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Bonus Patreon Release: Ahab! With Scotty White! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grey Malkin Lane Patreon channel where we get to talk about off-over-looked characters or the characters that certainly do not get much of a conversation.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even if they are a weird little favorite like this guy today, this is a collab.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: What a journey it was to do this particular character.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: My dear friend Scotty White has joined me for this particular episode and I would Scotty largely choose this character.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Scotty, welcome back to the Patreon and what was it about
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, everybody.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, Hab is such an underused interesting X-Men villain.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: My relationship with him started when I first started reading comics One of the first books I picked up was the the annuals that made up days of future present So I like that's how I jumped into X-Men so like before I knew about Magneto or any of that stuff You're a apocalypse for anybody.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I anyway have so he's got a special little place in my heart and I was like he's gonna be everywhere and then he wasn't
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This character has a very specific look and demeanor that very much set him apart, but yes, he is largely associated with those really weird animals, which I think when these came out, like these are high sci-fi concepts, right?
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about alternate realities and things popping in and out of existence and cosmic destiny.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of really crazy pieces to to these stories that we love in the X-Men when it's done right.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of the story lands in
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: They made the multiverse cool before it was cool.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this builds on what Claremont started with days of future pass and really expands on it and kind of pushes it forward to where we get modern, multiverse, especially with the X-Men.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's always extra dimensions hanging out with the X-Men.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's really interesting where this is kind of, we had that we had to start with days of future pass and then present just kind of builds this into this whole other thing.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so let's jump right into the thick of it with this storyline.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I've tried to do in these channels is to layer the continuity where we can be comprehensive, but not overly comprehensive because we could stuck.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think everyone at this point knows what an alternate reality is, but the rules from our will change a little bit.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the clear thing is if the character time travels from the future into the present and does something to alter the present, it thus changes the future.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the timeline splits, the reality that the character jumped from remains viable, but the reality that gets split off is something else entirely, right?
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, days of future past is a huge early Marvel example of this.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the most famous comic book stories of all time, in which we see a dystopian future where mutants are being rounded up in concentration camps, Kate Pride sends herself back in time to try to intervene at a particular point and the timeline ends up diverging.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, the original timeline, the one that Kate came from, has been used in dozens of stories at this point.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's been full limited series about this timeline.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there are characters, like with many timelines in the X-Men, primarily things like the Age of Apocalypse, or that 2000 years in the future, where cable lived, or Bishop's timeline, of course.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we see a lot of characters in our timeline in the 616 interacting with main members of the team on a regular basis, who are from this future that technically no longer exists, but it's still out there.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just not this reality's future any longer.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that was a lot already, but we're just kind of layering that quickly so we can have a conversation about the complexity of this.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Got to do you want to introduce the character of Rachel's Summers to us?
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a beloved character to the X-Men, not one that we have talked on my show very much about except in a couple of isolated episodes like Madam Sanctity, or the recent one on Blacksmith.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But do you want to tell us who Rachel is?
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Rachel is from the Desert Future Past timeline.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: She is the daughter of Jean Grey and Scott Summer.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: She is one of the survivors in the mutant concentration camp.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: In between the time that she was captured and the time she ends up in the concentration, she becomes a hailed, a hunter for a have himself.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her immunabilities are similar to Jean's, but she's got an extra one where she consents mutants, and that became very useful for him.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rachel escapes her timeline and comes to the past and becomes a member of the X-Men and has a very complicated relationship with Jean.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It becomes host of the Phoenix Force for a long time and is currently running around with Betsy Radik, so she's a she's my favorite X-Men period.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of my part of my favorite Marvel character, so she's a character that I haven't given a lot of thought to which is crazy I'm a huge comic book head like I love everything X-Men, but she's just not a character that I ever really imprinted on the longer I make this show though The more excited I am to go back and explore her because she's the again I've read all of the comics right just not someone I ever considered really a focal point for anything
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's funny for me because, again, I got into comics through the Marvel Comics cards, the trading cards back in the 90s, and for season the series 2, there was this great art by Steevelyn, a light of her, and I'm like 13 and impressionable and like, okay, I like girls.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just kind of fell into it and that's what got me to read books about her and found out she was in this days of future present story and that's my for I picked them up at the flea market and just been hooked ever since on her and her story and her evolution and you know if you haven't revisited ex-calibering here she should definitely go back and check out the playwrights her the best in ex-caliber.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been doing an Excaliburary Reed for the eventual trial of Knight Crawler, which will host on my show, and I'm paying attention to Rachel, but I'm there for Knight Crawler this time.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, read through in this way, I'm there for a particular character.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel imprints with a lot of audiences for a couple of reasons.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Number one, late 80s, America, where we have the Cindy Lopper, kind of vibe going Debbie Gibson.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's this kind of rebellious,
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: cool chick who's like a little bit sluddy maybe, but like fashion forward, think of the television show, Blossom with Miami Alec.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a certain kind of energy that I think Rachel captures as like the independent teen girl, right?
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But she also has this like crazy future thing going.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, a lot of readers read her as queer, which canonically, she's at least bisexual now in the comics, because she's with Betsy Braddock in her deep relationship.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is a character like many in the X-Men that is entirely steeped in trauma, and I'm going to put the trauma therapist had on for just a minute.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel is a mutant character who in the future is captured from her family, and basically brainwashed by a had will get there in a minute, into hunting down other mutant
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, the trauma of this, the loss of her innocence, the Stockholm syndrome of it, but there's also parallels to kind of rape and what happens to victims afterward or sexual assault.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, there's a lot of parallels, and whenever she manifests this hound power where she loses her mind, she manifests these dark scars on her body.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's also associated with that tight red costume with the spikes over it.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, there's this kind of odd Mad Max kind of energy to this future that she captures.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, in World War II, there were Jewish people that were captured and tortured by the Nazis and then sent back out as like seekers, because there were Jews living among the populists pretending not to be Jews, right?
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, these seekers were sent out to find the gain, the trust of other people, and then turn them back over to the Nazis for arrest.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh and it was entirely coerced.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard for me to believe that Rachel's story is not somewhat connected to this kind of mythology from World War II.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of thoughts on Rachel at what's but she specials.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's a really great character.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I like about her is outside of the trauma is that she's always trying to find connection to family.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: If she lost her family and she has a chance when she comes to the past to reconnect and it's
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: doesn't always work out the way she thinks it should.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: She has a really complicated relationship with Jean Grey.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Scott kind of accepted her as his maybe possible future kid and it's kind of that has only grown.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Me, I'm an adopted kid so you know that that searching for family aspect of Rachel always was something that that sung to my heart.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah and then these are future past as well.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: God we're gonna get lost at it.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Days of future past as well is kind of Claremont being so fucking smart because he's really playing the mutant parallel up Right, he's the one that brings in the sentinels as the ultimate sign of the hate There's references to like government depression sterilization like pits of bodies Oh, mutants being experimented on everything that's happened to disenfranchised Populations in the real world and in days of future past he's showing us here's what happens if we let go
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the parallel for 2025 America with internment camps and alligator alcatraz is already rough.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the imagery of days of future past, it's giving that dystopian end of the world.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's that infamous image of two of the character standing in front of the wall of missing, missing, dead, dead, missing.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's giving very Jews during World War II.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's literal concentration camps.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you picture the X-Men as one family in the camps, they're experiencing losses.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to escape.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have no hope anymore.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel is born in this environment, right?
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Ahab is then the Nazi character.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is the Joseph Goebles, or, you know, one of those like AIDS to Hitler in his way, as he's brainwashing hounds to go out and hunt down all the hated mutants who aren't, quote, unquote, Aryan enough.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: The World War II in Fascism comparisons are deeply uncomfortable, but this character is a real good time at the same time.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's important to just kind of put that out there all at once, just so we can properly frame the conversation more about to have the one thing that's that I think people still miss about days of future past is that if you go back and reread and you know, especially in this climate, I recommend everyone
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: should.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not just the mutants who are in camps.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's mutants and meta-humans and also humans because humans can make mutants.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the sentinals are in control and they are very careful how they monitor everything.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the end, everyone is a prisoner in this.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: No one's safe.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I think that's the lesson here.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like this, you know, you just think it's the and the mutants at first.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, it's everybody.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Rachel is in the future in a relationship with Franklin Richards, who is the son of Reed and Sue Richards.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they're both the children of an entire heroic legacy, right?
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Franklin of the Fantastic Four, Rachel of the X-Men because her parents are Cyclops and Jean.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have bonded together in their trauma.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel's still gay, it's fine.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's, there's an argument.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: We all have our first one, friends, it's fine.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Franklin is a character that is sometimes labeled as a mutant more recently canonically not, but at this era he is a mutant and he's basically born with God powers.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He can alter cosmic threads.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: He can create life.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: He can put a new universe inside a little blue ball.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a character I have a whole academic panel out on.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you go back to November last year, we talk in depth about what Franklin Richter represents.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really smart panel.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: In this future, Franklin is dead, basically.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he's looking to find his place.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: His consciousness has lived on.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's connected to Rachel.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it has manifested in our reality.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's trying to alter reality in his trauma space.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because this like solo Franklin Richards doesn't realize he's actually dead.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's an undead, all powerful spirit from the future in that Rachel's ex-boyfriend.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: who's manifesting reality around him through this series of annuals.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I told you it's complicated.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you have came, you know, I love the X-Men.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the best soap opera.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm telling you, it's the best.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's great about it is like, so you've got, you've got, you know, you've got Franklin who's this cosmic entity.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's drawn to the past because of the Phoenix force with Rachel and control.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's herf cosmic entity that that calls out the helm.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it's just amazing.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, AHAB is in the future, and his prize-hound has escaped, that's Rachel.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's living in the past and has joined the X-Men, and now Franklin has manifested back here.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So AHAB is opening time portals and coming through with other hounds, who are crazy powerful, as well as his own crazy technology, we'll talk about his powers in a moment, as well as future sentinals, and all of them are being used to try to re-acquire Rachel.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the story we're jumping into,
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: We begin in Fantastic Four and you will number 23, and Ahab is right on the cover, and this is a startling design.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: For those of you that have attended my fashion review in person, this summer one of the characters I've featured in the fashion review is Ahab with three different looks that everyone just like cheers whenever he shows up.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Us got a do you want to describe Ahab before our listeners?
