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Bonus Patreon Release: the Presence and Starlight! With Derek Nichols and Scotty deGeest! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Mulk and Lane Patreon channel.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is Colossus Month in July on 2025 on Green Mulk and Lane.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we are getting characters all over the Patreon channel that kind of take the Russian or Soviet story from slightly different angles.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: We've covered characters like McCyle, Rasputin and the Super apes.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Today we get to cover some characters that I'm really fond of because, back when I was on the handbooks, I was like the Defenders expert.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you jump to the Marvel Appendix, all the profiles on the defenders are written by me, from Gargoyle to Hellcat, two smaller characters called Red Guardian who becomes Starlight and the Presence.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: When I was younger and read these stories about these characters and profile them, I'm like, oh, these are really interesting superhero stories.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: But now that I'm reading them as an educated man in my mid-40s, I'm like, holy shit, this is a rape stories.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: This was a crazy or dirty that I realized when I first scheduled it, but this is the Chernobyl story basically done in a superhero tropes.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm really excited to welcome to with my very favorite people who took this journey with me.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to presume neither of you had really even heard of these characters before, so it's always a fun time to jump into this world.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me welcome my friends Scotty and Derek back to the show.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: If I'll have you both introduce yourselves to our listeners who may be unfamiliar with you, let them know your name and pronouns.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And let's hear some of your initial thoughts on the starlight and the presence as we're going to go to the job.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Chad.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: My name is Scottie for the listeners of our of the Patreon podcast.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think this is my first appearance on the Patreon, but I've been on a very mock on a couple of times.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I am a data scientist, and I think my big flame to fame on the Grimalk in Lane podcast was the Sentinels episode where I got to talk a lot about AI and robots and how terrifying they are, and it was fantastic.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's how you and I became acquainted.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm ever grateful for your expertise.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think my biggest takeaway for this was I thought a lot about the gender politics and how much they've changed and how much they're not changed from the 70s to day to day.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, I'm happy to be back here, so I'm Jack Nichols, my partner's like, he, they, my day job as I work for university and sustainability, so the environmental disaster part of all of this is one of the most exciting parts of their story are ones that I wanted that I could relate to the most and then the gender politics definitely that's going to get super interesting.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I decided to talk about that.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also my background, my great-grandmother was still alive and she came from Slovakia, so there's a little bit of like this Russian connection and I Eat up that corner of the Marlea universe.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was excited to take a deep dive into this.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: So so stay tuned the next episode out on the main show after this I'll pre-down.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's going to be the trial of Pewter rescued
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: When I started my journey with Colossus, it was very much like, oh, this is a character that I'm fond of, but don't have particularly strong feelings for.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're researching him and his connections to Russia and how the portrayal of Russia or the Soviet Union has changed in comics over the decades was a fascinating journey.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: So doing some of these characters on the Patreon kind of reflect themes that we're going to be playing on in the Colossus trial.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: The presence is a Russian super scientist who is obsessed with radiation.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: and self-importance, and the Red Guardian is kind of a, well, she's a neurosurgeon, first of all.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's an amazing character, but she's kind of a rebellious, like, uh, I'm going to fight against the oppressive government kind of energy, and then we'll talk about what happens next.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: But both of these characters are introduced in the mid-1970s, which was a time right after Colossus first appeared.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, Russia in the comics prior to this,
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're all just kind of a red or crimson supervillains, right?
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: The super apes and the red ghosts and the crimson guardian, these types of characters are all over the place.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Colossus kind of changes the trend where we're getting a sympathetic view of a Soviet person.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Colossus is effectively a defector from the Russian government, which is already an interesting thought experiment, because Xavier gets him out.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Where Mikhail has brother the cosmonaut parishes in italics, I suppose.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: and magic and her parents end up kind of victims of the government in kind of different ways.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: So those relationships are already really fascinating.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: We won't talk a lot about Colossus today, but we're seeing some different writers kind of approach the Russian stereo types and comics in the mid 70s from some interesting perspectives.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now our initial writer, we're gonna jump into Defenders number 35 and 1976.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Defenders is the non-team.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: The premise is we have a group of heroes who don't want to be a team, but they get getting pulled back together.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the classic heroes are like silver, surfer, doctor, strange, Hulk, and the submariner.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: They just keep getting getting back together again and again.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: But we have some writers early on in the title who kind of form a core group that do want to be super heroes.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they're all characters I love and they will all eventually get trials at my show.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: We've already done Hellcat.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nighthawk is one of these characters who's just the worst.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then we have Valkyrie who's amazing.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we see some tropes start to kind of play in and out of this and some really talented writers take this series on a run from there.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And later of course, X-Men characters joined the team much later in the early 80s.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, in Defenders 35, the creative team is Steve Gerber and Salvis Chema.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Steve Gerber is really an interesting character study.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've literally read a biography of Steve.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Some of his works are some of the most defensive comics I've ever read, particularly when examining tropes related to race.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: But he was kind of an independent person.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he really would want to take like a trope, an interesting topic like feminism, and like view it from two or three different angles.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like can we create a pro feminism and an anti-feminism kind of response?
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Red Guardian, we'll talk all about Tanya Belinsky in a moment, is a character that he did beautifully.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's a brilliant character.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really smart and really interesting.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: But boy, are there some other characters introduced in this background of defenders that are like, oh my god, go see the sounds of the serpent story for example.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's rough.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really, really rough.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: He also created Necra and the mandrel who we've talked about on the show.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, so we're going to jump into that world.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me throw one more thing your way and then I'll hear some of your thoughts on this kind of opening.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Red Guardian is a character introduced early on in the Avengers as kind of the counter to Captain America.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's the state superhero and we've seen him played up brilliantly in recent movies like The Thunderbolts and Black Widow.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: But in the 60s comics, Black Widow, Natasha is a widow.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's a spy who is a widow.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: She has a
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: a husband who was a superhero who was a cosmonaut that got lost and he comes back that's the red guardian he's like the Russian version of Captain America but he's the state superhero who like has you know paid the price with his life so that's the character we see brought back more recently who has been played in the movies and he's got a little bit more of a prominent space literally the Natasha's ex husband who is just dead forever and then comes back as a villain but is now a hero.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's fine, that's just the dirty he takes.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: But there's a number of characters called the Red Guardian who succeed him.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: One of them is the female Red Guardian, who is tangible and skew, who is easily my favorite one.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like looking back at that time, she is not the stereotypical of what you'd think of how a Soviet character would be portrayed.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she's being a little more flamboyant and out and the costume was, like you said, not a spy, like authentically herself as a doctor and then a superhero.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: He makes her a neurosurgeon and a rebellious superhero who's dressed in the colors of her national superhero It's a little bit like what Josh Trujillo has done with Aaron Fisher captain America like the queer captain America of the railways Like I'm gonna put on my country's colors and fight against oppression.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of an odd odd pair of lots of that
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I mean, well, that was really it.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's not very black and white either.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's also, like, like, see the flaws of her government, but also the flaws of the American government, which make her a little more nuanced.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's more entertaining to kind of follow her story.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: She ate that fresh yourself as Russian, but these are all taking place during this regime that you as a Saur and Soviet regime.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's a distinction about between Russian and Soviet here that I think is an important that direct brought up.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: The other thing I think that's really interesting in the context of this and thinking about the overarching thing is the space race, because she's involved in this idea about the USSR and their competition with the United States around science, and around, you know, maybe pursuing a dangerous scientific ideas or pursuing them risk with a lot of risk, which is key to what some of the things that happen in the comics.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: So comics are really interesting to look through that lens and say, okay, I think we're thinking a lot about this and about what it means to be it.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Scientists, and I'm thinking about the USSR as a competitor to the United States in terms of scientific might and power.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, second week feminism is something we've been talking a lot about on the show throughout the year.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a theme that we're exploring Hellcat and Moon Dragon are both characters we've given a lot of thought to as well as Shannon the She-Double, who all had kind of journeys through this.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Black Widow, who was the Russian spy tropes stereotype, who, you know, was like seducing Hawkeye and Iron Man in the 60s,
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the 70s becomes like a very strong feminist character, like I don't need a man, I want an independent career, right?
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Valkyrie is a woman with a giant sword and a metal bra who can't hit other women and only men.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: We start to see super villains like Mankiller, who we explored in Pride Month on my show, who's a feminist like
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: terrorist basically.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Starlight is an interesting parallel of that because we see a woman who is a neuroscientist really like world renowned neurosurgeon who's like sought after highly who's choosing to dress in the colors of her country's national hero and fight crime in the streets knowing full well that if she's caught she will be not only prosecuted but probably like badly hurt like uh the the government is after her in that way.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we're going to jump to 1976.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Steve Gerber and Salbashema, we open on a bearded man robbing a woman in a snowstorm.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Quote, it says something about our culture that we Americans find it difficult to conceive of a country where crime and the streets is not considered a major problem.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, however, is such a nation.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Is such a nation?
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: In this highly regimented, tightly-policed society, the daily brutalities to which we have become in your are exceedingly rare.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Rare but not quite non-existent.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: For no society of human beings can be fully immune to crimes of violence.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Alrighty, we see people participating in a government system struggling with poverty.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's kind of what's going on.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's these men robbing in the streets, but they're trying to stay alive.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: But here to intervene in this crime is the red
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: She has long flowing black hair, skin, tight red costume.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: The red star is on her chest, which is a symbol of Russia.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: She has a white belt, boots, and gloves, and she plans to humiliate this man.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: He calls her a party intellectual who wants to play Street Fighter in her bullshoi costume.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Go home girl, he says.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: The revolutions over and done with.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the word bullshoi basically means theatrical like a costume.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: But when the police arrived, the woman has to run for it.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: She says, it pains me to be thought of as a criminal.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: None could love Russia more than I, but I also owe allegiance to who and what I am.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: And if that incurs official frowns, then that is the way it must be.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I cannot subscribe to the notion of my country right or wrong as the Americans put it.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll talk about the parallel to 2025 later, friends.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're recording this the day after national no kings protests.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then she continues my concept of what my life can be embraced is more than than than the niche the party has made for me In other words, I'm more complicated than just what they expect me to be right.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: She has some privilege as a neurosurgeon because they pushed her into that direction
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: So she gets a call from Dr.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Strange in the United States who has arranged for this through government channels.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And she agrees to come to the United States to do a brain transfer surgery because the headman and Nebulaan, who are just the queer code, weird, super, really Steve Gerber had does a lot of fun stuff and defenders you guys.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: They are involved in things are crazy for the defenders and Nighthawk has had some brain problems.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he needs a full brain transfer, which is so 70 soap opera that it makes me smile year to year.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: She arrives in America in a maroon coat and a matching hat with the co-husfer trim, but it also leaves her thighs exposed.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's gorgeous.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's flanked by a military officer and learns that Dr. Stranger's billionaire buddy, Kyle Richmond, so the literal billionaire air is needing this brain surgery, so she performs it in scrubs and the military, the KGB are watching her the whole time.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: and they can't hear Tanya and Dr.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Strange talking, throwing the brain surgery.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I sense a certain whistfulness about you, Dr. Belenskin?
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really nothing, really a whim.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought I might enjoy extending my stay in this country for a time without the constant companionship of Cazlov and my so-called bodyguard.
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're not along with my protection strange, but for the parties, they consider me a prime candidate for defection.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not so.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: If they could be convinced about perhaps the visit you
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: are they so do it in their view?
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: So complete the immune to persuasion?
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me put it this way, doctor.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do not believe in magic.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: There is a lot of literal stories from the 60s and 70s of very talented Russians, chess players, cello players, scientists, doctors who were looking to get out of the country.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they had a certain amount of privilege and they would come to the states and have someone to pick them up, right?
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there'd be like threats if you leave the country will kill your family back home.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was like a tight rain on immigration.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: You belong to the state you're not allowed to leave.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: So defection was a real fear and we're seeing that addressed here.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: In issues 36 through 38, we see Tanya in a red jacket and skirt.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's checking in on her patient who's just waking up from the surgery.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Again, full brain transplant.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's nuts.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Some thugs enter and she kicks all three of their asses and the quote tells us the woman performs a ballet of aesthetically pleasing loops, presents a study in grace and strength.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: An unusual doctor, this lady, what with her unmistakably foreign accent, her supple form, her parent fighting skill.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, while Dr.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Strange hypnotizes the KGB guys into letting 10 years stay in the United States for a little while, so they're like, okay.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Strange and 10, you have coffee.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: They discuss the celestial mind control movement called the Nebulana's running.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'll do a Nebulana episode sometime.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: I promise he's insane.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a center that promises to help people release their true power.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: But instead, he's taking over their minds, which is kind of an odd parallel to how America sees Russia.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think in some ways,
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we open the door and we find cheerleaders in bald caps and clown make up where a celebrating their bozo thinking it's all part of the cult.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Tenia ends up getting taken back to the sanctum, saying Toro and she meets Wong and she's shocked by this like weird ass decor in strange house which wouldn't be Kyle has been attacked and Tenia has learned that Stephen is Dr.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Strange.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: She fights him and they end up fighting, flat man, I've got an episode on him and he'll also have an episode on him and park your pint.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Also have an episode on him.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then there are hallucinations of monsters and insects from Nebulon, Luke Cage shows up and then the Hulk.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna keep going at just a moment, but I'd love to hear some of your early thoughts on number one, Tangus presentation.
