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Bonus Patreon Release: Unuscione! With Tom O'Connor and D'Manda Martini · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

0:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Greenmolkin Lane podcast on the Patreon channel where we get to talk all about characters that don't often get the focus that they deserve.
0:11
[SPEAKER_04]: The character potential, we get to talk about crazy characters and beloved characters, and today's one of those in the queer X-Men world, this particular character seems to have a particular fan base.
0:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not entirely sure why I like her, but I'm here with two of her super fans today, so you will either convince me or not by the end of the episode.
0:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I am delighted to be joined by my friends, Amanda Martini and Tom O'Connor.
0:37
[SPEAKER_04]: To talk about you new shiion, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you
0:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So I, I just assume because it is Italian and so it's Latin based which means that all letters make a sound.
0:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
0:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so so I, I assume it's either unishowny or uniskeony.
1:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, in a show, and they were, it's a must-pugetti.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, some Italian, some, something like that, but again, I just assumed that all letters need to make a sound, because for the longest time, I called her UNESCON, but then I was like, oh, no, like then learning other languages through my school stuff.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, speaking UNESCONs with, first of all, if she would have had a frickin' card in here, you bet your ass out of it, making UNESCONs.
1:33
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, all right, welcome to you, full.
1:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me have you both introduce yourselves for our listeners, and I would love for you to share a little bit of what you love about this particular character.
1:45
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the third acolyte we've tackled on this channel.
1:48
[SPEAKER_04]: We've done scanner, and we've done Amelia vote.
1:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So I've re-read these issues a few times.
1:52
[SPEAKER_04]: It was, oh no, I've also done Senyaka.
1:55
[SPEAKER_04]: It was crazy to do it from Uniscone's perspective.
1:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So let me start with Tom O'Connor.
2:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, this character was your idea.
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thank you so much.
2:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad to be back.
2:06
[SPEAKER_01]: She was my idea.
2:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I I'm so thrilled.
2:09
[SPEAKER_01]: My pronouns are he him.
2:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a middle school social studies in geography teacher in Massachusetts love magic and huge X men like fan and have been since I was like
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: like 11 or 12 year old years old.
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason I brought you to show an up, you know, show an eight, what, you know, this is going.
2:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Carmella, we're gonna call it Carmella.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Carmella, that's the safe one.
2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the first issues I ever got of X-Men and might even be V first was like 298 where she and the accolades show up in the bus and we'll get into it and I'll rob the magic all that is.
2:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But from the get, from early on, I was like, who is she?
2:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, sparse appearance is here and there, but afterward, but like, part of you, like, has always been like, dang, she's awesome.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, she's a badass bitch.
3:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, let's go.
3:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm just happy to dig into her more of her story.
3:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to read and learn more about her recently.
3:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, just so happy to be here, let's go.
3:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so fun to take a journey where you read from a character's perspective.
3:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It gives you kind of an unlocked piece of the universe in a weird way.
3:25
[SPEAKER_00]: who is she though does she do shows that that's honestly like almost every queer person's experience with like the one female character that they get upset so it's like but wait who is she though does she do shows how do I tip her um uh hi i'm doing martini i'm a DC area based drag artist a cosplayer hyphen hyphen hyphen hyphen um
3:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I also was introduced to Carmella in XMT-90, uncanny XMT-90 because I was reading a month to a month at that point in the XMT thing.
4:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, oh, because like the accolites were still like really new, like we had really kind of just seen them in XMT number one with Fabian Cortezas people.
4:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So this was like the second wave of accolades.
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So like new characters who were joining.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was very like, ooh.
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: new villains and she just seemed like really badass and like that bloodthirsty crazy woman which was super fun.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I really do love about her and I will try to be quick here because I'm feeling we might talk about later.
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: In the late 90s, like mid late 90s, so 96, 97.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Christopher Golden wrote prose novels of the X-Men, the first three that were released where the mutant trilogy, or excuse me, called the immune empire trilogy, and
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about, again, it, because again, not all X-Men stories are original, but it's about Magneto taking over the Sentinels from Project White Wake and taking over the island of Manhattan and having all of the accolites be a part of his sort of like ruling council.
5:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of the subplots in the novel, because again, it takes place over three novels.
5:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a whole B story where also the Star Jamers crash land on Earth, and so like half the team has to go to space.
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And but Carmella and Amelia are sort of like the two polar opposites on Magnetos Council, where Amelia is the more like, hey, we're actually trying to build a country and we're trying to build a space and we're trying to like make this last,
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the break everything where Carmella was like, kill everybody, like, let's go.
5:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We're finally doing it, like, let's get our revenge.
5:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And because, again, it's a novel, you also like read a lot through Amelia's perspective in the story, and sometimes I can't remember you just go, but like everyone hating her, but seeing how she has like a purpose on the accolades,
6:13
[SPEAKER_00]: quite powerful although in rereading her history like she never really can still do a whole lot of cool stuff.
6:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You know those books are a weak spot for me.
6:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I have not read a lot of them.
6:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I am reading some of the early X-Men novels.
6:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've read some along my way, but a lot of those books are considered canon by the handbook writers.
6:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Unless there's something that directly contradicts.
6:31
[SPEAKER_04]: a lot of time.
6:32
[SPEAKER_04]: If you jump over to the Marvel appendix, there are these spots in the character profiles that are there for their book appearances.
6:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So, and if they do contradict, usually there's a comment section underneath, not that the appendix is canon, but a lot of the appendix crew ended up becoming the handbook writers.
6:50
[SPEAKER_04]: That's where I got recruited from as well.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So another little claim to pay for myself years ago, because I mean, I've been, I've re-read them a million times, and at one point I re-read them, and I just posted a picture on I can't bear which social media platform, most probably Twitter at the time.
7:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have many, I don't know which way.
7:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
7:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so, I'm so, don't you know how popular I am?
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But Christopher Golden saw it.
7:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I said something about how let's stop trying to adapt all of these like origin stories for the XM and media.
7:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why can't we just adapt these stories?
7:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Because those those that trilogy in particular is sort of like a perfect encapsulation of XM of the 90s where it gets that whole XM
7:36
[SPEAKER_00]: versus the accolades and like the space nonsense that the X then get into randomly because the X then are also a space adventure sometimes.
7:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really, it's really awesome.
7:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I know that we did one of the script readings early on was X then unlimited where death bird is the viceroy of the Cree home world and like that novel like really impacts that time frame of her being her being the
8:05
[SPEAKER_00]: being a tyrant.
8:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really awesome.
8:08
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, so if you guys have not checked them out yet, the mutant empire by Christopher Golden, I highly recommend if you can find any sort of copies.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: My copies are currently with Sarah Century.
8:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe she's finally finished.
8:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Great of the thing because last year we did an episode together for her shell.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kept talking about she was like, I've never heard of these books.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, well, I will be nailing them to you immediately.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to read the
8:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Not only was I just extinct Sarah, but the three of us were all having dinner together just a few weeks ago Okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna defer to demand up for the book analysis of Carmella when we get there But first I want to take us back to once upon a time when we were three little baby gays and
8:51
[SPEAKER_04]: the internet was new and there were things like comic boards around cause it was really fun.
8:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom is a newer friend of mine that I made on social media that I had on the show and like I can't wait to have you back again and again you're lovely.
9:03
[SPEAKER_04]: But when I propose the two of you joined together, it turns out you already know each other.
9:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom tells us how you know a demand of martini already.
9:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I would be thrilled and honored.
9:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I'm going to the days of gay.com, everyone.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: My space was a thing.
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not or not.com, but yeah, God, baby gay joined the uncanny xman.net message boards.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even remember how I found it.
9:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I was just
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: looking for an outlet, like being a huge comic fan, and being a huge ex-men fan, and even to this day in some level, like not really having anyone around me to, like, that was very active on these comic boards too, truly cool.
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, yes.
9:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's where we went, that's what you did, like you found your tribe of, like, geeks online.
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm still on there.
9:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I, like, I'm not honest frequently, and there's, um,
10:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's so much to, I gotta even know where to begin.
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I, like, the relationship I've made with people on there, saw my my touch with Undisquared right now.
10:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just think fondly of as like old friends, even though, again, we only know each other's like, user names and, like, avatars.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: What year are we talking about here?
10:23
[SPEAKER_00]: it was like 2005 to 2007.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So like I joined the forums around probably actually probably before I left college in 2003, but I didn't really start actively posting or saying anything in them until about 2005 when I had best jobs where I didn't or they just told me to just look busy upfront.
10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: a whole lot of people and again like finding queer people because, you know, I've probably said this before.
10:56
[SPEAKER_00]: but the analogy of that sketch from little Britain where he's the only gay in the college.
11:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like, I just think I'm the only queer person who knows anything about X-Men and then finding out that, oh no, this is a very tried and true queer experience.
11:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, jump back 20 or jump for 24 or 20 years and this show has become for me in a lot of ways.
11:16
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm gonna make rewind a little while.
11:17
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't have to delve deep into this, but I got off my Mormon mission at the end of 1999.
11:22
[SPEAKER_04]: started college at a Mormon school in January 2000 and I was I have a lot of creative energy which everyone who follows the show will already know but even back then I was in my spare time besides working full-time and taking credits and like being in the school play in my free moments I would write profiles for the appendix and I think my second year doing that so in 2001 I started posting
11:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So my first version was Survivor Masters of Evil, I would post every new episode to the comic boards, and I would have people vote on who they wanted out next.
11:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And that got some decent reputation.
12:01
[SPEAKER_04]: You had to read a lot, but it was very character driven and very focused.
12:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was the project that got me recruited by Marvel to the handbooks.
12:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So I wasn't really active in the message boards in the 2005 era because I was busy writing the books and you know, pretending to be in the closet and going to graduate school.
12:17
[SPEAKER_04]: But I have an indelible origin story with the comic boards myself.
12:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Now the two of you recognized each other's names from early on.
12:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you interact a lot back in those areas?
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was very, I was very big in, so there was a section called like limbo and random thoughts where people could just like sort of talk about whatever and so recently like maybe I don't know time like a year or two ago like you message me being like,
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I saw that you posted somebody that I recognized from the uncanny X-Men forums, where you on there, too, and I was like, yes, I was.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a very close-knit group of friends from the UX end boards.
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And we, so I have a group chat called Hellfire Club that we have had for over 20 years.
13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And...
13:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, one of them is Evan, the creator of the homo superior drag show in Portland, Oregon and then the other than the others are Kevin Daniel and Luke and I posted something about.
13:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel, I think in Instagram story, so also like two years ago, Luke had come to visit me here in DC when he was on his honeymoon.
13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He is from London.
13:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And we got matching tattoos.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the Hellfire symbol that I have on my shoulder.
13:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
13:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and Daniel also got it as well at home.
13:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So the three of us have a matching tattoo.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, so I posted something about Daniel.
13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Tom, I think, had like recently followed me or, you know, whatever.
13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And was like, oh, hey, were you on there?
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, yeah, like that was like, I was like still like super baby drag.
14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I wasn't doing a whole lot of drag.
14:03
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point, I'd maybe done like one or two, like Halloween looks maybe.
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah, so like this was my screen name.
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, oh, yes, I do remember you.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he said this screen and I was like, oh, yes,
14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, like we weren't like super like I don't know.
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like we were like private messaging or anything Whereas I was but but but I was like, oh no, I remember your name and I remember liking you in the forums like you were definitely not because you always remember either like the people you were super close with and then you like you took that friendship off the forums or the people that you absolutely hated
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I know exactly what you mean.
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I know what you're talking about.
14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, like to this day, Mar Hawkman, absolutely not.
14:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's from my, you can get in the bin.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm calling out your names.
14:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I go, I don't even know if these people like still exist or if they even are anywhere in the world.
14:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But they were,
14:57
[SPEAKER_00]: not my favorite people.
14:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm so glad you get to meet today.
15:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, since we're a lot of ages, Tom and I are both married gay parents, like we're all doing different journeys, demand us a celebrity these days.
15:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, though, yo.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: She's an X-Men drag queen and I'm very, very happy with my little fame circle.
15:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very, is very nice and very niche.
15:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's jump into the early 1990s.
15:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Chris Claremont has left the book.
15:29
[SPEAKER_04]: The X-Men have been jumped into new rooms of popularity.
15:34
[SPEAKER_04]: There are movies coming out.
15:36
[SPEAKER_04]: There's all kinds of crazy happening.
15:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Scott LeBdele and Fabini see as our kind of spearheading the book.
15:42
[SPEAKER_04]: We've got uncanny X-Men adjectives of this X-Men.
15:45
[SPEAKER_04]: The line is expanded.
15:46
[SPEAKER_04]: X-Force, X-Vector, X-Galiber.
15:48
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the era where I was about 15.
15:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I was picking up the books at this time off the shelves and this was kind of a brand new world to me.
15:54
[SPEAKER_04]: So this would have been one of my early issues.
15:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Re-reading the accolade stuff is always really interesting and I'm just gonna give the backdrop for this very quickly.
16:02
[SPEAKER_04]: They needed to make Magneto a bad guy.
16:04
[SPEAKER_04]: You wanna tell big Magneto stories.
16:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's have him declare himself the savior of mutant kind, we're going to build a sovereign land on a space station called Avalon and those who don't want to play by the rules of society before can come live up here, right?
16:21
[SPEAKER_04]: So we have a lot of premise we understand as queer people what it's like to try to integrate into society to keep our light dim.
16:26
[SPEAKER_04]: So, yes, let's go live in the Rickady Old Space Station away from all the humans or the the oppressive straits that I get it.
16:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm all in, right?
16:35
[SPEAKER_04]: The interesting thing here is they design almost entirely a brand new cast of characters.
16:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Joanne, a cargo, of course, as frenzy joins the team.
16:43
[SPEAKER_04]: But a lot of the characters are brand new, including characters like Exodus and Fabian Cortez, who've gone on to be quite big characters.
16:50
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a number of these characters in the accolades that deserve a lot of attention because they did a brilliant job, but not only making each design unique enough to make the characters very easy to recognize.
17:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Scanners blonde with the lines on her face, and Milan has the face tattoos and the goggles, and K2 has the big severed arm in the huge beard, right?
17:10
[SPEAKER_04]: They're all very distinctively looking, but they also give them a ton of backstory, individual character motivation, and even though the characters don't get a lot of attention,
17:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very easy to understand the divide between Senyaka and Amelia Vote for example, right?
17:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Unishone is a unique in her own way.
17:26
[SPEAKER_04]: She has big, big, big, brown, like fairfossent hair.
17:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, fairfoss, it's not the right description.
17:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Who's her hair like?
17:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, for the 90s, I mean, it's probably like, uh, because even though this came at 93, probably still pulling from like those late 80s or the 90s, I mean, if it is like, Tony Katane, or, um, or just a little bit of like, sealer ran.
17:47
[SPEAKER_04]: She has big hair, big hair, it's a, it's a, it's a heavy wig.
17:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't see them all right.
17:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I like early, like, first album, or I'll carry.
17:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:56
[SPEAKER_04]: uh she's fit she's in the acolyte uniform but it's kind of uniquely hers and her power set the visual we get that distinguishes her is she surrounds herself with a force field that kind of looks like rickter lines almost there's like vibrational green kind of connecting points uh it almost gives uh a character that's more well known for a design like this is armor from xman
18:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It almost gives that kind of thing.
18:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's an exoskeleton that is kind of a force field sometimes, but mostly described as psionic.
18:26
[SPEAKER_04]: So that I think that just means she projects it with her mind, but it could have relation to some sort of psionic energy somehow with its hold in the right way.
18:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Mostly she just uses it to make big hands and grab people out of the air.
18:39
[SPEAKER_04]: That's mostly what she does.
18:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Or like tons of people.
18:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is mostly what she does, but there is an in reading, you know, the the notes that you have, she doesn't do it here, but it seems like I think she does it more in the novels that I was talking about, but it actually can give people like a
19:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's probably just like my brain from reading like comics and then like the novel on how they're they're just the same in my head that whether or not it happened on panel but it is also connected to her mentally because it seems when people like heard it or crush it or whatever which happens a lot she always passes out in like screams of like the typical like psionic woman
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And she also mentions like later that she can feel like vibrations and her sonic powers and she has sonic awareness, but they never really talk about like what else that exoskeleton can do in sense and feel.
19:44
[SPEAKER_04]: But she's got some really interesting visual cues and some potential, again, a huge character with huge potential, her power sets unique.
19:52
[SPEAKER_04]: She's really interesting.
19:53
[SPEAKER_04]: She can be both defensive and offensive.
19:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And as using the quote from Tom O'Connor earlier, she's a badass bitch, right?
20:00
[SPEAKER_04]: We could definitely see that with this character.
20:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, we start with this series with a number of new characters once again.
20:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Carjol, our cargo is frenzy from the early alliance of evil.
20:12
[SPEAKER_04]: She's a big tough, super strong woman of color, who later joins the X-Men for a period of time.
20:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And she's amazing.
20:20
[SPEAKER_04]: She's also very, very tough and like badass bitch energy.
20:24
[SPEAKER_00]: she's she's by far the coolest and she's just she's just like the coolest her her arc again I know this is not a car girl episode, but her her arc going from you know just sort of like henchwoman in the original like factory three alliance of evil to where she is now in like now she's a member of X factor is wild
20:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we have the weird triplets, the Kleinstock brothers who are silly, they're silly, but they're also really body horror-worthy.
20:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, do you want to tell us about the Kleinstock brothers?
21:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, I think you put on that there.
21:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I, they, uh, they like combine their meat and powers to combine, but like it increases their mass, but like they are one person, but they also like have like three heads and I don't, like are there others arms can focus?
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, it's
21:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so they can either combine their three masses into one giant form that like amps their bulk up, but also it's kind of like one twin is phased into the other and we'll just kind of randomly pop out so like arms or heads will like pop out of a shoulder
21:37
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very odd and they're often treated as cannon fodder like one dot is in the other they're like, oh no, our brother died, but there's still two more so it's Sven Harlan and Eric are their names.
21:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Sven Kleinstock is a fantastic day.
21:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so as we're opening this story, those are the characters you need.
21:58
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to jump to uncanny X-Men 298.
22:00
[SPEAKER_04]: This is March 1993 by Scott Labdell and Brandon Peterson.
22:04
[SPEAKER_04]: The accolades are relatively new characters here, and they don't like humans very much.
22:09
[SPEAKER_04]: They are committing terrorist acts to try to get attention for mutant causes, which is giving a little in this era
22:17
[SPEAKER_04]: of like the act-up or queer organizations that were like doing public protests to get notice around AIDS.
22:24
[SPEAKER_04]: The legacy virus is running rampant, it is not a safe place for mutants all over Earth, but these people are doing in very, very poor ways.
22:33
[SPEAKER_04]: The other characters I'll tell us out quickly are some old X-Men supporting characters, named Sharon Friedlander and Tom Korsi, who are allies we're not going to get into the time they got turned into Native Americans.
22:42
[SPEAKER_04]: but they are here working at a hospital at a place called our mother of the sacred heart, which trittens to kind of convalescent people, patients, and children.
22:55
[SPEAKER_04]: So one of them is a nurse, one of them is a bus driver.
22:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, do you want to tell us about uncanny X-Men 298 and the introduction of Unishone or Carmella?
23:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.
23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay.
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So it, um, I guess the X men are sort of like, oh, we're doing a danger, a danger of exercise and, you know, Xavier's on cerebral, he's been on their prolonged time, isolating himself, everyone's concerned, whatever.
23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But then we move on to the scene at our mother of the sacred heart, I had to shoot over there now.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had to confess, like, I, like, X-Men before or pre, like, early 90s, I'm not so hot on.
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So, like, given that this was, I think, one of the, if not the first issues I ever read, I had no idea that Sharon Friedlander was like a huge central character.
23:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And the shows her in this, in this hospital, and someone, frenzy, is showing like punching her and like,
23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: kills her right like and this is I like only much much later in life that I understand how big a deal that was because you know 12 year old me was like that poor lady you know but um like yikes that's like a good sort of signal shows like how like farther willing to go in their mission of like evil
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: odd just killing innocent like straight up innocent people then later on there's um that it's time course he writes is driving the bus yeah um he drives up and you know uh he senses something's wrong he's like yo there's someone out here should be greeting me but they're not here so he backs up a little bit but then the school explodes and that's when this team of accolade sort of shows their faces um and i'm looking at the picture right now in front of you like holding share and buy her hair like it's
24:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the the act here is let's go attack a school full of innocence.
24:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, we call them flat scans.
24:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's destroy them and also there's a mutant among them that we might be able to recruit.
24:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So remember that for in a minute.
24:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, do you want to describe the acolyte team uniform?
24:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so I have this uniform.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not been premiered yet because I keep pulled like dragging my feet on like making the armor bits, but it's coming.
25:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to have the uniform.
25:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I have the hair.
25:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you're going to do.
25:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, yeah, I'm going to do in caramel.
25:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, because it's also like it's the basic uniform.
25:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So in this issue, they are colored more black.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But as we move on into later stuff, where in my opinion, coloring gets a little better in comics.
25:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually more purple.
25:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And also like the original ones who appeared with Magneto and X-Men number one, we're also much more purple because there's supposed to be purple and red to base it on Magneto scholars.
25:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a basic purple body suit with red.
25:54
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, with a red V in the center of it, it potentially could be like house of M like and then in their chest, but there's not red going down the sides.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: If I think if this costume were designed today, I feel like it would be a full M with like red going down their sides as well.
26:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But now that you're right there, uh, and then they actually have the X-Men are blue and golden.
26:18
[SPEAKER_04]: These guys are red and purple.
26:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes.
26:21
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, so that and then like each one has like different kind of like armory components, sometimes they have cape, sometimes they don't have cape's cargo.
26:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I know has been drawn with and without a cape.
26:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They usually have some kind of gold accessories, so like usually shoulder pads, some kind of like
26:40
[SPEAKER_00]: head gear that is some kind of communication device is usually on people.
26:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's usual or there's different kinds of like bracelets up there in their wrists.
26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And then like varying boots, again, sometimes Carmella is drawn with a, you know, a county thigh high boots, sometimes like, you know, your basic, like superhero at the knee boot.
27:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But everyone kind of has like a slightly different variation.
27:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's a full glove on the hand.
27:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it ends at the bracer again.
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very much like X-Men or other like team looks where it's like, everyone has like the basic color scheme.
27:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has kind of the basic look.
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also going to be different.
27:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Because like Senyaka who joins later, like he has like a full different look, but it's just all in purple and red.
27:29
[SPEAKER_04]: So the characters here, there's so many new characters coming out all at once between the nasty boys and the mutant liberation front, and you know, et cetera, et cetera.
27:40
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so complicated, and all of them got toys while most of them got toys.
27:44
[SPEAKER_04]: But something I really respect about all of the writers in this era, and this is Scott Labdell.
27:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And you see, as I do, it does more of it later, is all the characters have very individual voices, motivations.
27:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You could tell they were different people.
27:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So we get a moment, they're attacking the school bus here and the Kleinstock brother, Ed demand to all have you read Unishone and I will read Cargo and then Tom will you read the Kleinstock brother here in this interchange.
28:12
[SPEAKER_04]: You got to give us German accents, of course, and I'm just just kidding, I'm kidding.
28:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So Eric Kleinstock as they attack the bus says,
28:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wait, there is nothing.
28:22
[SPEAKER_04]: This is where he says, I think we got their attention.
28:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay, yes, oh.
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust we got their attention.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I trust you are an idiot, Kleinstock.
28:31
[SPEAKER_00]: If only you and your brothers have jeopardized the gifted with your reckless behavior, you'll answer to no less than Cortez himself.
28:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's talk about that guy in a minute.
28:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you guys sure you don't want to do German and Italian, though?
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm 100% sure that I did not want to.
28:47
[SPEAKER_04]: After you're counting the five, how do you think you did?
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a very British accent.
28:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Joanna Cargill says, and this is a white guy rating my apologies in advance, securing the unidentified mutant is only part of the in-quest unit, Unition.
29:01
[SPEAKER_04]: There is also the cleansing of young humans from the gene pool, such as our right, our responsibility as accolades as magnetos chosen.
29:11
[SPEAKER_01]: There is nothing in Magnus' readings that says we cannot enjoy our victories.
29:16
[SPEAKER_01]: For decades, mutants have been hunted and slaved all too often executed.
29:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I am only too happy to return the favor.
29:24
[SPEAKER_01]: stand down Eric wait until the area has been secured okay the other brothers are here too uh but keep going with Kleinstock yeah i'll just you know all of them whatever um you're being overly cautious cannot we know the homeless appear here and the bus is still in latency phase certainly you're not frightened by these filthy flat scum
29:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And the Kleinstock brother is killed because Tom Korsi has a energy rifle.
29:50
[SPEAKER_04]: So, fuck yeah, like he got to really defend himself.
29:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom Korsi jumps and watched the mouth powle.
29:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, watch the mouth powle.
29:58
[SPEAKER_04]: With the school trash, as it is, I'm what is legally known as the local perente, which means I'm responsible for keeping all racist and derogatory language to a minimum.
30:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Naturally, I mentioned a genetic cleansing, is out of the question.
30:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Around her made out of green lines.
30:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to describe this for us, Tom?
30:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's that she's got um one of the she got Tom in like one of the claws They're gonna left claw like sort of reaching up and like looking up is this sort of like Toothie asked mouth like a teeth like all over and look just looking fierce again as a boy who didn't know he was gay saw this and was like
30:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, who is this bitch?
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is she though?
30:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I need to know more if her I need more of her.
30:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's looking she's like going to eat him or leave the psionic exoskeleton is going to and it's frankly great.
30:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So she grabs coursey in her in a fist made out of her forced field and then slowly bring him toward the energy monsters jaws and she says
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You are one of Xavier's minions, no doubt.
31:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I prefer the term operative, volunteer if you must, minion is so demeaning, says Tom.
31:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Trust that I will do more than to mean you, human.
31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You have slain a fellow acolyte, and that will cost you your life.
31:19
[SPEAKER_04]: You couldn't have mentioned that earlier.
31:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I would have settled for giving him a flesh wound.
31:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom's punching in this issue.
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone about to get crushed by my psionic exoskeleton, you are surprisingly calm.
31:31
[SPEAKER_04]: But then the X-Men show up, it's Jean Grey, Bishop Gambit Arcangel, and she yells, that's curgal.
31:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I'm sorry, cargo yields.
31:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Human lovers, okay, wow, if you were true mutants, you would follow the teachings of Magnus.
31:48
[SPEAKER_04]: You would fight at our side to purge the world of the genetically impure.
31:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Cargill is right.
31:54
[SPEAKER_00]: We should all be working together.
31:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So she grabs Jean Grey and a green fist.
31:58
[SPEAKER_04]: She rips open the bus and grabs the latent mutant within.
32:02
[SPEAKER_04]: quote from the captions, the X-Men are far more worthy opponents than, or no, no, sorry, this is her thinking.
32:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to do her thoughts?
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the X-Men are far more worthy opponents than Quartez, let us to believe.
32:17
[SPEAKER_00]: All the more reason we need to increase our numbers for the sacred war to come.
32:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she yells, by Sionic Powers can divine the chosen, again, hinting that her powers are also Sionic in nature.
32:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So they might, so they might be raised among their own people, instead of the wallowing and bits, the human style.
32:36
[SPEAKER_04]: But this year recognizes that this human child, who is a pre-teen mutant, has down syndrome.
32:43
[SPEAKER_04]: What is this?
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Xavier has played us all for fools.
32:48
[SPEAKER_00]: This child is obviously flawed, even by human standards.
32:52
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no place for imperfection in our new order.
32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, Tom, do you want to be an archangel yells?
33:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is how you honor the memory of Magneto.
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Hasn't I your family was wiped out by people who felt like you do?
33:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Supremacists who believe they had a right to decide who lived and died.
33:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it goes.
33:15
[SPEAKER_01]: The child has down syndrome, acolyte, with as much right to live in anyone's order as you, nothing new about ignorance and tolerance, hating what you don't understand.
33:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So long as there are people like you, there will be people like us who will be there to stop you.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Come on, come on.
33:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, come on.
33:43
[SPEAKER_04]: So the other two Kleinstalk brothers try to blow up the bus, Archangel narrowly saves the mutant boy who's named by the way as Teddy Metson.
33:50
[SPEAKER_04]: We see him like one issue after this and then basically never again, I don't even think we don't know what his powers are.
33:55
[SPEAKER_04]: This kid's just out there somewhere.
33:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Then Storm arrives, but the accolades have escaped and the X-Men are left to count the dead bodies of the humans who were killed while the public reacts.
34:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So there is a lot happening in this issue, and this is Carmella's juiciest issue.
34:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Her first one is the one where she gets the most attention.
34:13
[SPEAKER_04]: There's about six problems with this.
34:16
[SPEAKER_04]: First of all, the power of the acolytes all cover very quickly.
34:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Magneto is the mutant Messiah.
34:22
[SPEAKER_04]: He's often given the very, you know, the Malcolm X comparison.
34:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I want the mutant nation.
34:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll work with the humans as long as they are working for mutant causes, as long as mutants get to speak for themselves.
34:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you push him too far, he becomes very unreasonable and can almost be portrayed in kind of a Hitler-like manner sometimes.
34:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But he survived the concentration camps.
34:44
[SPEAKER_04]: He knows the cost of what it is to be genetically divided.
34:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Thibian Cortez is very Spanish colonialist energy.
34:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And Exodus is a hundreds-year-old kind of Catholic crusade guy who I'll kill anything in the name of my Lord and Savior.
35:05
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a complicated trio at the head of this organization, and everyone has different beliefs about the savagery of all of this.
35:13
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Demand, do you want to point out problem number one, but this story?
35:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So first, I wanted to talk about, so again, this is where we really get Carmella and her nutshell.
35:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, everything about this character, you like, you kind of know in this issue.
35:29
[SPEAKER_04]: But one's actually in Carmella and make her say on a guest of skeleton, look like a nutshell.
35:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's that.
35:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so, so her, so one of the things that I did want to point out is that,
35:41
[SPEAKER_00]: the way that she talks to the other accolades when she's talking about we need to be working together, we need to make sure this area is secure.
35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that stuff, she seems to have some sort of like field leader status, some sort of also military potential background, and also like when they start comparing her to other supremacists like, oh yeah, she is also Italian.
36:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, bringing in the sort of fascist regime.
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, that was in, that wasn't Italy, which is very interesting.
36:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but uh, but the trains ran on time.
36:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and uh, but like the, obviously, that's a big, it's like she seems to be though slightly aggressive, seems to be like the person who's trying to keep everyone like on task.
36:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it's like as soon as she sees this child with Down syndrome,
36:36
[SPEAKER_00]: She becomes the grossest person.
36:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, oh, girl, it's like, girl, you had me.
36:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, and then you said what you said.
36:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you can't take that back.
36:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And now it's gross.
36:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I still love her as a villain because again, she's she seems very formidable in this issue.
36:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, she can definitely like deal some damage.
36:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, you're like, oh, girl, you said the thing.
37:01
[SPEAKER_00]: You said the thing.
37:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's problem number one.
37:04
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't even have to spend time there.
37:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It's rough.
37:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Problem number two is the killing of innocence.
37:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, do you want to talk about that one?
37:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I am a teacher.
37:12
[SPEAKER_01]: The accolades attack a school on purpose.
37:20
[SPEAKER_01]: They're very few subgroups that are more innocent than that.
37:24
[SPEAKER_01]: What an earth is going on.
37:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the message is along with the
37:28
[SPEAKER_01]: They're sudden, all two sudden death of Sharon Freedlander, like un-messaged to the audience like do not fuck with these people.
37:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, like because they are like out for blood no matter who you are and they like have no real limit.
37:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, but like also yikes, oh my god, like I don't know.
37:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that's what I, that's, that was always my number one.
37:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so there's a lot of interesting things, you know, coming up with a group name for a group of oppressors, right?
37:55
[SPEAKER_04]: You use Faggot to to to to crime me.
37:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm going to use this.
37:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So the beauty flat scan debate, right?
38:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, we do need public protest.
38:03
[SPEAKER_04]: We certainly need to be able to defend ourselves and to stand up for our rights.
38:07
[SPEAKER_04]: But there is a very fine line between how that looks when you are killing innocent versus, you know, doing a sit at, right?
38:14
[UNKNOWN]: There's a
38:14
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't need to spend a lot of time there.
38:16
[SPEAKER_04]: This is comic books, but the queer energy of the accolades, the magneto was right debate really falls apart very quickly because the X-Men would never do this, which I think is the point of this story, right?
38:27
[SPEAKER_04]: These are the people taking it too far.
38:29
[SPEAKER_04]: So strong introduction from a character with a ton of potential.
38:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I love an angry woman.
38:34
[SPEAKER_04]: We support women's wrongs on this show and she's visually just fucking cool.
38:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
38:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, we have a lot of acolyte stories that Carmella is kind of just part of.
38:44
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll review some of the key moments as we go and then let's talk about her whole history here.
38:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So uncanny Xman 300, they're under the direction of the Fabian Cortez.
38:52
[SPEAKER_04]: The acolyte's capture and torture, Moyra and Mick Taggart, which we're going to give them a pass.
38:57
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a luck going on with this lady.
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot.
39:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Discovered that she genetically interfered with Magneto in that time when he was Reverted to a baby.
39:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And now they're torturing her to get some truth about what happened.
39:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is kind of a retcon.
39:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, Moira messed with Magneto.
39:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's partly why he became a good guy for a while.
39:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It's basically what they're trying to say.
39:17
[SPEAKER_04]: There's another big fight with the X-Men.
39:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Come out like it's to toss, you know, Archangel around a little bit with the monster again.
39:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And she yells,
39:26
[SPEAKER_04]: less than a week since we nearly killed you arc angel and your foolish enough to again oppose our will she grabs colossus with her field and he says and he says you and your brother have begun a reign of terror that
39:39
[SPEAKER_00]: that will continue long after I've crushed her metal frame in my psychic grip.
39:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm afraid you are a short on power as you are on compassion Unishone.
39:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Perhaps I should show you the same mercy you have prepared to shower upon the children of Middleboro and he flexes which just breaks her force filled into pieces and sends her really and she screams Jean Grey's style.
40:01
[SPEAKER_04]: The X-Men save more at the end.
40:03
[SPEAKER_04]: We jump to X-Factor 92.
40:05
[SPEAKER_04]: The accolades are terrorizing and killing humans again.
40:09
[SPEAKER_04]: They later attack Camp Hayden, where the government is building Sentinels.
40:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Now this is terrorism I can get behind.
40:14
[SPEAKER_04]: This is more mutant liberation from style terrorism.
40:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, Unishone gets to fight Polaris, but gets defeated, sheels.
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I Polaris, before I crushed a life out of you with my psychic exoskeleton, wow, it's like they're explaining who these characters are every time they appear.
40:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Just tell me why denigrate yourself and you're race by playing monkey to these flat-scan
40:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Organ grinders.
40:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Those are the guys that would turn the little pipe in the monkeys would dance for them.
40:43
[SPEAKER_04]: But also Polaris is working for a place that's building something else.
40:46
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, she has take my word for it.
40:49
[SPEAKER_04]: You in a skill.
40:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to say it different every time.
40:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Lorna Dean is nobody's monkey.
40:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
40:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I do what I do because I love my kind and because I'm sick to death and hate mongers like you and Senator Kelly who are so afraid of uniqueness and diversity that you reduce all people, human and mutant to convenient stereotypes and labels.
41:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Lorna, this is before her doctorate.
41:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know that she's always well-reasoned in her arguments.
41:14
[SPEAKER_04]: We jump to uncanny X-Men thirdly.
41:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You sound like first wedding, right?
41:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.
41:21
[SPEAKER_00]: They're supporting women's wrongs.
41:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I have 100%.
41:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I love her.
41:24
[SPEAKER_04]: I love her very much.
41:25
[SPEAKER_04]: You'll see the try.
41:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I've learned a day in on Grey Malkin Lane.
41:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting X-Men 304.
41:29
[SPEAKER_04]: The Fabian Quartez has been involved in the murder of Magneto, everyone learns, and the accolades turn on him with a deadly attack.
41:36
[SPEAKER_04]: They're going after the man who has pretended to be their friend.
41:40
[SPEAKER_04]: You can go to Shonae, yells.
41:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We know where no longer you're mindless flock.
41:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Save your breath for the screams I intend to tear from your lungs.
41:51
[SPEAKER_04]: But Cortez, who has power boosting powers, bless his way out of her quote, Sionic grip, exodus is there, and he guides the Multimagneto who's still alive.
42:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And like now he's ready for the giant attack that leads to the crazy that is made of attractions.
42:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Unishone, when she sees Magneto yells,
42:09
[SPEAKER_00]: He lives Magneto Liv's Justice Exodus claimed.
42:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Amanda, I could break out into the Mormon hymn.
42:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that I've been her Liv's right now.
42:18
[SPEAKER_04]: We could do it.
42:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, it just, it strikes me as so weird that like she, because she does not seem to be...
42:28
[SPEAKER_00]: this sort of like religious person.
42:30
[SPEAKER_00]: She's sort of like that classic Catholic where it's like they're not really religious until all of a sudden you show them across and then all of a sudden they're like doing like 17 Hail Mary is like you know what I mean.
42:41
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a lot of questions I have here in a moment.
42:43
[SPEAKER_04]: consider this is she performative in her devotion because it seems genuine here.
42:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Cortez is messing everything up and whether this is just giving her a chance to escape whatever life she had before or she genuinely believes in the cause.
42:56
[SPEAKER_04]: She does seem particularly devoted.
42:58
[SPEAKER_04]: She's able to be savage in his name, you know.
43:01
[SPEAKER_04]: There's another fight with the X-Men at Magnum makes a big play for power.
43:04
[SPEAKER_04]: He kills Senyaka to prove a point.
43:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he launches Avalon into space.
43:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll kill as many humans as it takes.
43:11
[SPEAKER_04]: X-Men 25 is the big confrontation where Xavier brain wipes Magneto leaving him comatose, which results in onslaught and leader Joseph we're not gonna go there.
43:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And the culminating end of the giant accolades fight before they crash land on Earth, which is the X-Men story where cyclops gets to lead them shirtless through the desert.
43:34
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll get there in just a moment.
43:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, do you want to tell us about X-Calibur 71?
43:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You mean my favorite issue of all time?
43:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Please tell me.
43:41
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.
43:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Demand, did you want to tell us about the galaxy?
43:46
[SPEAKER_00]: No, if you want to hear my thoughts on it, me and Sarah Century did like a four hour episode about it.
43:51
[SPEAKER_01]: No, please give us a break down.
43:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you think so.
43:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So, for Carvella's sake, it's the whole,
44:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Xavier uses kitty to bring Colossus back, which I know you guys just also covered in the trial of Colossus.
44:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, so, so they trick him to try to give Colossus brain surgery to fix his personality.
44:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when he doesn't come immediately back, uh, thought caught to in the UNESCON all come back to try to get him.
44:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's caliber goes to fight them and Amelia's like, um,
44:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You all keep that our teammate, we're just here to get him, but then of course because Carmella is Carmella she goes to fight Phoenix and is immediately taken out Rachel's like I don't have the time for this.
44:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got body swapped in front of my brother, but my captain Britain, I'm going through stuff.
44:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very, it's very funny that again, like Carmel is like, I can't wait to fight you and Rachel's like, no, okay, I gotta go do something more important.
44:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's kind of all that they are in this issue.
45:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you have to go.
45:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't read that issue before, and I, so I got to see like, oh my gosh, and just,
45:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm thinking the whole time like Kermann's taunting Rachel and she's like, oh, long have I waited like match-off against you.
45:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, Pearl, this is the Phoenix, like, are you kidding me?
45:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It just goes back like, yeah, well, every one should have.
45:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you're moving.
45:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, it's, it's so, it's so good.
45:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, if you're very interested into your like, my very long and detailed thoughts about this issue, Sarah's entry and I recorded a best issue ever about this issue.
45:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it is, by far, one of my favorite issues of all time,
45:37
[SPEAKER_04]: We also cover it briefly in the trial of classes.
45:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes.
45:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, trust me, I was listening to be like, did they get anything wrong?
45:44
[SPEAKER_00]: No, they were all correct, we're all very clear.
45:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a very emotional issue.
45:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's not a lot of action.
45:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was just kind of funny.
45:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So this battle gets just be set up between Excalibur and
45:56
[SPEAKER_00]: and the X-Men, sorry, it's caliber and the accolades, but you also realize that it's like towards the end of the issue.
46:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So it just like ends really quickly.
46:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, I don't know if it's in this issue, or if it's in X-Men 300, but Cyclops also makes a joke at Kato being like, hey, Kato, I kind of wish I could see your powers, but we don't have time, and it would just like optic blasts him away.
46:21
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I would love to see what you can do, but not today.
46:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's rapid fire some of these appearances and then I want to pause to talk about some of the character beats for this.
46:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'll edit this out.
46:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll cover the cable appearance.
46:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom will you take on County 315.
46:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And then demand a way you take the Australian Outback part and we'll just do those in a row.
46:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Very quickly, you're welcome to use my notes as a template if you like.
46:43
[SPEAKER_04]: In cable 9 through 11, this is NECAza, the accolades get involved in a super complicated plot that we just don't need to go into involving cable and a mega red, and they're attempt to get the techno-organic virus to be able to control avalan better.
46:56
[SPEAKER_04]: This is where she gets called Carmella for the first time, she gets to punch some soldiers,
47:01
[SPEAKER_04]: She gets to call someone a flat scan.
47:03
[SPEAKER_04]: She gets to call a client stock brother a moron again.
47:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And then when cable turns on them for a brief second, she gets to throw some punches at him as well.
47:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't be a fool, cable.
47:12
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't really expect to sneak up on someone who's psionic, exoskeleton can pick up the subtlest change in pressure, did you?
47:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So remember that.
47:20
[SPEAKER_04]: But cable turns the walls against her because he's commanding all the stuff and knocks her out.
47:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And anyway, that's what she's got going out on this issue.
47:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Top view and take the next one.
47:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, uncanny 315 is a trial of Neophyte, the young guy who like betrayed the accolades, it's part of the, he has like a conscience, and he's sort of as a problem with their doing, but they have a problem with their problem.
47:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's as Vot who is, she's the prosecution, right?
47:49
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the one.
47:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
47:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you go on.
47:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in this mock criminal trial.
47:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
47:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
47:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's the fault, sir.
47:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, Carmella, you know, shown is just like annoyed the whole time, like tapping your nails throughout everything.
48:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure loudly is possible.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And until, you know, Niafite says, like, hey Xavier,
48:12
[SPEAKER_01]: is not so bad a guy.
48:13
[SPEAKER_01]: He might have had some good points and everyone freaks out.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And she, you know, someone's her organic exoskeleton, which he loves to bring up as much as possible.
48:22
[SPEAKER_01]: She grabs him and says, Blast Famer, and the name of Magneto, I would see you crushed in my sound, like exoskeleton.
48:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Before I allow you to speak that name again with such reverence.
48:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So again, blasphemer, you can't worship the same God.
48:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I do what you believe differently, interesting enough.
48:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I write a lot of X-Men stories in my spare time for fun just to test my skills.
48:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And I did a team book, Cat's Eyes on it.
48:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I love her.
48:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I really deep into a dub deep in a character.
48:50
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the characters I chose on that particular book was this character Neophyte.
48:53
[SPEAKER_04]: who's a little older, so he's changed his name to adept because Neophyte becomes an adept in religious circles.
48:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And we like to jump back into his origins in Germany.
49:02
[SPEAKER_04]: He's an interesting character to me.
49:04
[SPEAKER_04]: All right.
49:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll take, or excuse me, Demanda, will you take the next story for us?
49:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so this is X van 41 and then 43 for 44.
49:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Carmilla is among the acclites frozen in the crystals, the world ends because we're going into the age of apocalypse.
49:19
[SPEAKER_04]: The mcrong crystal everybody.
49:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
49:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So after after reality, resets, they pull a Holocaust on board, which again, that's a trap.
49:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And when and so then he destroys the space station killing many people on board, cyclops and the gene helped to arrive.
49:38
[SPEAKER_00]: She, Carmella, of course, is very much against them being there because they're heretics.
49:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's, they're literally the children of Xavier, but as they fall to Earth, Cyclops does convince Carmella to protect survivors in her exoskeleton, and she really, like, test the limits of her exoskeleton.
49:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And they, uh, survive in the desert by trusting a shirtless Scott Summers, which, again, I would as well.
50:04
[SPEAKER_04]: he's pushing their powers to the limits.
50:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So again, we have her using the word heretic, right?
50:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So again, we'll keep this in mind.
50:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, do you want to tell us about Excalibur 106?
50:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's when Carmella and Scanner, they're trying to get classes from Excalibur.
50:21
[SPEAKER_01]: She says, Evelyn arises again, X-Man.
50:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you are wise, you'll rejoin us in fulfilling mutant kinds destiny.
50:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We want you back
50:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It was Cargo's idea.
50:33
[SPEAKER_01]: She respects you for the individuality you've displayed when you were one of us.
50:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But he doesn't want to go.
50:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He's not into it, and I thank you.
50:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We act like it's understand our place in the bigger picture at Colossus.
50:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, Piotr makes, he makes a scanner question, you know, if what the act like you're doing is right.
50:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's the character of the both Exodus and Cortes have beat up for, like, asking questions, like, there's literal domestic violence from both of them toward this child.
51:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and yeah, and yeah, so she says isn't obvious that our former Conrad lacks a vision that the individuality you think so highly of of blinds him to the truth.
51:13
[SPEAKER_01]: This is your one and only chance, X man.
51:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You've drawn a line in the sand this day.
51:19
[SPEAKER_01]: see that you don't cross it or else the next time we meet don't expect the accolades to be so cordial.
51:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the accolades are just all the fucking over the place.
51:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Joseph has that thing with them in South America and the Magneto-limited series.
51:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Then there's the quick silver heroes for higher crossover which we have famously multiple times on the show said, they're so never read that before and I had I stopped so many times throughout and was like,
51:44
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
51:45
[SPEAKER_04]: There's like 50 characters running around and they're just behaving in reprehensible ways.
51:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I love the writers of these books.
51:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I've met some of them, but it's just it's 90s.
51:54
[SPEAKER_04]: So Exodus is trying to get something called Isotope E in order to do some bad shit.
51:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And he recruits the accolites and a bunch of other mutants to do it.
52:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And some of them that he's recruited have the legacy virus and he's like, Hey, if you come work for me, I'll find you a cure later, but he's lying.
52:09
[SPEAKER_04]: During the fight, you know,
52:11
[SPEAKER_04]: come on like it's to drop a telekinetic barrel on quick silver the son of her lord if you don't follow Magneto's dream then you're an enemy to your kind the heroes for higher or here the knights of wondergore here people get devolved and evolved and it's fine uh the accolades
52:26
[SPEAKER_04]: This is our part, our destroying genetic research facilities for doing anti-nuton things in uncanny X-Men 3606, another plot I can get behind.
52:35
[SPEAKER_04]: They're fighting the X-Men at the direction of Cortez in Magneto War number 1.
52:39
[SPEAKER_04]: In X-Men 86, we see Carmella playing cards with Kamal and Melon Camp.
52:44
[SPEAKER_04]: That's great.
52:45
[SPEAKER_04]: In uncanny 367, she punches Storm with a force field.
52:49
[SPEAKER_04]: We jump to X-Men 201 202, and we are in a brand new era for Carmella, where she's now part of a new Marauder's team under Exodus.
52:58
[SPEAKER_04]: This is all the Hope Summer's crazy.
53:00
[SPEAKER_04]: She gets to fight with armor for a single panel in another one in a new X-Men, 44, the X-Men Storm, the Marauder base in Antarctica.
53:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And then there's like a multiple issues in a row, where they're all just fighting, but Carmella doesn't really do anything.
53:14
[SPEAKER_04]: in Xman.
53:15
[SPEAKER_00]: She's just there and she's green and you see the giant.
53:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's giant group fights.
53:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Can we have a legacy to 10?
53:21
[SPEAKER_04]: She sees Xavier arrive on one of his adventures.
53:23
[SPEAKER_04]: That's all she's in it.
53:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Jump all the way to 225 Xavier storms the base takes over her mind briefly and uses her telekinesis to block some lasers so that he can pass through.
53:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think she liked that much.
53:35
[SPEAKER_04]: She's also in the age of X, where Legion rewrites the universe briefly, and she's part of the Force Warriors with Silok and Helion, and I would appreciate it out of that little team up.
53:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I fucking love age of X.
53:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It is one of my favorite crossovers, and also Cardinal, like it's her first official codename, which is standoff, which is great.
53:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and I wish that she would have kept it.
53:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
54:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a good code name, actually.
54:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
54:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I loved it.
54:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder what she one of the ones maybe, maybe, who after the age of X, you know, Emma was like, I can make you forget, I can make you remember.
54:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if she chose to remember.
54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
54:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I also wonder if she chose to forget to be like, no, I didn't, I didn't like working with you people.
54:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
54:18
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a fun team up.
54:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to tell us about her, her appearance in X-Men Blue Tom?
54:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, what's a mother vine?
54:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just
54:27
[SPEAKER_01]: like, I don't even, I wouldn't even know where to begin.
54:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But the virus, it happens for mutants to be controlled.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fine.
54:35
[SPEAKER_01]: As you do, you know, and Carmella was in San Francisco when that all started and spreading and whatever.
54:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And it mutates the way people's powers work.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I'm so, like, rusty on this.
54:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But, like, bastions are wild era of comics, absolutely not.
54:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, a bastion setin' will show up to like, how will put it over?
54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's in this like white dress.
54:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I like, I had to be honest, I like skimmed these issues.
55:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, the look, I was like, oh, okay, it's like, you were so out of your normal, whatever that I didn't recognize you in first, but it's a nice outfit.
55:09
[SPEAKER_01]: M.M.
55:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I wear it, I don't know.
55:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But she's like, she's there, she's using her powers.
55:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you heard like energy spikes, which I didn't really hadn't seen in the 90s, but well, again, that's a month.
55:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's the mother of mine mutating her power.
55:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
55:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
55:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
55:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, but um, you know, she shocked, um, some X-Men show up.
55:32
[SPEAKER_01]: There's players in Zorn.
55:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and, but our powers like get out of control and um, they started their ship.
55:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have some take her down.
55:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but like Zorn, as the content as the content is like, oh my god, how we helped her enough and, you know,
55:47
[SPEAKER_04]: she gets so fun moments as an individual here, but it's as a victim of a mutant virus, right?
55:53
[SPEAKER_04]: In Xman Blue 34, we get a single page of Magneto launching a new version of the brotherhood of the evil mutants, the team, Briar Alley, which, uh, uh, towed, marrow, and elixir, and Carmella, uh, but they've literally never done anything.
56:08
[SPEAKER_04]: They just did two in a team shot and then we've never seen them again.
56:11
[SPEAKER_00]: well so to be fair so like they do the same and also I take the fact that she was still in the acolyte uniform for this which I guess then likes to click her devotion to Magneto or whatever but to be fair like they they're about to debut this thing and then Jonathan Nickman came in and said by the way I don't care what anyone else was doing I have a plan.
56:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Jake, hello well here we go.
56:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Then, in powers of X5, she's invited to cracoa and we only see her at the very end in a single panel when they're all manifesting the Phoenix Force to defeat the Enigma Dominion, okay?
56:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so I have about 10 questions I want to ask us as we talk about this character.
56:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to kind of shift back and forth.
56:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Demand at first, I wanted to create some room for you to tell us what you love about her from the books.
56:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the books, as I kind of mentioned earlier, Carmella and Amelia are sort of the, they're the good and the bad angels on Magneto shoulders.
57:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So in a lot of the acolyte scenes with Magneto when they're trying to make a decision about something or when they're trying to strategize or when something happens, like out in like out on Manhattan Island, and then they had me to like, you know, discuss or debrief or regroup whatever.
57:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Carmella, and again, as I say, when I say that I like her, I say that I like her as a villain, not that I, you know, agree with everything that she says, but she is a villain.
57:33
[SPEAKER_00]: One hundred.
57:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
57:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she is the person who's like, no, we are the people with the power.
57:39
[SPEAKER_00]: We should crush them while we can.
57:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and then, and make them make them obey us,
57:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a smash and grab all works until all of a sudden you like run out of steam.
57:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we need to like build the foundation of our country.
57:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to like make sure that like everything is stable on the island.
58:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, she's like, and also we can't just steal Manhattan and not expect people to be mad about that.
58:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have to like, you know, do all of this stuff.
58:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just so funny that in in the books,
58:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You can tell that number one, everyone hates the Kleinstocks, which is hilarious.
58:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, there are people who are, and then, like, they sort of get divided into factions as the accolades want to do, where there's the people who agree with Amelia, and then there's the people who agree with Carmella.
58:31
[SPEAKER_00]: even the people who are grew with Carmella like you can tell that like no one really does like her or trust her but are kind of afraid of her and because if you sort of betray her then she's like oh you're an enemy that means I'm an
58:49
[SPEAKER_00]: predictable and their unpredictability of like, I don't know what she's going to do, but I know she's going to do something against me, kind of a thing.
58:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just really cool and again, being able in the books where you have more space and more area to allow characters to get attention and get to, um,
59:07
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of develop.
59:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the fact that she was chosen as one of the accolades that you really got a lot of screen time in the novels was was really awesome.
59:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And that it just solidified my love to hate.
59:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Bye.
59:23
[SPEAKER_00]: her and how crazy she is.
59:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course, like as we will know, I love a deal as character.
59:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I love especially a deal as female characters.
59:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that she finally got this, you know, heard her finally unique design in the age of X and a code name.
59:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of wish that that would have stayed.
59:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, like the novels are just
59:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much fun and as I said, like they really encapsulate like what those 90s comics were like nothing in them like with is changing the status quo, but at the same time, like it's it's really fun and the ending does get a little batshit crazy.
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I'm not going to, but it's, it's just a really fun book because you have like the political stuff as far as like, uh, because like when the X-Men go to space and then the other X-Men are left, they don't, they don't, they don't just kind of charge straight to Manhattan.
1:00:16
[SPEAKER_00]: First, they're trying to, um, you know, Charles goes on television to try to like calm people down and then, uh, Val Cooper gets involved for a little bit and like everyone's trying to
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_00]: fix the problem before it turns into, you know, we can't nuke Manhattan is sort of like the thing that keeps coming up.
1:00:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's great.
1:00:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I highly recommend.
1:00:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can't recommend it enough.
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, topic number one.
1:00:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Let me toss this at Tom first.
1:00:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's discuss Carmelah's power.
1:00:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Excuse me.
1:00:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I heard personality and her beliefs.
1:00:56
[SPEAKER_04]: She's angry.
1:00:57
[SPEAKER_04]: She's assertive.
1:00:58
[SPEAKER_04]: She very much comes across as isolated to me.
1:01:01
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no key relationships for her.
1:01:03
[SPEAKER_04]: There seems to be kind of a respect for frenzy, kind of a frustration with the X-Men for sure, but also with characters like Neophyte or Vote who make the acolyte belief system more difficult.
1:01:17
[SPEAKER_04]: And a reverence for Magneto.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_04]: She's using a lot of words like heretic.
1:01:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean a lot of the acolytes are using these words.
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... she has a very rigid belief system in the way that she sees the world uh... we don't know anything about her origins accept and all of this in here as well in uh... the x-men and psyched the pia in 2003 which was the book that the handbook guys did right before the handbooks i wasn't on this team but there was a series of encyclopedias that came out
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_04]: they propose in that entry that Carmella is the daughter of Unis, the untouchable.
1:01:48
[SPEAKER_04]: We also definitely get that she's Italian here.
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's hear about her, your thoughts on her beliefs, her personality, her key relationships.
1:01:56
[SPEAKER_04]: What are your thoughts on the inner workings of this character, Tom?
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, I mean relationships.
1:02:02
[SPEAKER_01]: What if any besides like teammates?
1:02:04
[SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't strike me as someone who's well-liked amongst the accolades, though she does.
1:02:09
[SPEAKER_01]: lead them.
1:02:09
[SPEAKER_01]: She does command a lot, but she also speaks down to just about everybody.
1:02:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, she's done a good leader.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no.
1:02:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You moron, do what I say.
1:02:17
[SPEAKER_01]: No, great.
1:02:19
[SPEAKER_01]: God.
1:02:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hear you, she does like, I think at least respect frenzy, maybe in that, because she's like, oh, man, she could fuck me up.
1:02:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Or she just like does like straight up just does respects, you know, of another badass bitch.
1:02:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But I can see her.
1:02:33
[SPEAKER_01]: like under and understand why she would not respect the client stocks fairer.
1:02:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I mean, she does have this devotion to Magneto that is like, like blood thirsty level, which, I mean, without a background, you're sort of, you were, we're just left wondering why, and then we try to fill in those gaps as best we can.
1:02:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, as like, and when Neo fights like, hey, Xavier's not so bad, and she's like,
1:03:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, like, what's the motivation there?
1:03:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
1:03:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
1:03:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I just lose their mind.
1:03:06
[SPEAKER_04]: She's ready to kill children with down some grown, but also she grabs this teenage boy and was like, die, her take her right.
1:03:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, she's cool.
1:03:14
[SPEAKER_01]: She's quick on the trigger a little bit.
1:03:16
[SPEAKER_01]: For real.
1:03:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess if we did know a little bit more about her backstory, like we might have more compassion, but like, maybe we're not also supposed to.
1:03:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we are, like, there's just like an evil woman.
1:03:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And, like, who we should just, you know, think of her as such.