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's so pointy.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: he is he is all parts I would say cybernetic pirate captain with a peg leg and everything he's got big furry face he's that is scarred and broken from years of abuse he's completely cybernetic all parts the best parts of a terminator and robot cop all matched with Captain A Hab from Moby Dick.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: This looks like a character from like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like totally fauna power Ranger, right?
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The white and brown beard.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these like super pointy hair and the way his peg leg ends at a point.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, he almost looks like a character Mojo would have created in an odd way.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's weird because clearly the peg legs have choice.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got a regular robot leg or boot.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you clearly the peg leg was, I need one of those.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: He also plays around on a giant ship called the peak quad, which is a direct reference to Moby Dick.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll get there in a minute So this is a four-part story in annual form.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the stories are long.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll cover parts of this quickly and then we'll pause to talk about it The four-part story is called days of future present and this to first story is when Franklin comes March and home by Walter Simonson, Jackson, Lease and a Jeff Fisher wood The fantastic four find the backster building
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: which has been gone for quite some time, suddenly back in New York City where it has always been, and they see past versions of themselves inside it.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It turns out that Ghost of Franklin Richards from the future has created a new backstabilting and an old version of the Fantastic Four to make himself more comfortable.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, when his powers activate, meanwhile, deep within a hidden crypt somewhere between here and now, we get code, red, time, emergency, terminate, stasis, initiate, recovery, and a have awakens.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, status report code red sir Franklin manifestation target isolated but vergable authority necessary for final action is finally happened compared to lots in the warbatek know what Deadly robots attack the fantastic forescanning for mutants to destroy scan form utates one human mutant Richards located temporal anomaly Richards mutant is a child destroy DNA scan mutates Susan storm Richards producer of mutant offspring eliminate invisible force field defense initiate historical scan for proper
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: offensive response.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So these are like really scary terminators and those their robots end up self-destructing though because Franklin's powers go crazy.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna skip through some of this.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna jump over to New Mutants annual number six, which weirdly, if you read, it came out later than the next part of the story but you're supposed to read this one first.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is a Rob Lafel cover.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Franklin Richards has the tiniest feet and he is fighting an entire pack of sentibles and the new mutants are tied up by identical hound twin.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I said small feet is on brand for Rob Lafel.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: We had a whole bunch of stuff about this MFF action panel.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Peter hard to draw, okay.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Franklin Richards constructs the Xavier mansion into the version that it exists in his far future.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he just kind of alters the building around it to match and it has a bunch of anti mutant messages spray painted on it elsewhere from his secret complex.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: at a nexus where the present and future meet, a had the master of the hounds, a mutant hunter sent from the future, surveys a projection map of lower New York state.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Alas, it was before the Sentinel robots rested control of the United States from humanity and brutally crushed on mutant resistance, he is the guardian placed there by the master Sentinel to prevent any mutant time travelers from escaping into the past.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Crazy, this is a crazy origin.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ehab says.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, he is appeared.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Little Threken Richards, little no longer.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: This time, he isn't Westchester at the late Professor Xavier's Mutant Schoolhouse.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: How is he doing it?
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I ran into ground, he had no powers to set him aside from normal humanity, only a vast, unrealized potential.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Certainly, he was no time travel.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And my masters were a certain day of killed him.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yet, he is alive.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: With all enormous potentials fulfilled.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: What has happened to release his powers?
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now he's two dangers to be allowed to live.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: After him, my hands, pick the scouts and go to Westchester.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Two of her vests are Xavier's school for gifted youngsters.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hunt down young Franklin Richards and destroy him.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is giving such wicked witch of the West.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, fly, fly my monkeys.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like,
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love how he says go to Professor Xavier's school for gifted yokes jersey.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gives the respect to the full title.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is used to these sentinels.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like if he does not give the exact prompt, they're like, oh, I didn't know which Xavier's school you meant.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're sassy.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has to be so perfectly precise.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're not like sentin on GPT, right?
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, a hound, which is a buff guy with a mohawk, and he's inside that spiky red suit that represents all the hound uniforms.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Flys forward with guns, he's surrounded by little robot planes.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The new mutants are training in the danger room, with cable, when replicas of the X-Men from Franklin's future appear, manifested.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of them, and this are crazy designs.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you'll see these characters causeplayed at the most obscure X-Men conventions, which I love.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got Blue Wagner, who is the teleporting daughter of Night-Crawler, Blaze, who pulls bio-weapons out of his body.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: The magus, who is the father of Warlock in our reality, magus here, is Doug Rimesy, merged with an evil techner.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: With that cudgel, a person of color, who has a staff that causes earth tremors, and also old man, Banshee, who has a red beard and a red iPad.
• 16:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Franklin sends them all back.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then the fantastic four get there with young Franklin and normal batchy, and they end up going to war with the robots and the hound who's been deployed.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the hound says, we've been sent back in time to stop Franklin Richards anyway we can before he changes history beyond repair.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You are fools to apply.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: my master, Ahab, he was bred to stop your kind.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't know his power to capture and to transform so that you are his alone and serve him body and soul, but you will learn to your sorrow as I have learned.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ahab will take whom he chooses, and you will die for in my time, you are already dead.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this pisses Ahab the fuck off, because he's given way too much information.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: What you have to think is this, I mean, uh, this sound is not serving of his own free will.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is his way of trying to ask for help.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You almost wonder because he's been brainwashed.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It had teleports in and yells, dog of a hound.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've revealed too much.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Be silent now and forever.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: and he hurls his harpoon, it's made of energy, and he kills the hound, and then he teleports away and says,
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Franklin now goes to the Museum of Natural History and he conjures up a version of Rachel from his world.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Another Hound to Tax, along with a pack of Sentinels, and the heroes fight again, but this time they realize that the Hounds are people with power and free will that are being enslaved.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You almost gotta think of it as like the Isidai with those control collars in the Wheel of Time series for those of you who know that we're talking about.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Adult Franklin Richard kills them, wipes them out, and then thinks, they were people.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ordinary mutants, like the new mutants, like me and Rachel, poor little Rachel, twisted beings with innocent beginnings, as my sweet, my beautiful gentle Rachel's beginnings were so innocent.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, have stole their souls, like he stole hers.
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I came here searching for the innocence in myself, and instead I've completed the ultimate betrayal, the destruction of the innocence I came so far to find.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, we jump to X-Factor IDL number five.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is where on the cover, we see the fantastic car rushing forward with Ben Grimm, the human version, and driving it.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in the backseat, Ms. Marvel is clutching baby Nathan in his forced shield.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Iceman and Cyclops are here.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Scott's firing a blast at the cyborg pirate A-hab, who holds an axe with like a 14 foot pole and so long.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the longest like Plato actually I've ever seen and the other hero's Russian and for the aerial battle from the future he comes AHA master of the hounds The story opens with a Herman Melville quote and Herman Melville is the author of Mopi Dick and was also canonically question mark
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: a very actively believed to be gay, which is interesting.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So fun fact, go look that up.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The quote says, faith like a jackal feeds among the tombs.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even from these deer doubts, she gathers her most vital hope.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So right out of Moby Dick, Franklin makes X-Factor's ship completely disappear.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: A hab knowing that Franklin could alter history itself, opens a portal and summons more hounds from the future to go after him.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: He says,
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: after him my hounds.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Find him, lead me to Richards that I might destroy him.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when one of the hounds is able to resist him, a have tries again to change him using his energy harpoon, but he has no choice but to kill the hound with a spear.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So do you want to talk?
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's pause here and talk about what this guy is capabilities actually are.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's designed by the Sentinel's and what is he able to do with mutant minds?
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: uh he's able to ship shape and morph them to his needs so he's got a very complicated machine that allows him to alter alter people's brains he's got how he mind wipes all of the mutants he needs and he can transform them into physical monsters that are their hounds uh it's they all end up with the same uniform it's real
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: He also has, um, let's like a weird twisted willing walk-up factory.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really odd layout, right?
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was like ship in space, you know.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he also has these energy spears that can either incapacitate or kill.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what's interesting?
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's interesting here is, too.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what's interesting about it, about his harpoons are, because our harpoons are not spears.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Our harpoon, because it's, it's pirate theme.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we got to stick with harpoons.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: The harpoons are tied to his life energy.