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And number two, these crazy super villains that they're fighting, the fashion alone.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: The fashion alone is great.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I, it is really interesting to read her because I think, occasionally, when we saw this, maybe in the early 70s, these female characters would be sort of, people would kind of dismiss them or poo poo them.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: We saw that famously in some of the Shannon, I think I read a shot on the sheet of an issue with you earlier.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was very funny because a lot of her conversation was about these men not really taking her very seriously.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I do say that even the guy who is like talking to her at the very beginning in the issue 35, he mocks her, but he doesn't mock her skill or her powers.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, you're basically pursuing a lost cause.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And similarly, when she goes to the States, like everyone immediately kind of respects her,
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: for shifting out of a trope where men writing women, all of the women's thoughts are just about the man and what the men think of the women.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like that's different, it's changing in the 70s, but we're not there yet.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's, oh yeah, her interior already too is about like, here are these things that I want to do and they're about freedom and about exploring things and trying new things, which is also kind of an interesting piece.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: the other thing I was going to say is, are we going to talk about the hypnotism that Dr.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Strange did or is that, is that not?
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, go ahead.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought it very, very entertaining to watch Dr.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Strange just be like, yeah, obviously he's going to mind control all these people to do what I want them to do.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, he is very unsuddled.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is like they, they, they, they foreshadow it right in that conversation that we just said that we just promised.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, which is what Professor X did to allow Colossus to come to the United States, right?
• 16:07
  [UNKNOWN]: Yes.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Very unsettled.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very funny at the context of all of the people that were very terrified of mind control and all these massive noses things So the celestial mind control movement is the counter to that story But again, we'll do a nebulae story sometime.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Can that guys insane?
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Derek, I know you have thoughts on some of these super villains.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: It nebulae and Ruby Thursday alone are worth their own episodes
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's a couple of things.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Me personally, like, being assigned to read this and like just dropping us off in the middle of the story.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blue, my mind.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am not very like, immersed in the defenders realm.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you are, it was insane to me.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then, so kicking that.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Satanya is like she also was just dropped into this like weird ass like I couldn't imagine the cultural dissonance that she was like experiencing with just all of the flashy like super villains the powers everything because she was fighting crime by herself in the Soviet Union.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this has to be totally unique experience for her.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then just in general, I enjoy like in her early days and even when we get into it like she there's nothing the writers get her Eastern Europeanist down really well.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's very serious and very like stoic and like there's not like a real superhero camp factor to her She's just like the the the the the straight man the entire time.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's I think that's fair.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, she's the serious party and she'd like the Dr.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Strange as a wizard and was like, okay.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, there's a plant man attacking outside.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, look, there's some cheerleaders dressed like clowns like she's a role of it.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which is also a great like attribute of hers to roll.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as we'll see if maybe it's not the greatest attribute there.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's rolls with things, but
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, for those following the script readings, these defenders comics are coming out right at the same time.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're doing both the X-Men, Avengers, and Champions.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's right, Black Widows and the Champions.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: We see Hellcat and Moon Dragon in the Avengers, and we're seeing Storm and Gene right as we get up to the Phoenix saga.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right?
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like the stories of feminism and women are happening all over the place in this era.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, we jumped to defender 3940, uh, Tanya says without minimizing the gravity of the situation.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: I must say I find this plethora of super beings who's paths collides so frequently and violently rather amusing.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: How much less complex it is to operate alone in a nation like my native Russia that forbids the wearing of costumes and masks.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Nighthawk, who's the white billionaire, says,
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm, indubitably a consequence of the widespread availability of events technology and a capitalist society.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hope somebody wrote that down for posterity.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: This guy's an asshole of time, but I love him for it.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's such a sad sack.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was trying so hard.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's all his big words.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's so bored.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: He does things all over these comics like Valkyrie one day's like, I don't know where to keep my winged horse, so he makes a phone call and he's like, I bought you a stable Valkyrie and she's like, oh, thank you.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, the shit just keeps happening.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: He also wears a jetpack under a pair of like cloth wings, which is just a terrible design.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, amazing character.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: So she's later walking through a tangy walking through the city in full costume.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Never have I walked amidst such squalor, such depravity as this place you call Times Square.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Which is, what is the lore of these streets, Mr. Cage?
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: What do all these great faces expect to find here?
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Luke Cage replies, cheap thrills and other great faces, I suppose?
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know y'all were hoping for a more sociological type answer, but lady, nobody around here lives in the abstract and lives for long.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: This here's a war zone, you dig, which wow, again, the politics.
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then she helps knock back a man who's been a costing cage.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's definitely a bit of flirting between she and Luke, which I think is a great.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then they break Valkyrie out of a women's prison.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Red Guardian sees someone throw a rock through the window with a note that says, how can you call yourselves Americans while you harbor a communist in your home?
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Signed the Committee for Free Immigration.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Again, 2025 parallels.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll get there.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, Red Guardian chases down some thugs who hate her for being Russian, and when one of them is shot, she staps behind to help stabilize him, and she helps carry him up to an old lady's apartment to use the phone, but the old lady also draws a gun on her, ranting about how she has relatives trapped in Russia because of, quote, immigration policies.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: 4,000 years, and we're still in bondage, but no more.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Meet Mrs. Rosenweig, who is a Jewish woman, and there are complicated histories between Russia and the Jewish state, but we won't delve deeply into that today because it's a whole different complicated conversation.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then a scary man on a black hood comes out and he knows Red Guardian's real identity and we're equally aware of your tenuous status in the Soviet Union.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: We intend to exploit it, Dr. To The Hilt, as the USSR has used our people.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this guy has metal arms and he's chasing around the city, ranting about oppression and she defeats him and says, I am better acquainted with oppression, with untheking brutality than you might imagine, hooded one.
• 20:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: And whether or not I agree with you, your tactics are abhorrent to me.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: and an affront to those you claim to stand for.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, there's a lot that just happened with Tanya, and this is maybe the most Tanya forward story out of all her appearances.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, this is a time you wanna talk about, like, yeah, we can jump in, yeah.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, you know, the red scare and like the fear of the other and just the politics behind it all.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the fact that, you know,
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And just really hard as reading these things about like we're having the same conversation today, obviously, and just the rock through that, the mansion of just you're harboring the other or the communist is something that we're basically talking about in today's world.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I was just all very resonant.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was when my super my my gut reactions to it all.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, immigration in America 2025 is already extremely complicated as it was in 1975, but we're in this age where ice agents are around in people up.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're changing laws that people who had legal status here are no longer legal.
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: And frankly, if we were not rewind over the last five or ten years, this has been happening in Russia as well as increasing policies have been discriminating against gay people.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Against immigrants, we're watching this happen in England and in Greece and in Israel So the Jewish conversation becomes uncomfortable and we are not you can adopt deep there But I have at least one dear dear friend of the show and if you're listening my friend I won't use your name here about I love you very much who had to flee Russia because he is because they are a queer person
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's some really uncomfortable parallels as we're watching people be detained by ICE, we're watching queer people leave America and droves already.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: And there are people who I talk to on a daily basis in my office and even through the show who are considering the same, because we're afraid that the policies are gonna turn the same direction that these Russian policies have turned.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: It gets very painful too to explore.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I, you know, working at the university when all this was going down to, like, we've, um, unfortunate to work in a place as liberal.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we had a lot of our students were concerned for their peers that were from other countries, uh, when visas were trying to get revoked, and ice, sightings were happening like campus.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we had to like, disseminate information on how to, I couldn't believe the world we were living in when I had to, like, disseminate information to my students about how to, like, interact with like an ice officer.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it just, you know, again, to read a comic that was,
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: 50 years ago, I feel the same like nothing has changed.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes it's hard to be hopeful.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: When recording this from June on June 15th, literally the day after over 5 million Americans and cities all around the country arose up to have peaceful protest.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're recording this during the time where it's the National Guard and military resources being deployed to Los Angeles.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: over this very crazy Fox News amplified like ice protest.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm watching people back on Facebook posting like anti-American and during this Trump throws a military parade like it's truly insane and it sounds like shit that happens in other countries.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're also reading this today after a couple of political assassinations took place in Minnesota where the three of us are going to be hey yeah just a few weeks like this is a live and well friends like
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're creating joy here, but these are truly insane times to be alive.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just nuts, nuts, nuts.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Derek's wearing a big A-Do crime hat.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: is really exciting to see the scope and scale of the protests that happened yesterday.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a scary time for a lot of people.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was talking to people before we started the show about a gay chorus.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I went to last night and one of the big things that we talked about in the show and one of the numbers that they did was specifically about how afraid many people and angry many people group people all around what's going on right now in the country.
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just a deeply terrifying time for a lot of people.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've been making this show long enough where if you go back and listen, there's time capsules.
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's an episode I recorded right after the pulse shooting.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Or after the day I went by gay club and there was an armed man with a gun inside that had to be shown out, right?
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's a trajectory as we're going through this and this shows like an odd time capsule that I will look back in my future when I've done making it eventually as a really divisive time, but it's hard to feel safe right now.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so the battle with the bozos wraps up in defenders and you will number one.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: And why is that a funny parallel after we're talking about dealing with the bozos in our real world?
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Steve Gerber, prophetic question mark.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what you're troubling to me at any time I read your work now.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a crowd of brainwashed clowns going crazy and tanya thinks the savagery, the brutality of this mob, astounds me long, have I pondered the beliefs of the Soviet leadership on the dangers of free assembly.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now perhaps I understand to my sorrow, there is a kind of madness at work here.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: more than lust for blood or for vengeance, the fever only an idea can kindle.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: The fever that swept the motherland, and the narrator says, but 10 is using over intolerable systems which breed revolutions, which become institutionalized and breed more revolutions, is cut short as her body hits and rebounds off the hard wooden platform.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, guys, we were going to record this like a month ago.
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: The fact that we're recording it now, these stories are hitting you, just like at a very sharp way, my goodness.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so Nighthawk swoops in and goes, kind of let your sense of moral outrage run away with you, Hontania, and she replies, My Nature Nighthawk is essentially activist.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: I make no apologies.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I love her.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Nebula and the headman are trying to take over the world, and there's a big debate, and Red Guardian gets to contribute.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: A new world order cannot be based upon an oligarchy.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Only through collective action.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Holy shit, 25 sucks.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is 50 years later, good lord.
• 26:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, got any do you want to tell us about Defenders 43?
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to tell us about Defenders 43.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I would also like to say that collective action is a big thing that we work on.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And right now, in the data science community, if we're talking about things about getting more and more groups of people organized to solve so many and address some of these big problems.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, it's a real thing.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: What I would say about .3 is that we're looking at the defenders and they're trying to handle this with egghead in the map in a series of evil and our RG has their mind merge with the cobalt man by Clea to help prevent a nuclear disaster because this is the episode I have on the cobalt man too, I'm a comprehensive guy.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, what man is very is weirdly terrifying, like I don't know why, I find him deeply, deeply discomforting whenever I see him and I think, I don't know, but I see plant man like, oh, this is very silly, but when I see the global man, even though he's that roughly the same level of silliness, he's very scary to me.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I hate to see your horse, right?
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I hate it is one of my all time favorites.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love him.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's kind of like a Hank Pendillan, which is very funny, right?
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: His whole orchestra is wrapped up with the Avengers.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he tries so hard to be like a really smart guy, but he suffers the same kinds of things like the Mad Pinker from the Van Duster Board as in the D. What really love you to believe that he's coming up with these very clever ideas.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they are just, um, I think the phrase I use is pants shooting these stupid most of the time.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, yeah, of course, I'm going to be able to take over the world.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to do all these things.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and the rhino shows up as well in 43, which is just very silly.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: The issue ends with co-bought man sort of stabbing egghead in the back and stopping him, right?
• 27:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then 44 is where Dr. Omar Karindu shows up.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a, a foremost scholar in paranormal sciences, who becomes a villain called the red raja because of this mystic ruby.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: And 10 is getting deep pressure from the Soviet Union to return.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she can feel like the clock ticking.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Almost does it.
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: She resists a man's mind control.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Remember that for a little while from now.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: And also this is David Anthony Kraft writing at this point.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a change in tone here.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then we have an exchange here between three women Hellcats joined the team.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: If I read Velcroy, Scotty will you read Hellcat and Derek will you read Red Guardian.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Before we can act against the Rajah effectively, we must determine why the Red Guardian fell under his spell while we did not.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hellcats says, Maybe it's her calmingest mentality.
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: My ex-hubby buzz used to say.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Valkyrie says, Hellcat, please refrain from making absurd judgements based on nationality.
• 28:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: An individual's social sympathies do not necessarily make her an easy subject for mind-controlled despite what your ex-husband used to say.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, your ex-husband's a fucking asshole, and Red Guardian says,
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are aspects of my country's power structure that I find repulsive.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure you feel the same about us, but my government's emphasis on the common good over that of the individual is deeply ingrained in my psyche, much as individualism is obviously in yours.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Red Roger advocates collective consciousness, perhaps the mystic persuasion was able to invoke in me a strong subconscious sympathy for his deceptively logical philosophy.
