Captain America, Steve Rogers constantly questions authority.
• 44:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Laina almost never does.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Third, her identity revolves around power rather than principle or moral character.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Think about the quick succession of Dark Stars, a Sasha dies, Reina dies, Lady Returns.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why?
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because she possesses a extraordinary powder, power.
• 44:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: When Lady Returns notice what everyone values about her, not her kindness, not her wisdom, but her connection to the Dark Force.
• 44:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's welcome back primarily because she's the real Dark Star, not because anyone actually missed her or reflects on her character.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And lastly, she rarely demonstrates compassion in these stories.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: She doesn't mentor younger heroes, she's inspired to feed it in many enemies, she doesn't negotiate, she mostly fights obeys and survives.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: She is admirable as a combatant, but we have not seen evidence that she is especially compassionate.
• 45:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her existence and choices repeatedly bring ruin to those around her.
• 45:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her deep-seated family trauma leaves her unhinged brother Vanguard swinging wildly between grief and rage, and her refusal to properly separate herself from her toxic father, the presence, turns the radioactive forbidden zone into a constant theater
• 45:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: of war, even in death her lingering presence in the Dark Force Amulet acts as a psychological parasite, inflicting identity crises, and an existential dread on the innocent women drafted to replace her.
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: You must find her guilty and after the events.
• 45:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Folks of the jury, please excuse my colleague's blind mis-understanding of miscellaneous protrovna.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everything you've just heard mistakes quiet professionalism from moral emptiness.
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: As you hear the counterarguments I prepared, please consider that Darkstar has done nothing wrong moreoverly and has never intentionally harmed an innocent person.
• 45:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: For starters, Lady of Rapidly puts herself in harm's way for complete strangers.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: While I was Lady and the channel in Paris when Weapon 12 struck, she wasn't protecting Russia, she wasn't defending national interests, she was working for X corporation, which means she's involved helping mutants around the world do
• 46:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: During a time when, after a vicious, unprovoked attack on Genocia left, 16 million mutants dead.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her fellow mutants needed here as more than ever.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: She could have remained comfortably with the winter garden.
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Instead, she joined an international humanitarian organization.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is an enormous moral choice.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: When she was most needed, she transitioned from primarily serving the Russian state to serving mutant kind more broadly.
• 46:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Secondly, she is literally murdered while trying to save people.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: weapon 12's deadly terrifying attack costs many people their lives, and all only knew
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: wanted to do was help them.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: She didn't hesitate.
• 46:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: She threw herself into the dark to stop a bio-weapon, and she paid the ultimate price.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: She has encrypted their greed, our ambition, or revenge, she's infected, assimilated.
• 46:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then, she's executed by Phantom X because there is no cure.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: The prosecution spent a good amount of time criticizing the victim of a biological apocalypse.
• 46:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's become evil, she becomes infected.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Those are two very different things.
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: He can't call someone a bad person when they died in the dirt trying to save millions of strangers.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Third, her greatest quality is her sense of duty.
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The prosecution uses the term soldier as an insult.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: This defense, though, embraces it, laying in never claims greatness.
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: She is simply keeps
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's there resurrection back to work.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: No speeches, no glory, no complaints.
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's not moral weakness That's integrity and she shows it in spades in the armor war story when she realizes general roster is a corrupt madman Using her and the Neo Soviets is pawns and she chooses to walk away lastly the prosecution blames her for what happened to Sasha and Raina That is absurd Laney was dead her government stripped her DNA and trapped her soul in an amulet to weaponize her legacy
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's a prisoner of the Russian government's military industrial complex.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Herz was a fate and none of us could possibly imagine, and I would love to see what the prosecution would do if he were trapped in an ambulance.
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And upon her resurrection, she doesn't seek vengeance.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: She immediately destroys and invading force of dire rates, protects her brother, and reclaims her identity from those who hijacked.
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: identify one innocent person or civilian lenient intentionally harms, you simply cannot.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're heroes who give speeches, heroes who inspire nations, heroes who reshape history.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laneia for Trevna is something quieter.
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: She volunteers to help people, she dies in the line of duty, she is mourned by everyone who knew her.
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: When given a second chance of life, she doesn't seek revenge, glory or power, she simply returns to protecting others, if that is not goodness, what is, the defense rests.
