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Bonus Patreon Release: Absalom! With Phillip Sevy and Joshua Catone! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Well ye ye hi everybody welcome back to the cowboy western month on the gremalkin lane patreon channel I am here with my friends Joshua Kittone and Philip Cv and we are gonna bring you another western goody with a character that you do not associate with the old west it all this is absolute from the externals now this is the third external I've covered in a patreon episode which is crazy because there's whole teams I haven't gotten to
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done Kandro with the incredible Saragalee.
0:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I did Gideon with Darrell and Allen a while back, and now we get to talk all about Absalom, who's one of the grossest fucking mutants I've ever seen.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy's powers make me sick, I hate him.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's character, but I'm very excited for this particular journey.
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me welcome my two guests if you'd like to introduce yourselves with your name and pronouns.
0:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And what are your thoughts on the Western genre?
0:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any favorite books or cowboy franchises or TV shows?
0:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Or are you a big Lulele more fan?
0:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Let us know where you fit into this journey.
1:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Josh, you a welcome back to Great Malkin Lane, my friend.
1:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey Chad, thanks for having me.
1:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great to be here as always.
1:08
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Josh Wilkatoen.
1:10
[SPEAKER_02]: He him favorite Westerns.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see.
1:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So I didn't even know this character had sort of a western background.
1:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was a nice surprise.
1:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So I immediately sort of went like red dead, Arthur Morgan for his voice in my head.
1:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, I think that first season of Westworld is pretty hard to top.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That's for me as about as good as that whole sort of western thing gets.
1:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Much like Joshua, very hard to top.
1:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
2:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Philip CV.
2:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I use the Hebrew Nones.
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a comic artist and writer and have done a lot of X-Men over the years and have been on the show quite a few times.
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks for having me back.
2:14
[SPEAKER_00]: As far as Western's go, two that came to mind right off the bat is a preacher, the comic by a Garth Ennis and Steve Dylan, one of my favorite modern westerns.
2:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Though I haven't read it in quite a few years, I can't attest if it holds up or not, but I loved it growing up.
2:30
[SPEAKER_00]: and then a hell or high water with the best crisp pine is one of my favorite movies of all time and it shocks me how good that movie is and other kind of like modern western.
2:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done so much western research.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even think of preacher in this genre but of course it is.
2:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what a delightful read.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a long time.
2:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that book a lot.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah, so Westworld is a favorite of mine.
2:52
[SPEAKER_01]: My stepfather, my mom's husband, who's in his 90s, has just like a giant box of like 500 Louis Lamor books.
2:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I've read like two.
3:01
[SPEAKER_01]: They're, they're fine.
3:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They're, it's a fine genre.
3:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But I watched a bunch of like old John Wayne films and stuff in preparation for this.
3:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's amazing to me, the hyper masculinity and like this like common theme that we keep talking about in fantasy on my show where it's like,
3:15
[SPEAKER_01]: the white guy lands in the foreign land and is the best the is it everything good uh you know then he beds the woman and like defeats the bad guy there's a lot of western in our comics Bishop is a very western themed character Wolverine has a lot of western stuff Saber tooth is a very western in a lot of ways
3:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting to think of how much it intersects with our comics.
3:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Marvel, of course, has an old line of Western books from the 1950s, which we've also been talking about.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to close out the Patreon channel this month with a really special episode about the Apache kid who's a very problematic, but kind of special character who's half white, half native, and like on the cover of all the books from the 50s, it's like, which side will win?
3:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The white man or the savage?
3:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, oh no, like it's a problem.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But two of my favorite friends who are both indigenous are going to be joining me for that conversation.
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But we've been delving into the world of these old 50s comics in the way that they intersect with our modern character.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, comics.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And absolute is a character that intersects with an old 50s comic.
4:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk about it today.
4:17
[SPEAKER_01]: This old kind of genre of these older books.
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, do you guys have any fond memories of Marvel's Cowboys, the two-gun kid, the raw-hide kid, or these characters that you follow or enjoy?
4:29
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I wasn't going to tell you mentioned some of the older Marvel ones that I remember that there was that re-release of the raw-hide kid as a gay character.
4:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I looked on myself as you were talking about it, because I bought this, I have the slap leather graphic novel.
4:44
[SPEAKER_02]: that I haven't read it in a while.
4:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure there's some really dicey bits of it.
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So more offensive than you remember.
4:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Really?
4:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I remember at the time reading it and being like, oh my God, it's progress.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
4:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Gay stereotypes are fine.
5:00
[SPEAKER_01]: The violence toward women in low-level races.
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think so.
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so maybe I'll just leave that on the shelf with my memory for the end of the month that you enjoy the show trials We're doing the trial of the raw-head kit on the main show at the end of April amazing talk all about weird But Ron Zimmerman the writer of that title was like basically like Howard Stern's best buddy if that tells you everything you need to know Yeah, kind of does
5:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, fun memories.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel how about you.
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't think I really followed any of the Marvel Western characters really.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I was aware of where I'd get.
5:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I do remember when the Mac series came out and kind of the attention it got.
5:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But beyond that, like, not really.
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so we're going to jump into the world of X-Force.
5:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Fiddy and you see his is on the book.
5:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He's expanding the mythos of a lot of things and in that big giant...
5:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Rob Layfield, Dron Ark, that goes on for like four issues too long.
5:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a lot.
5:51
[SPEAKER_01]: We see Cannonball get gutted by Sauron in that storyline.
5:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it comes back as a high-lord.
5:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And now the big theme are the show going on.
6:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Highlander was like a huge deal in television at the time.
6:03
[SPEAKER_01]: This race of immortal's manipulating events, which is something we see in our comics
6:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We're both of you Highlander fans at all.
6:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to delve deep into the world of Highlander, but I didn't want to bring that up because we haven't emphasized it in my previous external episodes as much.
6:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Weirdly enough, I watched the Highlander TV show constantly as a kid.
6:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I saw the movies till I was much older if I've ever actually sat through the entirety of them, but I sure watched a lot of a Duncan McCloud Saturday afternoon like TBS TV shows.
6:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Josh?
6:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, not on my radar.
6:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember sort of the vague sort of Vaseline lens that there can be only one of it.
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of as far as my memory goes.
6:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There were a hundred shows growing up that I watched every episode of, uh, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Highlander.
6:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I never watched at all.
6:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen maybe one or two isolated episodes of Highlander, but I did research it a little bit in preparation for this.
6:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's correlations, but it doesn't extend far enough to really delve any deep analysis.
7:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, already warrant any deep analysis.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think.
7:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Where were both of you in 1992?
7:06
[SPEAKER_00]: By then, I hadn't started collecting comics yet, like officially.
7:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It would be about the next year, 93 is when I started regularly picking them up.
7:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was still watching the X-Men animated show and Batman animated and getting action figures like crazy.
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think my brother had the cruel action figure, which I think is the only external eye.
7:23
[SPEAKER_00]: We had Gideon as well, so I guess there was a couple of them there.
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, as coming close, it didn't like fully losing myself in comic.