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Valkyrie concludes an interesting theory, Tanya, and since my own rather strong personality was created entirely by the Enchantress, which is true, we'll tell that story at other time, I have no such affinities ingrained in my character.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the ladies have to defeat their male allies who have successfully been mined controlled and it's a girl power finish.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yay, we see Red Guardian an incredible hook to a seven in like the kiss comic and Marvel Super Special number one in Avengers 46 though is when she has to return to Russia because they have threatened her loved ones and her last words to the defenders as she's leaving is to tell Nighthawk not to throw a tantrum.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: In 49, we see her arrive in Moscow, but she gets picked up by the KGB, who know her secrets, and in 51, she is driven deep into the wilderness, where she is to serve the one called Code Name Sergei.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: It turns out the government knows nothing of Tanya's return, so she may have been able to stay in America, but there's a weird guy we're going to meet in a second called Sergei.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: who is demanding her return because basically he wants her.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I think my favorite part of her was the exchange she had.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a few issues back.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: They exchange she had with Luke Cage where he was, she was set something that sends up.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: There was that sort of thought we tried to go beat them up.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: He said something.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: She said something like, he's trying to protect you from being an instrument of your own suicide.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then he said, what did she say?
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: She said, oh, I admire your restraint, Mr. Cage.
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was, I really loved it.
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: In these bombastic commas, or everyone is like near the throwing purple president, each other.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: She had that nice little, like, understated line.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was like, this is excellent.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this is a sad fucking turn for this character that we're about to take because there's another world where she got to stay on the defenders and she gets to be one of these powerhouse girl characters who's kicking ass all over the world like our heroes that we love are.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: But they decided to give her this fucking story.
• 30:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Scott is gonna take over the narrative here for defenders 52 through 54.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's through 55.
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so for the defenders,
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: When we get to the appropriate dialogue spots, I'll read the presence and Derek will take the red guardian.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Scotty tell us what it was like to jump into this era of defenders.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a rough go.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is not a darker, but not in a fun way.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was already pretty like, pretty rough.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So at the start of 52, we have a very weird set up with now more running around in his little bikini, but he's also got his giant red cave on, but that's not really the part that we see related to Tonya.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: She has been taken away and there's a time jump and we should get shown Tonya in Tonya showed him in Dessirge as on a ground base and she gets him that first she expressed and she's impressed with the scope of his base.
• 31:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: and her escort kind of explains her what's going on.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Surgeys, the power behind the power, surveyed has been speak and commented great.
• 31:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Comrade Brezhnev speaks and then Brezhnev was one of the leaders of this episode.
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're a Brezhnev is the long time Prime Minister of Russia at this point.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in real life, yeah.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so it was a very it was a very it was back in the time when Marvel comics actually named named the names of world leaders instead of making that up.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why else would you think the they would look the other way when he conducts underground nuclear tests and Tony is instructed to change their costume and then she could tact she says I was brought here is at threat of my mother's death and I'm angry.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I do not care if you need a really is the most feared man in all Russia.
• 32:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I will tolerate such barbarian tactics nor will I be a party to his plans.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that really does feel like very classic red Guardian Tanya that we've seen so far and that just won't do for the rest of the story.
• 32:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So then they put a control cow on her that takes her will away and she has shown into the room with Sergei and he's called the presence.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, really quickly, a quick thought, I don't know what the writer's intent was here.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he's just telling super-here stories, but there seems to be two stories playing out, and I haven't interviewed this person, but number one, an independent woman must be mine controlled to make her more 1950s old-fashioned serving the man, right?
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, that seems to be part of it.
• 32:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: The number two seems to be if we allow Russian defectors to go back,
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is what happens.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: They take away all their free will in thought.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, but this is a creepy supervillain Who's design is fucking incredible?
• 33:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: The presence is design is amazing.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Scottie tells about the presence.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I will say that they can turn to the design.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he's got this big.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's got these big robes.
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: These big yellow robes and this big purple sort of thing over the top and Tony also is wearing these very It's lots of robes.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Lots of secrecy and robes.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very exciting for everyone.
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's got this red robe and then she's got this little yellow eye twitchy technology things on her mask or cowl that's the control cowl and it all looks great like he's really a champion of design.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we know about the presence is that he's an awe inspiring man with a palpable overpowering aura that transcends charisma with sheer indomitable will and he starts single-minded sense of
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: purpose.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're coming about the robes, just like triggered a memory of my childhood.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, oh, okay.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to connect it to the Eastern Orthodox Church too.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So over it.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like way.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we all like grow up in that church, every like the priests, the the altar boys were all wearing robes.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's like how the religious thing happening to and then in communist Russia, that wasn't like
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: a communist Soviet Union, religion was not allowed, so it was also like this kind of vibe that this being kind of underground, or kind of like this pseudo-religion kind of plays through a little bit too.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's definitely some religious overtones to some other way that the language and the costuming looks, I would agree with that.
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a billionaire secret guy controlling the government who dresses himself in gold armor and is conducting insane radiation experiments in obscure places that are literally killing people.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he dresses again in gold armor and he wants a woman companion brought to him.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: The caption tells us I've been reading this one caption.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: The sentence is quote, Amplified Ego.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Electronic Leach a channel to control cows implanted in robes designed to screen the lethal
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he's just this white-haired kind of old scientist man who like dresses in gold armor.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's very uncomfortable.
• 35:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I used, again, I opened the upside by saying I used to think this building was amazing, but rereading I'm like, oh fuck, he's terrible.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's very creepy.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And like he just the whole, I have surveillance thing.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And like the way that he frames things is so creepy, right?
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: He says to her as soon as he meets her.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to my domain, dearest.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: How long have I studied you from afar?
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Spide on you.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: known if your secret identity is read, guarding, and my or do is a patriot.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Even as I disdain your spent idealism.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Derek, will you tell us where Guardians response?
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am honored by our attention.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it turns out that he has selected Tanya to undergo something called nuclear transmogification.
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: He plans to have be subjected to cobalt radiation over the next few weeks so that he can dwell with her.
• 35:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he has incurred the use of the body.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: You have an
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He tells her she has an incredible disease in the mind and together they will transcend near human existence and be transformed into beings of a higher form in a nuclear explosion that will tear half of Europe apart.
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's bit you know boy meets girl boy starts nuclear holocaust to transcend people to the next plane of existence and destroy a continent.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: So time will slow story, Chad.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have never watched the Twilight Zone before, but I've been watching like a couple episodes a week, and I just saw when this last week where the whole premise is, there's a guy who wants a woman who's not interested, so he goes to like a wizard and gets a potion that just makes her love him so much, and then he has to go back to the wizard and be like, oh my god, now she loves me too much, and the wizard literally tells him, like, she loves you so much, she'll forgive you when you cheat, you could hit her, it's not going to matter,
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: and the story ends with him like, well, I guess I'm stuck with her then.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it was deeply uncomfortable.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Twilight sounds bang and great most of the time, but that one I was like, oh no.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so in the next issue, we go to all the cover 53, and we see Red Guardian glowing and surrounded red by these black spots.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: and are eyes are going with power, and there's a massive nuclear explosion around here.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the caption reads now, Red Guardian Report will be a friend or foe.
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Few weeks have gone by, Antonia is now glowing with radioactive energy.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: The presence has crazy flowing white hair, and he wears orange and purple again going back to robes.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a very robes-centered situation.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Presence yells, out of anguish is born ecstasy.
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: The past few weeks with you, Tanya, my dear, have been Navana.
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Never have I known such a sensitivity in a man, my beloved.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: You are a poet, Sergei.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I soon all over the world shall be yours to relate.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I admit is a rare indeed to find the attributes of poet and potentate in one man.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Such a man must be extraordinary.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Such a man is Sergei.
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: The presence.
• 37:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am, wow, Japan selected your comfort.
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: But in that alone, makes it all worthwhile.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have earned a reputation as the single most influential person in all Russia.
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have much money and great power.
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: But neither is intrinsically satisfying.
• 37:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: When you have both, what is their left to want?
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: First, I'm a lays of the spirit sets in.
• 37:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: And now, even my health is going, I want more than material success.
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: You want love and a new life.
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I want to end this emptiness inside, perhaps, perhaps dearest tenure.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am at last to be fulfilled tomorrow when we undergo the ultimate nuclear transmogrification together, good fucking god.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's like, you're so great.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he's like, yes, I am so great.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, this pisses me the fuck off reading this now.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's really rough.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And gang, it gets worse.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: So soon, they start going down into the base.
• 38:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: And our lovely narrator in classic narrations, classic seventies narrate, narration style, calls Tania extremely subdued.
• 38:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he has a nuclear bomb.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is power by pretty the pure potential to transcend all human experience forever.
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Prepare to go undergo the ultimate evolution.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Attention all
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we all know what a nuclear countdown sounds like.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Sergey Dons is bizarre red mask, it's available in Alden and some golden armor.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, Jeremy read the record, the line for room guardian there.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ash, it was, but Sergei, are you certain that I should undergo this?
• 39:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, I'm certain it will forever affect our lives, interlace our identities as no other man and woman have ever entwined their lives.
• 39:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then the narration tells us, loose, somewhere in the laparance of our own mind, the Red Guardian subdued personality struggles weakly to assert itself.
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: The nearest memory of her displaced identity strains to become the reality once more, her memory strains, in vain, the Red Guardian remains submissive to Sergei.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: So not only is she being raped here, like her will completely remove, the narration tells us that she's fighting back and it's ineffective, fucking story, like truly, it's really rough.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then there's no clear bomb, because
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing really to cap off a creepy mine control rape story like a nuclear explosion.
• 39:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: It devastated Bucharest, Romania, and kill thousands.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a newspaper report in the comic about the devastation, it identifies the place epicenter as a little bit south of Moscow's or Delta's Farge.
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Rome, and then the presence in this crazy design in the end of the issue is glowing and up there in light.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's like a giant furnace in its stomach, his hands going with energy, and this is forehead is beaming.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is a wild wild image.
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: because a bunch of like symbols of like wings on his eyes and cape, I don't really know what those mean.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: But in 54, the defenders become aware of the nuclear devastation because it's spreading and name work gets hit.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, Atlanians are dying.
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: It looks, yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the image now at the end of that image.
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's really powerful to put together and it got all little curly dots floating around him as well.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's this, my theory is that those images of wings on his eyes and his cape are like imperial signs, right?
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, and this is where we get back into the defenders, right?
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And get back, have our connection again.
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's an explosion that ripped through Prince downwards.
• 40:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Best walls were resolved to the shockwave, like you said, Chad.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see Kelly Atlanteans, and almost coming all the defenders on board, the ship that got destroyed.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we also get an image of Sergei Antonia, and their skeletons are visible through their blowing flesh, classic symbol and imagery of reoactivity.
• 41:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's some really intense prose that I would love to share with you right now.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's all right.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, together they stand in the midst of this mailstrom, tentatively, Saragay reaches Britannia's hand.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: He would like them to be legendary lovers.
• 41:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: He wants her to adore him, the way Juliet adored Romeo, which is an interesting reference here.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's another way you read back, as an adult you're like, wow, this is intense.
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: He wants her to seduce him, the way Cleopatra seduced Anthony.
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: He wants the purity of great passion to consume her, even as the inferno now does.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is subdued by the presence by the overpowering forism as stemming them as a men's seek.
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the single mind and intensity of his identity now soon be automatically superimposed over her own.
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: A distant inner voice whispers to her, reproachingly of a one-strong will, but as her hands clasped and her add-ons co-mingle, that voice is silenced.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's an interesting moment of Paradox, right?
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because the character, both wants her to have this strong will and like this devotion of love, but then he's also like, and you completely control your will and dominate you it, but embossably, it's a crazy double standard.
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And soon, out of the lethal radioactive myths they appear, hovering legally on high, themselves.
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now the source, particle emissions, the presence in silence, somber, self-absorbing.
• 42:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: suffused with the influence of his amplified ego, as well as affected by the Nelson-theotic renatua of their relationship, the Red Guardian says nothing, seeming oblivious to the desperate plight of their former allies that fenders, yet deep in her subdued consciousness tiny cry protest against troubles of family to surface many days.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that makes it so much worse.
• 42:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this man could have chosen any woman to subdue, but he chose a neuroscientist who has like, is possessed of like free will, and that's the person he wants to subdue.
• 42:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fucking, it just, mmm, it's so, we get a moment where they appear in like radioactive glory to the defenders and hellcat goes, gosh, if the red guardians really gone bad, then maybe my ex-hubby bus was right about communist after all.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Fuck it.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, never talk about anything about bus.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yes, all of us.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I know she does, but also, like, come on, come on, okay.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: They do a really good job of making this a pretty dark story, right?
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, we're really, we're really into the thick of it now.
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they do a good job of setting up these crazy stakes for just how bad we're getting.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So as we move into the next issue in 55, see that the presence can literally snap his fingers and make impacts as powerful as a hydrogen bomb.
• 43:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Tania can now fire off radio about active burst of energy and flying and they're running around killing Atlanteans.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the presence starts ranting like a crazy person about hour.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Power always takes a toll.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's effects on men of forces history Alexander the Great Hitler.