• 20:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So no one else can pick them up.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they're, they're totally, he can only use them.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of a neat little special thing that they have has.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Rachel shows back up and by the way, canonically, this is her first meeting with Jean Grey, I believe.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: When the sentinel's fallen the attack, A-hab realizes he's going to have to get directly involved.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the first thing he does is impale Rachel with an energy harpoon, he says.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you too have escaped your proper time in place.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: You, my pride, my greatest warrior.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: You cannot escape your destiny Rachel, though you deny it.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: My hopping reminds you of who you are and who you truly are, a killer of your own kind, a hound, and nothing more.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Rachel is changed.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Richard Longlast packed a leader of Mongols.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome her back to the fold.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel lashes out with the Phoenix Force because she can channel that sometimes, burning up the hounds around her, but Ahab opens a portal to welcome more.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is the man who stole her child.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this is the belasco to her magic, right?
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the evil guy that took her innocence in the trauma, right?
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Phoenix person's gonna be right there.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: He yells, it is a habit those who serve him that you must fear.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: In a future time, I helped outradicate your race.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now to save my timeline from oblivion, you will die!
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ehab, who is surrounded by the time displacement field, meaning a tax just passed right through him through a Tesseract pocket, an optic glass like just passes through him sun somewhere else.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, he keeps summoning psychic harpoons, but they soon find a way to destroy his ship, which has taken time, his time protection is a way now.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: of a mutant dog, you belated with the obvious.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he disappears back in the future.
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's still another part of the story, which I'm to X-Man annual 14.
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: A Hab is hitting Cyclops on the face.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: He calls him Ladi-Buck.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the invisible woman is hit with his energy, he harpoon.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So both Cyclops and the invisible woman are turned to hands.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a permanent process, by the way.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you get hit by this attack, like you are permanently changed, it's a permanent alteration, you can't be healed.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So keep it down in mind.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's second time to get invisible woman and become like evil versions of themselves as hands.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, then a technology with a board for the Star Trek fans out there.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or once the Falonk's gets you out, you know?
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just bam, which would you become?
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am Ahab, Hound Master, Hunter of Mutants, and their Slayer.
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: After Pride's Times Switch, the hierarchy set in motion, appropriate countermeasures, sending me and mine at this temporal nexus to bring to any future rewriting of what is for us history.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And who better to aid me in my sacred tasks than the parents of those I seek?
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Cyclopsials, you've had precious little success so far, buster, and invisible luminous monster.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nothing you can do can make me betray my son, I'll die first.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Consider this installation is cut affects the tomb, my dear.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's an apt, a bit futile, boast.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: For no way die you shall.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: The transition process has been refined considerably since young Rachel served as the initial prototype.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Essentially, the genetic software of your DNA is overwritten by new program, reshaping mine and body to my purpose.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: For her, the process took a better part of a year.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: For you?
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Only second.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: No less painful, though.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: No less effective.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Far more permanent.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hounds that you are, hounds you shall remain as long as you draw breath.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: In all of the ways that matter, intelligence, strength, courage and power, you are as you were.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: But all the all royalties are gone, replaced by absolute devotion to me.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I say kill, then you shall, even though who wants you love, or even those who wants you love.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, did you have a special affinity to the location of your blood relations?
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell me where they are, lead the way my pets.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been too long since the children have behold their master.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those cyclops in the invisible woman are reborn in green with chains hanging from their suits.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sue has white boots and a spiky collar and that four on her chest has a slash through it.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like not for anymore.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cyclops is dressed like he's dressed for a Mad Max movie.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like a Mad Max cross with a cinebite.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Very cinebite coded.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It really is from Hellraiser, is they are cybernetic cinebites.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty down.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can see it, yeah, yeah, it's a weird look.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they attacked the adult Franklin, Rachel, and Baby Nathan, who the future messianic character cable, right?
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He tells Rachel, proud and defiant.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just like when we first met, I'm glad.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll enjoy breaking you a new all-more.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: The narration tells us his whip is essentially a neural disruptor derived from a design used by the genotion magistrates, and that's another mutant mind control thing, right?
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Scrambles the synopsis so that the harder you try to use your abilities or move or just plain think a coherent thought, the more you feel like you're tearing yourself apart, it hurts too.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, even the most powerful beings can burn themselves out physically and psychically, usually an unfortunate side effect laying waste to the local landscape in the process.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: in desperation to less-dech effort is to save themselves.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in less time than it takes to tell the assaulted mind and body shut themselves down.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So again, crazy power set.
• 25:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It had takes the captive back to the tomb.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Franklin goes in a tank.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel, he holds up against the wall with a hand to her throat.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: She says, you don't look happy, cyborg.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the matter?
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Things not going according to plan.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hours of effort zipped to show for it too bad.
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that the way to talk sweet Rachel to him who helped make you what you are?
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: You missed those days admitted to the glorious standing first among A Habs Hunters.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: You wish.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: My will rules girl in time, you'll yield.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a scared shattered kid anymore old man, so lost and lonely and hurt.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: She'd respond to a gentle hand from anyone.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You really believe you're the match for me?
• 26:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Got the guts to try me in a fair fight?
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, well, well, well.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're just full of vinegar this morning.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: You pose a most irresistible challenge sweet.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Only thing is, it's one I don't need to accept.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not so long as I got your baby brother to take your place.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: No!
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how are you going to stop me?
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, look at yourself.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're but a shadow of yourself, weakening by the.
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then the heroes arrive.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: The fantastic four, X-Factor, the mutants, and even a few of the X-Men.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cable attacks A-hab, he reveals...
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: This hard-boon is bonded to me.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an extension of my life force.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: No one but a hat can wield it.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: He also hints the cable might recognize his face, like maybe the person who becomes a habit from the present might be someone cable knows and almost seems to hint that.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't get that story till much later.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when Franklin burns some shit, a hat recognizes it's maybe time to take what he came for and go.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel's still resisting him, so a hat fires his harpoon and Jean narrowly helps him escape it.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's over, eh, have you lost y'all's read Richards?
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Only up battle, Richards, and the beauty is the horror for you.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know, well, how the war ends.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever you do to me now, you'll still meet me in the days to come.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sooner or later, I'll have your heads.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the meantime, every time you look at Cyclops and the invisible woman, you'll see my mock on their face and those scars, your own fate.
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you disappear with a bamp, and I'm almost wondering if this character was originally intended to be night crawler.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: He just hinted that they might recognize him and then there's a BAMPF sound used when he teleports away.
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thought pause.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the hero's soon realized that Scott and Susan have their own, have had their DNA altered.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are lost to them permanently.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the Ghost of Franklin Richards from the future reveals he, oh, by the way, I've been dead the whole time, but before he disappears into the ether, he boasts Rachel's powers, and she's able to turn Scott and Gene back to normal, which is, of course, a very Phoenix sports thing.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We just covered that in very strong detail.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We want you every story at this level, but there's a lot packed into this.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we set the backdrop.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've introduced the story.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Scottie, what have we learned about Ahab?
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he is this hunter.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is this, you know, he's looking for the people that have dare.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: They escape his timeline.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not so much that he wants to wipe out all the mutants.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: He wants to wipe out his mutants.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so he's got to reclaim those who he's lost.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rachel and Franklin, those who escape the timeline.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's letting those others stay in their timeline for now, intent.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he has this cyber-agnetic monster who has no qualms of turning your family against you to his own needs.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: How much will does he have?
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's interesting.
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think he has will, but I think he's devout.
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He believes in the cause, right?
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: He surely believes in the cause.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think devotion...
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He lives in the past and says things like it's a shame that the mutants haven't been exterminated yet.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: right, right.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he is definitely a believer.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, he's a subordinate.
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has people he's answering to because he mentions his own masters.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the people who make the time nexus to watch what Cated had, you know, watched the timelines for what Cated done, I think he's, you know, he's a patriot.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: He, you know, he believes in his cause.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's also a Nazi.
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, 100% a Nazi.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
• 28:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like really horribly, because everyone that he is, I mean, for him it's a mission, right?
• 29:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is uncomfortable, but some of the Nazi work criminals who escaped World War II, when they went to court, they would try to make the argument of like, I was just following orders.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't me that did it directly, and it's almost like they had to prove that someone killed someone with his own hands.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: No matter how much they have as programmed this way,
• 29:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't see a part of him that feels victimized.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's not trapped in his soul wanting to escape in this story, right?
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's very happy to do what he does.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He'll come back again and again and again, while calling new names the whole time.
• 29:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's interesting about him?
• 29:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: you've got to put in context of the story.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The story, you know, for this story, it's an annual.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, at the end of the year, you've got four big stories and, you know, you're, you're four big, big, big titles.
• 29:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, you need a big bad.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, they create this big bad, this, this mutant pirate terminator from the future.
• 29:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: that has these incredible powers, these life-harpones, this ability to shift time, so things don't hurt him, and then you add the evil and trauma that he has on top of it, and you target specificity of Franklin, Rachel, and then take their family away from them.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a pretty horrific thing.
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the conversation we haven't had yet is the Moby Dick comparison.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have you written it?
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, long ago, but I did.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've written it.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tell everybody what it had story is, and what the parallels are with this character.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Ahab is a sea captain who is wailer.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: They hunted whales as they did back in the 1800s.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one whale had injured him at, you know, taking his leg.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so he's on this vengeance to get back back, you know, at this whale that he, you know, they'll white whale.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's where the saying comes from.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's looking for this whale.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, the whole time he's going after this whale.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we see this perspective from a shiphand, they miss male.
• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like said, this has been 30% of that.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're doing great, yeah.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so he's on the ship the peak while he quiet and so the thing about him though is that he is literally going to hunt on this thing to to it's Finality it doesn't matter if he dies or he kills everyone on a ship or you know, sinks the peak while it doesn't matter He is going to kill Mobykit.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is so furious and so driven and this is a have a he happens got a mission He's got to get these people back like Rachel is like someone he lost all while back But she becomes this bonus in this focus from here going forward in his story
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Ahab is a man so obsessed that he loses sight.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like all the stuff in his life fades away because he's a single minded character to the point of kind of madness, right?
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this vibe of like I'm the ship captain who is insane is very strongly that they have a reference.
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I do want to talk about when cable sees a have and there's that connection, you know, like like you see someone for years the thought was he was looking at himself because before we knew what strife looked like.
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so you know, a have was a possible future cable that's a better arm right.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it's so, you know, that was something we talked about on the playground for you, but then there's the band that's what got me.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, the scary pirate I can see it.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's all fun.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I love it.
• 31:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Rachel's on the main team for a long time, then she joins Excalibers.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if she's over there, there's a lot of stuff going on with the Phoenix Force.
• 32:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're hopping around all these different kinds of realities.
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's evil sorcerers like Necroman.
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a whole bunch of crazy stories.
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of stories that try to talk about what the Phoenix forces and where Rachel comes from.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the next couple of appearances are all smattering across Excalibur.
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: In number 35, we see a habit read in purple.
• 32:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's holding his glowing harpoon in one hand and the whip and the other.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the whip wrapped around the hound Rachel's neck.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's on the ground at crotch level.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So very uncomfortable.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's giving some very good on your knees girl kind of energy, which I don't love here.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Several other hounds are lunging in, and she flashbacks in the episode are in the issue of her time underneath Ahab.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He yells, Nothing, you're nothing Rachel, except one of the hounds of Ahab, the mutin' slayer.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: But as my favorite, you've earned the right to track my most elusive prey.
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Rachel recalls how she hunted down father Wagner, who is Night Crawler in her world.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: He had joined the priesthood in Europe and had become a mutant right activist, and she brought him before Ahab.
• 32:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Father Wagner says, Dovatya must have buy Bhati Ahab.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: My faith in God assures me that you and your precious hierarchy would one day fall.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll be sure to deliver his sentiments at the same time at deliver your lifeless husk.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So she hunted down Night Crawler.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now she's on a team with him and there's feelings.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: right.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: We jumped to Excalibur 52, we see a flashback to Ahab spending months brainwashing Rachel, making her his prototype, sending her after friends and foes, both before she escapes into the time stream, 66.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The story opens in and we're not going to spend a ton of time, but another alternate future of 2013 AD.
• 33:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was so far away we couldn't possibly envision what 2013 would be like.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: A-hab is floating around in a weird stasis tank as he reviews the footage of Kate Pryd and Rachel Summers friendship, again very lesbian coded right from the beginning by Chris Claremod, who has spoken to that, but anyway, with Kate going back in time to try to change the future, activating Nimrod to travel as well, and now Kate is captured, but Rachel's gone back in time, and Kate tries to escape and merges with widget.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: and a few years past and a hub is ready for combat.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's flanked by hounds.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: A hub is back from his mission in the past.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we meet his aide Quinn here.
• 34:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just covered a lot of shit all at once.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to tell you what a widget is right now.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a a hub focused episode.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Read Excalibar, widgets great.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then A-Hab says, I A-Hab, Master of Hounds, I'm the Guardian of Time.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the piece we don't see emphasized much, but it's key to his character.
• 34:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the previous story, he was created to make sure mutants did not escape into the time stream.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's another key part of his mission.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He, we also learned that he occupies a place just kind of outside of the timelines, if you remember them saying that as well.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this becomes a character that's a little bit like, uh,
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has kind of a particular man on the wall kind of mission part of him which is interesting.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the one authorized to go into the past to reclaim what's been lost.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I look at it like Cold War Germany.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like checkpoint Charlie.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a, you know, there's that, there's that white station and so, you know, he's keeping watch for people who are going across the wall.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't need any more of our kind of escaping to a, uh, a freedom back in the story.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is sensing that Rachel's building an army to attack him.
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, a have goes to his boss, who is Mastermold.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, MasterMold here in this future has the Sentinels fighting the Soviet super soldiers and the Asian alliance, they're expanding their power around the world.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Sentinels want to conquer this timeline before worrying about any other timelines they say.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very efficient these Sentinels.
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: We move to 2015, widget and Rachel arrive back in the future and they have allied with the RCS.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've got Albion, who Ahab kills, Arthur, Dark Angel, Grace, Kilpower, and Tangerine.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: All of these are characters that ties to Marvel's line of British comics.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to talk about any of them today.
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ahab, the Hounds, and the Sentinels attack.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Excalibur ends up in the future and Ahab captures, Kitty, and Rachel.
• 35:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in the next issue, 67, there's a huge battle as the Sentinels are destroyed.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ahab, thanks.
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Summers is the architect of my pain.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Long have I dreamt of breaking her to my will.
• 36:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've making her once more a loyal hand of a have.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he tries to kill her while calling her a side witch, but surprise, the Sentinels have been deeper reprogrammed to protect all life and a have teleports away defeated.
• 36:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, we don't know if this happened in the timeline for him before or after necessarily the last adventures, but I'm going to maybe presume before.
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like he knows Rachel's in the future, because she's already time-traveled back with all her friends.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know exactly what the playout is here, but he exists in time-travel.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay, we jump now to Excalibur 72.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the character has been looming in the background.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we have a number of futures.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the onslaught era where we're setting up Bishop's future with who was the traitor, and you know, blah, blah, they're so many mysteries.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get to meet a character named Roderick Rory Campbell.
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're scotty, were you reading Excalibur in this era?
• 36:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was kind of neat deep in it at the time.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you want to talk to everybody a little bit about Rory Campbell as a reader at the time.
• 36:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was very apparent very quickly that this was supposed to be a habit in the present.
• 36:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like that was very, like the hints were palpable.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: They were, you know, he's a psychologist in scientists.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's somewhat compassionate at first and then he's having his own struggles throughout the comics and the selves.
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I remember I spent famine for a while for a minute and yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of a lot of transformation coding with him.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Campbell's a doctor, Xavier has asked him to go to Mior Island, Moira McTaggart is there and she's studying the legacy virus.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a huge thing in the comics throughout the time.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: The characters are dying randomly of this like AIDS themed virus.
• 37:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Rory Hire is a boat confronting the local superstitions about the place.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: In 73, there's a huge storm, blame Santa Blaze, and
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Campbell's ship is capsized and he's rescued by Excalibur.
• 37:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wakes up in just the tiniest red shorts.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember this image from my time as a teen.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: They drew every character very hot and this man is strapped down in red shorts.
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, he's in a medical machine.
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Moira is tending to him and he's got a white streak in his hair.
• 37:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: She introduces him as Professor Rory Campbell PhD.
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: He'll be joining our research team.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is not a Scottish accent.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a research fellow from Strathed University.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, Strathed, Strathed Clyde, Strathed Clyde University.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's so ripped, he meets Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and then Rachel Summers, or Phoenix.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I specialize in the psychology of control, he tells her, but I'm considered a bit of a maverick by my peers.
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Rachel, thanks.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: A guy like him could really make a girl forget all the fighting, all the pain.
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder what he thinks about me.
• 38:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I'll attend to his recovery personally.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're just gonna do this in one sentence, but this is a much older man who is her future rapist.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, ooh, he's so hot.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hate this plot line so much.
• 38:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if he's her future rapist.
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, I think that's harsh, but the man who took her innocence, I didn't see anything.
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I, I, I, I, I mean, I, I, I, look, I think it's different between the let's go and imagine.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if that's clearly something else going on.
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't, I mean, to be crass.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think he has the parts.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: because he's cyber nag now and like yeah so let's take the one but this is it and this is the man but he's the man who I mean he took yeah he took her in a sense he made her a murderer he made her track down her family people that she know and loved yeah he's not innocent in this I'm just saying I don't just I hate that she's attracted to him but now I bring his future he have his a unit because they're right you would explain why he carries around such a giant heart movements all that's right he's got to have something right
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to cover the Rory Campbell stuff relatively quickly.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: In issue 74, he's aiding more with Megan's emotional crisis with her shape-shifting powers.
• 39:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He kind of takes on a little bit of an arrogance, and he's like very hyper-focused, like staring at Rachel as she's drinking his coffee.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel stands out on the bluff overlooking the ocean, Rory approaches her, and she telepathically states, I appreciate the concern, Rory, but I need to be alone.
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Does this telecompathic communication get more comfortable as time goes by?
• 39:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's such a strange feeling having another person enter to your mind willingly or not.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Something about the invasion of the most private places had not yet chilling.
• 39:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And speaking of invasions, I didn't come out to invade your privacy.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Come closer to the edge, Dr. Campbell, believe me, I won't let you fall.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: You sound nervous, funny.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're not the type of strikes for me.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is easily frightened.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rachel explained some of the complications about her origins and her trauma.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she says, I feel the chapter in my life is coming to a close.
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just when so much was beginning.
• 40:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's getting ready to jump to the far future as mother of Scotty.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So she's right.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: This might be a bit forward with me Rachel, considering we just met, but whatever happens, you won't face it alone.
• 40:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Any touches or shoulder?
