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Web of Venom: Ve'Nam! Featuring Josh Trujillo, Anthony Oliveira, and Scott Free! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grey Malkin Lane podcast where queer friends and allies gather to review and discuss the original X-Men comics in continuity order, which includes modern books set in an early continuity.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: Now this episode is all about Venom, which is not a space we think of when we're thinking about X-Men.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: But we are going to talk about an early Wolverine story from a book called Web of Venom, the apostrophe name, number one, at the latter half of the show.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: I have three amazing talented and hilarious people with me today to talk all about Venom's stories.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: Let me first welcome my dear friend, Anthony Olivera, back to the show, Anthony, it's been far too long.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: Are you a predator fan?
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, the movie, yes, yeah.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like not sexual predators.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not like, I'm not in on all of them.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't seen all of them, but the original and the sequel are live in my brain since I was a kid.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love them.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this story is virtues.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think all come from it's lifts from the predator franchise.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: Let me also welcome the lovely Scott.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: free back to the show.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott, are you an alien fan?
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, yes, the first two, uh, I think they rapidly decrease in quality after that.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, definitely, and I thank you for having me back, especially I don't know why I get 10 to be chosen for the monster fucker adjacent episodes.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, I have a lane, and I'm in it.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: And let me also welcome Josh for heo to Gravolkid Lane, hello Josh.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: My initial question for you is, are you a Jurassic Park fan?
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's a Jurassic Park fan, I am gay, and I was 48, so there's really no ambiguity about this.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: Let's begin with the very simple question of what do you love about Venom?
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in the early Venom, it's about the monstrous other half.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the darkness within Peter Parker that becomes external and then it becomes actualized with Eddie Brock and all that.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just love Venom, conceptually, I love Venom as a character.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the intense
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: at times confusing homo eroticism.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is almost no franchise at Marvel that is gayer than Venom.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really just even as it's moved into different directions.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: For example, with like Donnie Cates, there's always the sort of this core of the inner darkness.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, let's go there.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're going to start there.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: Let's just go there.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: What is queer about Venom?
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I, to, again, go back to the original, you know, material Peter Parker casts off the Venom suit and it goes to Eddie and there's very much a spurned lover kind of aspect to it that continues throughout Venom's history.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Venom originally wants to get back a theater because Peter got rid of him.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: How dare he?
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, later with the carnage stuff and all that it's, it's just, it's gay.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: uh, I have a moment with Jordan White recently on the show if you haven't heard it where I'm like all you ain't choosing to take venom symbiote and bond it to Mary Jane so it's like his two exes fucking assistant really well decision.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yes, I uh, I have written actually it was never published but I got a nice kill fee for an article when the first when the first venom movie was coming out about like venom and the queer origins.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I agree with Scott 100%.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is something really baked into the dark suit, symbiot, Venom, Eddie Brock's story.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: That to me is just not even just inherently queer, but inherently queer from its very specific time period.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: venom that the suit becomes more than just an aesthetic thing and turns into a pretty specific metaphor to me of 90s gay panic and specifically like the the AIDS crisis, I think that that's what I think there's no way to read those early stories without realizing that's what it's about like you take a moment to expel it on that for let's not sure.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Venom Peter Parker has his alien suit, his alien suit, knows all his secrets and at a fundamental level the way the metaphor works is like one night Peter Parker goes out and something dark gets attached to him and suddenly as the Eddie Brock element enters the story suddenly there's this man who knows all his secrets who looks exactly like a Thomas Finland drawing who is like
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's really to, as something I think is undercredited about Todd McFarlane's art is his men are just as horny render as his women, like when Todd McFarlane draws a dude their hot.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eddie Brock is hot, like, and he is covered in Spider-Man's goo, and he knows Peter Parker's secrets.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: and he knows where he lives and he knows about his partner and the threat is that he's being stalked in those early issues.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: That this this someone is out there who knows what Peter Parker did and there is some shared biological thing moving between them.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't read those early stories without thinking about the movie Brain Damage, which I think they're kind of a rip off of.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Handsome, brunette, dude living in New York City, who gets a slime monster on himself, and then goes to the YMCA and starts cruising for guys and is murdering people and is dealing with this like parasitic entity that is both turning him into a murderer and turning him very gay.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like there's a way to me venom is inseparable from that always as a metaphor and as like a way the engine of the character works.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: Interesting, interesting.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm not a Venom guy.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: I don't like Venom that much.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_06]: Early announcement.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is going to take a minute to get there, but I really am planning to do a theme on my show one month all about the 90s obsession with goo and slime in the marketplace.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's truly crazy from the Ninja Turtles to Nickelodeon, right?
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's all over this place, but this gooey stuff.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're going to talk about Venom origins in a minute and end at some talking points.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott, what is a favorite?