• 43:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Cruchev and the SARS before him, even Richard Nixon.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh my God, this is the way this man thinks of himself.
• 43:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And my power's greater than any of theirs and she'll serve to keep me from a similar fate to fulfill me and to keep Tanya and I together.
• 43:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Namor is defeated.
• 44:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now where does get his, uh, proverbial shit rock almost immediately, which at the, like, at this point, namore is like a very scary guy, right?
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, they've established well that he is and take on the band does support his own holes down.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: He can pipe the hole.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: So like, watching him get one shot of here is, uh, like, it's a great way to set up the how terrifying this guy is.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's also a tangential battle with a sea monster.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we do finally get back to some interior if you'd read Guardian.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: She starts her calling her own origins and her decision to dress as a national hero, read Guardian after the fall of the first one.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get another flex from the presence and the manager to revert the Hulk to Bruce Banner, which is another like, oh, this guy is for serious he just took out a man more and the Hulk.
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: But what does start happening is that Tonya seems to find the will to start turning against him.
• 44:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: You are the woman I worship, my chosen mate, the spirit I so dearly cherish.
• 44:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Together we too will live a life of total fulfillment.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: That is my dream.
• 44:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Perfect.
• 44:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a dream, Sergei.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But not mine.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You don't love me.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You love your dream.
• 44:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't you see?
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: These people are real friends.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: They can accept me for who I am.
• 45:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've never gotten beyond thinking the only thought of yourself.
• 45:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: You wanted to remake me in your image.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go Sergei, leave these people.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Leave me.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've brought all of us enough pain.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You mean, lose you, lose the one thing I care about after gaining ultimate power?
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: You set it yourself so that you can think, what have you lost?
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: A zombie, that's all.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: An image that existed only in your limited imagination.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your words have the ring of wisdom.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: You are right, Tanya, despite all my power.
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am a very small man that he's referring to his penis.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: And very lonely, especially after the radiation.
• 45:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I will go you have your power Sergei and yourself.
• 45:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: What more do you need?
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I boasted before that I could not be hurt by anyone.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was wrong.
• 45:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the presence looks at her one last time and sees the scare he tried to spite both blatching and her eye and because he really does love her and perhaps because he does not love himself.
• 45:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: He turns away without a word and disappears in the globe.
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some seems red with radiation death.
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: He prized power so much yet in the end his ego was at the mercy of his emotions.
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if this is where the story ended, I kind of be okay with it.
• 46:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: She got her will back, right?
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: It gets worse, right?
• 46:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a little bit like, I will say it, right?
• 46:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: As I was reading this is like, oh, this is kind of like what they sort of did with like some of these other 70s characters, they're like, oh, she had a kind of a bad story and now she's got to pull power up.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now she's got these like radiation powers.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: She can be like this awesome hero.
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's where I thought it was going to, but no.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: So in 56, the not very much about Tanya, she is isolated with the defenders are getting radiation experiments.
• 46:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 59, we get another brief moment over to her where so the scientists viewed or in Vladimir are trying to cure her, but they can't really do it.
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then she gets kept in an institute by General Carpob and you see that again in 64.
• 46:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: The next big time where we see things that are in the presence are an issue to one and there we have a presence is flying through the air and is little slower chair and he passes a flying military ship, but he is lost and bought no doubt think about how he's better than Richardson and conjuring images of tania in the sky.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Long have I wandered without will or reason aimlessly.
• 47:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have no more goals nor is there any future remaining for me.
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm motivated solely by melancholy, saddened beyond any consolation at the memory of my rejection by the Red Guardian.
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: After a lifetime of striving, I finally achieved ultimate power, yet at what cost?
• 47:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: When the one thing I really need is denied me, love, companionship and acceptance are denied me by my chosen mate.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: When they are all, I have ever really sought.
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thus, I have come home to the barren and desolate forbidden area to seek solitude.
• 47:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: For many years, I was the power behind the political powers that be in Mother Russia, and so I know many of the state's darkest secrets, such as the sad story of what truly transpired here a score of years past.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: a story that's been said steadfastly kept from the Soviet people and the world but not without good reason.
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: For if the truth should ever become known a panic would sweep across the globe like unlike any in history.
• 47:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: For here, looking in the midst of modern mankind lies the greatest threat to human life ever imagined.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he's kind of wander through the devastated area that he
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, destroyed and sort of like thinking about the things that he's done.
• 48:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a little bit of a like a break-up song.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a real reference to a real story that happened in a place called Kaistumrasha.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: You might have been thinking of Chernobyl, but there was a nuclear event at level six that happened and like an explosion happened in 10,000 people were evacuated and like a huge area of the land was like declared forbidden.
• 48:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Chernobyl wasn't until 1987.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's very possible that like the real-life people that aren't teabaria or eager curse at all are the inspirations for the character of the presence.
• 48:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that that's a great route.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, to add to your point right, there were lots of these sort of nuclear events that happened that were not Chernobyl-level events that were still very terrifying for lots of people.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the secret vision MCU series, weren't the scrolls living on a radioactive area?
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Also, which is also in the comics, it could just be Chernobyl, because also in the comics now that's where the vampire nation is.
• 48:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like the Dracula and his nation have been developed in Chernobyl because they can live there.
• 49:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: In 61, we see this in 62.
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get another flash to the presence.
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's still flying around and he gets one of those idea bubbles and it's kind of a deadly idea.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then in 63, we get more of the presence reflecting on how he caused the nuclear disaster that destroyed the town of Kishhten, which is the moment we were talking about earlier.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he says, how it cursed the day that the Cold War thrust me, young geneticists into the 400-minute period search, but for all progress exceeded all expectations until late 1957, I made a fatal mistake with radioactive waste disposal.
• 49:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he finds a massive radioactive monster that he calls a dreadful new strain of amoeba, and he wants to use that to feed on Sergei's power, and the military is freaking out.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: We've come to a close in 65.
• 49:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know we're spending a lot of time on this story, but it's super resonant for for this storyline.
• 49:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Tell us how things wrap up.
• 49:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, it all comes up close in December 1665.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like you said, Tanya's been kept in captivity.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she's really developed these like powerful radioactive abilities.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a cut here of Tanya speaking, directly read that for us.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I, who have always loved my country, have now become a deadly threat to Mother Russia.
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yet, how long can I remain a willing captive?
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ever since childhood, I have followed the path that my country's greatest need.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: In play or in study, no sacrifices too great for me to make my ambition to serve others.
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But to contemplate, a lifetime spent in solitary confinement, this is too much.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: So in other words, because she was raped, she's now not fit to be around other people.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know they're telling it about radioactivity, but like you have to read it as she was damaged by this experience and is living with trauma.
• 50:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's, I hate it, okay, keep going.
• 50:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Getting, yeah, it's getting worse.
• 50:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: So these are the things happen and far-all problems for the presence that injured the forbidden zone and have activated a deadly radioactive disease frame and she was the only hope to stop him.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Donut flies in, bites the meba, and inside, and Sarah Gay is, you know, whining about how he was telling you.
• 50:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the mods are also grabs, telling you, and that gets in the world, it's like back and with it, so they grasp hands and combine their powers, they're powerful enough to escape.
• 50:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: The presence says, we are free, and once again, my beloved, we are together.
• 51:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was you who exposed the folly of my ambitions, Tanya, rejected me, and so made me see it last that I was not a god, but merely a man,
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're overlooking the fact that he murdered people with a nuclear fucking bomb on him, yes.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: You freed my soul from the shackles of mad ambition, just as our bodies are now free of their unholy physical manifestations and he kisses her and says, I love you and they work together and they destroy the creature and he continues, we have a one tenure.
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yet I feel no elation.
• 51:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Once years ago, I stood on the same hilltop.
• 51:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I boasted that I would fill the emptiness inside me and I sought to do so by establishing dominion over others.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: My power was ambition.
• 51:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: I succeeded only in poisoning the very soil itself and in poisoning you against me.
• 51:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have but one remaining ambition tenure to earn your affection.
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've done so Sergey and here in this dead area where we too will not endanger those around us.
• 51:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: We shall have a home.
• 51:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: She went back to her rapist you guys.
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: You remember, I don't know if either of you have a red Avengers number 200, there's a story where Miss Marvel Carol Danvers gets impregnated by Marcus, the child of Kang the Conqueror, gives birth to her rapist, and then decides to go off with her rapist into limbo and the Avengers are all like, okay, bye, and later she's like, fuck all of you, because clearly that was not me, like exercising my will.
• 52:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is that story.
• 52:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is where it ended for 10 yet at the time.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: It took how long to kind of dig Carol out of that old, but that story had dug her into, right?
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, could they remember called that up when it was Avengers angles, right?
• 52:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: She shows up in a comment that Claremont wrote a little bit later in one of the X-Men angles and just starts rightly like giving them a help giving the Avengers hell about that.
• 52:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And for the inevitable trial of Carol Danbers on my show, we'll delve deep into that character, but it's gonna be a bit of it.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, the takeaway is that sometimes characters can come back from something like that and they can go away, go, like, there's awful, but there's a recoverable thing if they get the opportunity to do it.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's not really what happens.
• 52:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: You're supposed to believe it was her choice to go back to him because he said, sorry, right?
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: And also because no other man can have me now because I'm radioactive.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, it's really truly a rough read.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right, so Tanya's back in incredible hope number 250 where she's outside the crime lunges for one panel in 258 hope has gotten involved in a Russian conflict in Afghanistan and he ends up in the forbidden zone where the radio activity has been expanding which is concerning the Russian officials hope sees quote star girl and golden men basically having sex they're like having they're holding hands and like radio active energy spiraling around them.
• 53:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're both in full uniform and the presence calls this their cosmic communion and you know what good for them.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're living there by themselves.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: If they want to have radioactive cosmic communion in the sky, as long as she's consenting, whatever, that's fine.
• 53:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the Soviet super soldiers show up.
• 53:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's Crimson Dynamo in three Russian mutants, Dark Star Vanguard and Ursa Major, and they are sent in by the military, and they are considered expendable.
• 53:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's take those mutants that we have no use for, and send them into the radioactive zone.
• 53:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Are you ready, X-Men fans?
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because we're about to, uh, we're about to make your job drop.
• 54:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's, uh, there's some surprising connections here that you may not have been aware of.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a big old superhero fight, Sergei and Tanya intervene, but it turns out there's a new villain called Professor Fobos here, and he's evil and you know it because he's dressed in purple and he has a cape.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: His name is Peter, Fobos, and he's a Russian agent who was put in charge of raising orphan mutants, uh, like little babies that were taken away from their parents.
• 54:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he has a superhero school in orphanage for years and dark star and her twin brother Van Garner there as well as Ursa Major.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: But in fact, one time Tanya had been sent in as an agent to investigate him apparently.
• 54:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now we're in the present and Professor Fobos is making the radiation expand outward in a revenge plot.
• 54:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: But they always assume that Tanya and Sergei are behind it, but he's actually the bad one.
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he's been stealing all the mutant kid's powers over time.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the big reveal, the mutant twins,
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: are the children of Sergei, the presence.
• 54:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was irradiated when they were born.
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: We know nothing about their mother.
• 55:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: They were born mutants, and they were taken away.
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he was told that they died along with their mother.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he's the father of Darkstar, who is an X-Men fan favorite as well as Vanguard.
• 55:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the end, Sergei realizes that there's only one way to save the planet.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: A chain reaction bilms, radioactive molecules, replicating themselves at an incredible pace, so in the vividness on will erupt outward, the only way to prevent the spread, if the red garden and eye to absorb its unstable energies into ourselves and transform it and ourselves into a nut matter.
• 55:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Far from this earthly sphere, parallel to my children, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, I never betrayed you, I loved you with all my heart.
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, Earth planet of my birth, I go to dwell for all eternity with him who I love above life itself.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'm shooting.
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they send in to space.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're like goodbye forever planet.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're never coming back.
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Did it blow your minds to learn that this was Darkstar's dad?
• 55:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, and no.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, right.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it's wild.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: But like it's aligned with that whole, like children, like mutants are the children of mutations and a radiation exposure that was common in the 70s for X-Men characters and mutants.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that worked.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: that it did feel a little bit like, okay, is every Martian Marvel character like all related to each other?
• 56:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the answer is that is apparently yes, yes, they all are.
• 56:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: So they're gone for years until Mark Grunwald does a story in Quasar, where the stranger, we go see the trial of the stranger, has captured a whole bunch of characters that are super obscure.
• 56:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: All of their stories ended up with them flying off into space.
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a whole smattering of characters here, a ton, including Krakawa.
• 56:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Krakawa is in this, which is crazy, because remember how Polaris, like not Krakawa into space?
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the presence and the red, well, the present specifically, we don't see the red guardian at first, are on the stranger's ship,
• 56:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: did, and now Quasars there, and we find Red Guardian there, and they're helping everyone escape, and the entity Eon is here, and the presence is somehow decided that this cosmic entity is a threat to Earth.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he's fighting Quasar anyway.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jenny comes back in Quasar 20 with a new codename, which is Starlight.
• 57:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, which actually really love.
• 57:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love that code name for her.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's outgrown or her red guardian days.
