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Bonus Patreon Release: Bishop the Last X-Man! With Joe Harris and Jason Liebig! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Walk and Lane Patriot on channel.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to be joined by two old friends from Marvel Comics who are also real-life friends.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jason Lee, big and Joe Harris, are here.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm meeting Joe for the first time and we're going to be talking about an obscure 90s series called Bishop, the last X-Men.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a crazy book.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was really fun to read this.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't read it since it came out the first time and I'm so happy to have you here.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me welcome you both to the show.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're willing to share with everybody a little about yourselves, your name and pronouns, what you might be most known for, and your preliminary feelings about revisiting Bishop the Last X Mad in 2025.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me get vegan with Joe Harris.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Joe, welcome to Greenwell-Con Lane.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, thanks for having me.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've been writing comics for over 25 years at this point.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ironically, or maybe not, ironically, Bishop the last X-Men was one of the very first things I wrote out of the box.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was one of two series I wrote on going.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: When I first broke into comics, there was that in a Spider-Man book called,
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: lingers that I wrote back then.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Since then, I've gone on to write for virtually every publisher.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did a send to DC Comics for a while working on Firestorm, various Batman projects.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've published a bunch of creator-owned books with image comics, including Great Pacific and Rock Stars, as well as Only Press where I wrote a book called Ghost Project and Spontaneous.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I maybe I'm best known for in comics.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wrote the continuation of the ex files for a number of years, which were very well received and it all culminated in an audible production being done in which David to Coveney and Jillian Anderson and the whole cast came back to voice act, my comics is released on audible.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's so cool, man.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is way preliminary because it won't happen for a little while, but fully expected invitation to come back and talk about Ricochet with me.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really love the character Ricochet from Slington.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have a theory about your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I also want to make sure you just leave it like this.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey Jason.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, how's it going?
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jason Leibig.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he him, you know, I worked in comics 25 years ago.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: I haven't really sent some like dabble in a few things.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: These days, I'm best known as television, food, historian, brand historian, where I tell stories about the history of food brands and other brands primarily on the history channel these days.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I do stuff like that.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's my most forward-facing output.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am so happy to have you both here.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really fun to reunite old friends on this show and people who worked on books together.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's such a joy to be playing with this nerd version of myself for my old age now.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so I'm gonna rewind and make this personal for a second.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's 1999.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I grew up Mormon and gay and I was like super, super closeted.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: In 1997, I went on a Mormon mission because they promised me I could make myself straight.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I spent two full years knocking on doors.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a long story.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of new ones that goes into it.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in 1999, it's when I was the second half of my mission.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And comic books were against the rule, but X-Men was the thing that saved my life all the time, right?
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I would have to because you live with somebody all the time.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd have to buy comic books at the grocery store and sneak them in my backpack and hide them under my mattress.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like they were playboys.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where I first picked up the last X-Men.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So first few issues I read there and then I finished it, of course, what I came home and started college But reading this title like it was like, oh, man, I haven't read this since I had a hidden under my mattress scandalous Jo, if you want to share with everybody a little about how this series began it comes in a time when you don't expect this book Specifically, it's it's interesting and it has kind of a long run Jason is gonna have to crash
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is all many brain cells ago, but I've been working in the ex office on a few different things.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'd written many series and some one shots and annuals and stuff like that.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think I had read that more, you know, this wasn't even direct knowledge, but I had read that Marvel wants the launch of this ship series.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, I think I questioned Mark Powers then the X-Men editor.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jason, the other X-Men added her at the same time looking to see if I could get in on this book.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's pretty much how it happened.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jason, I auditioned for Jason, Jason, I heard, right?
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I can back us up a little further, the churn of the business side of comics, which was, you know, you need to fill publishing slots and you need to keep things going.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the X-Men being the best-selling titles in comics at the time.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Every publisher being risk-aversal, they're probably not as risk-aversal as they are today.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: You launch things out of the X-Men if you can.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so there is talk about launching a character out of the X-Men, a solo series out of the X-Men.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, I think we bounced around a little bit.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think there is talk of Storm, maybe doing something with that.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Doing something with her, but it ultimately landed on Bishop.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then it was up to me to try to put it together and figure out how we create a Bishop solo series.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: And as Joe said, yes, I don't remember the details of how I mean Joe and I knew each other because he'd been working on ex titles already at that point.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: I did reach out to a few writers that I liked that were available and that I thought were talented and I got a, I got a few good pitches.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: My, I remember I got a very interesting pitch from Ben Rab as well, who's our friends still to this day.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Joe was the most interesting and it allowed us to do something that was very different at the time, which was deeply, deeply appealing.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is interesting because it's kind of right before the big bankrupt sea where everything kind of collapsed in on it.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it was right in the heart of the big.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say, yeah, yeah.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, like we were, we were swimming in terrible, terrible pressures.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, okay, so if we go back to the early 90s for the X-Men books, is when they really ended the line.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's when, you know, the X-Men blue and gold, and Claremont left of the announced X-Force, and later generation X comes along.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a, there was a kind of a Russian this era to put a lot, not a rush, but there was, there was a push to put a lot of solo titles out.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Bishop got his limited series in the mid 90s.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Storm had hers.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of characters kind of branching out.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then in 1998, havoc leaves X-Factor, and they launched the mutant X-Book.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're having this in another universe.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also have exiles right around the corner, which is the reality hopping X-Men.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're seeing this alternate reality parallel trend kind of really pick up steam in the Sarah.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: This should never happen anymore.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been shut up really, really has this adventure too, and I think people really remember Mutant X quite often, but I don't talk to a lot of folks that remember Bishop the last X man, and I have some theories, I want to talk about this a little bit.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bishop is a really interesting character already, Joe, when you started this pitch, and I know this is ancient history, but how do you capture the character of Bishop?
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: What makes this guy unique?
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: time tossed.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's always interesting.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I like a character who knows what the future holds and is kind of stuck in the present with maybe an opportunity to make it better, but always kind of suffering this knowledge of what's going to happen.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that I think that's what we took into the project is we wanted to base it there on that concept as far as what future and what he would
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, have to swim through was to be determined.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I think when you think of this ship, you think of the future.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think him and cable both give you that kind of vibe and you can really root some things in that and that's exactly what we did.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, Bishop is kind of an interesting mix of a few different archetypes I think because he comes from one of those days of future past type futures.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: where he's been branded, right?
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's seen what the world can become.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But even there, he was a guy who believed in justice.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Claire, I'm always wrote Bishop as a cop first and foremost.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then you have the time traveler bed.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The things that he knows are going to happen in the future.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some people take wild turns on that and make him like a mass murderer.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of crazy stuff that's half a division over the years since us.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: See you at the end of the video.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks a lot, I'm Joe.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: but he's also got kind of that old West vibe, right?
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's got the like, the bandana around his neck and he's gonna draw it high noon, kind of, or I see the gun slinger aspect of it.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, so you mix all of that in your series, which takes him back to the future, where mutants are being branded again, and where he's got that gun slinger vibe and this kind of undiscovered kind of wild West futuristic world.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a strong pitch and it's a beautiful platform for this character to navigate through.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, you bring his family with him, right?
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got Shard here, and then we've got the ever-terrible Trevor Fitzroy as the big bad guy at the Cronomancer.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a very bishopsentered story.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: What was it like for you to put together this universe, this kind of new Wild West region?
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, it's funny, sometimes I struggle to remember exactly how we hit on this particular type of universe, but Jason and I have spoken recently and he reminded me that we had a very thunder the barbarian influence on us at the time.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I would say, you know, the funny thing was in our early discussions in looking for things that we we liked that were appealing thunder of our variants stuck out sticks out in my head we talked about Lord of the rings we talked about I remember bringing to the table the hex series from DC where they took Jonah hex and they threw him in the sci-fi future and I was like, well, I thought that was really novel and fascinating.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I would say I think our intent was to really go, you know, not so much old West.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was really sword and sorcery, you know, where the mutant, if I recall right again, it was 25 years ago.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't like it wasn't Dungeons and Dragons.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was sort of swords and sorcery by way of the guns slinger or, you know, the man with no name archetype.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: For sure.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: That reads.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this series is fun.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think, well, for long-term listeners, if you're a bishop fan, this is one where we get to see Bishop really firmly in the limelight, which is not always the thing that happens with this character.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's so easily relegated to the background.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've had some recent work with him done.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a really fun limited series called Bishop War College a couple years ago by Jay Holthum.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: in which Bishop goes to an alternate reality where he sees what the X-Men world is going to be like.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in this world, every mutant is African-American.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he sees version of himself there that's like a very calm teacher where he's the hardened cop.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really interesting journey.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I like when people take clever ideas and make them a way to explore a character against that backdrop.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what's your connection to the character, Shard?
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'd also love to hear your thoughts on Fitzroy, who's one of Marvel's most Phantom of the Opera villains,
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's Roy as the most mustache twirling villain, I think I've ever had the, and I do he works that way, but we put him in this new context where he was not only the Lord of this new world that we had created, but he was also, and what was really important for me, this really driven by jealousy and loathing of Bishop that Bishop never took him seriously.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Bishop thought it was fine to stop hunting Trevor Fitzroy even though they all came from the future together.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fitzroy in a, you know, his mega, mega maniacal way decided to use that against Bishop and he in doing so he brought Bishop sister shard into this world and center up as a prisoner in the tower and gradually broke her down until she maybe inadvertently helped set Bishop up.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: My read on Fitzroy is, have you seen the original gladiator, like the Wikin Phoenix character, who's the eagle emperor, who's clearly gay, but also he wants to fuck his sister.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's kind of why I read Fitzroy a little bit.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Shark was as original a girlfriend, right?
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now he's moved on to better things, but he has to know she still loves it.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's the T-Law.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a Fitzroy?
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's brought him back, because at the end of the day, I want to spoil.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last appearance was in Jed McKeys X-Men recently, where he's running a YouTube channel for a group called The Up Starts.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're hunting down people for clicks and likes and like murdering them on camera, so he's still here's the same sweetheart of the he always was.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: What a fascinating arc.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jason, do you want to talk a little bit about assembling the creative team for this book?