1:03:31
[SPEAKER_01]: and she's a straight-up villain, you know.
1:03:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm extremely fond of the character, you understand, touchable.
1:03:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Go back to the trial of you and this way back at the beginning of my show.
1:03:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I have some big, you and this story as I would love to tell.
1:03:41
[SPEAKER_04]: In my brain the way their relationship works is like he's like a vastly older brother and then like she's a much younger sister.
1:03:50
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... and he came to america right he comes to america changes his name from angel o unit shown a which is the same last name uh... to gunther bane which is funny to me and then it becomes lots of way friend you know how it goes uh... so there's a lot of interesting pieces but we've literally never seen these characters interact on the page we've also i don't think ever seen them vocally acknowledged their relationship on the page they just have the same last name but it is called it she is purported to be his daughter in that encyclopedia and she's
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, she's purported to me as daughter, but also again later, and that it could literally just be internet nonsense, again, that they're siblings because he does have at least one cannon child, radius from, uh, from health of light cannon.
1:04:36
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like they read a record that said that, but we've never seen this character interact with these with those kids on the page either, yeah.
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, until just proven, it's on panel, but yeah, it's very, it's very weird that
1:04:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's all just conjecture in here, say.
1:05:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do think the cargo thing is game sees game.
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they're both like, oh, you're also a mean angry bitch.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it, we're down.
1:05:10
[SPEAKER_04]: If you jump to, I'm on it right now.
1:05:11
[SPEAKER_04]: If you jump to the Marvel Wiki site under unistand touchable, under relatives, it lists Carmella Unishone, alleged daughter and Jared Corbo, alleged son.
1:05:22
[SPEAKER_00]: See, I'm like, alleged, alleged.
1:05:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And then her like devotion to the cause of Magneto, right?
1:05:31
[SPEAKER_04]: We have a certain understanding for like the mutant cause.
1:05:33
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't know if she comes from a place of trauma.
1:05:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Has she been attacked?
1:05:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Was she dishoned by her parents?
1:05:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Did she have a difficult life?
1:05:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Or she just a busy, bossy bitch, right?
1:05:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we don't, we don't know exactly.
1:05:43
[SPEAKER_04]: But we love her for it anyway.
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, no key relationships.
1:05:47
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a key thing as well.
1:05:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Like she very comes across a standoffish, which her name is like the standoff, right?
1:05:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, stand off in the age of X. Yeah, so that's interesting to me.
1:05:58
[SPEAKER_04]: She may just be like having a verse of personality and not really enjoy many people, which is kind of giving man-killer or Katrina Louisa Van Horn vibes.
1:06:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So we just talked about that character recently.
1:06:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Top, do you have additional thoughts on her beliefs?
1:06:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, nothing, nothing that I can sort of like really cite.
1:06:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, again, she's like fiercely devoted to Magneto, but like, we'll do anything to please him.
1:06:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like anything she'll go as far as she wants to in his name, even if he might not fully believe.
1:06:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, like attacking her school.
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_01]: finding out later that someone has down syndrome and she's like, oh, yikes, you suck.
1:06:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is awful.
1:06:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes me not want to figure out where beliefs are.
1:06:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I want to see her as like a strong will Italian woman who just has a strong base.
1:06:42
[SPEAKER_04]: But there's part of me that's wondering if and it could this could go either direction.
1:06:47
[SPEAKER_04]: But is Amelia vote giving the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vibes?
1:06:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And Unishone has then giving the Marjorie Taylor Green vibes in the public discourse.
1:06:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Or is it my subversive?
1:06:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, to be honest, like a little bit, like it, she's, she's that political woman who's like, oh, no, like, but I mean, like, let's be reasonable in Carmelas, like, no, you don't believe us.
1:07:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe, get out, like, and then the difference is that Carmelas will then take her giant exoskeleton and smash you.
1:07:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And then let me love this one at demand of first, her powers have a pretty strong, like, potential.
1:07:28
[SPEAKER_04]: There's secondary mutations, there's psionic nature, there's telekinesis, there's the way she forms, like, energy lattices and consents things.
1:07:38
[SPEAKER_04]: She helped a team survive at spatial reentry at one point.
1:07:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, she's at untapped powerhouse.
1:07:44
[SPEAKER_04]: What are your thoughts on her power source?
1:07:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:07:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's awesome.
1:07:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think her powers are awesome.
1:07:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's another thing that sort of drew me to her is her aesthetic and her power signature.
1:07:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's so cool and also like when coming up with a cosplay for her, how is it that I want to like, I think I want to do like some kind of like claw or something that I'm like shipped to.
1:08:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to carry around this
1:08:10
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, but like it's very cool and and like they've given enough hints on panel that it's more than just like for example, like even armors armor is like it's a little different because again it's made of like the spirits of her ancestors and stuff.
1:08:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So like there's still like a bit of a magic nature to that as well, whereas like her mel is like there's definitely
1:08:31
[SPEAKER_00]: some kind of cyanic powers because she talks about how she can sense who the mutant is in the like on the bus.
1:08:39
[SPEAKER_00]: She talks about being able to sense like the different pressures in the room.
1:08:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like she can also feel tactily with with the um
1:08:47
[SPEAKER_04]: with her force field, again, it might be how she primarily experiences the world, right?
1:08:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I always do this place of like the way a character's power is, like in the college.
1:08:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, it's interesting.
1:08:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the age of X, it's also very interesting how legions would have nerfs a lot of the big, like the big characters.
1:09:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And with those
1:09:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, from the attacks and so they have to put all of their concentration here, so that way they can't do anything else.
1:09:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just very interesting that like she's one of those shows and to be a part of that.
1:09:29
[SPEAKER_04]: When Richter loses his powers, there's a little moment where he's like, I used to be connected to the earth.
1:09:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I can feel the tectonic plates and now I have lost that sense.
1:09:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Calisto, when she loses her powers, has that same like I used to be able to sense everything around me and now I can't.
1:09:42
[SPEAKER_04]: you kind of wonder how Carmella experiences the world and I think that's really interesting.
1:09:47
[SPEAKER_04]: What's the amount of restraint she has to show?
1:09:49
[SPEAKER_04]: There's another piece with her personality as well that we kind of see explored with frenzy more specifically.
1:09:54
[SPEAKER_04]: frenzy is a very angry character.
1:09:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And age of X is not only really fun because it gives major characters, redesigns, like the only redesign they've ever had sometimes.
1:10:02
[SPEAKER_04]: but it gives characters like Dragoness and Friendsie and even Kamala, even though she doesn't have a lot to do, the ability to shine in a way that's not normally seen, right, seeing her interact.
1:10:11
[SPEAKER_04]: We've seen her be reasonable.
1:10:13
[SPEAKER_04]: When Cyclops says like you have to work together or we're all gonna die, she listens and will do what it takes to go on the mission.
1:10:20
[SPEAKER_04]: So you don't know kind of what her
1:10:21
[SPEAKER_04]: her power is or the quite the way that she has been structured in that way, but I like this connection to her sciotics.
1:10:29
[SPEAKER_04]: We see this played out with armor a lot.
1:10:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Armor has a very deep relationship with her ancestry and the way that she occupies the scionic exoskeleton that she manifests.
1:10:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, what are your thoughts on this relationship between Carmel and her powers?
1:10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I just had an idea while you were speaking, honestly, and something demand is said, I just, the way she has this force field around her, and I was sort of noting the way that she talks to other people, like, is there always, there's a psionic barrier between her and the world, but is there, has that, like, led into sort of a social one, like, an emotional one?
1:11:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: She's so demeaning to others as she's so mean to others because she's always like, you know, remove.
1:11:11
[SPEAKER_01]: She's sort of protecting herself in a way.
1:11:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
1:11:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Does she, or is it like Cordelia from Buffy mean though?
1:11:17
[SPEAKER_01]: She's just a fucking bully.
1:11:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but who knows like who knows when her mean power, you know, sort of, you know, sort of, you know, came to be how old was she like, how long has she sort of been just that barely removed from everybody else?
1:11:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So as to make your a little bit probably sociopathic or even psychopathic.
1:11:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it takes one line of dialogue.
1:11:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't even have to be a big flashback.
1:11:43
[SPEAKER_04]: One line of dialogue that tells you where she came from and why she is the way she is and it completely redefines this character.
1:11:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And we've seen, you know, Necro's a great example, Necro and Saber Tooth.
1:11:53
[SPEAKER_04]: We had just a couple of words of dialogue and it changes everything, you know.
1:11:57
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a character that has a ton of potential.
1:11:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Was she abandoned how does she experience the world?
1:12:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think the subtlety of that is what allows people to connect with her because,
1:12:05
[SPEAKER_04]: is her anger, her anger's valid, obviously.
1:12:08
[SPEAKER_04]: But it is given her permission to do really horrible things because as she thinks, seeing horrible things being done, right?
1:12:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Does she have an origin more like X23 where she's coming out of like experimentation or does she just have daddy issues,
1:12:22
[SPEAKER_04]: that we don't know what this is for her.
1:12:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a really interesting thing.
1:12:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think she has a ton of potential.
1:12:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm interested.
1:12:28
[SPEAKER_04]: She's relatively a blank slate though.
1:12:31
[SPEAKER_04]: The way she believes and she's got to punch a whole bunch of X men.
1:12:34
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a lot of almost, right?
1:12:36
[SPEAKER_04]: The crazy moments where she's fighting the superheroes, the brotherhood announcement,
1:12:40
[SPEAKER_04]: the age of ex stuff.
1:12:42
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a lot of almost for her, but she belongs on a mean team.
1:12:45
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a ton where that could make her very, very beloved in a way that we love characters like Rachel and Betsy.
1:12:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I think she has a ton of potential.
1:12:54
[SPEAKER_04]: What is missing?
1:12:55
[SPEAKER_04]: What do you need to make her pop for you?
1:12:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what's missing for her is just
1:13:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you have the motivation of why, why, why the accolades, like what, what, what is it about Xavier's dream that didn't work for you, that you immediately chose violence?
1:13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, and again, I don't, I don't feel like it needs, you know, a five issue many series, but I just think like something to allow us to know, again, is she's one of the, the line of dialogue that talks about where she was when Magneto recruited her.
1:13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Right because it's like what was she in the Italian military which explains why you know she became a field leader all of a sudden and she's like all of these men are fucking idiots I hate everything about all of this and then man.
1:13:46
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, oh, by the way, did you know that you have this telekinetic exoskeleton?
1:13:49
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like cool.
1:13:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I can crush them awesome.
1:13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm with you
1:13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, like, that's kind of like all I need.
1:13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I just need a reason why she chose this over, like, Xavier, or over wanting to be like recruited into some, you know, Italian special teams force or, you know, alpha flight or X-factor or something like, what else?
1:14:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Cause like, if she's just looking to fight people, there's tons of ways to do that.
1:14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
1:14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's, I don't know if it's still going on cause obviously it's not as popular as it used to be,
1:14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, is there still the superhero wrestling thing that, you know, titania and yeah, she took her comic book a few weeks ago.
1:14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, so like, it's like, you could have just done that.
1:14:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And you could have smashed people just fine.
1:14:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, what?
1:14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, like, and also recently there's been like the meme of what radicalized you.
1:14:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like someone just needs to go.
1:14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so Kermela, what radicalized you and she was like, I do literally just wanted to punch things.
1:14:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know what I mean?
1:14:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It just needs
1:14:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there's more to hear than that.
1:14:52
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're definitely is.
1:14:54
[SPEAKER_04]: For your way that does what Tom just did a moment ago.
1:14:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Peter David does in his dialogue.
1:14:58
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of like character moments like yes Pietro, you can run fast, but what happens when you can't outrun yourself, right?