• 57:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Quasar gets all of the strangers prisoners to Siberia and the presence in Starlight attacked the fantastic four in order to get to Eon and they're like, are you the Phoenix to Starlight which is hilarious?
• 57:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: They burst into the Eon verse to kill Eon, but Quasar ends up dumping them in the quantum verse, which is like that place that Aunt Man shrunk into in that one movie.
• 57:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Don't worry about it.
• 57:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then they come back all the way in Quasar 45 and 46 again under Mark Greenwald.
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: The presence is floating randomly through the quantum verse void.
• 57:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: The narration calls him a Russian mutant who lives on a radioactive decay.
• 57:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Not quite accurate.
• 57:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: He gets pulled back to our Earth through a hole because neutron from the Imperial Guard, the gay one, opened a hole in the presence came out, which we won't delve deep into that thought experiment.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the presence spends weeks like traveling across space to get back to.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Earth, and they have to fight these weird, ebbin, antibodies, and they attack quasar directly, and neutron rips off quasar's ponytail and battle, which is amazing.
• 58:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I would love to do a neutron episode one day.
• 58:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: quasar tricks neutron into breaching the presence's armor.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: About Sergei repairs it.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Presence then decides to abandon the fight because he has learned that the Soviet Union has dissolved.
• 58:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he's like, oh, I got to go back to Russia, a rule my country.
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Crazy, crazy, crazy.
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It made sense to send them off in the space because they felt like at that time they were so overly powerful that it was one of those, there was a couple of characters where I'm sure writers are not trouble writing for them.
• 58:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I like that they were shipped off there in a cosmic way.
• 58:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: To cool the head, have more, hear more of their stories as they were out there though.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you like the name, uh, do you like the name Starlight?
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I do.
• 58:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is a nice upgrade and it also means that the red guardian net can go back to whoever needs to use it because there's almost always the need for a red guardian Well, I think it's white because there already were additional red guardians in the meantime
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a good upgrade, you know, it feels a little bit like there's there's a couple of other heroes that we've seen that happen before where they kind of dramatically changed their deal and they get a new code name.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I actually to make the very the very similar point like this almost the exact same thing happened to Carol.
• 59:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right for being mismarable to binary.
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely actually got cool new powers.
• 59:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so Marvel Comics presents little eight-page snippets.
• 59:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: We get a story where the presence is back on Earth.
• 59:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is issue number 70.
• 59:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: He sees a television report about Black Widow in Darkstar, both in America, and he decides that he must have them.
• 59:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think he has forgotten that Darkstar is his daughter in this story.
• 59:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the creepy version of this guy's back, I must have them.
• 59:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Too long, if I contented myself with the possession of only U starlight, I, the ultimate Russian man.
• 59:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Man!
• 59:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: ba, more unto a god, isn't it only fitting that a superior being such as I should have any and all of the very best Soviet womanhood has to offer?
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, yes, I should go bring them.
• 59:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Starlight does his bidding.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: She has tears running down her cheek.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Black Widow is talking about defecting, which she's done more than once.
• 59:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Dark Star says she's trying to change Russia from within, and then Starlight attacks, but they managed to free her from the presence
• 59:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Starlight says, quote, your father to Darkstar is very ill.
• 1:00:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Even though he hurts me deeply, I know it is not truly he that does so.
• 1:00:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: I beg you do not interfere.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Allow me to return to him and through my love, help him to return to me.
• 1:00:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, girl, you got it.
• 1:00:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: You got to leave this man.
• 1:00:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Back in Russia in the forbidden zone, Darkstar shows the presence and starlight that Vanguard, her twin brother and the son of the presence, died during a mission that Quasar recruited him on in a star blast story.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're not going to go there.
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's talk about Vanguard another time.
• 1:00:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: So they follow Quasar around for a while and they attack him and there's a big fight and Nova gets involved and Quasar lets the villains believe that he's dead at the end of the story so that he can go off into space and grieve the loss of his girlfriend Caleb Valentine who is gone.
• 1:00:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's the end of the Quasar series.
• 1:00:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: noting that Starlight is being mind-controlled and we see Dark Star and Vanguard get involved, and Vanguard is dead, which sets up the next set of Quasar stories under the pen of Kurt Bucyaked Avengers.
• 1:00:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, Derek, do you want to take us two Avengers volume three?
• 1:01:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is one of my favorite periods of the Avengers, because there's, I love a huge cast, and this was definitely a huge cast, saga going on.
• 1:01:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Chad, you might need to help fill in some blanks here, because I think we're picking up.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So King the Conqueror is there, and he is
• 1:01:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'll give you a quick setup.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is an era where Curt Bucy experiment on the Avengers for a few years now.
• 1:01:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love this run.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is late 90s, early 2000s.
• 1:01:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the Avengers have decided to be proactive instead of reactive.
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a story Hickman does later with them at two and even greater degree, but they've expanded their roster.
• 1:01:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they're trying to handle threats around the world before they happen.
• 1:01:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: So,
• 1:01:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: The team is spread all over the place.
• 1:01:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's Hulk shit happening.
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's the step with the deviants.
• 1:01:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's all kinds of things going on.
• 1:01:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then King the Conquer comes into like conquer the whole planet.
• 1:01:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like he destroys Washington DC.
• 1:01:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's basically doing what Emperor Doom is doing in the modern comics.
• 1:01:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: In Russia, and one of the screens you see the winter guard they're all glowing radioactive and they're attacking.
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a propaganda poster with the presence on it and it just says join.
• 1:01:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Team of Avengers go off to Moscow.
• 1:01:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: As we must be swift Sergei, we cannot stay in an inhabit area as long without contaminating them.
• 1:02:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have to come to this chamber often.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so they're in the creme, and he says, yes, yes.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: We cannot alarm them.
• 1:02:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Cannot cause them worry.
• 1:02:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: We brought them the body of my son of my son, but still they fear us.
• 1:02:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we must remain quantum shifted that they may not see or hear us.
• 1:02:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we can only snatch moments with him.
• 1:02:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, McCyle, my son.
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: They honor him Sergei as a hero of the motherland.
• 1:02:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: A hero, Pa, a dead hero.
• 1:02:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: I sacrificed my humanity for power, Tanya, for power, and I received it.
• 1:02:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: But it is a power that cuts me off from my homeland, my people, from everyone but you.
• 1:02:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And for all that cost all this great power, I cannot prevent my country's crashing from greatness into chaos, dissolution, and ruin.
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Cannot even save my own son.
• 1:02:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Is it not enough that I have power and power?
• 1:02:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I shall act.
• 1:02:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, the guards are innocent.
• 1:02:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you unleash your power, silence woman, I am not about to go on some rampage Do not fear that return to the forbidden zone where they will let us live in isolation return while I alter my physical state once more and seek True.
• 1:03:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this guy's like amped up.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's like professor X sneaking around like intangibles by and on people
• 1:03:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so, um, he drinks into Vanguard's brain.
• 1:03:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: His goal is to just kind of put around in there and see if he can bring back the life, which actually does.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he writes in his journal entry.
• 1:03:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Energy controls matter, and my control is thus considerable.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I shifted my atoms and becoming intangible, microscopic, and I entered the body of my son.
• 1:03:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ooh, that's phrasing.
• 1:03:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: The government kept his corpse preserving gases of my own design, and they, and I thought they, that they prevented decay.
• 1:03:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: But as I plunged deep within his atomic structure into this space between storms, I discovered this was not so.
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: My son's power gave him certain controls over energy as well.
• 1:03:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And on an infinitesimal level, faint and undetectable from the outside, a trace of that energy remained and I kept him alive.
• 1:03:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: A faint spark of life growing weekly at his core.
• 1:03:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I added my power to his, giving it willingly, gladly, and though it took virtually all of the vast fires within me, I drained myself, giving him the energies of my heart, so and that spark flickered flash and flared into life once more.
• 1:04:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was exhausted, spent a drift at the esopotamic level of reality, and it would be for months, if not longer, before I would be able to return to the greater realm.
• 1:04:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I drifted, regaining my strength, and I studied.
• 1:04:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I learned, I saw how the energy that permeates matter, the energy of life itself,
• 1:04:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: functions harmonizes replicates and glows and I made a wonderful discovery.
• 1:04:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is the weirdest porn plot I've ever fucking read.
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's super dirty.
• 1:04:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: I entered my son and I gave all of my essence until I was drained and it brought him back to life.
• 1:04:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: He does come back months later, much less to our life's surprise.
• 1:04:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think he's just kind of peered back in the, uh, forbidden zone.
• 1:04:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have returned.
• 1:04:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And with me, I bring Salvation, listen, our nation and its former Dominions face economic collapse, but worse, they face cultural pollution from the West as outside forces seek to profit from rebuilding Russia, seek to change her people, who very nature, but I saved my son and my discovery will
• 1:05:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he's like, remember the time my mind controlled a lady?
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe I could do that to everybody.
• 1:05:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and then Starlight says, but surely some level of assimilation is inevitable as people leave as outsiders come in.
• 1:05:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, I can change Russia's people, make them a new form of life and nuclear forms.
• 1:05:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Something you and I can be part of once more.
• 1:05:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Our people will be bound together, sharing strength, sharing life.
• 1:05:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: They will need only each other and repel all efforts to change them.
• 1:05:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: We will be free of all poison, whether it comes in the form of force or of creeping economics.
• 1:05:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Russia will be a new land, standing alone and strong.
• 1:05:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: We will be powerful, proud, united, and it begins now.
• 1:05:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so he's all like he's an amped up and like ready to make the USSR great again.
• 1:05:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm starting to, he wants to start taking over, you know, with his countrymen at first.
• 1:05:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the Avengers show up, the team that is there is the Black Knight Fireboard Quick Silver, Captain America, and Thor, and they start fighting the Russian superheroes that have been taken over at this point.
• 1:06:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the president's figure is, well, okay, why just stop at Russia, are the USSR or let's do the entire world and then embeds his energy
• 1:06:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: into his energies into the Avengers, but Firebird and Thor, the only two that were immune to this.
• 1:06:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're a battle ensues with Thor and Firebird against all of these other superheroes.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thor makes a comment, quick silver is like stronger.
• 1:06:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, more strong has been, his powers have been amplified, his strength has been amplified, long story short.
• 1:06:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thor absorbs the presence's radioactivity through me and me and more.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Starlight says to channel the energy back into her, so she can help cure everybody.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's how the plot is foiled.
• 1:06:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: You want to move into the dialogue?
• 1:06:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so yeah, so basically this is where Starlight is able to kind of declare it's gone too far.
• 1:06:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the thing that makes her up a little bit.
• 1:06:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, yeah, Scotty, do you want to read Starlight here?
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: The dream of global unity was his, not mine.
• 1:07:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Either is nothing but a reversing it.
• 1:07:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: But just as I share his power, I share his curves.
• 1:07:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Our little power prevents us from associated long with others.
• 1:07:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Without him, I would be alone.
• 1:07:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Derek has to do Thor being the voice of Thor on my show.
• 1:07:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Or Abswoman, that would be better off that way.
• 1:07:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, perhaps.
• 1:07:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: So she gets a little bit of will, but also is realizing like I'm a radioactive person.
• 1:07:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know where else I can go.
• 1:07:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: But a music actually gives her a little bit of a redemptive arc here.
• 1:07:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a little like we've moved past rape and where it's clearly into like a very dv kind of situation where she's like, I don't know what to do.
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's terrible to me, but I don't can't go anywhere.
• 1:07:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that didn't really set well with me either because I guess like in today and the world that she's they're living in She's kind of gave up like there was no she thought she would be alone There's there has to be some other solutions out there like she didn't want to even try or just really recognize She still couldn't recognize that she was with the really bad person So yeah, and then Little later on the Starlink presence aid the rest of the world in fighting king the conquer presence says to starlight
• 1:08:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: We shall break this intruder, but then we will have proved our power.
• 1:08:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: We can return to the broken earth below and claim our due, our own nation, perhaps, or Dominion over Mother Russia.
• 1:08:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's silent, sir, okay.
• 1:08:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: You will do what you have been asked to save our planet and you will do no more than that.
• 1:08:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when we then you will return to captivity, you will do this willingly or by other than I will leave you.
• 1:08:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Very well, my love, for you.
• 1:08:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yay, yay, Tanya!
• 1:08:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, finally.
• 1:08:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think you would fucking find it.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So then we see them again in the winter garden.
• 1:08:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a whole winter garden for a log of one.
• 1:08:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Presence is in a cell.
• 1:08:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: He heard that dark star had died.
• 1:08:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe she got resurrected, but it's actually like the government.
• 1:08:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this is an X-course story.
• 1:08:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you read X-Men, dark star dies in that one story.
• 1:08:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then like the government has found a way to access her power and put it into other women who take on her essence.
• 1:08:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a couple of other dark stars at this era.
• 1:09:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of weird.
• 1:09:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the presence escapes the spy on Igor Drenkov, who Sergey mutated into a massive radioactive monster.
• 1:09:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: The presence and the monster attack the winner guard.
• 1:09:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Furious to learn that Darkstar is the imposter, and then they get defeated later from prison.
• 1:09:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The presence reinforced the Sasha that she is only an imposter.