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Georgia's Jontis Pencils always are beautiful.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: George's look, famously we had discussions with Chris with Chris Cross and he was fantastic and ultimately I'm trying to remember George's just seemed to bring, you know, Chris was so slick and tight.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: George just seemed to bring that post-apocalyptic vibe in his pencils that we were really looking for a little dirtier.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: So and I can't
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't remember.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you remember, for us, I don't have any slingers together, too.
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, exactly.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you guys were partnered up.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that was certainly probably one of the reasons we first spoke to Chris.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's fantastic.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, that's the whole thing.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he's amazing.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I think I had a relationship with some of the guys in guys like the Adam Hughes, Cully Hamner.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's where I became exposed to Georgia's work.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, oh, this guy's got that sort of dirty thing that I think would serve this book and what the world Joe's building out.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was funny re-reading the books for this podcast, you know, and again, I'm gonna segue off.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was just, I was really excited to see, to be reminded of how Joe built out this world.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was world building.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't just, again, take this as you will, you know, whereas I also worked on mutinx, which was really built on the muscular structure of the X-Men mythos, right?
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't extended what if.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right, it was it was emerging that it was a very parallel world absolutely.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, what I think I loved about Bishop the last Xman at the time getting to work on it and certainly in reflection is that, you know, this was building a brand new world, you know, and occasionally took him around occasionally it was there were touchstones, but when nom goes off to find his people when we meet the kith, when you see these different worlds it was it was very much
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know the right way to describe it, but to me it was like play ground creation where you're just like, okay, you're gonna make something up and play with it.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I, that to me, at the time, certainly wasn't appeal as well because you know, one of the issues when you're working on large franchises and that's what Mark Powers as editors and I were doing a lot of, which was managing the X-Men franchise to get to do something where you didn't, you literally as every toy you picked up didn't have three different fingers on it or hands on it.
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And to sort of let Joe just go to town a little bit.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a little push for this in the books right now.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's all these solo X-Men books for the first time.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Magic, Silox, Storm, Phoenix.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's all these characters.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Getting a really strong push and they all have their own feel.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's fun.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: When Joe came up with the character, I'll say it again because he's such a fun visual character of nom.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is before Guardians of the Galaxy and our tree character became the tree character.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: The tree character became so popular.
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: This big sort of, you know, stoic, not talking a lot of guy, but, you know, then we brought in the linear U to do design work on the series.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And when those first designs of NOM came down along with the other characters, it was just a very exciting to see those things when Georgia's got got going on it, you know, and you saw these characters.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was a lot of fun.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, and it was fun to just see the X-Men portrayed as these characters of myth and to see, you know, and to see Bishop sort of come into his own as this mythic character rather than just sort of like a street-level cop, you know, he was walking in different boots, I think, for a little while.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is great.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And hearing you guys describe it as thunder or the barbarian has already changed what you've experienced.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not joking.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I worked out at the gym this morning in an ukulele mock take-top.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the character I remember.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have it upstairs.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very underrated, Thundra.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the last X-Man it says.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the issue one, it's called Time Loves the Hero.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we get the catchphrase, which is brilliant movie poster where the civilization is gone, but a new legend is born.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm always fascinated how writers put those little cover blurbs inside where they tell you who the hero is.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll read that really quickly.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Once a member of the legendary mutant group known as the X-Man, Bishop is a man out of time cast into an unfamiliar future.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: One grown out of the destruction left by a apocalypse whose origins have been long forgotten.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Allied with a group of young mutant adventures, Bishop resolves to do what he must to keep his new home from falling into the chaos which threatens it.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Facing the danger in mystery of an unknown world, the future is an open page for the one called, Bishop, the last X-MAD.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So really fun set up for the whole thing.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bishop has a nightmare, and he knows he needs to go after Fitz Roy, who has taken the name Cronomancer in the far future of this alternate world.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Marvel alternate timelines, we're not gonna go there today.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: People know enough, but yeah, a possible alternate future, right?
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Chrono Mancer has a bunch of Chrono troopers.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very Darth Vader and Stormtrooperie a little bit.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a portal that Fitzgerald opens and Bishop and Shard, the hard light version because she died from like crazy emplate hands in the future and has now been on X-Factor.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk about Shard another time.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bishop finds like a dark ages-style world and meets some rebels who all paint M's over their eyes.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this branding that he has on his face has carried into legend.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a call for rebellion.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the symbol that you are part of us.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And among them are a group of brand new mutants.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Joe, let me hear your thoughts on each of these characters you created quickly if you don't mind.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got Scorch.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hot head of no pun intended or maybe.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a pyrochonetic and very, yeah, very wants to like my jigs bigger than yours kind of energy through the whole series in some ways, but there seems to be like a little bit of vulnerability there too, right?
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Question.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've got jinks.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: She was my favorite, but I, I try to remember where she comes from in my mind.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, Jinx can jump forward in time like a few seconds at a time, which gives like an effective going at super speed or like having super fast reflexes.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right, she can sort of phase between two points.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's almost like short range teleportation, sort of out of, you know, between the blanks of your eye.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: She can move, straith.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: We didn't have 25 years ago.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: You had great things to say about Jinx.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just can't remember them at this point.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was very, I was very riveted by what you said about her 25 years ago, I promise.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wish you could remember what.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got NOM who is a knot mutant, but is a mythical giant, a big rocky dude, kind of thing energy, kind of forg if you guys read the like Hulk Warbound stuff.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the big strong rock guide.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You want to talk about NOM?
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, NOM is the last of his people, and he wonders if they're out there somewhere, and somewhere along with Weste, he has a side quest of his own.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Where he finally goes out to find his boss, race of the people, only to make a startling discovery he wasn't ready for, rather I should say he hadn't been
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk about that discovery?
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're on the topic.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: I guess I should right.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: He basically goes on this on this quest to find this lost hero named Azarok and he finally finds his people after almost giving up hope he finds them and he and he's but he's surprised and downcast to discover that Azarok this great hero
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: is dead.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: His skeleton is sitting in a throne, any hope that he was going to find this great hero and bring him to help Bishop and the mutants against the Kronomansor would appear to be dashed when suddenly the surviving giant circle around him and let him know.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Same as NAMM, they believe that Azirak is supposed to return in their hour or greater need, and here's NAMM and may Chris and him Azirak and he returns to the flight meeting to speak well.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gets the Christian journey.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the unassuming person who grows to the messy and a leader role, right?
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's, I think, nom, my very first influence for nom came from, I don't know if these are books you remember at all, but the second chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R. Donaldson, they were at these fantasy novels that I had read as a kid and there was a race of giants in there and that was, I think, the inspiration for nom.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's fantastic.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also have the character, Link, who is the team telepath, any member of the link?
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Link like she can link your minds.
• 19:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, she's your teacher basic telepath.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's also close to the witness who has a mysterious role to play in this universe.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so the other person is the witness.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is where we get a little complicated.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Bishops far future, there was a guy named the witness who it's largely alluded and not quite stated to be gambit as an old man in a hood basically.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in Bishops comes to the past, he and gambit have an interesting relationship in the future.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or excuse me, in the present, because of that future role,
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we have the witness in this future, which is like a different alternate reality version of Gambit question mark, who's like the professor ex or the splinter of the team.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the one that put the ex faces together.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, a splinter.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why chose to use the witness?
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's an interesting choice.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because he had this history with bishop.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I felt like we wanted to take a lot of those elements and superimpose it on this new setting and this new world.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So to take this relationship because the witness comes from the same future that Bishop does.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Originally, right, the XSE and... I don't remember if he's the same witness though.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's the thing I don't remember.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I don't know if this is a, was he?
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: But if it...
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there could have been a way that he could have been but I like I was wondering that too When we when we revisit when we were talking about doing this I'm like, what's he the same witness or was he like this other timelines version of the witness?
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I actually don't recall so I think the latter but it is farer to be the former
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the last character in our being a rotating cast here, when Fitzroy opens the portal and pulls them forward, a little kid of color, a black kid and a Michael gets yanked into the future as well, which is an interesting thing because we have a young kid from the American president who now bishop has to protect in this world, why the inclusion of the character Michael Joe, which I think is brilliant, by the way.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think it was for that lone wolf and cub archetype.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wanted him to have something tying into our present besides the X-Men and that he had to look after this child was something that I guess we just thought was cool at time.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I kept waiting for Mike to be revealed to be a mutant of some kind, but he's this kid that's along for the ride, which is also fun.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right, right.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you might as if, you know, if we played longer than 16 issues, it's possible.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, welcome to Earth 9910.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the official designation in the world.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll have a lecture on it.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the handbook guys always base these on publication year and month.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So October 99 turns it into Earth 9910.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, all the characters would have a dash 9910 when referenced at the handbooks, which is, and the team has chosen the name, the X faces.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why this name?
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember them having that name.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, me neither.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they call themselves the ex-faces.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Really?
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, at least like, how do I?
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: How do I?
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: How do I?
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: How do I?
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think I ever wrote that term.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I know they had been painted.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: They painted exes on their face at a certain point.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just don't remember them calling them that shit.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, even if you go to the Marvel wiki, I'm checking now the group in Bishop Xman, a Bishop less that's my number one list list the group is the ex-faces.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the books.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not in the things came up with it at some point.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I read all of these, but I don't know the reference at this point.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, anyway, loosely called the expaces, but we're just going to call them bishop's buddies.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: Wow, today.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I feel like that might have just been an invention of someone reviewing the book, Interesting.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the big mission of the villain here seems to be, Fitzgerald has now done the thing that he always said he'd do.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has conquered the world, built himself the tower, has all the slaves and the peasants and the riches that he wants.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But now he needs to lord over Bishop.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he thanks him into the future so that he has a buddy to fight.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: He brings shard along just to like rub it in Bishop's face.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a very vindictive side to this character.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of the through line here.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where Bishop is the strong guy, trying to like overthrow the Despo a little bit.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you have thoughts on their relationship?
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Bishop fits right dynamic?
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why, I always thought it was rich, and I thought they're
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's Roy was a clown as I think a lot of us probably would would think.