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Later, Rachel is thinking of a very serious nature, his, quote, soulful brown eyes.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would have told him anything, and I don't know if that's a good thing.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, he implies he has a certain power over her, which is rough for me a little bit.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, she's thinking back to her past in the future with Ahab and the Hounds and how she betrayed everyone and watched her family die.
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we see a literal split image of Rory's face and Ahub's face next to it.
• 40:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's very clear that they're meant to be the same right from the beginning.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: She says, first I hated him, then I hate the world.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Finally I ended up hating myself.
• 40:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And outside Rory is knocking on her door, but later Megan Lash is out and hurts.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Moira so Rory sedates Megan and Rachel's pissed off.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We jumped to 75 where in his private thoughts, Rory is thinking how he expected to find lab rats on the island.
• 41:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the mutants will be my lab rats.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: But instead, he met Excalibur, and he thinks...
• 41:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I won't pretend to understand it all.
• 41:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Something about the alternate timelines and days of future past.
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: The bottom line being, she was a woman at a time and place, and found her time and her place and family and friends.
• 41:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Rachel's joys outburst at Cyclops and Jean Grey's pending wedding, her powers flare up and Roy has been briefly endangered by a crashing ship that it results.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: While I don't mind your playful little games, it's exactly this flagrant disregard for human reactions
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: and almost superior, natural people tend to hate and fear what they don't understand and can't and Rachel assures him that there's no such thing as a normal person.
• 41:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then says, underneath all this cosmic smoke and flame beneath my polished veneer as a primal force of the universe and intergalactic avatar, I'm just a good old fashioned red blooded chronologically displaced American woman, see and she kisses him on the mouth and he says,
• 42:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Miss Summers, we don't know each other that well.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone has to start somewhere dark.
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he thinks of her as a kid as he watches her play or watches her good mood ruined by her destiny, manifesting itself because she has to take Captain Britain from the time stream, remembering this psychological torture and brainwashing at the hands of Ahab who would make her kill and haunt her freedom, Rachel surrender herself into the time stream using Megan and daytripper.
• 42:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: She opens it up, she pulls Captain Britain back and gets lost herself.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: A Rory here is thinking of himself as an expert in control and a master of science, but he's overwhelmed when he sees a vision of a have from the future and definitively realizes, oh, that's me.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's pause.
• 42:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: This man is an anti mutant bigot.
• 42:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: He thinks of mutants as test subjects.
• 42:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's spouting out about how you had an emotional outburst Rachel.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is why all mutants deserve to be hated.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then she kisses him on the mouth.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fuck this story.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hate it.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Paul this closure, I read Excalibur 75 and quit comics after that for a good six seven years.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: What did you hate about it?
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: The stuff between warrior and Rachel and the fact that they kick Rachel out of the timeline, they replaced Rachel with Captain Britain.
• 43:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, like I said earlier, she's my favorite and when I'm like, oh, this means the end for her, I don't want to even wait for her to come back.
• 43:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it takes years for her to come back.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean,
• 43:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hate to see a lot.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit of a scene himself in the future.
• 43:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he gets caught up in all the Excalibur crazy.
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he wonders if he can change his fate.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's working on the legacy virus.
• 43:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's an issue in 80 where Amanda sucked in questions, Rory.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: About the Ahab revelation, he's so distraught.
• 43:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: No man should know his identity.
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Much less that he's faded to become a murderer on a par with Hitler.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've always made my way through life taking matters into my own hands.
• 44:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: only to discover that no matter what I do, these hands are covered in blood and Amanda says, all we can do is live one day at a time and save our every precious minute we are given.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's still working with Moira on the legacy virus for a while.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's worried that if he goes to genoxia and he might get turned into a lab and there's some sugar man shit going on.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: We jump to X-Men Prime where Moira's revelation that she has the legacy virus has become publicly known.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we have this little story with spore, spore, spore of the accolades as we all are.
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is Andrew Graves or spore.
• 44:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to tell us who spore is, Scotty?
• 44:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I missed albums for you.
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had to have me on this one.
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a there's a there's a contingent of accolades who believe in magnetos cause who are being really cruel.
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're committing terrorist acts on earth and killing innocent people.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes children in school buses, sometimes patients in hospitals spores one of the bad ones.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's been captured.
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has the ability to manipulate your emotions.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it kind of looks like, I don't know, he kind of looks like a, like a caveman a little bit.
• 45:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, he's, he's, he's fine.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a moment where he's been captured and Rory starts visiting him in his cell and like taunting him because sports manipulating his emotions.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it eventually triggers him into kind of committing a hate crab against sport.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like he starts beating him.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look at me when I talk to you, you little discharge, he yells, he rips the leg off of the chair and tries to kill Spore and beat him with it.
• 45:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a security system in the room.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a laser that goes off.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's Sever's Roy's leg at the knee.
• 45:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he's now sedated in a hospital bed.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is clearly setting up the heaps going to become a have all along.
• 45:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: The peg leg.
• 45:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now he has a peg leg.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also real quick, just looked up Spore.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spore looks like a toldoo that would be name Spore.
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just start spore.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: like a money Python good.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it's crazy.
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: The 90, you know, setting up the future later in 101.
• 45:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gets to take over who the WHO and in Europe, and he's the mutant liaison and management working with Moira and Excalibur.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see him over an X-Men volume 263 where he's looking more and more like a have all the time.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is withering away in front of our eyes.
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's in a blue and white spandex suit.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: His hair's grown out.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's got a glowing eye for some reason.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: and he has a crutch that of his missing leg.
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's working with Sebastian Shaw on the legacy virus.
• 46:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Back in Excalibur 1111, we see Campbell on Mirrile and with a new prosthetic leg built by Sebastian Shaw.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wolves main and Kitty are happy to see him.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: He goes up to dinner with the team.
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh and Kitty gets possessed by Ogoun here.
• 46:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry about it.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then he's up the wedding of Captain Britain and Megan later.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of it for Rory, before we get this kind of final phase of him.
• 46:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Clearly, the whole time they're just laying down the foundation of him becoming a hat.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: They really lean in on that.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's not as effective.
• 46:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's real interesting to see what Rory becomes into.
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, a hat's terrifying, Rory is not.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a really interesting just position.
• 46:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll introduce this next story and then I want you to tell us what famine's costume looks like.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I don't know if that's what I'll do.
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rory briefly becomes a horseman of apocalypse for some fucking reason.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's famine.
• 47:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: He said it was his turn.
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the X man says someone's like, who gets to be famine this week?
• 47:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's so many characters to choose from.
• 47:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I represent unquenchable, insatiable hunger.
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can take you from you every ounce of strength, every spark of life itself.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kig has some missions.
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has a crazy costume.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gets sent to capture Sunfire once.
• 47:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: eats some atomic flame because he's hungry.
• 47:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Death bird is war here.
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Caliban is pestilence, and there's no death yet, but they do help capture Professor X, which sets up the 12th story, and this is the last we've ever seen of Rory Campbell in the 616 timeline.
• 47:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see aab, but it's less that we've seen of Rory.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know what happened to him after this.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Scotty, do you want to describe the family costume?
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is so a spirit Halloween.
• 47:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, so we thought that A-hab looked like you could find a power Ranger.
• 47:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Famine Rory Campbell is totally- he's like a bug looking dude.
• 47:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's got like weird armor.
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got a weird kind of claw foot and then he's got a normal boot.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got this weird stick and a hood that looked like he got from a Dr. Doom Discount Rack and you could see his ribs.
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: He looks like he could fight he man really he I probably own this action figure back in the 80s He looks like Simon Bill months gonna kick him in the face in Castlevania 100% 100% he's like a lower tier boss was like three guys before you get to Dracula You're got to fight this guy.
• 48:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we do have some more future rehab stories But again, that's the end of Roy Campbell's and cable 71
• 48:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We jump to the future where we see a havin' the hounds, draw Bay Layfeld, capture cannonball, he's already captured Sunspot and Gideon, but cable and X-Forcer there, also the Phoenix Force, the Sentinels kill everybody, Rachel tells cable, this is a premonition of what could happen in the future and then sends in toward the 12.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's fine.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We just gotta talk about the 12.
• 48:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see more references of him in Rachel, we're not gonna do the 12, just go look it up.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're worth that's worth not doing that tangent today, which is not the first time I've said that, say, just stay put on my shirt.
• 48:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we have the extermination event and I'm going to set this up and we'll do because it's it Habs the big village.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: They brought them back for another summer event basically.
• 49:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay The original X-Men are trapped in the present and the alternate counterparts of other X-Men from other realities are also on their team and the adult X-Men are still around as well So there's multiple versions of these characters all at the same time and basically the original X-Men have stayed too long and they like broke
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: time.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Blacksmith has like got a younger version of cable to come back and clean up the mess and he ends up killing his own adult self.
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the characters who are repeats like the vampire storm that made out with teenage scott summers that one time.
• 49:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Remember that?
• 49:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 49:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bloodstorm!
• 49:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is like a different blood storm, and she's grown this girl friend in this and Cyclops is a teenager.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's weird.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, a bunch of characters die, and this is the story where Ahab is trying to capture the original X-Men.
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tox the X-Men, and with more hands, and there's a bunch of mutants here, and he fights Rachel.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, not again.
• 49:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: You made a mistake coming here.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna make sure you regret it, you monster.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's rich.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Coming from one of the most notorious bloodthirsty hounds.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell me Rachel.