• 1:09:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Sasha, that thick imposter Darkstar.
• 1:09:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of internal confidence issues with her, so he's kind of like into that.
• 1:09:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just thought this was all very interesting because we saw the Vanguard, like a lot of the presence as I've read through all this and looking at it in a different way, like a lot of it was about like him wanting to have like a family in a way, so he I liked it, it's also father's day today, so it's also very coincidental.
• 1:09:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But this guy has a lot of Trump energy, right?
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it's very narcissistic when I'm not important then I get lonely and now suddenly I want the people that I've rejected to love me.
• 1:09:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's, it's, I don't like him.
• 1:09:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I, I wasn't saying that I liked him.
• 1:10:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I'm not, I'm agreeing with you, I promise.
• 1:10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get another series called Darkstar, The Winner Guard, which is really awesome read because again, I really like this team.
• 1:10:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, so the presence was really helped a week in Fentasma, who is another, who is like a Soviet witch, mystical entity.
• 1:10:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's actually a dire-weight queen and wanted to dominate the world.
• 1:10:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Late a bunch of eggs, is that correct?
• 1:10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like underneath their laboratory.
• 1:10:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we'll do a thing.
• 1:10:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, it doesn't more to talk about fit as my another tie.
• 1:10:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, she's an evil-dialer, fair-rate witch who wants to conquer the world's prize.
• 1:10:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But somewhere along the way, Starlight actually left the presence, which good for her, but then started dating his son, the resurrected Van guard.
• 1:10:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, so Starlight's fucking Van guard now, which I think is actually kind of fucking amazing.
• 1:10:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't really say much about it, like, but she's, this is porny too, right?
• 1:10:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, she's fucking her stepson.
• 1:10:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do you think this is a way to get back at the presence in our night in a really weird way?
• 1:10:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: How many people can you fuck as a radioactive milk?
• 1:10:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
• 1:11:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe she could join Radioactive Man.
• 1:11:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
• 1:11:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you kind of wonder about that, right?
• 1:11:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because there are some characters that would be probably just fine with this.
• 1:11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right?
• 1:11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: What about like, but not the Hulk?
• 1:11:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, didn't that be a thing?
• 1:11:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe.
• 1:11:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:11:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:11:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she joined another superhero scene called the Protectorate.
• 1:11:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Phatasmos on that parent and power strikes, still Guardian, Moistart, which I love adding to,
• 1:11:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: the collection of Russian super heroes.
• 1:11:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: They handle the military uprising in St. Petersburg, lots of property destruction.
• 1:11:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: They fight the winner guard, and they get a flashback to when the projector went to limo to ask a mortist to start dark start a life, and they battled the exiled direfs.
• 1:11:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, and Hezma is evil.
• 1:11:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Starlight got to use her medical skills to upgrade power surge, but she saw a red garden beheaded right in front of her, so that's probably triggering knowing that she was the guardian.
• 1:11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: a long time ago, and in the end, Fantasma was a band of Salimbo, Starlight was actually with her, and then she's trapped with, oh, backing up a little bit.
• 1:11:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Fantasma and the presence started flirting and decided to, they wanted to impregnate those eggs together.
• 1:12:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: with presences.
• 1:12:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't read you activity.
• 1:12:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's some sort of connection there.
• 1:12:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, started.
• 1:12:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I got banished a limbo with like her ex's new girlfriend, which again, that's another story that would be awesome to see.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and then Darkstar was resurrected.
• 1:12:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is fun because it takes all of the history and just let's it be crazy soap opera superhero.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And this is kind of since the early defenders, this is like Starlight's first time operating as a hero.
• 1:12:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's been a long, fucking time.
• 1:12:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me close out her appearances really quickly and then we'll kind of share our resonant thoughts.
• 1:12:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: We get a weird series called Operation Sin, written by Katherine Ammonin, who goes back into like Russia's prehistory.
• 1:12:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is when Peggy Carter was a really big deal on TV after the movies.
• 1:12:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we get to see a 16 year old Tania Balinsky at her father Andre, who he has developed an underground engine testing facility, and he's been in the Gulag.
• 1:12:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And she like teams up with Peggy Carter, Howard Stark,
• 1:13:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Woodrow in the court who's like the man on the wall from the operation or so it's from the What was that story original sin story line and then the teenage or some major is here They get to like write a bear and she's involved in this.
• 1:13:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: She gets to like knockout a KGB guy They meet some old fantastic four villains called Cherine in the Ebb and Seeker and she gets arrested at the end It's kind of a crazy like oh the
• 1:13:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, Tanya had some prehistory here and then finally we get Deadpool in the Mercs for money series numbers four and five Where Carolina in the Faye has hired the Mercs for money to like round up a whole bunch of radioactive people They would nuggets on a teenage warheads here a cold-bought man the presence there's a big little fight and at the end Negasonic completely drains the presence of all his energy and like we just see his gold armor like left clinking empty on the floor like tink tink tink like he's dead.
• 1:13:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's gone and I hope frankly he's never back
• 1:13:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I also hope that that triggered like a reaction where like starlight all of her stuff is cured now Like that's where I have this character to go.
• 1:13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we covered a lot of fucking history and we jumped all over the place How are you guys feeling about first the presence like I mean we've been calling out this entire episode It's a welcome man with a fragile ego and power hungry, but super involved with himself Yeah, I don't I also don't want to see him back on the page.
• 1:14:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't I think we have enough of that in the real world and I
• 1:14:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I feel like the one thing we haven't covered at all, and we don't have to go in a deep dive here, but radioactivity is really fucking scary, and this guy is that guy.
• 1:14:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's the most, I mean again, there's the radioactive man, but there's like radioactive shit is scary, scary, scary, and this guy is really scary.
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, one thing that I did, like, that last episode, the last story with the dead pool back when he first got his powers and he was like, nerfing, name or in the Hulk, it just seemed like in the modern day comics, he wasn't didn't come off as scary or powerful anymore, like there was so many ways to deal with him, compared to how like the dead, the defenders were dealing with him.
• 1:14:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know if that's like a commentary on how like,
• 1:14:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: heroes and villains are in modern day combat comics compared to how they were a little bit.
• 1:15:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: How the times were different with the comic books back then in the 70s?
• 1:15:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I truly never want to see this villain back unless he came back in like a human form, right?
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think there's some interesting things.
• 1:15:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're radioactive shit scary.
• 1:15:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm kind of over it.
• 1:15:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: But like the pull he had in the Russian government the way he could connect to all these different Russian characters.
• 1:15:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: characters that have elements of power, anyone from Mikhail Rasputin to the Crimson Dynamo, right?
• 1:15:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's all these characters where he's an interesting person to work in behind the scenes, but wow, he calls himself the presence.
• 1:15:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: This man wants fucking attention.
• 1:15:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: They describe him as an amplified ego, the entire time, and he's just a fucking rapist and murderer, just a truly terrible bit the visual.
• 1:15:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: The visual on this character is stunning.
• 1:15:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's a beautifully designed character.
• 1:15:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: I like how he's redeemable he is, which is a weird thing to say, but that is maybe something to say about the flavor of Bill and I like, I occasionally do a Bill and who is really just this conceited and awful, and he thinks he's like on some heroic arpeys, like he's at a rapist and a murderer, and kind of like the mentally abad guy, and there's something to be said for enjoying that, especially in a state in a world where a common professor, we have all these villains who go become anti-heroes, but I don't necessarily need to see him again.
• 1:16:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: to design enough, though that I would love to see someone else pick up that power set, maybe.
• 1:16:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's extremely self-important, right?
• 1:16:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And there's some interesting ways that he can play off other characters, but yet truly just an iridemable, awful, awful character.
• 1:16:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now we have Starlight, and she's currently often limbo, right?
• 1:16:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like this is a character who has some redemptive possibilities, and who, especially that version we first met in the 70s, once she got taken back to Russia, we had never seen mention of her being a neuroscientist again really, except she got to help
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: power surge one time thoughts on tenure and her story.
• 1:16:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: What are the things we need more of or want to see?
• 1:16:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, we've seen the defenders get rebooted from time and time again, right?
• 1:16:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: The defenders to be on serious is really was a thing that All-U-A-A-A did recently, and we've seen some of the little kinds of things.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: She would be a great person to come back in that group and the sort of non-team status.
• 1:17:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I like her as kind of what I said before.
• 1:17:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's an activist
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would kind of like her to be a character who came back and maybe worked with the heroes but also kind of like fought with them sometimes like a very like very anti hero kind of person like who has good intentions but maybe doesn't always agree with the way that the Western heroes do things I think that could be an interesting direction for to go.
• 1:17:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I also, like, as I said, I think she'd be playing character for the whole dinner act, but again, I hope all the needs, I hope all the needs, some more people around.
• 1:17:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Derek, yeah, I'd like to see her, um, you know, coming out of limbo with no powers.
• 1:17:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to have her go back to be like her original kind of status.
• 1:17:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It'd be cool to see her pick up the mantle of the Red Guardian again and what that means in today's world for Russia and former Soviet Union countries.
• 1:17:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was also interesting to see more of her doctor energy out there.
• 1:17:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think leaning into her like inslaff would be great.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really didn't enjoy operations in.
• 1:17:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was a bit huge fan of Agent Carter actually and the TV show, so reading that series was great.
• 1:18:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was one like...
• 1:18:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: kind of throw a line where, because Monday got shot or needed medical help, then that they mentioned that, you know, I think the communist got rid of all the doctors.
• 1:18:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I didn't know if that was like the spark of why she went into the medical field too, but so just seeing more of that and using like playing into that, I think would be interesting.
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's got a lot of really interesting relationships, but you just hit on something I hadn't considered.
• 1:18:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Watching her as a character who has survived trauma and like walking away from all of that and saying, I'm choosing to be a hero.
• 1:18:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think there's a really interesting redemptive arc for her there.
• 1:18:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: But my favorite version of her is just that early defender stuff.
• 1:18:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I would love to write early defenders her in Valkyrie and Hellcat, like kicking ass with Nightcrot and I often do fiss in the background.
• 1:18:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like that's delightful to me, that era.
• 1:18:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Um, we're going to spend just a couple minutes.
• 1:18:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: I would love to hear from both of you in your respective fields.
• 1:18:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: What was it like reading these stories from the 1970s if you have commentary on just the reflection of the changing politics and what it means for the stuff you guys are doing in your daily lives, which is so impressive to me.
• 1:19:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Checking it to today's world, like, yeah, nuclear, nuclear always gets tossed around there as a potential solution to climate change as we're new energy source, but we know that it's dangerous and the byproducts from it are extremely dangerous as well.
• 1:19:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, the plan,
• 1:19:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: especially as well as the world shifts to using AI like the plan to power those sources is like people keep touting nuclear and you know there's a lot of butterflies that should be going up when we talk about that.
• 1:19:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah that the destruction that that that that that power source leaves is definitely a huge environmental concern.
• 1:19:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: On top of that, I think we're still reckoning with, I mean, Chernobyl's 40 years older whenever now, but we're still figuring out what the fact that means.
• 1:19:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I recently watched the series Fear the Walking Dead, which is the follow-up to the original Walking Dead, and there's a couple of seasons where like, now that the world is untended.
• 1:19:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: The nuclear bomb gets still goes off because no one's attending those stations, right?
• 1:20:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a whole season of the show that's like radioactive nuclear zombies, where the humans have to wear like hazmat suits to try to live, but also there's like radioactive zombies pursuing them.
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really fucking scary.
• 1:20:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And like that may be thing like, oh my god, what are we doing?
• 1:20:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the thing I was thinking about and the conversations we've been having a lot in my field are around.
• 1:20:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I do supply chain, I do work on supply chain, supply chain analytics, and we talk a lot about the,
• 1:20:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: How global trade is changing a lot right now based on how all the different organizations are ramping up and reading these comics from the 70s reminded me of when there was very much that Bifurcated world about who could go where and who could talk who could buy what from what and we're sort of moving back into that.
• 1:20:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know that I have a great observation on that particularly, but it is creepy to think about a little bit of that piece of it.
• 1:20:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: I guess the other thing I would think about too is, as a part of some of the work I do as a data scientist, I do a lot of work to help people from non-traditional backgrounds or people who have been my minority groups get into data science and get into doing AI.
• 1:21:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I see a lot of what happened to this character as it's like very long to scientists who just kind of got used up and sort of treated very poorly by the system, but both texturally and and meta-texturally and it feels kind of
• 1:21:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And as we were talking about this, I also looked up some information about a woman in Seraphima Buosoba, who was the one of the first neuroscientists or neurosurgeons, excuse me.
• 1:21:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she was a Soviet lady.
• 1:21:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I kind of wonder if she maybe had some influence on the creation of this character.
• 1:21:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
• 1:21:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: But she also basically was a woman living in Soviet Russia and was a very prominent neurosurgeon and got kind of eclipsed by male neurosurgeons, especially having a lot of work done a lot of pioneering work in surgery.
• 1:21:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: So,
• 1:21:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I feel very similar about like looking at what happened to Starlight and saying, you know, she kind of got, there is a different trajectory for her, right?