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I, but I just thought that gave him a lot of potential.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: So to make him serious, let him internalize that, let him really resent his arc enemy for not coming after him all those years, but that just motivated him.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that idea, something really rich we could do there.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I think a villain that has commanded a lot of power has grabbed a lot of power and yet was not taken seriously and resents that and once to take revenge, I mean it's such a such a stretch for a very character.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I could, you could almost say that those characters exist in real life.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's right, it's right, I compared to the, it's right, I compared to the we keep, we keep an ex-character from the gladiator, which I think is a fair read.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But often, yes, we're reading, um, if we're reading Bishop is like Leonardo, Fitzgerald often comes across as like B-bop and rock steady.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you guys are old Ninja Turtle heads, where he's almost like one of those like
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, I'm gonna get you now.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, what are the cartoon voices energy almost?
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this guy's like a crazy mass murderer too.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like he has no, he'll cut down whoever's in front of him.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was at fun to write Fitzroy as the crownlmancer, the Batman.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's the most loquacious character I think I've ever written.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there is a lot of verdict in these books.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was like, wow, I wrote a lot of words as I was rereading these recently.
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I thought that's Roy was crazy, like a spinning top, you know, and just a lot of fun making him scary.
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's my duty.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I recall those conversations, and I do when I do remember when you had to deliver a plot, you know, an outline for an issue, and it was just, it was a lot of giggling laughter or whatever, just enjoying how robust his villainy, you know, was able to become
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: and outwardly expressed you know and it was that those were fun to us.
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's those sounds cool.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I agree.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really fun writing a villain who has everything he ever said he wanted but now he's still bored, right?
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like he's ready to self-destruct in whatever way he can or he wants to go out with style somehow.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: He also gets to play kind of the Bowser character if we're looking at Mario World where he keeps capturing the princess.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: He locks her in the tower.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I can't even go insane, you're metaphors and comparison, I think they're amazing.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna go with Bowser and Beebop and Rocks that he had like, I'm with you.
• 26:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, but also I can feed him, right?
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was on the bed.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, okay, that's, yeah, that one wasn't as broad a stroke, but yeah, like Bowser, I'm like shit.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: How do I miss the Bowser connection 25 years ago?
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Did it, did it, didn't?
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Shard is going on a journey here where she is dead.
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's a reprogrammed kind of AI living as a hologram or hard light Where Fitzroy is taking her on kind of a journey of temptation if you give in you get your body back basically
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: it was kind of uncomfortable, just because they come off as much older, a mace of timber romance, if you might say, between the two of them.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there was already this sort of skidiness to it, and making Trevor Fitzroy this more vile, loathsome character, we seem to blood on his hands.
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now watching him manipulate Shard, it would make me angry to be honest with you, because spiking for obvious reasons, I mean, he's the ultimate groomer.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a, I'm going to go another comparison.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is Jafar with Jasmine, but Jafar's so gay.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think, you know, I think if you look at Shard and what Joe wrote at the time in the scenarios, you know, it's interesting.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: As we often do and reflect, you know, the trauma that that character was going through had gone through was going through.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think our ability to put names on these things to navigate it, I think were much more nuanced and skilled these days, you know, as a populist.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so I think it wasn't, you know, I remember just the challenges of bringing that to light,
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: how well it was done in my opinion, you know, and obviously she was groomed.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: But we never would have used that term 25 years ago.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: But she was also, what's the, what's the term when your prisoner becomes your friend out of survival?
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, yes, so there was a little bit of that, you know, and I know we discussed that back then.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's torturing this poor girls like AI, you know, like there's something, even in today's day and age in 2025, that's an uncomfortable story.
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to lock
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then, you know, you torture it, but then you offer it a gift, you know, and it's like this is such just like manipulative, you know, horrible stuff for energy.
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my god.
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the fun running gags through the series, if you call it a gag, because it's always really special is what remains from the past.
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a moment in issue two where Jinx gets to present bishop with his old like X men badge, you know, like the sort of the X on it, they almost seem to kiss, but this is a group of like rebel kids surviving in the woods, they are doing their best against kind of impossible forces.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very the rebels versus the stormtroopers in that way, right?
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of interesting dynamics among the team in this kind of post apocalyptic space.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also get the character Bantum tossed around.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bantum is the egoer to Fitzroy's madness.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the toad of the brotherhood of evil mutants character, right?
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the guy that you kick because he's pathetic and ugly.
• 29:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the egoer.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk about the work you did with Bantum at all, Joe?
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, if I remember correctly, Bantum was sort of Trevor's Fitzroy's anchor of some sort, right?
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Didn't their powers work in some sort of compatible.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bantum allowed Fitzroy's like time portal.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Fitzroy can teleport around, but Bantum allowed his time portals to stabilize.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right, right, Fitzroy needs Bantam, but Bantam doesn't like the new Fitzroy, seeing Fitzroy really collapse into himself and become this sort of megalomaniac or maniac murder or mass.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought that could drive a wedge between these two characters and Bantam can play a role in helping lead Bishop and the heroes to this confrontation with the Corona mancer.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the chronotrippers are all in these kind of like they almost give like Catholic crusade or energy these white white robes crossbows they've got this insignia on their chest that looks like a clock that's almost run out of time.
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember coming up with these visuals it's it's studying.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think what motivated me was Clockwork Smurf is where as weird as that sounds, do you remember there was a character in the Smurfs who was made of Clockworks?
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he was a gift to the King or the Prince.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you remember this funny chance, and then you're way that resonated with me.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it has another things that I created as well.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I use that as a reference.
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I could definitely see a Clockwork Smurf's reference and the chrono troopers.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I remember getting the description of the of the chronotrippers and then, you know, and being being pretty down with it and then the visuals when the design straight coming in I was really excited I was blown away by it.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought that was a moment of excitement.
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree.
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very Robinhood in that way too, kind of, right?
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like they have the big king to take down.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just throwing reference after reference.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a big Robinhood vibe too.
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, 100%.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was fun to see that these characters, they had their set relationships, right?
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, as any group of people do and how bishop entering into it, you know, sort of change things up, right?
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because now there's this person who
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Overrides if anybody was looked up to in the group now this guy is the guy that everybody looks up to and so he's interesting to see how dynamic Shift when you're bringing this fairly significant new player will Bishop from his broken future in the very intense past now in this other future forming a new group of mutant rebels It's it's it's smart storytelling.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really fun
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the group realizing that they are facing big odds.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have that scene where they paint the exes over their eyes, they're like ready for combat.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they march into the city of Dunduin.
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we have the second arc of the book, which is issues four through six called the Kith Trilogy.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a really fun one, and it adds a lot of mythology.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It gives us the dragon fantasy that we've been looking for.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: That was the one where it just really felt like worldbuilding, right?
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Where you're building up the, you know, you could feel it.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: It felt like a fantasy novel that for me, you know, and it was just like, okay, this is where you draw this, you need to get the sort of lower to the rings map.
• 32:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, this is where you're drawing out this part of West Rose or whatever, you know, and so that's what's in this part of the world.
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so there's this thread, these allies, these enemies, you know, these, the West Rose is a lower to the rings, but no, I know.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm jumping around.
• 32:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: If we can go from Bowser to Smurf's, I can jump across the rest of us.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's why my joke was funny because I was like, no, but so that, I remember distinctly at the kid that was like, oh yeah, man, I was like, because I remember where, you know, you had you wrote all that stuff and then I think we still had a little bit of a lineal with us and so we were getting these sketches of like the mountains where the kid flew down from and stuff.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it just looked very epic, it felt very big.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And for me, as an editor, working with Joe, working with George, just for me, I remember being excited.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was like, oh, yeah, this is a whole chapter of a book, you know what I mean?
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a whole world that's being built out.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a group of like humans and these dragons are up on the hill.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of things.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: This has a very sci-fi sort and sorcery kind of vibe.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The titles of these issues are things like in the Hall of the Mountain King and the Battle of Evermore.
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you have characters like Kalin Carth Kith, which gives me like Pierce Anthony character vibes, which is a lot of fun.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's funny.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if this comes before some of the details that you've mentioned about the Kith, but we knew we were gonna need some help to get George's back on schedule and we brought in Charlie Adlar.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: since famous for walking dead fam.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we had this idea to do a framing sequence where Charlie would do the first bunch of pages in the last part or was it the other way around, George would do the bookends and Charlie did the interiors.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think Charlie did the bookends.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, Charlie did a lot though.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: He did a lot of stuff.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I just came up with this idea which, you know, did pull another reference out of childhood watershed down.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: where the new ones are lured into this town with the promise of safety not realizing that they're going to be sacrificed to the thing that is praying on the town.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that was the original intent of this group of humans that live there who are being victimized by the kids.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And once Bishop and the others are taken prisoner and brought into this place and he meets the Kiff and he meets the ruler who's a pretty evil dude later on, he meets his brother who's the actual king that's been left in chains further in the mountain.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Bishop freezing and in turn earns the respect and the death of the Kiff who will come to his aid later when he needs it.
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It also turns the humans against the rule of the chronomancer, right?
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: They start hanging the flag with the ex on it now.
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're slowly chipping away at Fitzgerald's power before Bishop's even confronted him.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: My favorite issue of your run is issue number seven.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did a huge research launch journey on my show regarding the sentunals.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was all over the place.
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: sentinel stories and like deep into like the world of like AI fiction.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a really fun one.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the X faces is how I have it type.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: The mutant rebels recuperated in the ruins of the X mansion and there's a group called the clan hellfire who have taken over.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I characters like told and trickster and my favorite one of yours is Samara Shah.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love a sex pot.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the Emma Frost, sexy lady who realizes Bishop is like the hot guy who's
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He needs to be manipulating him a little bit, but he's down.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have a good time.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Samarash was really fun.
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then they go down into the tunnels where they meet an old kind of deactivated Sentinel called G-O-L-19, or G-19, who has remnants of these memories of the past and there's a bunch of mysteries about him.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, we learned that Storm and Wolverine died in battle with the Sentinels years before, and they were kind of the last X-Men standing.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Gul 19 became their ally at the end.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, he's protecting a cerebral unit that he can now pass on to Visha, who can now track the crown of Metsor back to his base.
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do want to talk about Samara Shaw and this kind of, here's what happened to the X-Men in the past of this world.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I really wanted to get this late, I'll be honest with you.
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, so that didn't, that was no small motivator in coming up with the character for Smarshaw.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I always like the Hellfire Club.
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I always like that it alluded to something that has been going on for a very long time and may have predated these members, even back when we first met them when John Burn was drawing the book.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: There was always this neat aristocratic sense of history to them.