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: era of Venom comics for you and one you may not love as much.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, honestly, probably the early, the lethal protector sort of stuff, the sort of his early, very first sort of solo books and then sort of jumping much further ahead, the flash Thompson,
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: is also very queer intentionally or not by reminder at least favorite is probably there's some stuff in the early 2000s where there's like a symbioted clone that's just very much early 2000s you're marble the throw and stuff of the wall the seal stick.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's great.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Anthony's same question.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's a funny you just mentioned lethal protector where he literally like moves to the castro
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, I'm gonna have my own life.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I grew up in the 90s.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I grew up reading like maximum carnage and playing the video game and all that stuff.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that stuff's really baked in my brain.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I was reading my first action figure from Marvel ever was actually the venom figure that shot slime out of his chest speaking of like 90s slime.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that era is really important to me.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think venom is vulnerable to getting overcomplicated
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't say it's my least favorite at all, but I think like the Donnie Cates lore really like backs a truck into the venom verse that requires its own sort of like mythological understanding like how the codex is work and what knows deal is and stuff that can be very fruitful and like kind of turns the symbiots stuff into Something that can play in the larger like they're literally the enemies of the Celestials and everything, but it takes
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Venom away from that sort of street level New York slime grime stuff that that it was always about at first and like the more Lore I get about the symbiots the more they become something else to me that that you have that is interesting And it has to be rest of it, but to me is less about the core components of what the piece is for
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: I will say goo is not my first franchise that I'm in favor of, but I like Venom.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: I like Venom as he relates to Peter Parker.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: I like how he relates to Spider-Man stories once we get into the grand mythos that I think Anthony was just talking about of kind of this cosmic identity that they've been developing for him in the past decade or so.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: It gets a little hazy or for me.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I do like that we're finding different angles to approach the Venom symbiote.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: So let's talk about Venom as a protagonist.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, actually, I'm going to take it to a different place first.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_06]: So I've arranged a couple of brief talking points and let me just ask each of you to comment on each one, but if others also want to comment on each section, that's completely okay.
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: So let's begin, it's 1984, Tom Defalko, Roger Stern, Ron Friends, Spider-Man, finds a ball of goo on a spaceship and bonds with it in a secret war.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: He gets the black suit on the cover of amazing Spider-Man number 251.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's the famous black suit design.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott thoughts on that first iteration.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's classic, it's iconic for a reason if people don't really know anything else
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Spider-Man.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: They generally know sort of the image Peter standing there like this for the sand.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why I'm doing this.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: No one can see me on the other side.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: with his hands out.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really iconic sort of story.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: If there's something that people remember from secret wars, which is most, you know, with respect to the Legion shooter, is designed to sell action figures.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: They remember the black suit.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just, it's iconic.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a sleek, clean design that really sticks with Peter for a couple of years, even.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: Um, okay, talking point number two, it's 1988, realizing that he has bonded with a living creature who sometimes will take over his whole body and might be eating him alive.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: Uh, might might be making him do bad things, especially with you ad retroactive continuity.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: Peter rejects the symbiotes.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: It bonds with Eddie Brock and becomes a hulking anti-hero venom massive tongue, huge jagged teeth.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's like all that shit they did with the Infinity War doppelgangers, but multiplied by 8.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, do you have thoughts on that first monstrous iteration of venom?
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's like hard to overstate what a big impact that venom has had in Marvel specifically.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's especially being a 90s kid like I was it's like launching the first atomic bomb test like the world is forever chain like the molecules in our era are different now because of that makes him But he was just like he was just one of those like really he kind of restraints a little bit before the 90s, but he's so heavily entrenched in that kind of like variant cover universe for me.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: I like Eddie Brock as Venom quite a bit.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's not necessarily my favorite Venom.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm very curious about what's going on with MJ and Venom right now because that sounds absurd, which I like.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's the fun of comics.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, I'm a big proponent of characters that look cool on tattoos, like Ghost Rider and Eddie Brock Venom.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: at Scott Friesrequest.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're going to take a moment of silence for Paul Raven.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just just following on a Josh said, though, with the tattoo space, venom, particularly Eddie Venom, occupied sort of this place like Juggernaut, where he's so gay and gay readers instantly clocked it.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then you say to some straight men who will have like
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: that's like, that's like venom and it just goes completely over some people's heads and it's amazing.
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that that's like really speaks to that specific aesthetic of the 90s of that sort of green dark, but it's so over the top, like I always think of like Jim Steinman like meatloaf like kiss, right?
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's hard for straight people to clock that the camp aspect is sort of baked in to the design and to the character, right?