• 48:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, it is straight up zeros in that section, which gives us a zero out of 30.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dark started muffin' wrong.
• 48:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, we go to trial.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: 0.5, which we are calling all new Darkstar.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: The key issues here are winter guard, 1 through 4.
• 48:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is by our mutual friend Ryan Kady.
• 48:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Expecter volume 5 from a 2024 that series by Mark Russell, our friend also.
• 48:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Ascensionary Member here is Christy Porter.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Winter Guard is sent to retrieve the White Widow and the Red Guardian.
• 48:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Dark Star gets a beautiful scene where she lays under Dark Force in a valley and looks up at the stars, lost in her thoughts.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's flirting with the god of darkness, Chernobyl, who's just a big giant Evan Monster.
• 49:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the time of Blood and Shadow, when the name Chernobyl was a curse, and our all-ters always read with sacrifice, the Dark Force was our favorite weapon, again.
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Potential for stories, dark strands up taking turnabog into the dark forest dimension and at one point demands to know whether the god wants to kiss her, kill her, or eat her.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: And maybe all three, finally, in the post-precoat continuity.
• 49:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: After all of that Russian insanity during cricoat with my Kyle Rasputin, dark strands up cutting off her hair and announcing herself as the new leader of X-term, a small mutin civilization, quote, not Russian mutin.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we will decide the outcome of every armed conflict in the world for a
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: She stations the team on a previously uninhabitable island with a pre- with a decommission nuclear power plant on it, so ties to her dad, and Darkstar tries to recruit havoc to the team, but he ends up joining the new X-Factor, which is run by the government, but kind of like a reality show with a high-body count.
• 50:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a crazy series.
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: This series does a lot of different things that it's all over the place, but it's an entertaining ride.
• 50:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: The ex-factor has a shapeshifter named Zyber on their team and Zyber infiltrates ex-term to get intel and then ex-factor attacks determined to arrest Darkstar because they feel like she's doing these things around the world without authorization.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: A battle breaks out, the bases badly damaged, and members of ex-term are killed before ex-factor departs.
• 50:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar recruits Wintergeist to ex-term, explaining that mutants are destined to rule humankind, but she argues that only by helping humans complete their own wars can they rule the world on human terms.
• 50:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Wintergeist completes mercenary missions, but quits ex-term,
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: When the job calls for killing child soldiers, dark star publicly warns the United States of her plans for retaliation and soon leads a military attack on X-Factor, allowing her soldiers to kill guards as she frees prisoners, including her mole in the organization, again a McCloud, and then she gets gasped and captured aboard the helicopter, she says she will publicly execute the captors unless they change their minds, and she kicks winter guys out of the helicopter to fall to his death for betraying her.
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: but then Polaris attacks to save the team despite her affiliation with the mutant underground.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Darkstar ends up imprisoned and placed behind power blockers, weeks later she escapes and flexes her superpowers in front of the governor and the operatives who government operatives who've been detaining her.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we haven't seen her since, but we're gonna this summer, I'm excited to see what comes next for this amazing character.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me turn it over to Christy.
• 51:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: We will start with...
• 51:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: the prosecution, gaze and gaze of this most esteemed jury.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lanya Petrovna proves herself to be as dualistic and consistent and polarized as her coat name suggests.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: She pangelums between being a willing murder puppet for the Russian state and revenge-driven cart to villain beholden to nothing but her own murderous whims.
• 51:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a Russian agent with the winter guard, she obediently follows the orders of the security council
• 52:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: to a nation of literal vampires, a government that has already manipulated and betrayed her multiple times, resulting in her many previous defections, did she really say to herself who knows?
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this time, things will be different.
• 52:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Spoiler, it isn't.
• 52:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even in possession of this knowledge and experience, the most she can muster is feckless, philosophizing and occasional complaints, lying on the back of the strain and gazing up at the stars, all while acting as an accessory to multiple murders, recklessly in danger in the lives of her teammates and civilians protecting all the garks and billionaires and converting with darkness itself.