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Gideon was one of those action figures that whenever you went to toys or us all the other or X-Men figures were gone, but the Gideon was always there because nobody wanted the green ponytail guy.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: He came with a briefcase too, Chad, it was exciting briefcase.
7:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a briefcase with a sword hidden in it if I remember correctly.
7:48
[SPEAKER_01]: If you recall, getting an episode we did, we described him as the arbiter of capitalism in many ways.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Josh, where were you in 92?
7:55
[SPEAKER_02]: 92.
7:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I was probably in a very similar space as, as Phil.
8:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, I was always a casual comic reader, but you know, when you're a kid, you read whatever you can kind of find.
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So I remember like I have a sense memory of like the 91 relaunch like seeing that at a comic newsstand, but it wasn't it wasn't until like that cartoon hit in 92 that I was like fully jacked in.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So anywhere in 92, you could have probably found me like trying to get the VCR to work to tape this Saturday morning like X-Men cartoon.
8:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, 92 is when I really was sort of like I was in.
8:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so let's begin at the end here for just a moment.
8:36
[SPEAKER_01]: During Krikoa, there was some pretty cool story telling and X-Men unlimited that tied up a lot of plot lines that were happening in the larger books.
8:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And the external's got a really big amp up during that era with Phil C.V. getting to redesign some of these classic NECAs and characters, including Absalom.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So were you familiar with the externals much at this point?
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember having to do a lot of research?
8:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk a little bit about your redesigns?
9:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I was aware of them because I remember like the impetus of this plot of like was cannonball and external or not And the resolution of that got lost in the years when I was on and off of comics, but getting a chance to go back and revisit all of these characters I did a quick
9:18
[SPEAKER_00]: deep dive, mainly jumping back into Tini Howard's ex-calibur to see how that set up.
9:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that was the ten of swords crossover is was when all a majority of the externals were sacrificed to create the gate for a pockelip.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think from there it was just looking at the document.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I Steve Fox and Steve Orlando were the writers on that arc and then I was alternating art with Nick Roche and it was just looking at the way that the Steve's had kind of outlined
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of like key and core principles for each external.
9:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe Absalom was a despair.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was looking at like what are these core principles, what are their powers and where they at now?
9:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So for Absalom, my redesign was like, okay, he was just sacrifice and he was used to create this gate.
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So coming back in, he's going to be even more, he's going to feel even more threatened
10:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So violently ripped from him and betrayed by apocalypse.
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So his bone grotes that he could do.
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagined and designed it kind of as like a permanent external armor.
10:23
[SPEAKER_00]: He would have on him to keep himself protected and that would then grow and increase and mask the more angry or threatened he felt.
10:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and some of the other ones, I'm trying to think like, oh, we got here.
10:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Saul, we did a little bit of a redesign with his robe, which is looking at kind of the patterning on it, and how that could look like dragon scales.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It could deemus with the fire and make it deemus with the fire with the prophecies.
10:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and Burke, it was one of those like because he's pre-cognitive, um, we, I decided to put a blindfold on him so he could be like very much focused his power and not be distracted by external things.
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And just a lot of little things like that.
10:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just what can we do to try and give them defined looks.
11:02
[SPEAKER_00]: When I, when I get to do designs or redesigns, um, and I've talked to Steve Fox a lot about this.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Steve Fox works a lot with James tying in nowadays and we have similar approaches and, and philosophy on that is like,
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what design, what look will be iconic enough that they'll make a toy of it and that's someone will cosplay it and and regardless of whether like the designs nail that that's always the aesthetic I'm going for is like how can we boil down the look that that represents a character in a very visual Very quick and easy to recognize easy to cosplay cool to build a toy with type look and that's kind of what I was going for the externals because some of them have not had a specific look like even axlons kind of just generic looks
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: throughout his appearance.
11:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's a shirtless guy in jeans, basically.
11:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoy and I know this was an intentional.
11:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I decided to give Burke a blindfold so he wouldn't be distracted by external things.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You hear the team name right in there?
12:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll say pun intended.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the name, Absalom, is a fascinating choice.
12:06
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy comes from the Old West.
12:08
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna talk about the structure here.
12:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a masculine name of Hebrew origin, derived from biblical, like the third son of like King David.
12:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So it comes from Hebrew.
12:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Absalom, or the father of peace, or my father is peace, is the meaning of the name.
12:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So a little bit like Avis father and Shalom is peace.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And it appears in the Old Testament, Absalom's known for his striking beauty and his rebellion against his father.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: The name's been used in different cultures.
12:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've got this kind of biblical name, which fits into the Old West thing.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's very kind of synonymous with Samson, with the long hair and the beautiful man.
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And like his hair gets caught on a tree during a fight in the Bible, if I remember it, or what of the mythologies?
12:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So an interesting choice already.
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: 1992 is a really interesting time.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Claremont has left the books, and we have new writers coming in.
12:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Primarily, Lubdahl and Laefeld, Peter David, the teams of expanded.
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We see them kind of looking and the mythology of Xavier's dream, which had kind of been one thing for a long time, now means a lot different.
13:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you compare X-Factor working for the government to X-Force as the kind of paramilitary standing up for mutant rights group,
13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: and then you compare those to the accolades and the muting liberation front.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you get more like the chaotic evil versions of this, with like the brotherhood of evil mutants and the upstart.
13:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of different groups starting around at the time, where the more lucks are still just trying to hide underneath, you know.
13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of mythology about how all this works out.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And the externals, as this kind of very privileged set in their ways, group of people pluck from different cultures, who are working together, but all have their independent goals and ideals.
13:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to delve deep into the external hive mind concept.
13:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We have done that in the other episodes, but these characters are uniquely linked by a certain type of genetic mutation.
13:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you think of people being born, you guys ever see sense eight on Netflix where there's like, you know, eight people born around the world at different, at the same time and they're connected from different cultures.
14:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of how the externals come across to me a little bit, but they're born in different time periods.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: The most prominent ones being apocalypse and saline.
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to delve into these characters a little bit, but Josh, were these characters you were very familiar with?
14:15
[SPEAKER_02]: No, like Phil said, I remember the, I think I only really knew getting in cruel because they were action figures that you could find anywhere.
14:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And through trading cards and stuff, but also at this time, like X-Force was just kind of not my jam, so I missed a lot of this kind of stuff.
14:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So no,
14:32
[SPEAKER_02]: not particularly familiar with these characters until really Krakowa and after.
14:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So 92, we have Kabel and Strife from the far future.
14:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We have Bishop around from the different far future.
14:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We have Xmen 299 taking place.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's a lot of different concepts kind of weaving in and out.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And the externals are the ancient race kind of hiding.
14:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Gideon has been around since the end of new mutants, very Roblyfeld design.
14:56
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the guy that tells his man servant to scrub his buttocks while he's like, you know, having hot tub board meetings with Sunspot.
15:03
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lug going on with this character.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And X4's number 10, while Stripe is facing weapon X, Gideon puts together this group of mutants we've never seen before.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all immortal and they're called the externals.
15:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be spelled with an EX or X hyphen tunnel,
15:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we see Saul, who is the oldest one.