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Smarshaw, I thought it just made sense that if the world was ruined, you know, one more sort of tributary in the alternate universe thing.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: If that world was ruined, a group with resources and influence like the Hellfire Club might have found some safe harbor.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: They might have been able to broker something for themselves.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And because we know Health Fire Club from the main moral universe, you know, not to trust the you know that there's something self-serving going on there as well, no matter what this character smart shot says.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's a rival of the coronavirus answer, but they also have their own line of communication that's open.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's a bit of a tempress because she has something that she wants from Bishop for herself.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is postapocalyptic in that way, right?
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So here's the old station that has allowed it to retain power.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the use of the Sentinel, did you want to talk about goal 19?
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an interesting Sentinel story.
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I really, you know, I think those are my favorite issues to issues seven and eight, which I guess it is where they tell the story that goal 19 and a moods to and seven.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: am I correct about that?
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or am I, or
• 37:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: they're the scariest ones.
• 37:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought so.
• 37:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a moment in these books where they almost blot out the sun.
• 37:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's how many are coming for storm and Wolverine at the end.
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're halfway through the series.
• 37:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: We talked a little bit about Noms journey.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: How is the book doing at this point?
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jason, do you recall like how it was being received as these arcs were coming out?
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: The market was $3.99,000, I know.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it's a good question and a timely one because I do think, and again, I don't think I'm inventing this.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: That arc where, you know, you sort of bring out this story to talk about Wolverine and Storm and this Sentinel with something, and again, I can't remember the impetus.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think it was there at the beginning.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think Joe and I were at a giant scheme.
• 38:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was really cool.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and we started to break some elements of this, but I think as an editor, I was, I had a very crass, uh, directive to Joe.
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I said, we need to get some very ex-many, something on this.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Even though that's not where I wanted the book to go, but I thought, like, is there a way to really bring these elements and to bring something big and flashy that people will recognize and will feel that sort of nostalgia connection to.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I probably didn't use that word, but I feel like there may have been a crass impulse on my part and then as sort of like, what do you think, Joe, do you think we could do something that would really elevate what you're trying to do and still organically fit into that?
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then I think by the end of that football game, you had this idea of the Sentinel being reprogrammed and everything else and I feel like we left that game and you were sort of off to the race as a structure in these things.
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: So insofar as the sales, you know, the reality of most series at the time was sales went down.
• 39:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought they were pretty good.
• 39:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't like a runaway hit, but I don't think we had too many runaway hits at that point in the industry.
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I think we were doing all right.
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: You always wanted things to be better, but we were probably like,
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: breaking that thing for issues in five issues in.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: The book was stable enough to feel like it could survive for a while, but it was what I would say is trying to edit a book when the world was constantly shifting underneath your feet from a structural standpoint.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I always tell people I was at Marvel for
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just about five years, but there were eight corporate presidents why I was there, you know, in the book and why you can't happen in the middle of all this Like everybody was sort of exposed to that so keeping all of these things running just giving me what the sales were well I think these sales were pretty good They certainly weren't in the tank by any stretch.
• 40:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: They were they were decent and you know you just wanted people to see the book You because I felt the book was very good.
• 40:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought what would Joe and George's were doing was was successful
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: in the execution and I think at that point I was like okay how do we get someone who hasn't given this book a chance to maybe give it a try and you know that may have been there may have been some of that and that's again me speculatively memory but like I do think it was an idea I was like okay what can we do now this sort of goose this thing and get people say hey what what the fuck is going on here why is Wolverine and Sentinel and in this bishop series or why is bishop looking at the Sentinel or whatever that's how we got there I think
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we expand the X-Men, the modern era, a little bit more in this next arc, which is called Preludes.
• 40:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a two issue arc in 10 and 11.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fitzgeroy is living his best Bowser life.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: He came in.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: He conquered the kingdom.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has a princess locked up in the castle that he's slowly tempting, and he's lowering Mario into a trap.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, did it, did it.
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Phantom is playing the Gumbuh.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Bishop is like following a rebellion among the populist.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he meets a group of morelocks in this era.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fitzgerald, Laura's Bishop into a trap.
• 41:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a group of what seemed to be house elves living in the basement.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So now we're in Harry Potter, but our rabbit ourselves in a way.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we meet a group of morelocks.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got everyone will ever be able to follow along with us.
• 41:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, actually I think people will.
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I just like they'll be like, what were they on?
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is not the reference heavy episode for me, and it's like,
• 41:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've got a character named Seer, who's like your pre-cog with the blindfold, right?
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: The stereotypical blind blindfold.
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've got tracker, who's like a black guy with like stretchy arms.
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a girl named Note, who's a black girl with sound powers.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's again a bumper, who kind of looks like puck from alpha flight, but like in bulk year and with a wing of big arms.
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this shop is fighting with the more locks.
• 42:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: They end up kind of making friends.
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We learn the more locks worship a goddess named Orro.
• 42:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Orro, which is a clear reference to store and the insignia on the wall is in reference to like storms tiara.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then Bantam comes and like, hey, the coroner troopers are going to declare war.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk a little bit up this preludes arc with the more locks, Joe?
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Kind of remember if I have anything to have.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love the covers, and we're great George's covers to those two issues.
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You got a character in Fumper, man.
• 42:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was just about to say I was Joe and George's were character creating machines at this point.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'm giving you like five new characters, Marvel, five new names, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bobo, bo
• 42:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So then we have Adam Palena drawing a backup story near which is really fun.
• 42:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got to know Adam recently That's that's it there's some really brilliant artists on this book.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have a three issue art called Chrono War where the titles.
• 42:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love your titles, Joe the titles are shelter-scelters shine on you crazy diamond and remain in light
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Bishop and the kids stormed the chrono.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Keep, Fitzgera has laid a trap.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's ready for them.
• 43:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's changing shard back into a human form, but it's like a super painful process.
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a moment, again, Fitzgera gives like really the gay operabilin.
• 43:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: He backhands Bishop across the face at one point.
• 43:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get bishop hung in chains as Fitzgera is like I'm so much better than you my dick is so much bigger than yours right bishop But the kiff and the more locks and the rebel kids all join and the watch your shows up out of nowhere and like it shows like Hey, Bishop you're changing the world bishop gets loose.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's the big giant battle which like Fitzroy and Shard and bishop gets sucked back into the present time But they leave that kid Michael from the past in the future where we have never seen him ever again
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You want to talk about the big culminating war and how everything happened.
• 43:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I can tell you that the plan while plotting the chrono war was was to continue into a second year further into year two.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so not to skip to the end, but the end, the climax takes place.
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Trevor Fitzgerald has opened up this giant portal and he's going to step through it.
• 44:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when he steps through due to how powerful he's become, he will become time itself.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's chrono energy.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's going to assume his highest form.
• 44:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And what ends up happening is Bishop ends up absorbing his sister's energy form and channeling her as a weapon.
• 44:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: If I does that sound familiar.
• 44:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, only he misses and shard is lost through this portal.
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Bishop's going to have to take out fits Roy with his own two hands.
• 44:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And basically as the portal's collapsing, Bishop holds on to Fitz Roy's leg and pulls and the portal just cuts him right in half.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now what was going to happen there originally is all of this power was going to strike Bishop as it does and he was going to hold on to it.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: He was going to assume this essence of Fitzroy's corruption and the rest of the series was going to be him deciding what to do about it as various hour players made a pilgrimage to see him to see if they could barter for it themselves.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that was very much we had this idea that he, Bishop, was going to be sort of like King Conan, sitting on the throne, displeased with where he is and not like knowing how to rule.
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: What to do, what's the right answer?
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Everything feels like a bad choice.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this book ending at this point.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like you kind of had to wrap everything up and then you didn't get to follow up on it like you hope.
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: That sounds right.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you have plans for that kid Michael in the future?
• 45:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: None that I can really remember, but we wouldn't have left him there.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and this is effectively by the way, listeners, the death of Shard.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Shard already died, but she's dead here.
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: The only time we've ever seen her again is in the age of X books that happened right before Krikoa, but that's an alternate timeline.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, she's more in Bishop's memories.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: She hasn't ever come back again.
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, cool.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, where did kill Shard Joe?
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I tried to kill Fitzroy.
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fitzgerald does not need the job a father-time.
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: He would get so bored, and then the final two issues of this series pull us back into the present where Bishop is dropped into the middle of crazy X-Men continuity.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maximum security, and then the dreams end crossover, and the dreams end crossover is one of the roughest X-Men reads.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a hard one to jump.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's a name to do that?
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, I got you.
• 46:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: The title of the book is been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time, which is also delicious.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: As I did that, my zoom call popped up a little note that said, are you trying to play music?
• 46:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: Wow, that's funny.
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bishop lands on the middle of a battle between deathbird and the shiar and Xavier's here with his mutant scroll team, quadriacs, it's crazy.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Bishop and deathbird are definitely fucking during this time.
• 46:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he tried to fuck Jinx, he did fuck Samara Shah, and then he totally got some with deathbird as well.
• 46:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this may have been Bishop's most horny time, everyone.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk about bringing back into the 616 show?
• 47:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it kind of went full circle for me because the first time I ever wrote Bishop and Deathbird, I had filled in, I had scripted over Steven Seagull plot that Chris Bichello had drawn back in uncanny X-Men, number, whatever, read something, I don't remember what number it was, but it was, it was a story featuring Bishop and Deathbird.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I already had this dynamic because they were spending some time together back then for him to make this sort of unceremonious return to the present.
• 47:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't something I was particularly excited about, but I was excited to write death bird again
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Duffered so fun.
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's one of my favorite all-time villains.
• 47:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we have the wrap-up where issue 16 rebrands Bishop as the soldier of the atom.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: He fights Misty can savor tooth on mural and there's a lot of crazy stuff happening.
• 47:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the book ends up getting rebranded as a combination book with with gambit.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a bishop gambit series that follows.
• 47:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe so gambled series by John Laman was being canceled and this series was being canceled and then there was a new book by Scott LeBdell with both of them together in one book.
• 48:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: That sounds correct.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jason, do you recall the how the book kind of wrapped up?
• 48:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, keep in mind Mike March was actually the editor for those last handful of issues.