• 50:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do your friends know how many of your, their kind you killed in your time?
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do they know how much joy you took from it?
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: How you laughed at the blood of other reasons and begged for more.
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then he fires a spear and turns old man, Logan, the grandpa Wolverine into a hound.
• 50:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It turns out he planted two children among the X men.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is where it gets complicated.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's two new twins, one of them named Maxime.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is a master emotion manipulator.
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other is Manan, who can implant psychic memories.
• 50:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's using these characters to make new hounds.
• 50:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like, you think he's maybe lost his technology, but now these characters can do it for you.
• 50:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nightcrawler and Shadowstar turned into hounds.
• 50:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: By the time we get to issue four, he says.
• 50:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's something very poetic about having to take to the ocean to find my white whale.
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for giving my hunt the literary flared needed.
• 50:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And with his hounds, again, Rachel Logan, Nightcrawler, Old Man Logan, it, it, it, it, it, it, it takes the peak while to the bottom of the ocean floor.
• 50:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's trying to find the wounded teen cyclops in the C rebro base, SA, RE, BRO, C, rebro.
• 50:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: The X-Men are there waiting.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I come from the mutant plague is an epidemic.
• 51:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's not a family that has lost loved ones.
• 51:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: A war that hasn't been fought because of mutants.
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And finally, I'm able to bring them peace.
• 51:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bring an end to this chaos.
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he appears to spear teen cyclops in the head,
• 51:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: making posing as Cyclops.
• 51:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he's trying to break time basically.
• 51:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't know quite what the motivation is here.
• 51:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't seem to be on a mission for the Sentinels in this storyline.
• 51:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: He seems to be trying to stop the future from ever happening, but he also really still fucking hates mutants.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You almost wonder if he's bulking at the Sentinels programming in the way that the Hound will bulk at his own program.
• 51:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like he's trying to find a loophole to escape in.
• 51:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's kind of like a really, really twisted Sarah Connor here.
• 51:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's kind of an odd, it's an interesting story and he's a great villain here.
• 51:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, it happens going after the original five more and more characters getting to turn into hounds and he says, so much of your life he spit turning young moons into weapons against humanity.
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yet it was those very weapons that will prove you're undoing.
• 51:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I believe they call that poetic justice.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So team cables here, God, his dialogues, A-hebs dialogue is really fun here.
• 52:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look at little kid cable trying to play with the big boys.
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're not half the man, you'll grow to be.
• 52:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And even then, not half the man as me.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Given some years, you would realize that running is a fool's error.
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because now I've got you in my sights, I will follow you to the edge of time and keep pressing until I kill one of those sweet young X men.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love his wicked witch of the West energy.
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it, I love it.
• 52:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the peak, the peak won't get blown up again.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: strands A Hab in his own future.
• 52:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maxim and Manan are used to the timeline gets fixed and the kids join the X-Men.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's truly all you need.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So A Hab ends up stuck here.
• 52:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We think you got sent to the future but he actually ends up getting trapped in the present instead.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Scott, if you want to tell us what happens to this character in X-Forceball, you'm five by Ed Bryson.
• 52:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he gets stuck in a wound up in Transia where, you know, a horrible regime is hunting and imprisoning an exterminated mutants.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's forced to work on a cure for the X-Factor.
• 53:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the X-Factor, like the mutant gene.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the mutant gene.
• 53:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, not the team, but the gene itself.
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he's tortured here, but he's also using his biting his time and like slowly upgrading his own cyborg technology.
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's becoming bigger and better and better.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he has a fighting back.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's got buzz-saws and guns.
• 53:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, this is like upgrading his armor, which is fun.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, because he got parts of Deathlock in him.
• 53:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a, he kills a bunch of guards and he leaves a note in blood on the wall that says, there are only one way to kill our mutant is to kill it.
• 53:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The only way to cure a mutant is to kill.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just to cure, but this is how you do it.
• 53:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So then he kills the General's Mutant Sun and the General's Pist.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then he captures and takes a part of Deathlock, which is literal Terminator, right?
• 53:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so in issue four, we see the upgraded A-hab with like Deathlock technology battling X-Force as well as the corrupt President Constantine who has his own mix suit.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And A-hab gets like blown up into pieces like they're holding his severed head at the end of his story.
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he gets trapped here, used in the way that he's used other people, and then tries to like upgrade himself
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think he's dead.
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think this is like a cybernetic guy right?
• 54:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you can bring him back.
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's still have a head.
• 54:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can just stick that on another body.
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's fine.
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: The final thing we see is the recent Mark Guggenheim series, the X-Men days of future past, where we basically see Rory Campbell referencing losing his leg with Spore.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: While he was applying it for a job with Henry Peter Gyrick and Gyrick says, I'm going to make you the A-hab of our government.
• 54:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a point where we see a connection between Rory Campbell, somehow getting taken into the sentinels and getting reprogrammed, redesigned as a hub.
• 54:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's the through line that we needed all along.
• 54:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts on this character, Scottie?
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: The journey we see is interesting.
• 54:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know exactly where everything falls in the timeline, but particularly these last couple stories where he seems to be trying to break his destiny.
• 54:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really interesting through extermination there.
• 54:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: he's someone who can easily and has been easily a kind of a one trick pony shows up because he goes in always racial summers for a minute and and then he leaves and I think he'm trying to evolve from that and find his own destiny and make himself I mean clearly he's always going to be a devout mutant.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: big it.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he's got to have a new direction to making the least more relevant and more interesting today.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I like that people think about him and want to try to experiment him.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really curious if we see him in the next few years.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's such a fascinating villain.
• 55:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's not a potato.
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, we have that kind of guardian of time, part that's interesting.
• 55:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can pull this character from multiple pieces in the timeline.
• 55:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this is a scientist who's very anti-mutant.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't exactly know why.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then at some point he gets turned into this crazy weapon, right?
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even as a supervillain, he doesn't want to lose his will.
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's even kind of a little bit of like a lady death strike energy to him.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's very much stuff.
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: The time traveling assassin from the future the wicked witch energy the loss of will And the rejoicing that he takes in this like single-minded mission There's a lot of this character.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that could be really easily explored it I think he has the potential to be a huge villain of like a major event if we chose to go that way You know bastion has had those moments why not a hat?
• 56:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was another thing that's interesting about him is that, you know, while not just a villain, he's this embodiment of like, you know, control, conformity and trauma.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he is what represents days of future past that gets modified in present.
• 56:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's like, you know, while we don't see him in past, he's such a force that he's kind of been retconned into it.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so now when you think of that timeline, you definitely think of a hat.
• 56:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Sentinels represent the hatred of humans, and this is the future where it's manifested, and then they create human agents to complete their cruelties.
• 56:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of interesting pieces.
• 56:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: The visual is striking on this guy, and there's something about his pathos.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a, I mean, he's a clear supervillain.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing redeemable about this character, but the way he sees the world, I think, is quite unique.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hate the, I'm in a romance, Rachel, storyline from Excalibur.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's my least favorite piece.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's so great.
• 57:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Maxime and man in of it all, the, like, I'm gonna rewrite your brains to serve as my hands.
• 57:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, he's a scary village.
• 57:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some really interesting pieces here.
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's one of my favorites just because of all of that.
• 57:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got, you know, the look is crazy, but not like over the top.
• 57:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he looks, especially for 1990s, X-Men.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He fits right into that, that robot motif, that, you know, he's, you know, not quite Sentinel, but almost Sentinel, that mix between Sentinel and Neymaron
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: right a little bit of robocop he's very much a pirate more than anything right it's the movie dick mentality so i would not not so much a pirate like like i mean i see captain let uh he's a sea captain more than pirate as you know bird as an s-steck i mean he's i mean like he's got a peak watt so
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm, these conversations are always interesting to me.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I usually can capture the way I'm feeling at the end of one.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how I feel about this guy.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Clearly, he's reprehensible, but I think he's a super fun, super villain.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think, but I think really interesting potential.
• 58:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like that they trapped him in this timeline at the end.
• 58:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Extermination was very high concept in the way that the original days of future present story for Ahab was.
• 58:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: This character's been part of some really high concept complicated stories.
• 58:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it was fun to read though.
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a fun story.
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's got a lot of interesting things in it.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I got to kick out of it.
• 58:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, he got upgraded by apocalypse one time, too.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what did that do to this guy?
• 58:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, the Spore and the Fam and of it all.
• 58:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm going to go back and read the, I'm, I missed that and the, the research, I, I did, I did the highlights.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did the big big chunk stories.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, because I had not, I hadn't read the extermination until we, we, I've got your notes and so it's so complicated, right?
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's fun.
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, that's the kind of Xman stuff.
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I like, I like it.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's got some layers is, is so, you know, it wasn't too tough to get into.
• 58:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's, you know, and like, again, it's an interesting character and, you know, the, the kid Xman, you know, the, from Bendus' storyline is, that's also already nutty on top of it.
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a long bendest run on these characters where it's the original X-Men and the President plus all of their older counterparts plus some of their counterparts plus a time traveling from the future version of the X-Men that also contain another version of their counterparts
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's X-Men at their craziest.
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's X-Men.
• 59:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It wouldn't be simple.
• 59:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wouldn't be the X-Men if it was simple.
• 59:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're trapping a habit in the present.
• 59:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: He just had that whole adventure in Transia.
• 59:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He got blasted apart.
• 59:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to assume he can rebuild himself.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to create some sort of story where he desires to get parts of his body back.