15:24
[SPEAKER_01]: He's over 5,000 years old.
15:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Garra Chien, if I'm saying the name correctly, who can transform to a massive fucking dragon and he's deeply connected in magic.
15:33
[SPEAKER_01]: This guy has a lot of potential and lore that I don't think has really been tapped on in the X-Men universe, which is interesting.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it falls into some of the tropes that we see with Asian stereotypes a little bit with characters like the Mandarin and Finfang Fum, but Saul represents a really interesting version of that.
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get the caption that tells us he represents patients to the journals.
15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We see Nicodemus who manipulates fire, who represents wisdom.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We see Saul, who's precognitive, who represents fortitude.
16:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we get absolute who represents despair.
16:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll talk to you more about absolute in a moment.
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They call themselves the high lords.
16:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And they need in a stark white room surrounded by statues of bygone eras.
16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, do you guys have my dialogue pulled up from my notes?
16:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah.
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Will you read Gideon here in the section?
16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll do absolute.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Josh, I'll have you take over as a saw in just a moment.
16:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, a Gideon says, you all felt it, didn't you?
16:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I, it would appear.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I made a mistake.
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Cavalier, Gideon.
16:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You spend the last few months wasting your time and ours by recruiting the wrong person, and I made a mistake as good as we're allowed the pleasure of hearing.
16:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Saul, I now know who the newest external to awaken really is, and I know how to retrieve him.
16:42
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you propose to rectify your misjudgments, Gideon?
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I plan to do very little other than to pick up a telephone and activate cruel.
16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And my theory, by the way, is that Gideon and Krueller, like fuck-breddy, fuck-breddy is like the very intimate relationship.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what involved Kruelling what is already in otherwise untenable morass?
17:01
[SPEAKER_00]: What better time to call upon the most reckless, high-lord there is?
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We all agree that if this new awakened one is in the care of cable, we would prefer our interest in him to remain unknown.
17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: What better way to retrieve our newest external and maintain anonymity than to send Kruell as our errand boy?
17:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And we cannot lose either way, a Gideon, if Cruel succeeds, we have retained the services of the boy high Lord.
17:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And if he fails, then a canker, which irritated our ambitions will be excised forever more.
17:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Ooh, we ever had a canker excised, that's unpleasant.
17:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But what if neither happens, one of Gideon's plancers only lead cable rat to us.
17:40
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we do if the disciples of Xavier, Factor, Force, or Men learn of our existence?
17:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Gideon thinks of Absalom as being difficult, whiny and petulant, which is kind of fair because he's the youngest one.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Gideon came over on the Mayflower, you know?
17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, at least 300 years older, or younger, Nicodemus says we're not over absolute tendencies getting it.
18:01
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been seen as they always will be.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: My thanks, Nicodemus, for your consideration, and I apologize for ignoring your splendid meal.
18:10
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd think wouldn't you, that after so many centuries, I would have come to accept his ways.
18:14
[SPEAKER_01]: We're immortal, Gideon.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: No one ever said that would bring enlightenment, says Nicodemus.
18:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of immortals and enlightenment, the boy referred to Roberto de Costa.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that you have learned he is not the intended high lord, what will become of him?
18:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately though it may be, de Costa will go to the way of all flesh, only sooner than he thinks.
18:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and that's all we get for this group for quite a while.
18:37
[SPEAKER_01]: That they weave in and out, cool attacks the X-Men, and he gets like blasted and all his bones are broken and he gets dumped in the water.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We see later see him in like a full body cast.
18:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Cruel of purple, like hyborian, like Conan villain, basically with like a spiky ponytail.
18:51
[SPEAKER_01]: He whips his hair back and forth, like that's his...
18:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he's got the skull belt buckle.
18:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we jump all the way to X4's number 36.
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're just going to pick up.
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So a few years of past where we see Gideon saw an absolute show up at the door of the Guthrie house in Cumberland County.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you've seen my Lucinda Guthrie episode, they just start getting so many fucking visits from supervillains in this era.
19:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're all just showed up at the house.
19:15
[SPEAKER_01]: In 37, we see them all sitting around a campfire with cannonball and boom boom, discussing their origins.
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And what it means to be immortal, when absolute, there's loses his shit
19:25
[SPEAKER_01]: cannonball shirt.
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Now pause before we go on with this dialogue.
19:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We see the legacy virus happening in this era.
19:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We are building toward operations zero tolerance.
19:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like more anti-mute and fervor that's building up around this time.
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So okay, I feel if you will read cannonball and Josh, if you will read your writer die boom boom, I know she's your favorite, right?
19:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll take it.
19:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolum grabs Cannonball's shirt.
19:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Enough.
19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: This dance of avoidance.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I forgot my accent.
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Enough.
19:58
[SPEAKER_01]: This dance of avoidance boars me.
20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell our newest descendant why we have come here to seek an audience.
20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do we step lightly all around this little fool just because he remains a mystery us?
20:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I've seen I've never seen Kendra or Celine come to the gatherings and we've never treated them this kindly.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do we keep humor in this brat of Xavier's?
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we think we need him, is that it?
20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And he throws Sam into a tree, rips open his shirt to show deep, Pendled Markings, similar to Carpozi Sarkoma with the outbreak of HIV or AIDS.
20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And then grabs boom, boom by the hair.
20:30
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna talk about the AIDS allegory more just a minute.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Because two of us, nickademis and Burke have already died from this damnable pox on mutants, and soon you'll add absolim's name to the list of victims of the legacy virus won't you.
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not going to see my long life end on some sod farm in the dredge of a whole like this, just because Sammy Boy would rather spend his days in blissful ignorance with this eye blink of a sound.
20:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey buddy, this eye blink has a name.
20:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It's boomer.
20:56
[SPEAKER_02]: On account of
21:02
[SPEAKER_01]: worst codename, a change ever.
21:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right, she sets a bomb off in his face, which causes his absolute powers to flare, and his powers, by the way, are he creates like keratin spikes out of his skin?
21:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's, I hate, this is body horror that I hate.
21:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate when the skin is covered in like, pox or like, like, boils, like, when that's in art, I'm like, bruh, so like, absolute must powers and like, the growing tendrils, I'm just like, I don't like it.
21:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Marrow grosses me out like when there's coming out and you're plucking it off.
21:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just Iki.
21:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So he has these huge we've seen little little tendrils before But now there's just these massive like bony tendrils that are shooting off in every direction and this scout sound effect is Shrek Girl you are a fool.
21:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I Hate these half mutant ability of hate these
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: muting abilities of mine.
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I may be ill by life may be drawn to an unfair close, but I refuse to be treated like some commoner, not even by an eye-blank whose mutant potential is as normal as enormous as yours.
22:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Then how about by me, Absalom, care to give Cannonball a shot?
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But Gettian intervenes and he grabs one of Absalom's spikes.
22:10
[SPEAKER_01]: No, he does not.
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if you want to do Gettian,
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: No, he does not, absolutely apologizes, boy, high lord, to you and your friend, his actions notwithstanding, we did not come here to fight you, Sam.