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: She has multiple opportunities to be the hero she claims to be for Russia by exposing the monsters at the top.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But instead, chooses to aid in maintaining a decade-long cover-up that allows for the continued oppression of the people she promised to protect.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only thing she chooses to protect,
• 53:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: is the status quo.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is an example of a state-sponsored superhero team doing what they always do, preserving the power and wealth of the already powerful and wealthy, because if they didn't do it, we couldn't call them heroes.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in the end of the day, being called hero is more important to them than actually doing what is right.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the case of laying a patrofna,
• 53:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: As with many in the past on the wrong side of history, following orders is not, and has never been an excuse.
• 53:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: We see that when she re-emerges to work for herself as leader of X-Term.
• 53:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Langia Petrovna engages in malicious opportunism following the collapse of Cricola and mercenary behavior.
• 53:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something she herself wants considered important.
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: She orders the death of children, executions without due process, and attacks on her fellow mutants.
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: She directly slaughters mutants who attempt to leave her employ.
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rather than providing an appropriate adequate severance package, she throws them from helicopters while they're drugged into unconsciousness.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: and even when she does manage to help a single mutant by breaking him out of a U.S. military facility, she does so not because she believes it is the right thing to do, it's just her version of recruiting.
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: She wants powerful mutants she can use, then dispose of.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once used, she is now the user.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: When she is later in U.S. custody, she resorts to cart-tune villains, speech-ifying, and referring
• 54:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Finally, when presented with the opportunity to escape without any more bloodshed, Lanya Petrovna chooses violence.
• 54:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now we will hear from Defense members of the jury.
• 54:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to pose a question.
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: What became of the mutants who did not get to participate in the albeit imperfect and temporary nation of Krakowah?
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: For Lania Petrovna, she had nowhere else to turn, but to a government she wants to affect it.
• 54:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a member of the Winter Guard, she demonstrated her good heart by becoming for the Russian people that the Avengers are for the United States.
• 55:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Heroes, to inspire.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: She gets off in the voice of reason for her brother and the rest of the team, tamping their worst impulses, reminding them that they are not mercenaries.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: That killing is not the only option.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when they have a chance to save civilian lives, she makes it her first priority.
• 55:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: When faced with adversity, she remains loyal.
• 55:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lemia Patrovna comports herself with decorum and plumb.
• 55:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: What her suspicions are confirmed, it's revealed that they are mere pawns in a much bigger game.
• 55:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such is the world of espionage and intelligence.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: She positions herself to be a light.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the darkness of that world.
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: After the fall of Krakowash, she provides opportunity in the form of employment and shelter on her own sovereign island, two mutants now forced back into the human world, a world that still hates and fears them that revels.
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: in mutant deaths, prejudice is resilient and mutants must help each other to survive and to survive they cannot rely on human nations and governments.
• 56:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: She realizes the maximum, you don't change the system from the inside, it changes you.
• 56:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: With X-Term, she starts her own system and when a human government threatens what she
• 56:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: in kind.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: A government that at the time was capturing and detaining mutants and was once again considering fascistic anti-mutant legislation.
• 56:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: She also faces off with havoc and his traitorous ex-factor, but had she managed to kill havoc, he would have had it coming surely for the number of God-awful plasma puns he inflicts on his subordinates.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no counting.
• 56:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The number of lives
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The threat of vengeful U.S. military officials whose stated goal for the record was harming as many mutants as possible.
• 57:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lanya Petrovna is only guilty of one thing doing what she must to survive.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Defense Rests
• 57:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Our votes in this section, Christy is a three, Chad a four, demand a four, Derek a two, Sean a three, and Tom a one, which gives us a 17 out of 30 in this section.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And our total, let me get our vote together.
• 57:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Our total is 32 out of a total possible of 150, which gives a dark star a low 20% on the Grey Malkin Lane scoring calculator, which makes a lot of sense for this character.
• 57:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, that brings us to the end of our comments on Darkstar.
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have a lot of thoughts on this character when I do this type of research.
• 57:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I find myself wanting to write stories.
• 57:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have a bunch of ideas for Darkstar stories, but I think this character has the potential to be at a storm level in the X-Men if we chose.
• 57:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think she could fit in the X-Men.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think she could fit as a member of a team or the leader of a team.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think she could fit on the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think I could see her allying with my Kyle Rasputin or doing her own thing.
• 58:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's even interesting as a love interest, but there's certainly a lot of potential when it comes to her dark side and what that means for her powers.
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Her family connections are fascinating.