• 59:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's almost looking for some sort of cure.
• 59:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: He makes a deal.
• 59:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's going after someone to obtain power.
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Still very much hates mutants.
• 59:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: He ends up having forced to work with someone.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: This would of course end up being a Rachel story, although she's not the character.
• 59:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd want to use it because I think she's outgrown him in a lot of ways But I think we create a place for him on the Hellfire Club or in the government working for Bastion There's some interesting pieces or does he just want a quiet life for a while?
• 1:00:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I Interesting, he's he's kind of he's got some magic to him
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's interesting to me, especially as first after reading re-extermination and the other stuff, it's like, I'm really surprised he didn't make an comparison in the Orkits storyline.
• 1:00:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because he, I mean, this whole, you know, the follow-up per coa, he's meant bit for it because he got the failinics as something he could, could rebuild his body.
• 1:00:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's got, you know, it's got the Orkits aspect of hating mutemians.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's kind of a guy that I figured like Senator would manipulate.
• 1:00:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: He seems like he would be easy for Senator to manipulate.
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, interestingly enough, but also this guy hates Mind Control.
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to be the one controlling.
• 1:00:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if he's stuck here, where's he at?
• 1:00:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who's?
• 1:00:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who's got his heads sitting on a platter somewhere in their basement?
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just staying alive.
• 1:00:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cameron Hodg is one over, you know?
• 1:00:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we get those two team up.
• 1:00:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what we're doing.
• 1:00:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But put their head on one body because we don't have any sexuality for a have.
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then again, is he a unique?
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: A habendonald pierce, a habendrever fits Roy.
• 1:00:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of interesting potential for this guy.
• 1:01:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: A habendvating other world, right?
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's got his like ship sailing in for the Starlight Citadel.
• 1:01:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some interesting pieces.
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like this guy, I think.
• 1:01:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't a big fan before.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, Scottie, thanks for helping turn me into Nate.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad we did that.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: this again, you know, gave me talk to one of my favorite, you know, villains and also let's talk about my favorite character Rachel.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it all works.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:01:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was fun for me.
• 1:01:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It helped me solidify some thoughts I didn't know I had.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll always love taking these journeys.
• 1:01:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: If this is your first time hearing or learning about, uh, I have definitely read days of future present.
• 1:01:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is wild.
• 1:01:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is crazy, but it's one of the best stories.
• 1:01:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I kind of think it's a hidden jam because it's
• 1:01:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a little complicated.
• 1:01:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Most people, you know, most people stop at days of future past, continue the story.
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Learn about, you know, A.
• 1:01:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have racial and scrapper.
• 1:01:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Franklin Richards.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is so cool.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So definitely definitely check that out.
• 1:01:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've got some big news coming in September.
• 1:01:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is the perfect time for it.
• 1:01:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to toy store.
• 1:01:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do all the other kinds of stuff, but also write comics and stories.
• 1:01:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm watching in a website, chronicleslimo.com.
• 1:01:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It starts at launches September 2nd.
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: All my comics will be available for free.
• 1:01:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you can read the work I make.
• 1:01:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Got short stories and other things that's going to appear all in a,
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: young adult sci-fantasy world.
• 1:02:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is going to be really, really fun stuff.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Study weight is excellent to see you, my friend.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't, we can't always could see you.
• 1:02:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're, you're delightful.
• 1:02:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, and I know we had some crazy time scheduling too.
• 1:02:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So thanks for all your patience with my wanky schedule.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, for those that want to follow the show, Gramel can underscore land on Instagram as the easiest place to interact.
• 1:02:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you would like to follow the show's Patreon channel, which is where you would
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: be hearing this.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have weekly character episodes every Wednesday.
• 1:02:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The next one immediately after this is going to be about Luna Shone or Euniceo, the green force field check from the acolytes that might be the daughter of Eunice the Untouchable, a Demento Martini and Tom O'Connor joining me for that.
• 1:02:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then over on the main show, watch for the trial of Dave Cannon the whirlwind.
• 1:02:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's our academic panel for August.
• 1:02:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be a delightfully good time.
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you everybody for listening.
• 1:02:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you Scott for taking this journey with me.
• 1:02:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: We will see you all back here next time on the Patreon.
• 1:02:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here's a name you may know, Eva Brown was born on February 6, 1912 in Munich, Germany, the middle daughter of a Catholic school teacher and a seamstress raised in a conventional middle-class household.
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: She trained briefly at a convent school before working as a shop assistant and photographic aid for Heinrich Hoffman, who was Adolf Hitler's official photographer, by the way.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was there in 1929 while working were training to be a photographer that she met Hitler, which began a relationship that would define the rest of her life while remaining almost entirely hidden from the German public.
• 1:03:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Brown's relationship with Hitler was marked by secrecy and imbalance.
• 1:03:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hitler deliberately kept her out of public view to preserve his cultivated image as a leader married to Germany, quote-unquote, and Brown was excluded from political discussion
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, Hitler was on all kinds of drugs and struggling with all kinds of health issues, and she became kind of the public-facing wife who was kept behind the scenes.
• 1:04:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: She lived largely on the periphery of power, spending long stretches alone at the Burakhoff or in Munich, pursuing hobby such as photography, sports, and socializing with a small circle of women.
• 1:04:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Her emotional isolation was severe, and she attempted suicide twice in the early 1930s.
• 1:04:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Episodes that appear to have secured her continued presence in Hitler's private life,
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: but did not alter her marginal role.
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: During the years of the Third Reich, Brown benefited materially from her proximity to Hitler, while remaining politically passive.
• 1:04:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: She enjoyed comfort, travel, and privilege, yet left no evidence of involvement in policy or decision-making, and her letters and home movies suggest a narrow focus on domestic concerns and personal devotion.
• 1:04:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: which is where the Nazi party required women to be anyway.
• 1:04:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: The famous color films she shot at the Berghof have become some of the most widely circulated private images of Nazi leadership and they're easily findable online.
• 1:04:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: These offer an unsettling contrast between casual leisure and the regime's mass violence unfolding beyond the frame.
• 1:05:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: In April 1945, as the third right collapsed and Soviet forces closed in, Brown chose to travel to Berlin against Hitler's wishes entering the Fuhrer bunker as the forces arrived.
• 1:05:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So on April 29, she and Hitler were married in a very brief civil ceremony, and the following day on April 30, they both died by suicide.
• 1:05:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Brown, with cyanide, Hitler, with a gun.
• 1:05:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Her body was burned with his and the chancelary garden, Eva Brown's legacy is inseparable from Hitler's, often cited as an example of wolf-aligneness and personal loyalty, divorced for moral responsibility, and her life remains a stark illustration of how proximity to power can coexist with profound political irrelevance.
• 1:05:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you learned one thing today, she married that man the day before they killed themselves.
• 1:05:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's something I think a lot of people don't realize.
• 1:05:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're now going to jump to a very unpleasant story from Captain America, volume 5, number 15.
• 1:05:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's 2006.
• 1:05:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is by Ed Bruebiger and Mike Perkins.
• 1:05:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Red Skull is living in the body of Alec Sander Luke in, and there's a lot going on.
• 1:06:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a long form story, but we're going to capture this one single issue here.
• 1:06:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Crossbones has captured Cynthia Schmidt, the daughter of the Red Skull, who we've talked about in these conversations before.
• 1:06:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But she's been living, her mind has been reprogrammed by shield and they are, like she's living in a life, not knowing who she was before.
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But now, crossbones is confining her and harming her.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: He makes her revisit her origins to reawakened the evil within her.
• 1:06:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a flashback to the aisle of exiles where the red skull holds his newborn daughter up on the rocks determined to throw her in, but Susan Scarbo or Mother Night intervenes.
• 1:06:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nine, my heir will not be a girl, he says.
• 1:06:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Erskol, please, I beg you to not kill her.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's still from your blood, Erskol.
• 1:06:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: How dare you speak to me, Wench?
• 1:06:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Forgive me.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know it's not my place, and I know you wanted a son, but you are the red skull.
• 1:06:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Any offspring of your bloodline must surely be destined for greatness.
• 1:06:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you would allow me, I will raise this child myself and make sure that she is worthy of her great father.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You are that scar-bow woman.
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, one of grooning's people.
• 1:07:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, AirScore, Susan Scarbo, my brother and I have served the masters of this island since before they discovered you, and now is always I am in your service, where the brash must not have an easy life, just as I suffered through childhood, so must she.
• 1:07:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, my leash to no misery and anger and hate until she doesn't even recognize them, she will be a terror than I will spare her for now, and if you please move your work, you may have a future of my own
• 1:07:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for now, you'll be the night mother to this cut.
• 1:07:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I see her next, I had better see blood in her eyes.
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nine years later, the red skull observed her sin, sent the beating up other children at the orphanage, as Susan dressed like mother night stands near him.
• 1:07:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then he aged her up and turned her into a crazy telepathic none, if you remember those stories.
• 1:07:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: of it earlier on.
• 1:07:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now in the present again, Crossbones beats Sin kills a man in front of her tortures her.
• 1:07:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: She gets another image of the red skull ranting about his daughter.
• 1:08:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's coming along fine.
• 1:08:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure about she's always been too weak for my purposes.
• 1:08:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: All women are too weak.
• 1:08:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: She isn't worth nothing to me.
• 1:08:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you understand?