• 48:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I was, yeah, I was, I had my hand busy with Warnellis over encounter acts at this point.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was rooting I was rooting for the book like I didn't I didn't want to see it come back to continuity But there was you know these tides pull these characters back in right?
• 48:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: They were never gonna let Bishop do his own thing for too long.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know whatever unless it was selling like a million copies I suppose yeah
• 48:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I don't like I was not working on it first hand and so for me it was just oh, that's too bad that it's got to end, you know, it was it was almost more of as a fan at that point, you know, I was like, oh, that sucks, you know, I would have liked to have seen more of that world.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So do you recall getting the news that the series was being canceled?
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, kind of, I was told that it was ending.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was essentially going to be fired for lack of a better term.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think I chose not to write issue 16.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that was, I kind of remember this, right?
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think I could have written that, but I told them no, just because I didn't like the idea of where the series was going.
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: All right.
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, remember some of this.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that sounds familiar.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking it up.
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Issues six times.
• 49:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, you've been 16 with Scott libdell, which I didn't even pay attention to in my room.
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I look at that.
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was great.
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's usually, well, often for writers.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's kind of a grieving process that you go through when you end a book.
• 49:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you recall grieving this book when it was done or were you kind of on to greener pastures at that point?
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was kind of under greener pastures at that point.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just sold my first screenplay.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I remember feeling this weird vibe like my series is coming to an end, but I've got this other great thing happening.
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wish I could blow my Marvel career along with it, but it was, I think, one chapter for me was about to wind down.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's yeah.
• 49:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Joe Harris, you read a hell of a superhero story.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was really fun to read again.
• 49:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's such a fun slow burn in a way that in a way that we don't get in modern comics today.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The characters are always in such a hurry.
• 50:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Things are always flopping around.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: People are always kind of expecting to get canceled a few issues into something.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's really fun to see kind of a slow burn where there's one through line with a villain and the mythology of this sword and sorcery world is really great.
• 50:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: These characters that you created exist out there for people to use.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are, there's a whole timeline of mutants out in the future who, uh, Samara Shah for sure needs to come back, if no one else does.
• 50:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: What was it like for both of you to revisit this series?
• 50:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there like some nostalgia or some old memories showing up?
• 50:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I was excited.
• 50:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, which I mean, you know, I remember when I got the gig I thought what my career is I you know, I was like I'm writing an X-Men's old Yeah, I was like I thought I was on easy street because it was such an ambition and it was such an opportunity So and you you know, it's very rare that you get to do something over a year now in comics and eat
• 50:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: way.
• 50:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just you don't usually have that much rope.
• 50:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can tell you from doing creator own books.
• 50:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: You have to think of things in short arcs that can end tomorrow.
• 51:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, those are my reactions.
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have affection for those memories even if they were a long time ago.
• 51:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I would double down on that.
• 51:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, Joe and I had a lot of fun working together.
• 51:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we've remained friends in the 25 years since.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: The opportunity to talk about Bishop last X man is just like, oh, that sounds like fun.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, and every visiting the book
• 51:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Over the last 25 years, when I thought about the book, it's, you know, there's certain images or covers you think of, but you don't really think about the stories in the specific dialogue and, you know, and all the interactions.
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Although a few, a couple of years ago, we did get a Bishop the last X-Men toy.
• 51:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Which was amazing.
• 51:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, I had to buy one.
• 51:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's how nostalgic I was with, like a like an $85 super detailed bishop toy, but it doesn't save Bishop the last X-Men on the box, it's just a bishop, but it uses Georgia's artwork, he's got the whole post-apocalyptic, you know, Bishop the last X-Men costume design, his hair design, that's what it is.
• 51:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's wild to see that come out 23 years after the fact, because we wanted it 25 years ago, you know, we wanted that toy.
• 52:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we were actually the funny thing is toy was
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: a Bishop the last X-Men toy, and then the series got canceled.
• 52:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: So because we saw the sculpts of it, so that was, yeah, yeah, I remember that.
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we didn't talk about this costume redesign or Bishop's, you know, rightable hair in the series.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually really, yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful design.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a nice little nail.
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was a lineal, although conversations with Cross has, you know, he seemed to have indicated that he may have taken us there first.
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't remember that, but I don't want to take away from his recollection because it's possible that maybe Cross did something that I saw or Mark saw, and then we directed, because I remember giving a directive to Lineal to, what was it?
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: What, what rap artist was it?
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was, because I actually have the design still some.
• 52:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Boo is Buster Rimes, it give us some Buster Rimes here for him.
• 52:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I remember he sent back these three different hair styles for Bishop with a little notes.
• 53:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's Buster Rimes, I can see.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, right.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, he was, get that look of Bishop was also very, very exciting.
• 53:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because I think he had a shaved head before that.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think most recently maybe, you know, he went through the Jerry Curl.
• 53:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: He had a flake, he had a shave in head, didn't he?
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I remember when Joe Madd was drawing him, I think.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe the issue you, I feel like you, you know, when you scripted that issue, he might have had fun.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you might have a shaved head then, but then we gave him this just really fun hairstyle Which you know, which looked cool as fuck and yeah, it was great It's so great to reminisce with you guys.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing your memories.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it shows like revisiting my childhood all the time But every time I get to the final series I read and then like here from the creators it's such a joy Do you have any final thoughts you want to share on memories of Bishop the last X-Men that we didn't get to share so far?
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's funny, I bet they'll get to it someday.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: When it comes to the more diverse, right?
• 53:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 53:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, I, you know, to something.
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right.
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, maybe X-Men 97 can go there now.
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: What I found, what I found interesting in some of the revisiting is an idea and a discussion in comics that comes over, which is, which I just saw someone talking about.
• 54:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: on Twitter or something like, you know, that every comic is someone's first, right, you know, and, and however you want to accept that, but there was because of where we were at the time, and because there were always a new president coming in with a new edict, you know, I noticed sort of, there's these long scroll of where we are in the future, right, at the beginning of the book.
• 54:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: where you were really asked to like okay if someone had never picked up the book before give them this give them this information so I thought wow I go that was you know that was an edict and that was something you had to do so you had to sort of fit this idea to fit this thing into make sure everyone knew where you were where you were coming at it and I don't think that's something I don't think it hurt it but I just think it's something you wouldn't necessarily you know feel the need to do these days but it was just kind of funny some of the structural things
• 54:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't think I'm doing a con so much these days.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the structural things of a comic at the time.
• 54:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: And there were always, you know, we had the double gate folds for a while.
• 54:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: So making comics at that time, there could be a lot of jerking back and forth, you know, a little divo reference where someone would come in and say, okay, all the comics have to reflect this, this approach or this or this sensibility and then someone else would come along, you know, from on hot and then say, oh, no, that's not right.
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Don't do that.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which also happens to be Fitzroy's greatest motivation.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: He just wishes Bishop would join him in jerking back and forth.
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love, you know, how like how Fitzroy is is motivated by sort of being clowned, you know, like he's not taken seriously.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's not even paid attention to these are that is a very real human psychological, you know, I mean, you know, you're a therapist, right?
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a therapist, but like I said, I just take a short tangent here really quickly.
• 55:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know where you guys go.
• 55:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The up starts themselves if you read this title.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: My word.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we've got Fitzgerald who we've been talking about.
• 55:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got Sienna Blaze who's like for a good time I'll fracked the world.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got Shinobi Shaw who hangs out in like hot tubs in every appearance, surrounded by shirtless men and women with like a line in his hand.
• 56:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we've got the struck or twins who are fucking.
• 56:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the team.
• 56:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the entire upstart's team.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was Scott, that's what Scott wrote.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think Fabian did a lot with the Upstart's too.
• 56:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a crazy wild journey.
• 56:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like books ladies and gentlemen.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had such a joy, a joyful time with you both.
• 56:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today, thank you for hanging out, and I can't wait to share this episode with listeners.
• 56:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: As we're wrapping up, where can people find you online?
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: What would you like to plug for April 2025?
• 56:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go Jason and Joe.
• 56:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can catch me most Sundays on history channel talking about the history of food on the food of the built America, the mega brand of built America, and a yet to be disclosed third series coming, I think, in spring or summer, which I can't talk about yet.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you would sit back once in a while and go like, I have a show, which is amazing.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're incredible, that's great.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're doing every five minutes.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It gets me through the hard days.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where do people find you Jason?
• 57:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I'm mostly on Instagram at collecting candy, but I'm on, you know, I think like you can find, if you just look Google my name on on any of those things, be I'm on Instagram at collecting candy, I'm on Twitter.
• 57:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think I just dream blue sky, you know, but Instagram is where I play the most on my social media.
• 57:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's where I'm at as well.
• 57:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Joe.
• 57:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 57:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have a new book coming out April 2nd called Pass Time for Med Cave Studios.
• 57:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's about a vampire who realizes his dream of playing professional baseball with the advent of night games and lights.
• 57:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So fantastic.
• 57:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have anything else you'd like to plug?
• 57:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nothing I can give in detail at this moment.
• 57:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's okay.
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a brand to create a linkage Mike Mart who closed out being the editor of Bishop is the editor-in-chief of Mad Cave, correct?
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mike, who I've also had on the show, just a lovely guy.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Watch for joy.
• 57:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, sometimes soon.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And eventually I promise I'll have you back for Ricochet, man.
• 57:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, have a good time.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Lastly, I'm Chad Anderson.
• 57:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I keep my own social media private like I get those.
• 58:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The two of you are welcome to add me just ask.
• 58:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you can follow the show at Grimalkin, underscore land on Instagram most easily.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: In this crazy political time, we are determined to continue to create joy here.
• 58:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And just nerd out over comics through an academic lens.
• 58:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I hope everybody's having fun.
• 58:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: The next Patreon episode you can watch for immediately after this is all about the character Katsai from B. Helions.
• 58:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: There will be lots of meowing and obnoxious language.
• 58:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: This character speaks it a weird, weird way, but we're gonna have fun.
• 58:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Over on the main show, the next episode coming out is a script reading of two old 70s issues that are tangential to the X-Men.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of them is Avengers 137, which is where Beast joins the Avengers.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other is the champion's number one, written by Jenny Isabella with Iceman and Angel joining with Hercules, Black Widow and Ghost Prider.
• 58:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is super out to you, it's a crazy ride.