• 58:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's another set of
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: mutant twins and we've never really seen that explored.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Her visual is stunning, her hair, the sleek black look, the major power potential, and even the way that her powers interact with others, and her connection to the dark force and oblivion itself all really fascinating and rife with story potential.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm so excited I got to join with my incredible journey members for this.
• 58:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me have each of you share your final thoughts.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Where can people find you online
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: So again, my name is Derek Nichols.
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: My Instagram is Derek J Nichols, and my blue sky is Derek Hart's BFL.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, because I am from Buffalo, I will be at DragonCon, this year, and the UK experience, which I'm very excited about.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: And after doing this trial, think I am going to cosplay as dark star.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: So maybe you'll see me there, because I kind of love her.
• 59:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is this powerhouse of untapped potential, I feel like diving into like her full,
• 59:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: history.
• 59:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: She's had experiences with the Avengers, but the accent with Daredevil even is just and she had her own team too, her own world.
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is that Soviet world was interesting.
• 59:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: I also find a really interesting event of on tap territory where there's always like an illusion to mutants in Russia.
• 59:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: And there are obviously, but we think about like the population of Russia itself, but I don't think we're getting the full like picture of how many beings are actually there, so there's something that could be like proportionally tapped into.
• 59:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: Anyway, maybe she could be like the mutant leader, the mutant leader of like the Russian mutants, right?
• 59:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, she's fabulous.
• 59:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: Love the cost and never want that to change.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, I appreciate being part of this trial.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I am during the martini consignment across most social media at DMA and D.A.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: M-A-R-T-I-M.
• 59:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: My final thoughts are I'm a little bummed out at her more recent portrayal in the X-factor series, although it sounds like a lot of that is just being ignored in her most recent recent recent, which again is a little bit inspoiler warning of her appearance in like a couple of the came up at time of recording like this week.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm a little disappointed that she's like kind of gone full fascist however it's I guess not surprising given her background like she continually goes to sort of familiar territories and she's like well I don't trust other people to do this so maybe I just have to do this myself so again it kind of makes sense.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But again, we will see where the story takes her as I said, you can find me across most social media.
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when this gets released at the end of August, I will have, I will be gearing up to go to DragonCon.
• 1:00:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then right after that is the uncanny experience.
• 1:00:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, I will see a lot of you who are listeners out there at the uncanny experience, however, hopefully maybe I'll see some of you guys at DragonCon.
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still have two other conventions.
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Potentially this year the salute to Zina, which you can also find me at my podcast to drag Queen's a lesbian and a baby where we're doing a Zina rewatch so we're going to be going to Zina Khan in October and then I'm hoping that I can work it out to go to Rhode Island Comic-Con, hang out with her friends, the wilders in November.
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So hope to see you all there.
• 1:01:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Chad again for having me.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: my final thoughts on Laney Frittona.
• 1:01:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: What a joy it was to get to know her better.
• 1:01:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, as I mentioned, she's sort of on the outskirts of like, you know, most comic stories, most X-Men stories, but like, how very cool is she her powers?
• 1:01:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or so, it'll define but in a good
• 1:01:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: firing blasts, flying, like, creating shapes, like, this wind is so powerful, like, I just, like, uh, she's so powerful.
• 1:01:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think you should be right at home on a cosmic team.
• 1:01:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I could see her really, like, going toe to toe with folks, like, quasar with, like, who might know she has a history.
• 1:01:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: But like, I don't know, I don't see her fight silver surfer.
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I look to see her in moon dragon.
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go.
• 1:01:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: at it.
• 1:01:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just, I don't know, I like part of me really wants to see her on a cosmic team, where I think she could do a real lot of good out there in the universe, especially with her source of energy.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like the Dark Forest stuff isn't something you see much out in space, so she could be a real wild card for a team out there.
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: this was so grateful.
• 1:02:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:02:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is so wonderful.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a wonderful chat.
• 1:02:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am so grateful that you had me on for my first trial.
• 1:02:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is an absolute blast.
• 1:02:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope to do another one soon.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: As for, you know, where to find me, I keep my social media pretty private, like Chad, I have kiddos.
• 1:02:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't do anything nearly as cool as like cosplaying or like
• 1:02:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I am trying to do my best with my teaching job and trying to change the world from the ground up.