• 1:08:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has failed me from birth because she was not a son and in the end, Sin is back ready to embrace the red skulls message mission and also
• 1:08:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Love you, welcome my friend, Brent, when I get to the show to talk to me about this crazy journey.
• 1:08:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know you did not know what you were signing up for when I thought it was that Brent.
• 1:08:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, are you a red skull fan, my friend?
• 1:08:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's begin there.
• 1:08:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I, he's not a villain that like registers for me as having a distinct personality, outside of just kind of being like a Nazi, but not a Nazi.
• 1:08:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels generic, there's not a whole lot there that I get excited about, motivation-wise or the actual threat that person poses to the world.
• 1:08:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, when I think of like, oh, Mr. Sinister is doing some genetic non-sensigory, that's not even a word, but he's doing it.
• 1:09:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, it's a bad news when he's got too much time on his hands.
• 1:09:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Red Skull, it's just the normal, well, let's get a black and white camera, let's get in there and punch him.
• 1:09:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Were you familiar with the daughter of the red skull before she was a big part of like the the fear itself storyline years back?
• 1:09:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had never I did not know he had a daughter and I really there's a lot of to be disappointed in this comic But I do find myself particularly bored by stories of like sins of the father like oh Your father was evil so therefore we have crafted you and made you evil and now you're gonna carry that evil legacy on
• 1:09:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels pretty boring to me, but I mean, I guess good for her for getting back on the horse and D-brain programming.
• 1:09:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you read Anthony Olevera as Avengers Academy?
• 1:09:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Red parts of it, yeah.
• 1:09:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this character is that cherry crane like Tradwife influencer that's
• 1:09:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: that's like fighting the heroes that's said, so she comes back.
• 1:09:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, the red skull is a horrible person, obviously, and we want to read comics about villains being villains sometimes, but when we elevate it to Nazis, you know, infanticide, and violence against women, not my favorite.
• 1:10:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's effective for what the story is trying to do, but not my favorite.
• 1:10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you sympathize with sin in this story?
• 1:10:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: To sympathize, it's weird because there's this problem of violence against women and comics and, you know, refrigerated women and characterizations of female characters that people I think they have a natural reaction, which is understandable that the violence kind of feels gross and unnecessary.
• 1:10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that when that stuff occurs, you, you feel some sympathy for the character and you feel annoyance at the writer for leaning on it.
• 1:10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the reality is that the problem isn't that it's violence against a character or it's violence against a woman.
• 1:10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that it's unnecessary for the story.
• 1:10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is often paired with
• 1:10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: the female character not having actual agency of their own.
• 1:11:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so they become this kind of like plot device where all of the other, you know, kind of male characters are able to use them for their growth and their interesting motivations.
• 1:11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this, this woman is here for essentially a pro.
• 1:11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that having her be a person that ends with her submitting, right?
• 1:11:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, the person you wanted me to.
• 1:11:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like she's not an acting of her own will because she'll reprogrammed her and she's not acting of her own will when crossbones breaks her out of that programming for sure And that that her whole motivation is like I was raised evil then I was deprogrammed by some men and then I was reprogrammed by a man It robs her of being having real motivations for herself and if you want to choose to be a villain that's great when it's when it just feels like well This is a way of having crossbones
• 1:11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: show how tough of a bad guy he is.
• 1:11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that there's sympathy for the character because I wouldn't say that there's a character there.
• 1:11:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This writer is very talented and this is a long epic run on Captain America.
• 1:11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the one that in the middle of the run, Captain America gets killed and the winter soldier shows up here, so there's a lot of lore being woven in.
• 1:12:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you definitely see sin kind of becoming her mother, who is not her birth mother, who's not Susan Scarbell, the Mother Night.
• 1:12:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you read that character, who dresses like a nun and submits herself to the Red Skull's violence, that's kind of her journey.
• 1:12:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's a telepath.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: She becomes kind of like the template of the woman she was raised by, which is, again, kind of what the Nazi party expected.
• 1:12:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any other resonant thoughts on this issue?
• 1:12:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Normally, when we come on the show, we laugh a lot, you and I, this is, yeah.
• 1:12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The thing for me is that, you know, you hear growing up, you'd hear, oh, Hitler was a vegetarian or Hitler was, uh, he hated dogs too.
• 1:12:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, there's a bunch of things where it feels like people want to map every bad thing onto a person, so that the association is itself bad.
• 1:12:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: By the way, Hitler did have a dog.
• 1:12:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the perfect name for an Aryan dog?
• 1:12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blondie, I believe.
• 1:12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blondie, that's right.
• 1:12:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 1:12:54
  [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
• 1:12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, did you know about the story of Eva Brown?
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: What were you thoughts on that opening today?
• 1:12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's so interesting because there's a weird thing historically where Eva also falls kind of by the way, it's she's mentioned.
• 1:13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: People know the name, I think, but I don't I didn't know anything about her past and I didn't know that they were married the day before they died.
• 1:13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It seems well, it seems like they knew what they were getting into, I guess.
• 1:13:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've learned a lot of people in the bunker.
• 1:13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of it loose top 8s and his wife and their five children also took the same poison that
• 1:13:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a messy, it's a messy ending.
• 1:13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's a, I'm not understatement, I would say.
• 1:13:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as for the comic itself, I think that Brubaker is a, is a great writer.
• 1:13:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, any sin in here.
• 1:13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, it does feel of the time.
• 1:13:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It does feel like it was written in a post 9-11 world where there's a lot of anger about the system, about authority.
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a make out episode of 24, where we get the villain back story kind of, yeah.
• 1:13:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 1:13:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, you know, it's also a little bit distracting of a story because I don't, I would not describe this as the best prose.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So trying to mix, you know, the sometimes black and white style of, you know, old Captain America footage with the grittiness of the era makes it very hard sometimes to see what's actually happening into her.
• 1:14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the color and inking choices are really blocky.
• 1:14:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Epic run on cap overall, but this is a breakout issue.
• 1:14:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're like, whoa, right?
• 1:14:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But again, another red skull story, which brings me to my last question, brand.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are you doing in 2025, my friend?
• 1:14:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: A DC-based, queer, X-Men, podcasting enthusiast.
• 1:14:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: To quote the great Drendimedly, not well-bitch.
• 1:14:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a dark time right now.
• 1:14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're an institutionalist, lower-case liberal, cuck-shill like I am, I love or I'm sure of.
• 1:14:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I like markets, I like law and order.
• 1:14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a great time.
• 1:14:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do think that it's uncomfortable like consuming so much art that is precious and relevant.
• 1:14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It would be nicer to be in a time where you think, well, that's a, that's a distant worry, but you see something like andor and you're like, oh, cool.
• 1:15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that is what it's like right now.
• 1:15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I guess we just bomb Venezuelans whenever we want this fascist comic full of like spousal abuse and fascism We're like, oh, yeah, that would be nice to have that be a fantasy world Well, yeah, and I guess the thing that I I'm more annoyed about it is on a deeper level I think that there are more people who are kind of telling the story of like how societies become One-way versus another or how did the Nazis how did Germany become infiltrated by Nazis?
• 1:15:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so to look back at this kind of story that part of it is still the great men type narrative of like, if we have the red skull who's super evil and then he has a child and their super evil, it kind of misses a lot of storytelling ability around what is evil happen, you know, I know that you have to have characters to
• 1:15:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: do this, but it's a little bit weak and silly to be like, well, and your father was the evil one.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So now you must pass on his legacy, Kylo Ren.
• 1:16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Understood.
• 1:16:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:16:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you're reading the Captain America Ron, I would say this is a skeptic.
• 1:16:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can just, hey, somehow sin returned.
• 1:16:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's back.
• 1:16:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: She ends up with a with a literal red skull a bunch of times too.
• 1:16:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, at the end of Anthony Olivera's run, if you read adventures of academy, she gets like douse with acid her skin her, like beautiful, Trat wife skin gets turned back into a red skull and her reaction is not again.
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, well, this is a this is an embarrassment on me as a comic book reader, but
• 1:16:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did not know that the red skull was wearing a mask this whole time, sometimes it is not in this In this era of the books, he's dead, but he's transferred his mental essence into the body of a Russian like general basically So that Russian general Alexander Luke in is putting on the red skull mask because your hunchmate is living in his brain and there's like a whole thing
• 1:16:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: because German, Germany versus Russia is a huge thing in the United States, so it's actually pretty interesting storytelling in this run, but yes, complicated.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's a mask, sometimes it is not.
• 1:17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing that I thought was funny was crossbones saying, you know, like, oh, you're you're younger now, and she's like, oh, I must have, I time travel, there's something and he's like, don't be silly.
• 1:17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: We aged you up instantaneously and then de-aged you instantaneously,
• 1:17:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Alright everyone, well, thank you for listening.
• 1:17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for the time brand.
• 1:17:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody take care of yourselves.
• 1:17:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a crazy world out there.
• 1:17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Living joyfully is an act of violence.
• 1:17:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: We are here to support and listen any time.
• 1:17:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, and make sure you check out the homo superior podcast where you can hear my friend Brent.
• 1:17:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So little quizing over there.
• 1:17:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for thanks for having me and yeah, check out our podcast.
• 1:17:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's fun.
• 1:17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It really is a good time.
• 1:17:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it's a good easy, happy listen.
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I smile every time a bunch of times.
• 1:17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's that's there's your endorsement for the day.
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, everybody.
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Take care yourselves.
• 1:17:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you back here next week.