• 1:21:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: One like what happened to Carol, where Carol got those terrible stories about rape, and then they figured out a way to functionally rescue the character and turn her into usable character again, and I don't feel like that really happened for Starlight and the same.
• 1:22:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, there's a lot of potential there, but she kind of got, yeah, she just got capsized at a certain point and became that story, just the side piece to the presence, which is rough.
• 1:22:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: We covered a lot of topics related to feminism, and now to start where we begin, or to end where we started, I'd be to excuse me, the commentary on the show this month has largely been about the changing portrayal of Russia in comics over the decades, and we see this here very much.
• 1:22:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: The way the presence was introduced,
• 1:22:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: when he rushes back to Russia because it's been overthrown and now I need to conquer my country.
• 1:22:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, like there's so many versions of this and that idea of the man behind the power, the changing sensitivity of American understanding toward Russian politics, although it remains super complicated because as we're recording this, there's still a war in Ukraine.
• 1:22:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a new war between Israel and Iran brewing and ICE agents are fucking all over our country as we are ready to fucking declare civil war.
• 1:22:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is just, it's insane times in reading these comics
• 1:23:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, by the time we released this on July 24th, I will have hung out with both of you in person at the Udkedi experience which I can't wait, we'll post some photos for everybody.
• 1:23:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm very much looking forward.
• 1:23:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am very very emotionally overwhelmed by what's happening in our world, given my job and being a dad and a gay man.
• 1:23:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm so fucking tired, making the show remains my solitude and my solace.
• 1:23:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: So spending this time with you this father's day morning was just the super joyful part of my day, even as we're talking about heavy things.
• 1:23:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: So,
• 1:23:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you every time you come on the show.
• 1:23:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm always always happy to see you both and what a joy.
• 1:23:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Watch for the trial of Colossus out on the show as the next episode immediately after this.
• 1:23:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the month of August, we get to have some fun as well doing some Avengers script reads, as well as the trial of whirlwind.
• 1:23:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have some really fun plans in place.
• 1:23:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the final episode of the month out here on the Patreon will be our final Russian character this month.
• 1:23:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, who is Elena Ivanova, a Russian telepath, a saber-tooth victim and a maverick love interest.
• 1:23:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I get to be joined by my friends Jay Cosmic and the writer of this character, primarily, a Jorge Gonzalez.
• 1:24:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: So watch for that episode.
• 1:24:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, there's like 40 more Russian characters.
• 1:24:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I could do Patreon's a lot.
• 1:24:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was very selective, but she's one of my favorites.
• 1:24:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Follow the show at Graham Walken under score lane online, most easily.
• 1:24:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: And, uh, what would the two of you like to plug and where can people find you?
• 1:24:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: you can follow me on Instagram at Derek J. Nichols.
• 1:24:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I also have been recapping planet episodes and like bringing it to like 2025.
• 1:24:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like how it's like your energy.
• 1:24:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really love watching those.
• 1:24:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're delayed.
• 1:24:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to know what that means.
• 1:24:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: We can have that conversation at uncanny experience what my energy means.
• 1:24:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But so, and you can also, I collect those on TikTok at PlanetTherodot Derrick, but they're also close to my Instagram.
• 1:24:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, hop in for that ride.
• 1:24:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: By your energy, I mean, you're delightful and you're just working on your speed and your pace and your educational and silly and dry humor.
• 1:24:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really fun to watch.
• 1:24:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm glad to know you, my friend.
• 1:24:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Again, I get it.
• 1:24:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
• 1:24:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: But also, you're the kind of person who goes, what is my energy me?
• 1:24:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you can follow me on Kai at least got to use I post there sometimes.
• 1:25:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I will also, if you want to hear me talk more about data science stuff for your interest in career and data science or AI, I'm going to I will have a post for me in the very near future on the data ideas podcast and so you can find me there.
• 1:25:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: us, such a delight.
• 1:25:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you both for hanging out with me.
• 1:25:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: This was longer than we expected, but I had a blast, so I appreciate your time on this Sunday afternoon.
• 1:25:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right, everybody.
• 1:25:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for listening.
• 1:25:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Please stay safe out there.
• 1:25:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Live bold, live strong.
• 1:25:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back here next week on the Grimmelton Lynch Hill.
• 1:25:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism.
• 1:25:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: As a special guest and I talked about a red skull story, and it's modern applications.
• 1:25:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: By 1942, Nazi Germany had already developed highly lethal chemical agents, including nerve gases, like taboone and seren, innovations originally derived from pesticide research by German scientists, which I have talked about a little bit in a previous Redskull conversation.
• 1:25:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: The German war industry, including the conglomerate egg farbin, or IG farbin, supplied such chemicals through the regime and used them, and excuse me, though the regime used them far more for extermination and camps than for battlefield warfare.
• 1:26:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nonetheless, as World War II unfolded along the eastern front and an occupied territories, German commanders and chemical warfare units considered using toxic or asphyxiating gases, in certain siege, or anti-partisan operations.
• 1:26:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't have time to go into this history today, but part of the reason Germany received so many sanctions after World War I, which led to their eyes of fascism, as we've talked about, was because of their use of chemical warfare against soldiers and civilians in combat.
• 1:26:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: One of the most disgusting tragic episodes in the defense,
• 1:26:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: of the Edskamushka Cori between May and October 1942, some 13,000 Soviet soldiers and civilians sought shelter in a network of limestone tunnels and catechomes near Kirch and Crimea, wind German forces advanced.
• 1:26:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: According to some post-war Soviet and later sources, German troops sealed the Cori's entrances, pumped smoke or toxic gas into the tunnels, and then bombarded or collapsed parts of the mine to crush or suffocate those inside.
• 1:27:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: The result, as recorded in many commemorations and memorial accounts, was catastrophic, only a few dozen to a few hundred possibly survived, and the vast majority nearly 13,000 perished due to this attack.
• 1:27:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: That said, modern scholarship in some surviving German war records cast serious doubt on the clarity of the evidence.
• 1:27:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Officially there was no universally accepted wartime or post-war documentation, confirming a deliberate large-scale deployment of nerve or poison gas.
• 1:27:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: A Wonderman military chemically unit did record a proposal to use non-lethal irritant smoke to flush out partisans from caves, but reportedly the order was denied.
• 1:27:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because of the chaos of retreat, the destruction of many documents and the reliance on testimonies and later Soviet investigations historians often categorize this case as alleged probable but unproven.
• 1:27:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: not as definitively proven chemical weapon deployment, like the documented mask gatherings and extermination camps.
• 1:27:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And part of the reason I share this story, even though it is not based entirely in fact, history is based on those who tell it and what survives to be recorded, which is an interesting reflection on what we're going through these days.
• 1:28:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now we're going to jump to a story.
• 1:28:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I read off the stands during my handbook days.
• 1:28:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is Avengers Volume 3, beginning in number 61 and then building from there.
• 1:28:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is the red zone story line.
• 1:28:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And a slowly building subplot, we meet the United States Secretary of Defense, Dell Rusk, which is a very clever anagram for red skull.
• 1:28:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: It always cracks me up on super villains that need to leave some sort of obvious clue to their name.
• 1:28:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's influencing national events with the president in 64, he's putting political pressure on Henry Peter Gaierick, getting intel from him at a clandestine meeting at the Statue of Liberty.
• 1:28:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: A plague of flesh-eating bacteria is released at Mount Rushmore has infected hundreds of civilians in an aggressive viral attack on the United States called Project Bloodwash, hundreds are dying, and Rush orders the Avengers to stop searching for a cure for the virus saying they were no longer sponsored by the United States, but the Avengers soon realized that the virus has been designed in the USA.
• 1:28:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of early parts of this story we won't take time to cover, where the Avengers are very helpless to help civilians who are dying
• 1:29:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: chemical or viral attack.
• 1:29:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Avengers soon discovered that blood wash has been specifically designed to target and kill, quote, non-whites, and it ends up mutating She-Hulk into a massive gamma monster during the fight.
• 1:29:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: When Falcon gets close to learning the truth about Rusk, Rusk shoots him right in the chest, and then he shoots Gaerick, who finally figures out the Antagrab.
• 1:29:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh no, you're
• 1:29:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: the Red Skull, I'm working for the Red Skull.
• 1:29:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Henry Peter Geirick, you'll get a trial on my show one day, I promise.
• 1:29:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Russ grips the skin office face, puts his hand on his heart in front of the American flag and states with his Red Skull showing.
• 1:29:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love America, it's the Red Skull, it's kind of country, Russ gets up beating the shit out of Geirick for a while as he prepares to release another viral attack, then he rants about how he became this secretary of defense, using aim tech to influence the minds of others.
• 1:29:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was actually surprised at how easily some of the congressmen and White House staff were subdued as for the fourth Reich.
• 1:29:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: That dream is over.
• 1:29:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have a new dream, a new vision, freedom, must feel fear and fear leads to control.
• 1:30:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was wrong about this country.
• 1:30:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: This wonderful United States of America.
• 1:30:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: It has all the resources already in place.
• 1:30:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: It has the right attitude's list within.
• 1:30:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: They just need to be exploited to become the perfect nation
• 1:30:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: America just needs a little push in the right direction and for those who listen to my show this is like the 17th time we've seen the red school give a speech like this about America and wow it just sucks every time Captain America attacks feet and fists and shield ready he calls school a monster monster I am the product of a government like you captain
• 1:30:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nazi Germany's perfect soldier and this perfect soldier will become the perfect leader.
• 1:30:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have confronted one another for over half a century, but our battle is over.
• 1:30:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: I believe in your ideals, Captain America.
• 1:30:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: I believe in the American dream.
• 1:30:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I understand you now.
• 1:30:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I needed an event such as this and event to bring fear and target any scapegoat that would serve my needs.
• 1:30:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: You must instill fear to capture control.
• 1:30:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hitler taught me that.
• 1:30:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Redskill fills the room with the red zone disease, claiming he's immune, and he wants to watch Captain America die.
• 1:30:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: He calls him a Jew lover, and he says he'll manipulate the president into declaring war on Wakanda to further his own cause.
• 1:31:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: But then, Iron Man and Black Panther attack.
• 1:31:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Black Panther, subhuman, I would brand your people as traitors to America.
• 1:31:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: They would be hunted, arrested, imprisoned.
• 1:31:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: While we bomb your country back to the Stone Age, Africa would be the first continent to be cleansed by my new America.
• 1:31:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Redskull is built a system that allows him to overload Iron Man's armor, but then Black Panther beats the shit out of the Redskull.
• 1:31:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: It a truly glorious scene.
• 1:31:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: He yells, and I'm not going to do it after I get access to my friends.
• 1:31:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: You have underestimated too many men and women today, counting them out because of gender and race.
• 1:31:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And as much as it seconds me, I've been thinking like you lately, but I'm through.
• 1:31:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a longer commentary on what the Black Panther is going through in this volume of comics.
• 1:31:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: After breaking the Red Skull's jaw, Black Panther cuts him, takes his blood, and then uses it to create an antidote to those hit by the Red Zone contagion.
• 1:31:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the Red Skull's actually captured for what's.
• 1:31:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: For this crazy story, Disgusted, let me welcome my dear friend, Minola's man, Boona's back to the show.
• 1:31:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Minola's hello, are you a Red Skull fan, my friend?
• 1:32:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, the Red Skull.
• 1:32:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm kidding.
• 1:32:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know you ask everyone this question.
• 1:32:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's sort of a little mistake, you know, when I knew someone, if someone actually says yes to this, that's dangerous, we only say no like, oh, he's great to punch or it's nice to have a bad villain to fight right when I initially invited you for this storyline, you had remembered reading it, what was it like for you the first time reading red zone and then going back to it this time.
• 1:32:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had read it off the stands as well, like you.
• 1:32:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have phone memories of this or the Jeff Johnson era, but we're reading it now and after everything we've gone through after the pandemic, after what we see the world going through with Trump twice now, it hits very differently.
• 1:32:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very patient and I really enjoy the pacing of it.
• 1:32:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what does that have to do on just doing here?
• 1:32:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you recall why you didn't like it the first time?
• 1:32:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think this is, this is the heart of Marvel's weight, writing for the trade era, and I think it really does not treat very well monthly because of the pacing, like so little happenseveries, just basically.
• 1:33:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, when we were for the trade era, this is when Marvel had the writers were tasked with writing like five issue or six issue arcs so that they could release them and trade paper bags.
• 1:33:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was the only choice for the time.
• 1:33:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think you lose a lot of the impact of the pacing and the pacing is exquisite when Red in one go, like how it really reads like a Hollywood horror movie and in horror movie.
• 1:33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it loses a lot when you read it month to month and then I think even now reading it again, it shifts gears very abruptly when Red's calorie will happens.
• 1:33:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It goes from this sort of,
• 1:33:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pandemic horror movie into Justice Luckfest.
• 1:33:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the Telastos uses just a puns him up.
• 1:33:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's simply a abruptly I think that still doesn't work very well, but overall I got chills reading this again.
• 1:33:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm very happy.
• 1:33:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's a huge cast of characters.
• 1:33:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jeff Jones is using a pretty big cast of Avengers and trying to give them all moments, but it's an era where there's a lot of big art and less dialogue on the page for the most part.