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So thanks everybody for listening.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you to Joe and Jason for joining me today.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: We will see you all back here next time on the Grimalk and Land Patriot.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism, as a special guest tonight talked about a red skull story, and it's modern applications.
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: All-oh-wee's shickle grubber was born in 1837 in a hamlet in Austria to his mother Maria, but he was an illegitimate child who never knew his father.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the word illegitimate was written on his baptismal certificate in place of the father's name, so either the father was known or it was kept secret.
• 59:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: When Alois was five, his mother married Yohan Georg Hitler, each IEDLER, and years later after Alois had enrolled in the custom service as a frontier guard, he ended up taking a variation on his stepfather's name as his own last name and became Alois Hitler.
• 59:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Historians have wondered for years if Alloese's heritage might be Jewish, or even involve inbreeding, but nothing conclusive has ever been found.
• 59:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this matters in later history as Adolf Hitler would one day require his allies and aides to prove their Aryan blood with certificates, which is something Adolf could never do.
• 59:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Alois worked for years as a customs official in 1869.
• 1:00:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: He fathered his own illegitimate child, Torecia Pence, and then in 1873, Alois at age 36, married the 50-year-old on a glass of water, but they became estranged because he cheated on her multiple times.
• 1:00:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: He ended up fathering an illegitimate son with his mistress, who was half his age named Fani Mutsl's Burger.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they named this son, Alois Jr.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he got two kids so far, Ternesia and Alois Jr.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: After his wife died in 1883, although us then married Fanny, his mistress, who was over a 23 years younger than him.
• 1:00:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was 23 years old at the time of their marriage, and they had another child named Angela Hitler.
• 1:00:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But his wife Fanny Hitler died of a lung disease just a few years later in 1884 at the age of 23.
• 1:00:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hitler immediately impregnated his teenage housekeeper, Clara Polzel, but found himself unable to marry her first because he had made claims on his birth certificate, saying he knew who his father was, and the man he said was his father was Clara's grandfather, which would legally make Clara his first cousin once removed.
• 1:01:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know if this is true or not, but again this is where the inbreeding question comes in.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the church ended up grinding a humanitarian waiver to allow the marriage to take place.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in 1885, Clara gave birth to Gustav Hitler a few months later.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then Ida Hitler, the following year, and then Otto Hitler in 1887.
• 1:01:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But all three of those children died very quickly.
• 1:01:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Two of them due to an diphtheria outbreak.
• 1:01:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Finally, in 1889, she gave birth, excuse me, Clara gave birth to a sickly child named Adolf Hitler.
• 1:01:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: A his father was 51, his mother was 28.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: She later had one more son Edmund, Hitler, who died of measles at the age of six, and then Paula Hitler, who would live to be 64 years old.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it all had three surviving siblings, Paula, who lived a quiet life and only had minimal contact with Adolfo, though he did financially support her.
• 1:01:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was a junior who lived until 1956 and had a very troubled relationship with Adolf.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And finally, Angela, who was very close with Adolf and managed his household for many years, Adolf later basically kidnapped her daughter to be his mistress.
• 1:02:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk more about the siblings of Adolf Hitler and what happened to his parents in our next episode.
• 1:02:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But today, we're going to break apart.
• 1:02:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: The story from Captain American
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today we're covering part one, the next RedSchool conversation will be part two.
• 1:02:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is part of the Epic Jam DMT as Paul Neary Opus.
• 1:02:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are building toward Captain America 300.
• 1:02:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an epic RedSchool story.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: This issue is called Storm Ones Drong, The Life and Times of the RedSchool.
• 1:02:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, beginning in 1998, dismissing the others, RedSchool stood aging and decrepit before Captain America, who was also old at this point, if you recall.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sitting in the replica of the German cafe that he had built in his home,
• 1:02:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You do the Peplex me, how can social-perial amounts around himself with trash, Jews, fobs, blacks, children?
• 1:03:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is the fascination?
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: These creatures hold for you?
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it their worship that holds you spellbound?
• 1:03:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does their groveling idolatry intoxicate you?
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does it feed your massive ego?
• 1:03:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we get the Red Skull's definitive origin story, building on what was there, but adding so many details.
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And J.M.
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Limitay has loves to give an origin story to a villain.
• 1:03:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: My life's journey began on a tempestuous night in 1899 in a stinking German village whose name is best left forgotten.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here lived a drunken loud named Herman Schmidt, a man born without benefit of brain, heart or conscience.
• 1:03:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was my father.
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: My mother's name was Martha as stupid a peasant as Herman, but with a soul as gentle as her husband's was, coarse and hitler by the way, hated his dad and loved his mom.
• 1:03:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was a saintly fool, a happy idiot.
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: For hours, Herman had endured the sounds of his wife's grunts and streaks as she struggled to deliver up the couple's first child.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: When Martha's cries finally faded, replaced by the mullish braying of the baby, Herman staggered into the bedroom and greeted his blood soaked offspring.
• 1:03:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have a remarkable memory captain.
• 1:03:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I clearly recall the comforting darkness of the womb, and the horror of being dragged screaming into the night.
• 1:04:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember two of the stupidification that transformed my father's face as the village doctor informed him that Martha had died in childbirth.
• 1:04:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: For the first time in his wasted life hermenschmit cried.
• 1:04:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: He abused and tormented my pitiful mother for years, but in his own twisted way, he loved her.
• 1:04:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was no doubt the same love Hitler felt for the Jews.
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: The love all victimizers feel for their victims.
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: For the man of hate must have an object to focus that hate upon,
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Without it, he is lost to madness.
• 1:04:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember that, but those were a minute.
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Such was my father's fate.
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like an animal he lashed out, striking the doctor down and ripping the babe from his arms.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could feel his hate capped in as he thrust my thrashing form in a basin of water.
• 1:04:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Submerged my head again and again, you killed my Martha, he bellowed.
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: You devil, you have killed my Martha.
• 1:04:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do not know where the old doctor found the strength to save me, but saved me he did.
• 1:04:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hermanschmit was beyond saving.
• 1:04:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: The animal had lost its will to fight, the madness turned inward, as father slumped to the floor, whimpering like a whipped dog, the doctor cradled me in his arms, whispering empty words of solace.
• 1:05:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I searched for that compassionate physician in later years, capped in oh, how I wanted to find him, not to thank him, but to kill him, schvine.
• 1:05:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He should have let me perish then and there return me to the darkness when I'd sprung.
• 1:05:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Father proved far lucky, other than I.
• 1:05:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the morning he took a straight razor and cut his own throat, a fitting end, don't you think?
• 1:05:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: As for me, life became an endless parade of orphanages, and even there among the outcasts I was alone, I was seven years old when I struck out on my own, my soul cried out for something.
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did not know what, but I sensed it could only be found amidst the storm of life in the thunder of humans suffering.
• 1:05:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Long ago I told you something of those years, Captain, how I lived in the streets, a beggar and a thief inept at both.
• 1:05:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here now the unexpected truth.
• 1:05:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like my mother before me, I was easy prey for the human vultures.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your hunch met the eternal victim, the perennial fool.
• 1:05:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: The only time I felt truly safe at home, at peace was in the darkness.
• 1:05:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mother Night was the goddess I worshipped.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hid for a week's at a time in lightness sellers and unguarded crypts imagining myself returned to the womb I remembered so well in the darkness I saw visions strange and inexplicable in darkness I grew and became a man.
• 1:06:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did I say a man?
• 1:06:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was allowed as much a brainless beast as my father of vagrant.
• 1:06:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I drifted from town to town jail to jail.
• 1:06:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never knew the comfort of a bed.
• 1:06:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: What jobs I could get were mean, you know.
• 1:06:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was treated like some insect with no right to be alive.
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Only once did someone show me kindness.
• 1:06:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The daughter of a Jewish shopkeeper who sometimes employed me.
• 1:06:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Esther smiled upon me and I fell in love.
• 1:06:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I thought it was then.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: The intervening years have shown me that what I felt was sheer animal lust.
• 1:06:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: The girl was
• 1:06:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: how I wanted her.
• 1:06:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I tried to woo her with words but I, who had never had an intelligent conversation in all my 30 years, could only mangle the language and frighten her.
• 1:06:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I forced myself upon her and she spurned me.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was then all the years of torment bubble up in me.
• 1:06:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I sought a scapegoat of victim of vessel to hold my rage, Esther became it, without thinking I knocked her down.
• 1:06:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mindless I reached for a nearby shovel.
• 1:06:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: How long I stood there pounding her, I do not know.
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Esther's blood upon me, I ran headlong into the night, my tear superseded only by my ecstasy.
• 1:07:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The act of murder had somehow opened a door in my soul.
• 1:07:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I felt a dizzying joy such as I never expected existed.
• 1:07:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I returned to the darkness and attempted to sort out what had happened, but your hunch-mitch should not have the intellect for such analysis.
• 1:07:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I slept in sleeping dream, in my dream a shrouded figure came to me, a teacher, a master, who promised to guide me through the lab rent of existence and lay the world at my feet.
• 1:07:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Years passed times change, and Germany changed with them.
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The humbled notion that had been beaten to its knees in World War I was finding new strength, new pride, and the Nazis were responsible.
• 1:07:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I unfortunately had grown no way, so with the years, the one who had visited me in the dream was long forgotten, but the empty
• 1:07:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: in my heart had reached a point where I found life unbearable.
• 1:07:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: How fitting that I was contemplating suicide that night I first met him, for was he not the man who ultimately buried your hunchmate and birthed the red skull.
• 1:07:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was in Berlin, I was a bearer boy to find hotel, the very pinnacle of my career to that point.
• 1:08:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: and I watched trembling with excitement as thousands turned out to welcome him.
• 1:08:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: This part of the tale you've heard before, how I brought refreshments to his room, how I walked in on him as he berated the Gestapo chief for letting a spy escape.
• 1:08:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just hearing his voice I knew I had found to the one, my savior, the redeemer who had come to me in my dreams, ate off Hitler and had spelled with a pH on Adolf here.
• 1:08:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: His words were branded in my memory, why have I no one to turn to he rally?
• 1:08:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: No one to depend on?
• 1:08:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Must I create my own race of perfect organs?
• 1:08:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could teach that better boy to be a better job than you.
• 1:08:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He turned to face me and a shutter ran through me.