• 1:02:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if there's anything I can plug, it would be this, this idea that one of my dearest friends Lindsay had.
• 1:02:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: She and her husband this past weekend, just because the world is a terrible place right now, just because it feels like everything is a dumpster fire.
• 1:02:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: They just threw a random party.
• 1:02:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're in, they like rented a enormous, an enormous water-slide, bouncy castle sort of situation, and just invited
• 1:03:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: almost everyone they know like over to just having a time.
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was like a like the world's on fire party like this everything sucks party like um and that's what I sort of want to plug this idea of like us still finding joy, us still like finding happiness like we I know everything sucks but like we need to have a good time we need to keep our senses of community together we need to keep our senses of selves and sanity.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Together.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if you can do anything like a the world just sucks.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's just have a good time party.
• 1:03:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really recommend that.
• 1:03:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you again Chad.
• 1:03:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: This was nothing short of tremendous.
• 1:03:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so grateful.
• 1:03:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And here's open that I see all against him.
• 1:03:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Christy Porter.
• 1:03:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can find me on blue sky at Christy Porter and Porter Geeks out everywhere.
• 1:03:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a writer journalist producer sometimes cosplayer along with my partner Philip Cv.
• 1:03:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: and artists known for predominantly X-Men but also many other things.
• 1:03:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have a not say for work fantasy comic called She Comes with Magic that is out in the world you can find out more at she comes with magic.com and they're probably you'll find information about the launch of our second issue.
• 1:04:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having us.
• 1:04:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, first off, for having me on Chad.
• 1:04:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: You know, I always love coming on Graham out and laying.
• 1:04:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: You can find me on Shawnee Havick, which is my personal account.
• 1:04:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: Or you could find my podcast through solvingforexman.com.
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: That will link you to our episodes to our social media on Instagram or pretty much anywhere except for X.
• 1:04:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: And my thoughts on Darkstar.
• 1:04:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: I've really enjoyed getting to know her.
• 1:04:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: Actually, this has inspired me to add her to the drama.
• 1:04:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: We are currently working on.
• 1:04:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: So first, in our first drama to me to handle Mojo took the X-Men to a dating show, then the next year, Mojo and our Kate took them to put them in horror films.
• 1:04:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: And now, another plan is a foot from Mojo and in plate.
• 1:04:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: So we'll see where they go this year,
• 1:05:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: And currently on the pod, we just finished up with the X-97 coverage and now we're working through more Wolverine in the extra episodes until a vision quest comes out.
• 1:05:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, and lastly, you can follow the show, Graham Alcan, underscore lane on Instagram, most prominently, I'm regularly posting updates.
• 1:05:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: It has been such a joy to put this together.
• 1:05:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: We are going to be delving into saber-tooth content, or the month of September.
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm going to be at the uncanny experience during that time.
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you'd like to come see me, I'd love to hang out.
• 1:05:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have lots of plans for like get together.
• 1:05:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's my favorite show of the year, and I hope to see you all.
• 1:05:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, we're going to be doing Claude characters that are to kind of taper the saber, excuse me, tiger, tangential over on the Patreon in October.
• 1:05:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to be featuring Shiar characters on the Patreon.
• 1:05:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: and focusing the main show around Eric the Red, which is exciting.
• 1:05:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then in November, it is the long awaited trial of Aurora, Monroe, or Storm with Storm at Jason Characters over on the Patreon.
• 1:05:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It has been such a joy to share this with you all.
• 1:06:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I hope you enjoyed this episode.
• 1:06:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Despite the fact that we had to put it together a second time, and I look forward to continuing to put out content.
• 1:06:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks everybody for listening, I want to enjoy to have you all here.
• 1:06:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can't wait to keep sharing more content with you.
• 1:06:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Stay safe out there and we'll see you back here next week on Cream Up the Day.
• 1:06:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.
• 1:06:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah, with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.
• 1:06:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Look for us on Patreon, where we are releasing weekly episodes about obscure characters and facts.
• 1:06:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a great way to participate with the podcast for only just a couple of dollars a month and it helps support what we are doing here.
• 1:06:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Also, the best way you can help with
• 1:06:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Grimmulkin Lane is by sharing and liking and subscribing, but also please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
• 1:06:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you back your next time on Grimmulkin Lane.