1:15:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Like Tom, you just gave her that like a yes standoff.
1:15:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Your character, your power allows you to not be touched, but what happens when no one can touch your heart?
1:15:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, there's some moments of her psychology that I think are interesting.
1:15:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Tom, same question, what do you need about this character that would make her really pop for you?
1:15:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't disagree with demand.
1:15:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, just a little something about maybe her background or something like thing for some people to connect to, or some emotional beat that we can create some sort of connection with her.
1:15:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, to, like, as a bigger example, like Emma Frost went from
1:15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: who doesn't love her, all because in the 90s, after taking over Bobby's body, after the generation and certainly after Morrison's New X-Men, she did a complete 180, and now she has a door.
1:15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I could see such a similar route for Carmella, should someone, anywhere, just handle well an emotional beat for her, that we could all jump on board.
1:16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I think the sort of emotional beat that Carmilla needs is the exact same one that Friendsie got through the age of X and then afterwards where we find out like why she's maybe a little too hard and like the fact that she liked being a hero.
1:16:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why she chose to keep the age of X memories and then decided to okay, yeah, I can join the X men.
1:16:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So she just means like again one little bit to start her on like whatever journey.
1:16:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:16:49
[SPEAKER_04]: She gives off some kind of prickly quick sliver vibes.
1:16:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Quick slivers.
1:16:52
[SPEAKER_04]: One of those characters that like will fucking hate you until you earn his loyalty and then he's all in.
1:16:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I would, if I was to rate this character, I'd really play up on her visual, the force field characters are kind of boring, which is why Cecilia Reyes is the most prominent because she's interesting because of her doctor stuff and her force field hugs are skin.
1:17:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Skids is interesting because she gets to skate around on it, but that's hard to work visually.
1:17:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Carmelas powers though are interesting, right?
1:17:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Like it takes that force field dynamic and really amplifies it to a level that makes her a powerhouse member of the team rather than just the defense.
1:17:23
[SPEAKER_04]: uh she could be invisible woman level of potential with a with a very different kind of visual.
1:17:29
[SPEAKER_04]: She has a ton of potential there.
1:17:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I would write her as the military strategist as someone who's loyalty has to be earned.
1:17:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's almost Wolveriney, right?
1:17:37
[SPEAKER_04]: You could go on a couple missions.
1:17:39
[SPEAKER_04]: and then you realize, oh, these people, like, this is the person I can have fun with.
1:17:43
[SPEAKER_04]: We give her a relationship like Wolverine has with Knight Crawler, where there's that, like one person like Pixie that she can be playful with, you know.
1:17:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I think there's some things that we could really establish her as a really cool fucking character.
1:17:53
[SPEAKER_04]: She's got a great power set, a great visual.
1:17:56
[SPEAKER_04]: I think she has a lot of potential.
1:17:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So I like the potential of her more than I like the reality of her which is a good place to start when you're writing a character I think she's really interesting in that way.
1:18:06
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to start to wrap up our thoughts here Do you have any final insights on Carmella Unouchone?
1:18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I think something that does need to be addressed though because with friends, they kind of have skipped over her repentance of full-out murdering Sharon Freedlander.
1:18:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like we've mentioned that in that attack on the school Sharon Freedlander dies.
1:18:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to bring that up and be like, why are the x-minutes and friends that you're great when like, oh my god.
1:18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, she fullen murdered her, but so it's like I feel like in whatever sort of arc that she gets whatever makes her angry and whatever, you know, makes her the way she is, it needs to be addressed as to why she's fine with killing children, why she is totally fine with killing people with downs and drown like what like it that I feel like that's not something that can be swept under the
1:18:59
[SPEAKER_04]: X belt as it were like once you get the X belt on you get the redemption art there needs to be some significant some serious like character revitalization yes you can't delete it but you got to own it for sure yeah Toma any final thoughts very similar like
1:19:18
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I wouldn't say justice for you, Nishon, but like, you know, some redemption would be great for her to see like to serve a tone for past crimes because again, I, I guess, you know, the way you put a chat sort of maybe think like, do I love her who she is or do I love her for her potential, you know, you she is is proven to be, you know, pretty shitty, but like,
1:19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: the potential still is there.
1:19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That nugget is there.
1:19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it takes a little coaxing from frenzy, like a girl's night out or frenzy like, come on, it's not so bad.
1:19:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're right.
1:19:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Or I put her in a team book and let's say you actually have room to explore some character stories like we used to right?
1:19:55
[SPEAKER_04]: And she's doing well and she has a big hero moment.
1:19:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And then there's a whole thing where like someone comes after her.
1:20:01
[SPEAKER_04]: She's captured and strong up and we learn in a backstory that she really hurt somebody and now like they're the survivors
1:20:08
[SPEAKER_04]: So we get a chance to like reveal more about her history, but like get her a chance to create that like redemptive arc.
1:20:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, there's a there's a lot of potential for her here.
1:20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, I'll also on the flip side or not a redemption story.
1:20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Just tell us why she's angry and then I support women's wrongs.
1:20:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, why she why she's all in with Magneto, but I think I think you can make her the anti hero hero.
1:20:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's fun.
1:20:31
[SPEAKER_04]: She becomes that redemptive character.
1:20:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I had so much fun hanging out with the two of you today.
1:20:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I always love making these.
1:20:37
[SPEAKER_04]: This was a fun last.
1:20:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I mostly love the enthusiasm you will have for these stories.
1:20:42
[SPEAKER_04]: As we're wrapping up, we're going to put this out on August 28th on the Patreon, where can people find you?
1:20:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Anything you want to plug?
1:20:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Grame welcome, Lane, you can follow Grame welcome, underscore Lane on Instagram most easily.
1:20:51
[SPEAKER_04]: In September on the show on the Patreon channel, we're doing some of Marvel's most problematic characters.
1:20:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm making sure we have the right voices joining me.
1:20:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So the next episode you can watch for addresses, and I've already recorded this, it's excellent.
1:21:04
[SPEAKER_04]: The addresses to character Umbaku, the Mani, my guess on that are Merrewa Ayudale, Storm Rider, and comic artist Dohto and Akonde, both of whom are Nigerian, it's a really powerful episode, and watch for some other very problematic characters as the month continues.
1:21:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Over on the main show, we're going to be addressing a lot of marble magic stuff in September.
1:21:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So,
1:21:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Watch for the next X-Men script read to launch the month, and that episode will also include an interview with the writer of Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff, where we're going to talk a lot about Lovecraft, and it's impact on Marvel fiction.
1:21:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So, really powerful.
1:21:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I've already recorded that one as well, so stay tuned.
1:21:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Demanda and then Tom?
1:21:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, so as most of you probably already do, you can follow me on social media at demand of our teeny dm a and d a, m a r t i and i.
1:21:54
[SPEAKER_00]: When this comes out, my con season is pretty much over.
1:21:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I have one more convention gig at the end of October, Derpy Khan in
1:22:05
[SPEAKER_00]: in New Jersey.
1:22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So if, again, you're local to New Jersey or when I come to New Jersey, I will be at DerpyCon.
1:22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a drag show there.
1:22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, I do have some ideas for some content that will be coming out.
1:22:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Some new cosplays in the fall.
1:22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, they won't be going to cons, but I'll be doing that.
1:22:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, I will still be doing to me in my
1:22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: finishing up our new mutants at a month in August and heading into September is Academy X kids.
1:22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, join me for some more X treats every Friday on my Instagram.
1:22:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Delightful and Tom.
1:22:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I keep my Instagram private because I'm like not,
1:22:57
[SPEAKER_01]: big person in the world of comics or anything, but when this hits my school year, we just starting so send me, you know, well, which is what I have you.
1:23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But for anything I'd like to plug, last time I was here, we were talking about the character Gray Malkin and I said, hey, let's plug, you know, the constitution and democracy and kindness.
1:23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to re up on that.
1:23:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to add, let's plug anti-fascism.
1:23:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I, let's go on that 100%.
1:23:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, what time is it?
1:23:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we're having lots of fascism conversations on my show.
1:23:29
[SPEAKER_04]: It's been a whole day of education.
1:23:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So, uh, all right, everybody.
1:23:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for listening.
1:23:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope you enjoyed this Carmella, you in a skinny episode.
1:23:38
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you all back here next week.
1:23:39
[SPEAKER_04]: God, the Great Vulcan Lady and Patreon.
1:23:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism, as a special guest tonight talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
1:23:51
[SPEAKER_04]: The Molotov Ribbon Trope packed formally signed on August 23, 1939, was a non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union negotiated by men named Molotov and Volna Ribbon Trope.
1:24:05
[SPEAKER_04]: publicly the agreement pledged that neither country would attack the other.
1:24:09
[SPEAKER_04]: privately it contained secret protocols that divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, carving up Poland, the Baltic states, and parts of Romania.
1:24:18
[SPEAKER_04]: The pact stunned the rest of the world because it joined two regimes that had spent years denouncing each other.
1:24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: ideologically, Nazi's hated communists, communist, hated fascists.
1:24:29
[SPEAKER_04]: The pact happened because both sides believed it served their immediate strategic interests.
1:24:34
[SPEAKER_04]: It all Hitler wanted to invade Poland without risking a two-front war against Britain, France, and the Soviet Union at the same time, and securing Soviet neutrality gave Germany freedom to act in the West.
1:24:44
[SPEAKER_04]: where Joseph Stalin, meanwhile, sought time to rebuild the Red Army after the devastating purges of the late 1930s.
1:24:50
[SPEAKER_04]: He also came territory without immediate war, believing the capitalist powers would exhaust each other first.
1:24:57
[SPEAKER_04]: ideology was temporarily set aside in favor of cold calculation.
1:25:01
[SPEAKER_04]: The pact fundamentally reshaped the opening phase of World War II.
1:25:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939 from the West, and the Soviet Union invaded the same country from the East 16 days later, acting in accordance with their secret agreement.
1:25:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Poland was erased as an independent city, the Soviet Union soon annexed Estonia, Latvia.
1:25:23
[SPEAKER_04]: and Lithuania and seized territory from Finland and Romania.
1:25:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Economically, the USSR supplied Germany with vast quantities of oil, grain, manganese, and other raw materials between 1939 and 1941, resources that materially supported Germany's war effort.
1:25:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Politically and morally, the pact shattered any illusion that the conflict was immediately a simple struggle of democracy versus totalitarianism.
1:25:48
[SPEAKER_04]: The Alliance, of course, catastrophically and inevitably ended.
1:25:52
[SPEAKER_04]: From the beginning, Hitler viewed the pact as temporary, a pause before the annihilation effort against the Soviet Union.
1:26:00
[SPEAKER_04]: On June 22nd, 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, invading the USSR without warning and nullifying the agreement overnight.
1:26:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Stalin was caught off guard despite having intelligence warnings, and the Soviet Union suffered enormous early losses.
1:26:14
[SPEAKER_04]: The Germans unprepared for winter in Russia suffered heavy losses as well, and this area turned into the bloodiest war front in the war outside of the deaths and the camps themselves.
1:26:25
[SPEAKER_04]: In hindsight, the Molotov ribbon-driven trope pack stands as a stark example of how short-term power bargains between authoritarian regimes can unleash consequences neither
1:26:36
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to jump to some random issues from Captain America, volume five.
1:26:40
[SPEAKER_04]: This is an epic run that leads up to the death of Cap.
1:26:43
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a ton of stuff.
1:26:44
[SPEAKER_04]: This is where the Winter Soldier shows up.
1:26:46
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of things happening in this series.
1:26:48
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm going to focus on a few key issues related to the Red Skull himself.
1:26:51
[SPEAKER_04]: In Captain America, volume 5, number 1, we see that five years ago on the border of Russia and Kazakhstan, the Red School made an alliance with Aleksandr Lukin, a former military general under Boris Yeltsin, who had defected.