• 1:34:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: What then members?
• 1:34:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then members.
• 1:34:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of jack of hearts and aunt man and all kinds of things go I got which leads into when this is disassembled not too far after this What was it like for you reading at this time though?
• 1:34:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I enjoyed the little moment I mean you covered most of it and I love I'm here for your red scallops and but the two moments I picked out rereading it was how central vision is you know of this the comments that Captain America makes if I can read a bit.
• 1:34:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay?
• 1:34:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, there is a very significant point halfway through where C.H.H.
• 1:34:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: is discussing with Captain Meritor and C.H.
• 1:34:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Schiem, not to pry too much, but you don't seem surprised by all of this, and then CapriPly's.
• 1:34:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not shocked, Jennifer, just disappointed.
• 1:34:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The system, I believe in it.
• 1:34:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe our government can't work and has
• 1:34:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: but sometimes it just takes one idiot at the top hiding somewhere to make the dominos fall and i think that just after all we've been through that hits harder than it did back in the day you will it hit pretty hard back then too right like the the red zone story arc comes out in 2003
• 1:35:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: uh, which was a really rough time for America.
• 1:35:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is shortly after Fort my, for my American listeners, this is shortly after the Bush Gore election, where it was very much rigged in books, Bush's favor.
• 1:35:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: We had that big Florida recount, and then they basically just gave it to one guy, but this is also the heart of jerrymandering.
• 1:35:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: and Bush was the president that wanted to push the war effort and Gore was the one who wanted to combat global warming.
• 1:35:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right, I know I'm way over simplifying the issues, but like looking back on this, it's just like, oh, I remember pink releasing a song during this time, like called Dear Mr. President, everybody go give that a listen.
• 1:35:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like the youth singing to the president, like how the fuck could you let this happen?
• 1:35:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that was there in 2003 for sure.
• 1:35:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's so political and then the second part is vision in all of this, vision is very center stage in all of this and physics reactions, and I think that uses him to push for the anti-polemic stance he wants to take, weirdly because boost does so up in the story, but there's no comment towards him.
• 1:36:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very neutral the way he's portrayed.
• 1:36:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, even on the first issue, vision is trying to save a child who's been left behind.
• 1:36:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he flies over to the airplane that is just carrying people away and they say, no, we don't have any space for this child.
• 1:36:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he grabs the weapons from two of the agents, throws them out and said, these two weapons weigh as much as this child.
• 1:36:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you can save this child.
• 1:36:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it even pushes back again later on when we found out that this call research for the flaciting virus was posing as an HIV vaccine.
• 1:36:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they make the comment, all the money took to do this.
• 1:36:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Instead of wasting all this money on making a viral agent, and we have so many examples, real world comparisons, the AIDS crisis being won.
• 1:36:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: We could talk about just the Secretary of Defense role John Kerry shifting to Condolese a race in the war on Iraq, and
• 1:36:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: The chemical agency United States was using other countries at the time, but keeping this focused on the cap-red skull dynamic, cap has always been the character who wants to believe in what America could be, but he's constantly met by the evidence that, wow, it's not the way it is.
• 1:37:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Ever since he tore off his mask in that Nixon era story, right, where the X-Men are involved in the secret empire,
• 1:37:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a story once again where he's seeing innocent people that he cares about killed and they didn't deserve it And the red skulls right there back there with his fingers in the government again again again It just keeps fucking happening And then you find out that the virus is specifically been built to target non-whites even though they're testing it on a wider populace And the country also has a history of testing chemical agents and other viral things against subgroups of people who are in ethnic minorities
• 1:37:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: So again, just an awful, uncomfortable history and real world storytelling in our superhero comics is always just like, oh, wow, it just takes a little too far or almost.
• 1:37:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but they make the point, they try to design it to target non-weds, but they failed that's what led to this.
• 1:38:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's their own racism that backfired on them.
• 1:38:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, because the things which between people at the core, right?
• 1:38:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like we're all the same.
• 1:38:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we all bleed red.
• 1:38:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Is the, um, do you have any joyful moments in this?
• 1:38:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like we saw the vision, we saw cap.
• 1:38:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's some, I mean, watching She-Hulk Hulk out is always fun.
• 1:38:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Watching Black Panther get the final punch is a good time.
• 1:38:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, there's some fun superhero beats in this in this storyline.
• 1:38:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sifting the focus from Captain America to the two Black Avengers.
• 1:38:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Having to talk in who's all caught.
• 1:38:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and Black Panther.
• 1:38:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's all start with Falcon because it's all a big, what's the word?
• 1:38:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: A big callback to when he was brainwashed by the red skull.
• 1:38:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's good that it's Black Panther who has the big final battle and that the final tie is turned by something that the Falcon does, even as he's propped up helpless.
• 1:38:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's still him who's instrumental in changing everything.
• 1:38:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love red skull!
• 1:38:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Red skull in Falcon also have a very uncomfortable history to go back to earlier episodes, but just ugh.
• 1:38:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: With Falcon had the biggest take at this, like he gets a solo issue right before this starts, where it's all set up.
• 1:39:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: They do all of the seeding work, but I would have like to have a bit more from him.
• 1:39:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did enjoy the entire battle with Black Panther and how badass Black Panther is, until they look to the red skull.
• 1:39:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, how have you got anything to say, animal?
• 1:39:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'm going to break your jaw.
• 1:39:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's also fun to see this attack.
• 1:39:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is right before young Avengers launches, so like Ant-Man's about to die.
• 1:39:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is also like where she Hulk and Jack of Hearts are on the same team, so for those of you that have read Rainbow Rows, like big love story between these two and modern comics, like there's some fun nuggets for future events.
• 1:39:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Black Panther in this early series, it's it's been retconned by by priest writing the Black Panther Marvel Knights title that he joined the Avengers because he had a lot of secrets, he wanted to figure out what was going on.
• 1:39:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a lot of political intrigue happening with this character.
• 1:39:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: So to hear him say out loud, I realize I've been behaving like you, like plots within plots, wheels, within wheels, and you know, even making decisions as the king of a country that have resulted in harming other people, it's an uncomfortable coming of age for this character who has had a lot of growth in recent years in comics, as he has lost his monarchy to a parliamentary system in Wakanda.
• 1:40:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: But those are conversations for another time.
• 1:40:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do you like an anagram?
• 1:40:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do you like the idea of Del Rusk?
• 1:40:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought forgotten this, surprisingly.
• 1:40:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I started reading it and when it got to him revealing, I'm like, oh my god.
• 1:40:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, how did I miss it a second time?
• 1:40:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But he's very smart.
• 1:40:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he introduces him as Rusk through the first four parts of this and then just says Del Rusk.
• 1:40:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the scene before the big reveal.
• 1:40:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he doesn't give the reader a fair chance.
• 1:40:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do love this silverage and onions.
• 1:40:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a question for you.
• 1:40:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where do you think it was a copout to have the reds cut behind all of this?
• 1:40:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the way it was being said, this is something the government has been doing.
• 1:40:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: but after the reveal, it's all, oh yeah, it's not the government's fault.
• 1:41:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The red skull manipulated them, brainwast them.
• 1:41:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the American government at all.
• 1:41:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that's called doing this.
• 1:41:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: I, you know, I don't know that it was a cop out.
• 1:41:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: I do think you're asking a question about culpability, which will transition us naturally to my last question for everybody here, which is how we do in an American 2025 or the world stage 2025.
• 1:41:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think culpability is a question I've been wrestling with as I've been doing this research.
• 1:41:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if the Red Skulls behind it and people didn't know the Red Skull was behind it, are they culpable for authorizing these things?
• 1:41:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So when you have a character like Henry Peter Gaerick or the President or these other people who are agreeing with the Red Skull's initiatives and they've authorized this creation of this weapon even though they didn't know its accurate purpose or the identity of the person, they were still agreeing to make a chemical weapon, right?
• 1:41:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's still got deployed.
• 1:41:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Would they have changed their minds if they know that it was a Nazi war criminal behind it?
• 1:41:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, Henry Peter Gyrick makes a lot of shitty decisions over his comic book history.
• 1:41:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really like HPG actually, he's one of my favorites along with Mallory Cooper.
• 1:41:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think they're both great.
• 1:42:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: So no, I don't think it's a top out necessarily, but I do think the story here is what we're seeing these days very clearly is you know what looks like something innocent on the surface where we
• 1:42:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: make room for it and we excuse it.
• 1:42:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: When you dig just a little deeper, it's some pretty ugly racist, you know, anti-semitic, anti-queer, awfulness at the core of it all.
• 1:42:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we're watching that return.
• 1:42:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: So widely, we're recording this everyone.
• 1:42:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: It'll come out in January, but literally on December 1st,
• 1:42:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: The most recent news has been the attacks on Argentinian boats, the killing of people, reporters continuing to be silenced.
• 1:42:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was the shooting in Washington, DC recently where Trump has like issued extreme immigration bands once again.
• 1:42:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just, it's crazy, does anyone knows what happens before release as well?
• 1:42:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, how are you doing in 2025?
• 1:42:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I imagine America is not looking too great from the Greek side these days.
• 1:42:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm happy not to be living in America.
• 1:42:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Grace, I mean, Grace is not doing that well either, our government is very Trump friendly and... Oh, there's some major immigration stuff happening a few years back, didn't you?
• 1:43:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I remember that in the news.
• 1:43:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Immigration has been a major point for helping the rise of the far-right, in Grace, yes.
• 1:43:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully, we might as to sat down the far-right party, they're all in jail still, or...
• 1:43:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: for government, but all new officers come out and the government is very happy to mimic anything that Trump is saying, they're very happy to follow in what's the word, the co-tails.
• 1:43:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mother's seeing, they're seeing rest as the power, but God is not what we want.
• 1:43:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know.
• 1:43:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's it's it's it's Ikyaki these days for sure.
• 1:43:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if you follow on lighter news I don't know if you followed the real housewives of Salt Lake City at all But there's one of the housewives that is a Greek or half Greek and she talks about Greece all the time and like throws Greek parties for for the big Angie fans on the real housewives of Salt Lake City menoluses over there
• 1:43:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see, I have no idea.
• 1:43:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a good friend who's obsessed and she keeps explaining the housewives to me, but I'm more intelligent.
• 1:44:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Utah where I live is a weird place, and it's really captures how weird it is.
• 1:44:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fun TV.
• 1:44:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will ask about here, all I know about the housewife is from Trator, Central Black Race.
• 1:44:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: So many thoughts on just getting by in 2025, by friend.
• 1:44:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Any advice, city, any sage words of wisdom you want to share with our fans?
• 1:44:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: People come, I don't, it's very scary.
• 1:44:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know it's scary in America, but it's scary all over the world, watching the American news.
• 1:44:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're all hoping we all make it out safe.
• 1:44:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: with someone so dangerous coming access to the nuclear codes.
• 1:44:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, and my thought is always, and this is not a great place to end this.
• 1:44:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: But like, for everything we know, what is the shit we don't know?
• 1:44:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that always freaks me out, because, you know, the red zone is a really scary story at the end of the day.
• 1:44:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you want to go read it, go give it a read.
• 1:44:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: an important message is let's all support and give strength to our transistors to everyone else who's been scapegoated right now in America they're lacking this story they're looking for a scapegoat and that's where they go first to someone to be nice to get to have a gateway to attack the freedoms let's not let them
• 1:45:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's just, that's just what's on the surface.
• 1:45:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: All queer people, all immigrants, all disabled people, all elderly people, and disabled people, like we're all under attack.
• 1:45:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's it's Iki.
• 1:45:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: We gotta, we gotta rise up together.
• 1:45:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just how it has to be.
• 1:45:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I know that this is a little more sobering than a lot of the conversations we have on my show.
• 1:45:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Our last recording friends was on the BAMFs, which is just a very different energy.
• 1:45:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Unless we, unless we, you know, parallel this to the cartoon porn conversation.
• 1:45:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: We don't care about that.
• 1:45:35
  [UNKNOWN]: It's not.
• 1:45:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, do you think this red skull porn out there?
• 1:45:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I hope there's not Captain America red skull like oh no hate fucking ooh that's that's no I don't want to I don't know I'm not gonna Google that friends if anyone wants to share more information please
• 1:45:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Alright, my friend, it's great to see you.
• 1:45:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Can't wait to have you back on again.
• 1:45:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've got some ideas.
• 1:45:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fun to have just a rotating group of beloved friends.
• 1:46:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm grateful you're in my life, Manila.
• 1:46:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for your time this morning.
• 1:46:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Before we begin, I just remembered.
• 1:46:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I anagrammed your name.
• 1:46:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: What did you?
• 1:46:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Only when I could find that uses all the letters, which is very unpleasant.
• 1:46:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Is just, if we take Manila's MemVoonus, it's the sentence, no, man.
• 1:46:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm ovulations.
• 1:46:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Which is just not sentence you ever needed, but it's a perfect letter match.
• 1:46:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's so many views in the name.
• 1:46:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not easy.
• 1:46:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's all I can do.
• 1:46:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right, but I have a beautiful day.
• 1:46:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks everyone for listening.
• 1:46:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back here next time.
• 1:46:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm on Grimmelton Main.