• 1:08:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I stared into those hate-filled eyes and saw dark reflection of my darkest fears and frustrations.
• 1:08:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I saw everything I was and everything I could be.
• 1:08:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I saw evil embodied it in that instant I died and was born again, the fior of bout to make a perfect Nazi of me, but his fumbling subordinates could only slap an SS uniform on me and teach me to goose step like the rest of the sheep Hitler saw this and grew in raged.
• 1:08:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was then the master personally took over my training.
• 1:09:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The fior believed it was his idea, but I wielded it.
• 1:09:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each night I prayed for Hitler's intercession, I wanted to learn what he alone could teach me.
• 1:09:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the weeks that followed, Kindred Spear, it became one, ineffectual words cannot hope to express the sublime horror as he revealed to me.
• 1:09:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: The vile creatures he dragged up from my subconscious and forced me to face, sat in himself could not have done a better job of remolding my soul.
• 1:09:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: At last, the day of my apotheosis arrived.
• 1:09:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: The day your hunched mitt was forever more erased from this earth.
• 1:09:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: The day men first laid eyes upon the red skull.
• 1:09:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: One glimpse and every man in the room drew away from Macapton, including Hitler,
• 1:09:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think even then the master realized he had both an evil that would ultimately surpass him.
• 1:09:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh the glories, I soon found in the flames of war, if the murder of that hapless cow Esther had thrilled me.
• 1:09:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine the ecstasy I knew as I eradicated entire populations?
• 1:09:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then the mention of my name invoked terror across the globe, the highest officers in the third Reich trembled before me.
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for all its chaos and devastation, the war soon grew tiresome, whereas the challenge and exterminating in fears, I craved upon it where the of my skills and I found him captain, in you.
• 1:10:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You brought me as much meaning to my life as Hitler had, perhaps even more.
• 1:10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, for at last I had found my ultimate enemy, my opposite face, but time cut our dance short, my friend.
• 1:10:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: How well I remember that night in the weaning days of the war,
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Allied bombers flew above us leveling Berlin while we battled in a bunker far below the city, with the deafening roar of the blockbuster bomb, the Nazi dream came crashing down around us.
• 1:10:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: The bunker collapsed, we were separated.
• 1:10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as unconscious swallowed me, one thought burned in my brain, let the battle begin a new, let me grapple with Captain America through all eternity,
• 1:10:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You did not learn until years later that the support pillows above me criss-crossed saving me from the tons of rubble overhead.
• 1:10:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: More important and experimental gas was released keeping me alive and suspended animation.
• 1:10:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: For decades I drifted my body little more than a corpse through the darkness I so love.
• 1:10:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was there to believe in the heart that I made the leap to the next level of consciousness.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I transcended Hitler's mundane evil rose beyond the confines of this earth and touched the heart of cosmic evil.
• 1:11:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I was finally revived by the agents of the organization called them, when I discovered that you two had been preserved, unaged by this hand of fate, I knew my life's dream would be realized.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: We two superior beings would play the game of good and evil for times end and beyond.
• 1:11:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: again and again we have clashed captain and though I claimed world domination as my constant goal the world mattered little to me what mattered was the dance the perennial interweaving of light and darkness but and we have danced as few others captain oh it has been magnificent
• 1:11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so we're gonna pause here.
• 1:11:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know that was a lot of reading, but God as it will written let me welcome my favorite, what am I very favorite people Kevin Canary to talk about this crazy story with me Kevin.
• 1:11:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know that was a lot of listening.
• 1:11:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your patience.
• 1:11:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kevin, are you a red skull fan?
• 1:11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: What the fuck?
• 1:11:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was
• 1:11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's insane.
• 1:11:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so in preparation for this, you know, you talked about the full story that this leads up to and so I was reading some of the earlier issues and red school just is a guest appearance in some of them and is somewhat fabulous as this like kind of gay camp over the top villain and all of this and so I was like, oh, you know what I could maybe get on board with this ridiculous event then this happens.
• 1:12:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then this is the one that we're going to talk about is like when Jim to Madness is like, okay, let me let me try and show you the full history of this terrible evil person.
• 1:12:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: The world according to the red skull, uh, truly crazy.
• 1:12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Finish the story.
• 1:12:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Read it through 300 because it ends brilliantly.
• 1:12:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I've been doing one red skull story at a time.
• 1:12:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: This one I had to slow way down, just because it's so fucking great.
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's it's a horrible character, but it's great.
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's talk about the opening first.
• 1:12:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I talked about the origins of the Adolf Hitler which most people don't
• 1:12:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that was fascinating because, yeah, I've not done any research into him because, you know, if I ever have to travel back in time and kill baby Hitler, I don't want to know too much about his life.
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I thought, like, you know, you just want to know that they're an evil fuck.
• 1:13:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, um, wow, all of that makes sense.
• 1:13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It also seems like that's some of what, maybe they want to do incorporate into red skull a little bit of this idea.
• 1:13:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, for something that feels like comic book, this is the 1980s,
• 1:13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you expect it to be very simple, cheesy in a way.
• 1:13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think they dove into Adolf's actual, like, you know, background a bit to say, like, what makes a man like this.
• 1:13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not a surprise, especially in the world we're in today to hear some of the stuff that's going on in Adolf's background, but I didn't ever consider it.
• 1:13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll continue it.
• 1:13:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, we're going to do 298 part 2 next time.
• 1:13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
• 1:13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you've got to get to the quiz.
• 1:13:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, we'll talk to, we'll talk to Haram about Redskull's daughter and the sisters of sin and their origins, but also Adolf's, Adolf never had children, but his siblings and the way his early life developed with his parents really informs just a crazy madman.
• 1:13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Red Skull's origins itself, first of all, he remembers having been in the womb in the darkness.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The experience of childbirth alone is insane and then his mother dies, his father's crazy, his dad commits suicide.
• 1:14:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a tragic origin story, my word.
• 1:14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and they make it seem, and rightly so, in the book, Captain America starts to have like somewhat of a feeling of like pity on Red Skull, so I get how they're trying to play that I don't have the goodness that Captain America has in him.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like for me, I think it's a lot of made-up crap.
• 1:14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think when people pretend they think they remember what it was like in the womb or they know how this was, they've heard stories and they've made it into this kind of narrative.
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that fits what they need.
• 1:14:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I don't know, I think red skull's a little full of it, and he's just trying to justify some stuff.
• 1:14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in his storytelling, he explains how dumb he is.
• 1:14:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Multiple times.
• 1:14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I'm not everything I should be.
• 1:14:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm dumb, and it's like, you are almost there red skull.
• 1:14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are seconds away from figuring this all out, and then he doesn't.
• 1:14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm inept.
• 1:14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm pathetic.
• 1:14:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how to talk to a girl, so I just have to attack her and then beater to death, and that was the only time I ever felt anything.
• 1:15:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we also open on him, staring at Captain America and saying, you perplex me, how can so superior a man surround himself with such trash?
• 1:15:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You gotta believe that this is where Hitler comes from, too, right?
• 1:15:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, and even Trump, frankly, but like, I'm creating this world around me, where I'm like celebrating beautiful people.
• 1:15:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like creating death for people who I don't see as belonging.
• 1:15:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But also, they don't belong in the vision of the beautiful people we're creating.
• 1:15:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's that line that damned Ajame includes in this story about Hitler being
• 1:15:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, no one understands me.
• 1:15:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do I have to create my own perfect Aryan race to finally be understood?
• 1:15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's just this like a delicious, evil, awful pathos that's so uncomfortable when you parallel it to right reality.
• 1:15:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ugh, and that's the thing right now with when people try and claim, oh comic books have gotten so woke.
• 1:15:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is 1984.
• 1:15:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please go back and read what they were telling you at this time, and this is this is when we were only 40 years out from like World War II when this is written and so there are still many people alive and many people who want to talk about this stuff.
• 1:16:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: They also early up to this a lot of stuff about the Vietnam War and about war and pacifism and all this other stuff is being talked about in this Captain America comic.
• 1:16:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: We understood this.
• 1:16:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was how we told our stories in the past of explaining how things happened and I think nowadays when people are like
• 1:16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to read about that.
• 1:16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to read about just fantasy.
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's never really been what comic books have been.
• 1:16:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He describes his father, Herman, as a man born without benefit of brain, heart, or conscience, who has rage and who ultimately takes his own life.
• 1:16:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's kind of describing himself in his own pathetic origins.
• 1:16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, he describes his mother as a saintly fool, a happy idiot.
• 1:16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we see the story later of him beating a woman to death that reminds him of his mother.
• 1:16:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's giving like deliciously painful like pathos related to very thin egos and kind of insel energy, but I mean he's like glorifying and beating a woman to death it reminds him of his mom who's the only woman he respects and remembers.
• 1:17:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a crazy psychological twist here and again really a job to J.M.
• 1:17:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: here, but your thoughts on the Red Skull's parents and maybe even the
• 1:17:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, exactly.
• 1:17:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you were telling the story about Hitler, I was like, oh, I see where they're pulling some of the stuff.
• 1:17:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I imagine the jam was pulling some of this on purpose, but it is that idea of like setting up them.
• 1:17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's very queer-coded too.
• 1:17:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I gotta tell you as much as it's not good.
• 1:17:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, um, there's a lot of hate for Steve Rogers.
• 1:17:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 1:17:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he's into Steve Rogers, he's super like Mama's boy, he, you know, had a really, you know, abusive, rough father experience, you know, there's, there's, there's something that's way queer coded about all this.
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do think he's using it all as excuses.
• 1:17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like again, I don't think he really remembers all this stuff.
• 1:17:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think he's either been told stories or he's decided to make his own origin out of what's happened with his parents setting up his mom as this one, you know, like almost as this good meal.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's very black and white and everything he talks about and even his parents are that.
• 1:18:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I don't know, I think it's a lot of excuses and I don't know, it just leads him down a bad path.
• 1:18:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, I wish I could have hunted down the doctor so that I could have killed him and ended my misery at the beginning.
• 1:18:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The darkness is the only place I belong.
• 1:18:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he's not enough, too.
• 1:18:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, he wants someone else, he's a coward and wants somebody else to have taken care of it.
• 1:18:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, and that kind of goes through his whole anger, I think, all the time.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is done.