1:27:02
[SPEAKER_04]: And they saw the Red Guardian killed when he was sent to arrest Lukin.
1:27:06
[SPEAKER_04]: The skull purchased old KGB holdings from Luke in, and in a stasis tank, among them was the body of the winter soldier.
1:27:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Now in the present, drinking wine and a penthouse, the red skull's rebuilding the cosmic cube, but the winter soldier acting as a sniper kills him and takes the cosmic cube for his boss, Luke in.
1:27:24
[SPEAKER_04]: An issue to the red skull is autopsy.
1:27:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Steve's reminded that the body was a replica of his own.
1:27:29
[SPEAKER_04]: They soon stopped the skull's terror plot to kill many in New York City that would have perhaps activated the rebuilt cosmic cube if he'd been at a left unchecked.
1:27:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Crossbones is working for the red skull again.
1:27:39
[SPEAKER_04]: We get another flashback to the war.
1:27:41
[SPEAKER_04]: In a military briefing, they show old Nazi footage of the red skull standing before the eagle in the swastika in a propaganda film Hitler enters with a hile.
1:27:50
[SPEAKER_04]: They called him the red skull.
1:27:51
[SPEAKER_04]: He's Hitler's right a strong right hand, a Nazi icon made to spread terror across Europe and the rest of the world, like a bogey man to send Jewish children screen into screaming fizzed bedtime and needless to say, he's been an effective tool a bit too
1:28:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Steve Rogers needs to be Captain America, of course, to counter that.
1:28:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Issue 5, we see a flashback to World War 2, where the Red Skull destroys an entire village rather than face defeated the hands of Captain America and Bucky.
1:28:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Masterman helps him escape, and it turns out that Aleksandr Lukin was born in that village that was destroyed by the Nazis.
1:28:25
[SPEAKER_04]: An issue 14 we learned that the cosmic cube has transferred the mind of the Red Skull into the body of Aleksandr Lukin, who are now sharing a form.
1:28:34
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a war of the mines.
1:28:35
[SPEAKER_04]: We jump a little forward to 18.
1:28:37
[SPEAKER_04]: The Red Skull has beaten me as begun influencing Lukin's mind more and more as they approach a group of angry white men who are committing hate crimes against Pakistani refugees.
1:28:46
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a soldier looking for a cause to believe in, thinks the Red Skull of the leader of this group of neo-Nazis.
1:28:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Alexander looking is considering suicide to stop the red skull from taking over his mind, but then the skull does take over.
1:28:58
[SPEAKER_04]: He makes a little mask to put over his own face to walk around, so people can know when he's the red skull versus when he's not.
1:29:04
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a new masterman recruited to run his war efforts.
1:29:08
[SPEAKER_04]: There's massive alliances with a bunch of different characters, including Dr. Faustus and the daughter of the Red Skull.
1:29:14
[SPEAKER_04]: We have the mask going on and off.
1:29:16
[SPEAKER_04]: There's more masterman.
1:29:17
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a sleeper robot.
1:29:18
[SPEAKER_04]: The Red Skull has Dr. Faustus, Braden Wash, Sharon Carter, and shoot Steve Rogers.
1:29:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Finally, an issue 25.
1:29:24
[SPEAKER_04]: They continue to battle back and forth.
1:29:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And finally, an issue 31.
1:29:27
[SPEAKER_04]: The Red Skull stands before an army assembled by Kronus, the company of Alexander Luke and for a speech.
1:29:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Soldiers of Kronus, I stand before you and under a pact with your leader, General Alexander Luke and I come here to tell you that the great days your general has waited for.
1:29:41
[SPEAKER_04]: The days you have all waited for are nearly upon us soon your great general and the red skull will lead you together with into the paths of history.
1:29:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And none shall ever forget what is to come when we write America's epitaph and its own blood as the series moves forward.
1:29:56
[SPEAKER_04]: The Red School tries launching a new political wing in America as of the he's done before this time it's called the third wing as an alternative to the two party system later on he tries he's focusing on the new captain america he gets controlled of control of the winter soldier who takes
1:30:11
[SPEAKER_04]: over his cap, a sin, his stab, Sharon Carter, the red skull slaps his daughter, I should never have left you live, he says, in 41 Arlam Zola has prepared a new body for the red skull, as the plots are getting ever more insane.
1:30:24
[SPEAKER_04]: But in 42, Sharon Carter guns down Alex Alexander Luke in and Arlam Zola leaving the red skulls mind trapped in Arlam Zola's body, truly his worst nightmare.
1:30:34
[SPEAKER_04]: No!
1:30:35
[SPEAKER_04]: That was a lot of quick history over a lot of issues, but let me welcome my dear friend Dante Rodriguez back to the show to talk about this crazy fucking story.
1:30:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't say my friend welcome Are you a red skull fan?
1:30:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if fan would be the right word.
1:30:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm familiar with red skull It's hard to be a fan of a of a Nazi
1:30:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I agreed.
1:30:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, it's nice to have someone to punch.
1:30:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, what was your connection to this character before doing this research?
1:31:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly pretty minimal.
1:31:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I think like there's I mean red school is always going to be known as Captain America's probably
1:31:10
[SPEAKER_02]: greatest enemy nemesis, really kind of the anti-compton America, probably in a lot of ways.
1:31:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe just like kind of peripherally, yeah.
1:31:19
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think really the one story that comes to mind is is when the mind of red skull was, I think, placed in the body of Professor X.
1:31:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, like that was a bit of an accident.
1:31:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Correct.
1:31:31
[SPEAKER_04]: The opposite.
1:31:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, if the opposite.
1:31:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Professor X gets killed by Cyclops and then the red skull cuts open Professor X's brain.
1:31:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's right.
1:31:40
[SPEAKER_04]: It takes his telepathy.
1:31:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.
1:31:43
[SPEAKER_04]: The red onslaught.
1:31:44
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll get there.
1:31:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
1:31:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:31:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean other than other than that, like the Red School is just a Captain America villain, like that's basically all I really ever knew about him.
1:31:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Had you, I'm assuming you've seen like the Winter Soldier movie and like a few other things, I did refer familiar with this era of the Red School's history.
1:32:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say I didn't realize how much of the movies came from like this comic series.
1:32:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So no, I wasn't familiar beforehand.
1:32:11
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a wild story because the one thing you never did at Marvel before this was bring Bucky or Uncle Ben back to life.
1:32:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone else was game, but this is the story that brings Bucky back.
1:32:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Were you much of a Captain America fan growing up?
1:32:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, also kind of the same.
1:32:24
[SPEAKER_02]: He was kind of just always on the outskirts.
1:32:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I knew he was part of, I knew he was in the Marvel universe.
1:32:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew that he existed in the same realm as the X-Men, but uh, I really didn't have much exposure to him, at least initially.
1:32:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think they're uh, when it came to like mid 90s and later crossovers, things like that, like there was a little bit more of an
1:32:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:32:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, initially, it really felt like we were reading issues where it seemed like a very minimal red skull, which I thought was kind of fascinating.
1:32:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Like initially, if he was introduced as a character who is obsessed with Captain America to like such an extreme that it may have been detrimental to him, you know, and seeming like he died because of it in his lines.
1:33:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, it gave me, I think the initial feeling I had was kind of that Joker Batman, uh, like a relationship where like the Joker just seems like he's so obsessed with Batman that he will go to any lengths to just like kind of mess with him, but like ultimately also needs him in his life to feel like he has some kind of purpose.
1:33:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was like an obsession that I was getting from the red skull that I'd never really
1:33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: had seen or known before his obsession with Captain America.
1:33:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that comes back even later.
1:33:50
[SPEAKER_02]: As he comes back, where it's like everything he's plotting is really to just like mess with Captain America.
1:33:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just him and his old fucking Nazi buddies, like manipulating shit behind the scenes as people die.
1:33:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's
1:34:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, today's perspective.
1:34:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Now you recently came on the show to talk about sack with me, which was such a good time.
1:34:10
[SPEAKER_04]: People really enjoyed listening to the episode on the Patreon.
1:34:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm really glad we're friends.
1:34:14
[SPEAKER_04]: How are you doing in this day and age?
1:34:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, boy.
1:34:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I've ever wanted to punch a naughty more in my life.
1:34:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I never thought that we'd be in a place in our lives where nauties would be an issue again.
1:34:29
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it always felt like these are the lessons that we're supposed to learn from the past and here we are seeing things being repeated.
1:34:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a really difficult time to be a minority of any kind.
1:34:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very scary.
1:34:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's the word recording this listener is for context in early January just the day after ice killed an unarmed woman in Minneapolis.
1:34:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And I know a lot of the my friends who are trying to just kind of stay out of it all are really struggling with this one and it's hitting at a different level and then I opened with the idea of this kind of secret alliance that launched the war and how bad it went.
1:35:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you have any thoughts on that bit of history?
1:35:08
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it's uncomfortable also looking at the parallels a hundred years later.
1:35:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, absolutely.
1:35:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I don't know if there's like a part of me fears conspiracy theories, but I mean, like reading that just very much, like, clenched me into it.
1:35:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, how much of this are we seeing in our current, you know, our current day government?
1:35:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, just, you know, the the fact I talked about just kind of sounded like project 2025 a little bit.
1:35:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, you know, full
1:35:35
[SPEAKER_02]: gross.
1:35:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it's, yeah, it's kind of alarming, honestly.
1:35:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's amazing how much art shines all light on things in our world that are wrong or not good.
1:35:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, really evil, honestly.
1:35:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, a lot of times, I think I always kind of gravitate towards this idea that it's fiction.
1:35:57
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not, there's no way it could ever be that extreme or that bad, but, you know, it kind of feel like we are living in a time where we are seeing that those extremes come to life.
1:36:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I will never understandably.
1:36:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I am too purehearted for that.
1:36:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I suppose that, you know, we have to take stock of, like, what's happening all around us and pull together and speak truth.
1:36:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And these conversations, even though they're unhappy topics, we're like adding a certain amount of silliness and queerness to just kind of make it nice to speak truth a little bit.
1:36:24
[SPEAKER_04]: So I always appreciate
1:36:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you have any words of advice or any final thoughts today?
1:36:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, I think the one thing I would say at least what I have to tell myself is You know, as as much as I want to not stress and worry about the state of things, there is a level of responsibility That we all have to be engaged and involved and to at least know what's happening to arm ourselves against
1:36:48
[SPEAKER_02]: any of the, really the, the craziness that could come at us at any point, you know, like being completely checked out, it doesn't really serve anybody except, you know, the bullies in the situation.
1:36:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know, and I think I'm a social worker.
1:37:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I do a lot of public speaking about topics like this.
1:37:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I think we've reached a place where we, the ability to stay disengaged has been a survival technique for a long time, but the ability to continue doing that is just showing that you have a lot of privilege.
1:37:15
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're able to stay disengaged while your neighbors are scared, then that becomes trickier, right?
1:37:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And I see for most people the circles getting smaller and smaller.
1:37:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It's happening closer and closer to home.
1:37:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's going to be interesting to watch what happens this year.
1:37:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't say that in a doom and gloom kind of way.
1:37:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, I grew up a closet and a secret keeping, you know, for traumatized family.
1:37:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's speaking truth and like being joyful anyway is really crucial to my daily survival.
1:37:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm always grateful for these kinds of conversations.
1:37:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you everybody for listening.
1:37:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you Dante for your friendship and this conversation.
1:37:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Make sure you're taking care of yourselves.
1:37:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Living joyfully is an act of defiance.
1:37:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Stay safe out there, my friends.
1:37:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Reach out if you need support.
1:37:54
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back here next week on Grimmalkin Lane.