22:21
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we did not, forgive my outburst, stare in death in the face for the first time and so very long as left me a tad-hast-strong, a saucepeaks up and says, Josh, if you would.
22:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, you see, Sam, you know, we have all faced death once before and managed to try and poover it.
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the defining moment for an external.
22:37
[SPEAKER_02]: The moment of transmutation it is something more.
22:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But this virus represents the unknown for us, a challenge to our sense of self is the inevitable end to our existence.
22:47
[SPEAKER_01]: cannonball says we were born and will die that's just the way it is except that long ago when the father died then diagramsy and then iliana a few months ago you know if you remember iliana resputina as a little girl died of the legacy virus just before this and other characters have been dying absolum says but for some of us as in that was just the beginning a continuation of the very torture is wasteful way of living
23:11
[SPEAKER_01]: The last century was drawn to a close.
23:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd come into a small town and Wyoming on the run from about six sheriffs in as many states.
23:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a thief and a killer.
23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And my life was going to end on the twist and end of a hangman's news.
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Two days before I ran into an old man.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Once when he was younger, he was a legend.
23:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I challenged this legend for I was young and his best days were gone.
23:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to best a legend.
23:35
[SPEAKER_01]: He smiled, said no and walked away.
23:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I shot him in the back.
23:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the way a man like Caleb Hammer was meant to die.
23:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But how could someone like me who didn't even know how a man was supposed to live understand how he cheapened it further by cowardly murder?
23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember as I felt the breath slipping out of my lungs that I wondered what kind of a special place would be reserved for me in hell.
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Then something happened for the first time.
23:59
[SPEAKER_01]: My powers manifested themselves, bone-like spikes erupted out of my body, and news was no
24:07
[SPEAKER_01]: free and it was 1896 in Wyoming so you can well imagine how the good town folk reacted to everything they were seeing so there I was.
24:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd gone from staring death down, feeling a life inside me like I'd never felt before to be in shutdown like a rabbit dog on a dirty street as I died I thought if only I could do it all over again then I'll do it right.
24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: all make something useful out of myself.
24:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I woke up two days later inside a wooden coffin behind a funeral parlor.
24:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I was dead no longer.
24:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I took advantage of this unexpected deliverance and quit the village under the light of the moon and I never went back to be in the man I was.
24:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was never strong, quite strong enough to become the man I wanted to be.
24:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're going to
24:53
[SPEAKER_02]: For Absalom, Death was the defining moment of his life.
24:56
[SPEAKER_02]: He had allowed the sad, pretty bull self-awareness he had gained on that day to prevent him from ever becoming anything more or less than he had been before the moment of pain.
25:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And Cannonball.
25:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm supposed to feel sorry for him.
25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Self-confessed murder.
25:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm only 20 years old and it seems to me I've done more with my life.
25:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Learning and growing, trying and failing than any of you over the course of centuries.
25:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I even fucked an intergalactic rock star, he said.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I just added that part.
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Gettian says do not belittle all we have brought to this eternal puzzle Sam Nicodemis brought wisdom Burke fortitude Saul provides patience cruel ferocity Absalom despair Kendra and Celine add Gile and Corruption I provide opportunity and you are newest ascendant to you We come for hope summers perhaps
25:45
[SPEAKER_00]: None of you understands the meaning of the word.
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Before he died, Burke used his precognitive skills to fertile many things.
25:53
[SPEAKER_01]: This virus took him on a wares, but he still tried to see the things beyond, and in his fevered dreams he saw you Samuel Guthrie as the architect of our salvation.
26:02
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know how or why, or even what role you truly will play, but within you, or perhaps within one close to you, lies the key to cure in the accursed legacy virus.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what to say, what to tell y'all, but I don't see how I have anything to do with the virus.
26:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm no doctor or scientist, but I think your pre-cog got something mixed up there.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord never meant for us to live forever, but what strafted was cruel.
26:26
[SPEAKER_00]: His virus is meant to murder us all before the natural course of ends.
26:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It just seems to me, you folks were given something special, a chance to make a difference, and y'all did nothing with it.
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, with the first real challenge of your life, y'all act in like Fratt and Children, come into people you've tried to kill.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: How dare you say that, Absalom?
26:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Presumptuous arrogant, how dare you judge us?
26:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Getty and stuff.
26:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Absalom, please, try to.
26:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Try to what, Gideon, control myself?
26:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: How can he judge me until he's walked through lifetimes in my shoes?
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You watch the decades pass by.
26:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You stop caring about life and death, and then wake up staring death in the face.
27:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Then once you realize that your life was nothing, but a series of missed opportunities, then you tell me who's a frightened child.
27:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And this room full of 40 something queer people, we all relate.
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's an absolute lashes out, his tendrils are multiplying, they're growing the larger sizes, just knives extending in every direction.
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Cannonball says, So what do you want out of me to absolve you of your sins?
27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I could, Absalom, but I don't have that kind of power.
27:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Seems to me, no earthly power does.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to live, Guthrie, but if that choice has denied me, if I'm to die, then I want the chance to have someone more in my passion.
27:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I was taught the loss of any life as worse, worse, more in an absolute.
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And when my daddy died, I'm more in hard.
27:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm more in the loss of possibilities, more in anything else, I guess.
27:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We more in the things that could have been, and never can be now.
27:55
[SPEAKER_01]: An absolute cries.
27:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I know, Josh, will you give us the narrator?
27:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, the passion, the sadness, the emptiness inside Absalom's withered soul explodes out of him.
28:05
[SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't even scream.
28:06
[SPEAKER_02]: He knows in his heart, he knows that his life, his death is not worth shouting over.
28:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And the tendrils expand further and then he falls over.
28:14
[SPEAKER_01]: All the tendrils disappear.
28:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He's clean and clear and just kind of looks dead.
28:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Giddy and says,
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: The flaring of his powers, the final deathnell of the virus raging inside him, but Absalom is still alive still, but Absalom is still alive still breathing, and then Gideon continues.
28:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I truly did not think he would have such a strong will to live, a sign maybe, a testament to the truth of your word Samuel.
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Cannonball, uh, I guess even cynical know what all mortals can find a little ray of hope, huh?
28:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all says.
28:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Indeed, and perhaps maybe even learn from their mistakes.
28:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And then boom boom says, like any year you're going to turn around and become mother to Reese's by Friday.
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, cannonball says, I'll make you a guarantee right now, Gideon.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If all you try to do more with what you got, whether it be an hour, a day or a century, and when the time comes, if the time comes, where I might be able to help save your life, then I'll do everything I can to see that happen.
29:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Gideon replies.
29:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Name curious, what has been your defining moment when your purpose in this world was made clear to you?
29:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Cannonball replies.
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to thank Gideon that maybe it ain't happened yet, gives me something to strive for, don't it?
29:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And Gideon and Saul, depart, carrying, absolums, unconscious body.
29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we've got four things that we've really got to pack a part here for just a moment.
29:28
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, Josh, tell us about Absillum's visual effect of his powers.
29:32
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got some prominent place even on the cover of this issue.
29:36
[SPEAKER_01]: He's that hot shirtless Bible guy, but with all the ikki tendrils come out of his body.
29:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that might be his only cover appearance.
29:45
[SPEAKER_02]: But he's got this like a long blonde Fabio hair, and he is often shirtless, probably because that's where the sort of horrific pink spice come out.
29:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is sort of like, what if Maro was grosser?
29:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's like, it's more of them.
30:01
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot more like skin pulling against them, which is exceptionally gross.
30:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That last panel where he just sort of like legacy viruses out
30:12
[SPEAKER_02]: particularly gruesome.
30:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if he's just like skin on spikes at that point, but yeah, it is it's it's pretty bothersome.
30:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a there's a lot of characters that have like quills that will grow out of their body that they can like pluck off and throw right this guy.
30:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm assuming he can break pieces off and use them as weapons, but it just I don't know it grows in the like it's
30:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost like the matter he gets or like the more out of control the more they're like flaring up.
30:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's an Iki weird kind of power.
30:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But the allegory here in the middle of the AIDS crisis, which is happening in the early 90s, is uh and Fabian's very much writing into that with characters like Black Tom and others who have become ill and their loved ones are trying to take care of them.
30:52
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the guy who has run out of hope.
30:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know so many people in the AIDS crisis to make this a little bit more serious or sobering for a minute weren't qualifying for
31:01
[SPEAKER_01]: getting refused medical care.
31:03
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some in some situations things we're expanding beyond their control.
31:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's absolute.
31:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just basically saying I haven't lived long enough.
31:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, life passed me by too quickly.
31:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And now it's expanding and how dare you say I don't have any hope.
31:16
[SPEAKER_01]: His represents despair, right?
31:18
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the youngest external up until Sam, who's not actually an external.
31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: The Sam represents hope for something new, even as the generation before him is dying.
31:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of the queer allegory that's really easily showing up.
31:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Communicating the realities of the world around us through the story was definitely impactful for me as a kid and then re-reading as and adult like they did a really incredible job handling stuff kind of in the,
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: tricky, perhaps more editorial driven era of X-Men comics, they still managed to make some pretty profound moments and stories and impact on the series.
31:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the rare instances of this kind of stuff in the 90s that really holds up amazingly well.
31:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's not a subtle allegory.
32:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It's done with a lot of care for the victims of this virus.
32:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's making a point.
32:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so it's really interesting even to go back and read these things and there's there's not a ton of it that's really sort of in retrospect problematic or or it's really it's a really sensitive compassionate approach and like I said it's not it's not it's not a real thick thick metaphor here.
32:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty much on the page.
32:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Getting in as this folks person is interesting as well, a representing again, if we're letting it go to like the older queer generation, you know, I have all these successful businesses and we have all this power and we were supposed to live forever, but now there's a whole generation of my peers that are passing away, right?
32:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And that allegory I think is always a really rough read but it's something we see in the X-Men with the legacy of our stories in particular.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, then we get Absalom's crazy origins.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the youngest one.
32:50
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been around since the late 1800s, basically.
32:55
[SPEAKER_01]: If we talk about Marvel Westerns again, let's jump to Marvel Premiere number 54.
33:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a one shot in 1980, written by Peter Gillis with Art by Jean Day.
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: The story's called The Devil.
33:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Excuse me, The Devil's Starry Anvil.
33:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And it features a brand new character named Caleb Hammer.
33:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's adding to the Marvel cowboy mythos.
33:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's 1890 in this book in medical Wyoming.
33:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Hammer had been studying to be a minister before a drunk man murdered his hot blonde naked wife, Thia.
33:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So instead, Hammer decided to become a bounty hunter for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
33:29
[SPEAKER_01]: After his brother gets killed, he captures a killer named Arthur Penfield and ends up getting hold up with him in a cabin for months before Penfield dies.
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he hunt down some ex soldiers who are now terrorizing settlements.
33:42
[SPEAKER_01]: he ends up beating up the men with his bare hands because they keep killing innocence.
33:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So Marvel does this like Western genre every once in a while.
33:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And Phoebe and E.C.E has seated in this character as the one that Absalom chose to kill in 1897.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So the parallel here, and I wanna hear your thoughts on this, because it's really layered storytelling, and E.C.E.E.E.
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: is it can really hit us in subtle ways?
34:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Absalom is saying, when I was younger and didn't know better, I killed someone older and wondered like if this was the end if I was going to hell and I got a chance to live again.
34:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm the older person dying and I'm resentful of the younger person who's coming along to you, certainly.
34:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you get to have the hope and why am I leaving?
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The allegory is really beautiful, but we get it layered in with this kind of tie-in to Wyoming in the 1890s.
34:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me hear your thoughts on this.
34:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's smart.
34:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it can be, I mean, I take it and I'm trying to think of the best way to kind of say this carefully because I think you see with the generational changes people of older generations fighting for the ground they can gain in life be it political social regardless and then the next generation obviously benefits from the work that they've done but there is times the older generation definitely does not feel that the younger generation appreciates the work that they did because they started the baseline
35:01
[SPEAKER_00]: of where the goal post was moved to.
35:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they do not give the younger generation kind of the recognition and appreciation for how they continue to push that goal post forward.
35:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can see it sometimes since we're talking about kind of the, you know, the AIDS crisis or queer community.
35:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are groups of people who are sometimes in the older area of that community and maybe are not as welcoming or as accepting of trans and non-binary people as that was perhaps not kind of the ground that they were pushing for at the time.
35:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, you know, like at the beginning of Christopher Street riots and Stonewall was led by, you know, trans and then women of color and yet they were often excluded out of celebrations further at the time.
35:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So kind of looking at that as it relates to this story, you can see the way that, uh, Absalom kind of took what was given to him and is now worried about his relevancy to the future generations kind of seeing how his actions are are being replayed as he is growing up.
36:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of some things that were going through my head as we are going through this.
36:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wonder though, why every time you say the word old, you're looking directly at me, I'm just saying rude.
36:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in a documentary, everybody called Dog Valley.
36:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It covers in part the history of the death penalty in Utah.
36:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had to turn like a hundred hours of footage into a 90-minute film, and I just had to keep it about one case.
36:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But I did a deep research dive several years back about the history of the death penalty in Utah, which is a really fascinating thing.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And it definitely, without getting lost in all this, falls into this category of what we call frontier justice.
36:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's how someone deserves to die.
36:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Do process doesn't really exist.
36:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Sheriff can be corrupt.
36:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like really odd kind of laws that can exist.
36:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And this like Wyoming town where where he is initially hung absolute and then and then shot down and just left in a coffin behind the place.
36:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It really fits into that like old West genre.
36:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the late 1890s that genre was kind of dying out in American history until you come places like Salt Lake City, you know, the gold rush is over, but it's still kind of
37:12
[SPEAKER_01]: at the time, it's a very different space.
37:15
[SPEAKER_02]: What I found interesting is this sort of immediate setup is him as a bad guy.
37:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's introduced as this sort of old West figure, right?
37:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Riding the horse knees on the run from the law and blah, blah, blah, blah, and he rolls into town.
37:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And the first thing he does is like shoot the hero in the back.
37:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought that was really interesting.
37:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't often see a story like that where he is sort of the upstart, again, forgive the X-Men pun, who runs into town.
37:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And right, and takes out this legendary hero and you know, the most sort of unceremonious way ever.
37:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I just thought it was a really interesting and kind of sad origin story that you don't really see.
37:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you watch, I mean, there's a ton of old Western television shows from like the 50s and 60s.
38:00
[SPEAKER_01]: More modern stories, you see things like dead wood, right?
38:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But
38:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If you watch any old Clint Clint Eastwood films or go back and watch like Maverick or the movie too, but I'm talking about the old series with James Gardner or you know, Benanza or any of those.
38:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There's even an old show called Raw Hyde that ran for several seasons.
38:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Plot lights like this are not uncommon.
38:20
[SPEAKER_01]: where like, your sheriff gets taken down by like the young upstart who then, you know, the guys have to like, hunt down and even like in cowboy origin stories, this kind of falls into like the raw-hide kids origin story from like 1954, it an odd way to, you know, with Clint Eastwood representing that kind of older archetype.
38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Caleb Hammer, prior to this story, only had one appearance.
38:42
[SPEAKER_01]: After this, he comes back in the modern retelling of old westerns called Blaze of Glory.
38:47
[SPEAKER_01]: If you've never read it, it's a beautiful series from around the year 2000.
38:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And for those that are avid listeners of my show, my show opened an April with an interview with Mark Bernardo, who was the editor on that book, talking all about Marvel, western, and Blaze of Glory specifically.
39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So you'll see the tie ends there as well.
39:03
[SPEAKER_02]: This particular issue, this issue 37, has particularly beautiful art.
39:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I love this artist, and I don't think I've seen him before.
39:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very sort of Alan Davisy kind of stuff.
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a breath of fresh air in the era of Rob Lifehub.
39:17
[SPEAKER_02]: His name's Paul Pelleteer.
39:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, particularly he's still around to this day.
39:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
39:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is a beautiful issue.
39:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, really, really gorgeous.
39:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very well done.
39:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, these next sections I'm going to cover kind of quickly because we've gone into them in more detail in some of the other episodes, but we jump all the way forward to exports 53 and 54, this is a wild era and the art gets really crazy.
39:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But the externals are being drained dry, like killed and hunted down by a Celine is the big villain.
39:46
[SPEAKER_01]: The more external she kills, the more she amplifies her own power and then eventually they're going to come back to life.
39:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Absalom is like very ripped in this story.
40:00
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got green shorts on.
40:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool is here.
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They're all fighting each other because they don't know who's doing it.
40:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Absalom in this story gets to use his tendrils almost more like webs.
40:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's extending them from his fingers, hovering in the air, stabbing buildings and like swinging along, firing long quills out.
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: He impails caliben with some quills in this, his tendrils.
40:21
[SPEAKER_01]: He also gets hit with sunspots, solar energy and meltdown.
40:26
[SPEAKER_01]: and by her time bombs and siren sonic screams.
40:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's still standing after all of that abuse, but then Celine just sucks the life out of him.
40:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So he survived the legacy virus, but not Celine.
40:38
[SPEAKER_01]: His dying words are Celine, you traitorous, y'all.
40:43
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we love Celine, anytime she can come back and be unhinged.
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my favorite.
40:48
[SPEAKER_01]: A junction if that's on the absolute power upgrades in the storyline.
40:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an expansion for him.
40:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's nice to see a little bit of creativity because before we just see him just sort of like spike out.
40:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And he never even really actively hits anybody with them.
41:02
[SPEAKER_02]: He just sort of spikes out.
41:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So now you see him almost sort of like a, it's like a blend between, you know, a mega red and or like spider bands webs or he's using them kind of interesting ways.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: you have to do some interesting things in an in some infinity comics recently with skin.
41:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm almost wondering if skins powers could be used kind of like absolums are.
41:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Where he's like tightening his skin up into tendrils and stabbing and swinging and doing all kinds of things.
41:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an interesting way of viewing it because our his tendrils skin or bone or marrow we don't quite know.
41:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, we see absolute very briefly in gamut number 14 volume three.
41:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a flashback where Candra doesn't defeat apocalypse and absolute there and like a white suit.
41:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He looks very dapper.
41:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we get that crazy time travel story from cable 150 through 154.
41:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Josh, did you read this one before?
41:47
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I hadn't.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's so much.
41:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Someone is hunting down externals.
41:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Candor has killed even though she's a little baby girl after the time.
41:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Cable forms a team of powerful time-traveling mutants, including armor, shatter, star, and dupe to investigate, uh, Celine is standing with Absalom, Nicodemus, and Cruel.
42:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, they always come back to life.
42:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Absalom gets to about one long, like, tendril bone sword from each hand, and this one.
42:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, it's like a hardened tendrils and fight alongside of
42:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Later, he gets to spout a bunch more growths and he screams when Shatter starts slices through them, which is just like the body hores so gross to me.
42:23
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also very loyal to getting it in this story as the externals are dying, but getting is the one behind it all.
42:29
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a bunch of far future, time travel crazy, wonky, nuts, stuff, but he dies again, basically.
42:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Fun, time travel one, but it's a little hard to wrap your head around.
42:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't actually read this one.
42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when it came out, and I think it was Ed Bristol.
42:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Ed Bristol, Ed Bristol, right this one?
42:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's really cool.
42:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I really like it.
42:46
[SPEAKER_00]: The artist unfortunately went the way of like far-right comics gates, so I was like, I don't need to worry about spending money, but now that it's on Marvel and limited, it's free, so I should go back and check it out.
42:55
[SPEAKER_01]: The artist on this being John Manley?
42:57
[SPEAKER_01]: John Mallon, yeah.
42:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know much about him, but I have the interview to Edward and yeah, super nice guy.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's super cool.
43:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I got nothing but good things to say about it.
43:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Blink is in this story.
43:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Long shots here.
43:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, if anybody enjoys these characters, you could look up cable 155154 and then we get critical at the external's come back in kind of a prominent way.
43:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Just tell us about absolute appearances in in Excalibur.
43:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so this is like this is a Excalibur 11 and 12.
43:24
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the prelude to 10 of Swords and this is the contest between the curriculum mutants that have access to one side of other world and the Iraqi mutants on the other side.
43:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So and 10 of Swords exists kind of in that middle.
43:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So at some point,
43:41
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a little bit of hand wavey stuff here with the with the cocoon gates.
43:45
[SPEAKER_02]: They've got a gate at Avalon.
43:47
[SPEAKER_02]: The Araco has a gate at Dreidor, but they need another gate in the middle.
43:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And Apocalypse is on it.
43:54
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got a big spell that he is ready to sort of both train and use Richter 4.
44:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So Richter's meditating in the forest and he's he's contacted by Apocalypse back on Cricot who tells him.
44:06
[SPEAKER_02]: the story of sort of the first ritual with the high lords in the in the 12th century, but Absalom's not there, but they they kind of help Kendra put her life force into a gem and then they kill Kendra and then the gem wakes Kendra back up.
44:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, it's a little hand-wave because I thought that's kind of what the external's can do anyway.
44:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, but Titi, Titi's done a good job here of building on the lower that's previously established because Kendra, if you go see the Kendra episode, Kendra doesn't want the externals to be able to murder her.
44:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So she has like moved her life force to a gem that unless you can find the gem, you can't kill her effectively.
44:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And now they're like trying to find that to use for this ritual, which you know, like there's a sacrifice that's needed to make this epic magic work.
44:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause other world keeps fucking with mutant powers.
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good time.
44:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so okay, so that makes sense and then Kendra is sort of so that the first ritual was to sort of make this gem for for Kendra, so, you know, the, the externals have the power to both commune at any point in time anybody calls a meeting everybody's got to show up and then they also have this power of resurrection, so apocalypse calls everybody to this this Caldera in in Caracola.
45:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And basically tells the externals that they've been there obsolete that that the percolan mutants now can do both of those things between resurrection and the the percolan gates.
45:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he has Richter as kind of his guy showed them what that's all about.
45:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And Richter immediately takes out a Saul, Kendra.
45:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Nicodemus and cruel, and Absalom is kind of caught in this blast too, but he's spared because they need four of them alive, him, Celine, Gideon, and Apocalypse to sort of do this ritual to make this external gate.
45:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So he turns their bones into crystal, and then from there he has this gate established into the center of other world.
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: The data page is alone.
45:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You have so much context for the externals.
45:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Tini really poured her heart and soul into like, making it a success work.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know Tini loves Richter very much.
46:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It did some really crazy shit with Apocalypse Daring this era.
46:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun.
46:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Were you reading Excalibur during Cricola?
46:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was one of my, it was one of my top books.
46:14
[SPEAKER_02]: That first, that first volume is great.
46:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you like read it from a character perspective, you're like, oh, there's absolute.
46:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
46:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, the stuff that she was doing with Apocalypse and Mutant Magic and stuff is really cool and it really just it does feed right into this whole High Lord external thing and always fun to see like eternal people turning on each other and and playing each other for fools So Celine's of course absolutely there and ready to throw half these guys under the bus Phil, I feel like you are the absolute to teeny howards Candra perhaps
46:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I guess they'll take it.
46:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you two are very close.
46:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll kind of pick up the externals in the during the fall of X time running parallel to all of that.
46:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And basically what the Steve's did, which I thought was really cool was throughout the history of the externals.
47:03
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd been referred to as high lords and externals kind of interchangeably.
47:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they did was define the difference.
47:10
[SPEAKER_00]: that externals are immortal, but they can feel pain, you know, they have kind of the weakness is inherent in there.
47:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But through this big ritual, they can perform, they can ascend to what is a high lord, which is like invulnerable, immortal, don't feel anything, our ultimate all power.
47:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And the backbone of this comic is that Celine, who's kind of a snuck out of Gillen's immortal X-Men, returns to Nova Roma.
47:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And because Orcus is causing
47:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Celine's been having a time y'all.
47:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Celine was part of the Red Skull's power in heat over anti-tudgy hecy coats, Captain America, just like rampantly murdering.
47:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Tina used her in X-Core, and then they put her on the quiet council in a mortal X-Men.
47:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And now here she is, she's been having a time.
47:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So she basically was going to siphon a lot of mutant life force to power this big ritual.
48:05
[SPEAKER_00]: She kidnaps tempo because tempo has control over time and essentially working together.
48:11
[SPEAKER_00]: They can get a bunch of life force energy to ascend ceiling.
48:15
[SPEAKER_00]: and all of this unfolds over the course of time and with, you know, a sunspot and we've got Captain Britain and Richter and Shatterstar and Moonstar and all of these other characters who are not being used in any of the other books they're off to the side uncovering the plot of like where are all these mutants disappearing to, what are the externals up to?
48:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And Absalon is there through the whole thing.
48:37
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a couple different big showdowns he has with Richter and Shatterstar Richter being one of the people who is responsible for his death at the external gate in X caliber And yeah, there's a big showdown outside of Nova Roma towards the end of the art where Absalon is defeated slightly off panel I believe going back through it, but I think it was Richter who ends up defeating him
48:59
[SPEAKER_00]: and in the end, they're able to overpower everyone and put all the external kind of in-stasis pods where they're forced to relive their worst nightmares over and over again and keep them kind of off the board until people bring them back on to the board for future stories.
49:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They're giving you a lot of really fun stuff to draw in this arc.
49:18
[SPEAKER_01]: from a third versus cruel.
49:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's some really great moments or a lot of the characters here.
49:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolum doesn't kick a lot of the ass, but he's still pretty fun at this title.
49:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And the upgrade you get, the costume, he's finally more than just a, you know, a pair of green shorts.
49:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's pretty straightforward, but it's, you know, it's the bone armor that was a fun visual for him and he got the whole thing was really fun.
49:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The Steve's were really great and we're constantly asking like, is there anyone you want you guys want to draw and we would draw characters and if they were available, they'd find a way to work them into this series and.
49:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's 20 some odd parts I think in total and it works out to be about six issues of stories.
49:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It was real fun to work on this thing that was just accelerating with every issue towards the final big climax and me and Nick had a blast drawing that one.
50:04
[SPEAKER_01]: If you go to the absolute character profile on the Marvel wiki, it spills drawing of
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: a carapace like woven all around and like atlory tentacles coming out is back and he's like sword spikes coming out of his arms and it's like it's a pretty fucking great upgrade he's looking really scary but it's so gross he's he's he's giving very marrow here honestly like
50:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an excellent image of really amping this guy up.
50:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we see a quote at the top of the page, which I wanted to say for last, that this is from a one of the comic books.
50:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But uh, absolutely, by the way, whose real name is revealed in a handbook somewhere.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: His real name is Cory Flynn, which is interesting.
50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: They, the quote here, Despair's an old friend, Captain.
50:50
[SPEAKER_01]: not just a friend of philosophy.
50:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Why follow Celine?
50:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not?
50:54
[SPEAKER_01]: My first love is dead.
50:55
[SPEAKER_01]: My family's gone.
50:57
[SPEAKER_01]: No one even remembers.
50:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Nary, a thing matters for long.
51:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Life loves to get worse.
51:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not ease it on?
51:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So we get some interesting papas for this character as the representation of despair, but also the choice of the codename abselom, which is the biblical pretty boy.
51:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's some interesting layers to this guy that I think could be explored.
51:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's interesting that towards the end in these stories and unlimited, he does almost get a little like somebody please kill me.
51:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like at one point, right when he's saying that thing, Betsy psychic knives him and he's like great.
51:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you understand all this pain and then right after he gives the speech about, you know, life loves to get worse.
51:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Why not ease it on?
51:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Shatterstar just like shoves a knife through his face and he just kind of sits there for a minute.
51:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's interesting and even I think it was all that said in the very beginning when we were talking he said, you know his his death was was the point in his life that and he's never been able to make anything anything more than that or being less than that like his death was his his defining moment so I think that's
51:59
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really interesting.
51:59
[SPEAKER_01]: He references his family's gone.