• 1:18:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is really deft, brilliant storytelling, but I've shared on the show before in these conversations.
• 1:18:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm frustrated by the writers need to find a reason for someone to join Orcas or Hydra or Louis Watchdogs or all these hate organizations.
• 1:18:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's usually not always, but it's usually some white man who like doesn't feel important anymore and it wasn't noticed by women and just wants to find a cause to pledge himself to.
• 1:18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if that's how you end up being like a skinhead or a supremacist, it's kind of a similar story
• 1:18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so figured the fuck out.
• 1:18:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Go to therapy, my friends.
• 1:18:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't need to join hate causes and channel that like I find brotherhood with these other people who feel like louts and losers and then we get to go beat people up that we think are terrible.
• 1:19:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a sense of power and rage that is quite disgusting with you.
• 1:19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look at the pathology of it all, but it's brilliantly told by Jam in this story.
• 1:19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's so smart.
• 1:19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels very real, sadly, I mean, you know, we can really make those associations with what's going on today, but I think he doesn't try.
• 1:19:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like that joke about Sauron.
• 1:19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, not wanting to cure cancer.
• 1:19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: He just wants to be evil.
• 1:19:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's very much this thing.
• 1:19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know.
• 1:19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not smart enough to figure this out.
• 1:19:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just want to be the worst best evil person I can be.
• 1:19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he flounders for years, he meets this woman Esther who he beats to death with a shovel.
• 1:19:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's rape implied, and I know that's a rough story already.
• 1:19:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, where we're telling stories about super villains, an often comic book will really water that down.
• 1:19:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is one example of what the red skull must have done many, many times, frankly.
• 1:19:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: The violence toward women is often the place that it starts.
• 1:19:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: He talks about like floundering floundering, and the night he murdered her, he had a vision of a savior who was going to give him purpose.
• 1:20:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: He talks about seeing Hitler recognizing that savior, recognizing and caused a pledge himself to, and he's given this red mask that he can now become someone else.
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: All the glories I soon found in the flames of the war.
• 1:20:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was the murder of that hapless cow, Esther had thrilled me.
• 1:20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine how the ecstasy I knew as I eradicated entire populations?
• 1:20:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Self-importance.
• 1:20:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: really, really truly terrible.
• 1:20:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your thoughts on this kind of connection to this messianic figure of hate that he needs to attach to, and then he becomes, that messy, like, to hate, to symbol it himself.
• 1:20:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's, and he's super proud of the fact that he like supersedes it.
• 1:20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's the whole point of his story almost to Captain America is like, I finally succeeded at something.
• 1:20:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was finally the best or even better than.
• 1:20:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: because he gets the mask and as soon as he has that, he's like, even the people that were supposed to be helping me or a part of my team are scared of me.
• 1:20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so there's definitely this sense of like, intimidation is all the only power he has.
• 1:21:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because again, in this entire story, yes, no skills.
• 1:21:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are no marketable skills here.
• 1:21:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he gets bored with genocide.
• 1:21:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where was the challenge in exterminating infuriars?
• 1:21:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I craved an opponent worthy of my skills and I found him capped in a new.
• 1:21:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You brought as much meaning to my life as Hitler had, perhaps even more so.
• 1:21:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: For the last I had found my ultimate enemy, my opposite face.
• 1:21:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: A jammed as this often when we have obsessive supervillains, if you've ever read Craven's last hunt, Sergei Craven off has parents who succumb to madness.
• 1:21:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: and he is bested by Spider-Man and now becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming Spider-Man.
• 1:21:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So J.M.
• 1:21:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: again does a really brilliant job with super villains.
• 1:21:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: He even does like an origin like that for the puppet master and Verman and Camelian.
• 1:21:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's these characters that he'll take and really give a ton of like early psychology to that, which is always fascinating.
• 1:21:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: rather than just renting super villain energy.
• 1:21:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The obsession the Red Skull has with Captain America, and that's what this story is building to, is basically I want us to die together so that we can dance in this battle for eternity, which is what hear thoughts here.
• 1:22:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was when it really made it turn for me when I was doing, when he's like, I don't care, I was going to let you and your friends go, but now I've decided we're going to battle for all the eternity and you almost feel like he's going to like rope them together and jump off a cliff or something.
• 1:22:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so, again, it's a little queer-coated extra, like he's a bit of a drama queen in this, but there is a sense of like, you don't have any purpose.
• 1:22:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have Captain Mary, it's very Joker Batman energy too, a little bit, like of that like,
• 1:22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't exist without you, but I just think it again goes to his almost like stunted growth like he's a child still with his like way of thinking of like I just need you to be here to be my encounter and that's my one goal now.
• 1:22:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's that messianic thing you said again, it's like it's God in the devil all the sudden.
• 1:22:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's also, and this is a subtle piece of the story, and it's drawing upon earlier stories that I've talked about with others.
• 1:22:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in the next room, he's keeping a little cosmic cube prison with the soul of Adolf Hitler inside of it.
• 1:22:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just sitting in the next room, while he's biting Captain America.
• 1:23:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just...
• 1:23:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some really interesting because he's talking about, you know, Hitler died, but I transcended death.
• 1:23:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I became this cosmic evil, but all Hitler's also around because Arnhem's Ola recreated him as the hate manga.
• 1:23:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be doing a Patreon on the hate manga later this year everybody, so you could listen to that story.
• 1:23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's do a little bit of analysis on the modern comparisons, because
• 1:23:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not the same story, but you can look at the same kind of psychology in the story of Donald Trump and his family and his upbringing, and a lot of the people in his camp who are frankly just fascists.
• 1:23:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we can't use the word Nazi, so easily, but fascists for sure, and they're doing the kind of same things, Donald Trump is fighting immigrants, but he's married to an immigrant and his parents are immigrants.
• 1:23:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: his name is an adaptation of, you know, earlier ancestors.
• 1:23:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's all these like really uncomfortable parallels, this man who needs self-importance.
• 1:23:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the psychology of these kinds of people is deeply uncomfortable, but history has a right to examine it at the same time.
• 1:23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I got to say too, especially when you're talking about Adolf's family's history and the people, you know, re-marrying, you know, younger wives, you know, people who don't have their own kind of self, you know, as they're being forced into these relationships, it felt very much like what's going on with like nowadays and how these men treat women in general.
• 1:24:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that has improved or changed much.
• 1:24:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when it gets away, historians for like a hundred years, there have been, not a hundred, but there have been so many tombs and articles and papers written about who, you know, Hitler's paternal grandfather might be because is it incest, was, was he Jewish?
• 1:24:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's so many pieces, but no one's ever conclusively prove anything, but keep going.
• 1:24:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and it's the idea of like creating your own backstory the way you think it should be, and that's exactly what's happening now with half of these people, but especially with Trump, where he just tells these lies and stories about relatives or his life, or, you know, and you don't know any more of like, do you believe that or are, you know, or is it something you're crafting for some reason?
• 1:24:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just like the red skull telling stories, like how much of this do you believe versus how much of it is a calculated lie for this purpose?
• 1:25:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I gotta tell you the idea of being really unqualified to do what you're doing is the major thing I kept thinking when you see these stories and you're like, you're almost there to prove the fact that you don't know what you're doing that you're incompetent but you're blaming someone else.
• 1:25:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this idea.
• 1:25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know why I'm blaming this person and this push pull.
• 1:25:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love them but I hate them because they represent something else and you see that throughout what's going on to your point like, oh, you're married to an immigrant.
• 1:25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that was that one's fine until it's not.
• 1:25:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, become something else.
• 1:25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it was real heavy.
• 1:25:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like again, I was ready to talk about
• 1:25:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's so weird to read this and be like what I mean of course history is repeating itself and we learn to nothing, but it's just weird when you see it in a comic book even and we're not learned like what else you have to read a history book to know this to sum up just that that
• 1:26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The final part of what I read today, which is halfway through the issue, he says, I transcended Hitler's mundane evil, rose beyond the confines of this earth and touched the heart of cosmic evil.
• 1:26:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then a little farther down, he says, I knew my life's dream would finally be realized.
• 1:26:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: We two superior beings would play the game of good meal until times end and beyond.
• 1:26:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Though I have claimed world domination as my constant goal, the world mattered little to me.
• 1:26:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: What mattered was the dance, the perennial
• 1:26:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost as though the need to be important to be remembered as something amazing and there's psychology done around a lot of serial killers and even world leaders like I'll do horrible things so that I can be remembered as the most horrible person.
• 1:26:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day, there's very little belief in the cause of something awful itself.
• 1:26:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: A Hitler chose what to believe in, based on what would keep him in power and then let that hatred go unchecked.
• 1:27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: He formed rules around what was okay and what wasn't.
• 1:27:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the more of these conversations I have, the more educated I'm becoming about what's happening around me, which is why these are really interesting, because I've done about 16, 20 of these now.
• 1:27:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And every time I'm looking into history and going, wait a minute, there's something here.
• 1:27:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stay tuned next time for the story of Adolf Hitler's niece because I don't think it's a story people know and it's it's dark it's really dark but we're gonna pick up their next time when we talk about the origins of Cynthia Schmidt the the mother superior red skulls daughter and air uh crazy crazy story uh Kevin I love hanging out with you every time we just got to hang out and uncanny uh even though
• 1:27:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: that will have been a few months ago before I put this out.
• 1:27:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But do you have any final thoughts on this story?
• 1:27:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted it to be Sillyere, and then realized, oh shoot, this is gonna be, this is it.
• 1:27:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are talking about its origin fleshed out.
• 1:27:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think some of these conversations are really silly, but some of them are quite intense.
• 1:27:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's important now.
• 1:27:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's important and it's so important for me to see something told to us in 1984 and that we and maybe why I am the adult I am is because I did read some of these stories back then, but wow, they were trying to tell us then.
• 1:28:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
• 1:28:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love you very much, my friend.
• 1:28:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for having me here today.
• 1:28:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody stay tuned.
• 1:28:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll continue this in our next episode.
• 1:28:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you're enjoying these educational vignettes.
• 1:28:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Make sure you take care of yourselves.
• 1:28:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Continue living boldly, living joyfully right now as an active appliance advocate, but be safe.
• 1:28:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks everyone for listening.
• 1:28:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: We will see you back here next time.