52:01
[SPEAKER_01]: His first love is gone regret.
52:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And then again, that idea of despair, which is almost the codename I want to see him take on.
52:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, let's fully embrace it.
52:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what I mean?
52:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Feel thoughts?
52:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it would be fun, actually, for when the external's next to peer, they've ditched whatever codenames they have.
52:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And they are just in bite, you know, fully living in their emotional.
52:22
[SPEAKER_00]: definition.
52:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, no, I absolutely, I really like the externals in the way that they're used.
52:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if we need an external series, but at the same time, I'm sure someone could come with a really cool way to do it, and it was fun to be a part of a story that gave them a little bit more screen time and a little bit more definition to, you know, as we look at, there's just tiny appearances peppered throughout, so the external
52:47
[SPEAKER_01]: storyline was one of the longer times they've had the the stage in a comic and it was fun to be a part of that I am less interested in more external shenanigans than I am in like taking one of the externals and putting them in a wider storyline
53:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Getting in is my first choice, as much as I love Celine and Candra.
53:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Getting in is kind of my first choice.
53:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he has some really interesting potential, but Absalom is kind of a blank slate.
53:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, any pre-cog with a blindfold, we've seen that 10,000 times and no one's gonna hold a candle to destiny ever.
53:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other guy, you know, blasts fire, but the character saw the dragon guy, Absalom, I think has some interesting things.
53:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be interesting to pluck him out and put him as the immortal kind of upstart energy.
53:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, maybe Shinobi Shaw takes him under his wing, maybe he's a fuckboy for some of my kind of, also maybe he gets a hero moment, maybe he's trying to absolutely do something different with his life.
53:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've seen these really cool ways of him upgrading his power.
53:44
[SPEAKER_01]: As a bit character, it doesn't have a lot of appearances.
53:46
[SPEAKER_01]: He still has some kind of pathos there.
53:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a character that would have been at the top of my list except for this cowboy connection.
53:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's cowboy month on my show.
53:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's interesting to analyze that theme multiple times as we look at characters that come from this genre.
54:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Any place you'd like to see, Absalom?
54:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just thinking, it would be neat to see him and Cannonball reconnect and assuming Cannonball is still in space.
54:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what if you take Absalom out of all of sort of like the earthly, high-lord nonsense and just like put him on a spaceship?
54:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what would you do if suddenly he has a whole chance to start over all over again without the trappings of this like weird eternal cult that he's sort of been forced into?
54:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what happens if he's just a guy in space that can, that can grow spikes?
54:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Or he gets sent back to 1897 in Wyoming.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: He has to watch his younger self kill Caleb Hammer all over again.
54:38
[SPEAKER_02]: There's, yeah, that'd be good too.
54:40
[SPEAKER_01]: There's some interesting things.
54:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Feel any more time travel is always the answer.
54:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Trent, Trent travel should add again.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: After he died from the virus from the future.
54:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, those were my thoughts, I was like, oh, let's, I would like to see him with Cannonball because Cannonball set up the concept of like this is what you could do with your life and he's yet to really do that.
54:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a nice set up for a story we haven't seen yet.
55:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is an interesting one.
55:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, not a favorite of mine.
55:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And the body horror of his powers just bled.
55:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But also interesting, interesting, and I did email Fabian initially, Josh before I invited you.
55:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I invited Fabian to see as I apologize.
55:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You're never sick.
55:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I am honored to be second-choice the baby in New Zealand.
55:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, don't worry.
55:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm good.
55:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually, baby didn't feel.
55:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Baby and I asked him some questions in the email.
55:26
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, yeah, chat.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to talk about the externals or X-Men.
55:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, yeah.
55:30
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do your thing.
55:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you know what respect?
55:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.
55:34
[SPEAKER_01]: but this was an interesting journey.
55:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, other characters were covering this month on the show outside of the Apache kid.
55:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We're doing the Texas Twister.
55:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We're doing Outlaw, who is amazing.
55:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Excel joined me for that one, Josh, which was a really fun, and then I Calico, or Gelsamone's current favorite horse girl from uncanny X-Men.
55:53
[SPEAKER_01]: We get to take those journeys and then in May on the show the theme is going to be the only girl on the team.
55:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We're celebrating characters on the Patreon where there's only one girl on the team and we're going to look at the world from her perspective.
56:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Opening the month with vapor from the UFOs, who I love actually.
56:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I know you're working on making 19 things right now.
56:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think by April, I mean, Steve Orlando mentioned it the other day online, so he and I are Retaming to do some X-Men Infinity Comic and even yet Nitro the colorist who colored all of the External Saga is coloring it as well, so the a little bit of a mini reunion for us Just doing a handful of issues in kind of Steve's big story that he's telling over there So that's that's fun to get back together and play with some some classic characters in that Um, I
56:38
[SPEAKER_00]: don't know, if we are in April, I'm trying to think another project I'm working on probably one of officially been announced.
56:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's out there on the internet in little corners, but the publisher's not officially announced a book that's launching the summer that I'm a part of drawing.
56:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a Kickstarter coming up soon, so watch my socials.
56:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll probably launch in May for a creator on book that I've done with my partner.
56:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, by April, I'll slowly start hinting at kind of what it is and building a pre-launch page to people to sign up to be notified.
57:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to pitch a book to Marvel, especially for Chad.
57:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That stars Absalom and Merro, and it's gonna be called Bonzoom.
57:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So, that's- Ooh, you know what?
57:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll fucking write it.
57:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good sounds great.
57:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Ooh, I've already got some villains in mind.
57:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you can follow me Instagram, Philipsyv, comic art, or blue sky at Philipsyv, and I am just around.
57:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, those partner, of course, being the incredible Christy Porter, who does the voice of Black Widow on our show regularly, I love them as well.
57:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Bone Zone also happens to be Joshua Catoons only fans for those that want to follow.
57:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's right.
57:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, pre-order on both ends.
57:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And he'll be hard to top.
57:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yes, you can find me on Instagram.
57:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Joshua Cotone, C-A-T-O-N-E, it's just my personal Instagram.
57:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing too crazy.
57:56
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see some very amateur cosplays on there.
57:59
[SPEAKER_02]: As for things I'm working on, hopefully if this is April.
58:03
[SPEAKER_02]: In a few months, you'll be able to find me and my best friend Kyle Gibson starting our own X-Men podcast called X-Men True Friends.
58:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been friends for years, we've been X-Men fans for longer, so we're we're about to launch a little
58:16
[SPEAKER_02]: a little X-Men show in telepodcast.
58:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So Chad, we'll have to keep you updated on that and get you on.
58:20
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been friends with so many people in this sort of X-Men podsphere for so long it seems time to do our own.
58:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
58:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay.
58:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice to meet you.
58:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice to meet you.
58:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Until Kyle, I'm excited for him as well.
58:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds lovely.
58:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
58:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, everybody, thanks for listening, stay tuned for the Apache Kid next week.
58:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll see you all back here.
58:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Next time, I'm the Greenmolk and Leachoke.
58:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye, Phil.
58:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much, guys.
58:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye, Josh.