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the the operaticness of it
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's it would be easy enough for them just to look exactly like Peter Parker in the in the black suit the iconic black suit, but it elevates it to drag is the fact that it gets both muscular and whole key and bigger and like that's like that's the fun of it to me.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want that sort of because Tom Hardy understands right like Tom Hardy gets like he even talks about his performance of masculinity as being sort of a drag performance right like Hardy has done interviews where he says like he doesn't understand gender but he understands how to perform this one thing really well.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he just leans in and gets as big as he can and plays that all the time, but he's always like even an inception like he's always adding this kind of draggy campness underneath it and like his venom voice is so camp in the same way he's like vain voice is so camp right like he understands the assignment specifically with venom I think
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, it's 1992, David Michelin and Mark Bagley launched Venom into his first solo featured solo title feature and boy, it does venom just go fucking everywhere from that on.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: Venom dead pool Spider-Man will reign in the 90s and ghost writer.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_06]: God, they were just fucking everywhere.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: The book is called Venom, lethal protector.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_06]: That same year, the red carnage symbiotes bonds to cleatest Cassidy and amazing Spider-Man 360, but the red versus black both symbiotes will
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: My introduction to these characters was the old carnage paint the town red video game on second genesis if that's what was called Anthony thoughts on venom lethal protector.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I mean, I have this this was like Scott said like one of those like I don't think it was chromium, but it was like a shiny like platinum me cover like I bought three was part of the The boom of a speculation marketing marvel leaned in for sure.
• 14:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I it's weird.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember like a single point
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: From these books, but I loved them.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like Maximum Carnage 2 was just I played the exact same Sega Genesis game as you a Chad and was like obsessed with it.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think Carnage Carnage again is clearly speaking to the the AIDS panic, right?
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he he is infected with the Cindy at in prison by his like roommate right like his cellmate
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: gives him the symbiote disease and then he starts acting up right like uh and it is so again specifically entrenched in like this New York fight for civility and decency like the way carnage monologues in maximum carnage is about this kind of strange anarchic redesign of society it is as I say it is it is straight panic.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, like it is a panic generated by, I guess, nominally at a sexual writers and creators, but the first song of, like, eroticism never goes away.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of amazing how often Eddie Brock and Carnage are naked, like the first torneous images from my child where I was like, wait, what's going on here is often Eddie Brock always at the beach for some reason, fighting Spider-Man and getting the goo ripped off him and like, they're having this weird, erotic fight about possession of the symbiotes.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was baggly too, like the baggly issue where they hit them with the sonic ray and like Eddie Brock's clothes all fly off is like, that would be my tattoo.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's Eddie Brock.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: So then it now becomes kind of a mainstay at Marvel in the way that Wolverine has become a mainstay and deadpool has become a mainstay.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: So it's 2003 and Daniel Wey and Francis Gohararag launched the first ongoing Venom title.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: It runs for 18 issues.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: In 2011, we get Rick Remender and Tony Moore giving us flash Thompson as Venom.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: My favorite Venom series.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: he joins the secret Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy, the book lasts 42 issues and gives spin-off events like absolute carnage and venomized.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: In 2016, Mike Costa and Gerardo Sandoval give us the third Venom series.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_06]: It runs for 22 issues.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: Flash Thompson gets a second title called Venom Space Night by Robbie Thompson and Ariel Olavetti, which leads us to where we're building into the current Venom 2018 era that we're going to be reviewing the character
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, what do your thoughts on venom is kind of a mainstay at Marvel?
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it makes sense, right?
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like the checks keep clearing.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I understand why that is the case.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I also think there's a lot of depth as Anthony's explain.
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is a piece of meal of creating mythology around a character whose primarily appeal is the fact that they look great on like a bumper sticker or like a tattoo or like a kulti shirt.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: And like Venom permeates beyond that.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: I remember seeing the Venom movie in theaters and not only was it a packed house, there were people standing in the aisles.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: They were leaving their children to watch whatever movie they were watching to come in and catch 20 minutes of Venom because they love Venom so much.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: And like that's so incredible to me.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: I like that he is he deserves to be a mainstay.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's been so many great stories with them.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: I like that, Matt Gorgon, I like him as Thunderbolt's quite a bit.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Is that the iconic him and the naked Hawkeye?
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's a better question.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I put it right from Steve at the moment.
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the other day.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: And now it's 2015, and in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, Brian Michael Bendus teaches us that the Clintaur are a benevolent race with their own planet.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: They cut off ties with rebellious symbiotes, expelling them from their hive mind.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott, it thoughts on the Clintaur revelation.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it was a choice.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there weren't earlier things.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's plenty of the symbiots in the 90s and some earlier hints at this, but Ben, this is really the first ones, a sort of fully flush that out.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it, you know, I think it represents a fundamental change in the trajectory of the character, because from that point on, it's all now focused on the sort of cosmic stuff that Kate spans upon.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: Ghostwriter and Dark Hawk go through similar types of journeys where the premise was pretty simple and that we just might keep making it more and more and more complicated.
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, yeah, I mean, venom hasn't killed Blalandra yet, but there's still time.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, but the fraternity of Raptis did.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: And now it's 2018, and Donnie Cates and Ryan Stegman launched a new Venom title, by the way, the current volume is number six by our Ewing.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's pretty fun.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's other titles going on.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: All new Venom and Carnage and all kinds of things.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Retroactive continuity gives us a bunch of symbiotes visiting Earth across history, but it also gives us a very complicated and complex origins for our own favorite symbiote, the one that we are most fond of, who has become a main character at Marvel over the years.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: uh... he initially bonded with a creed named tell car in venom first host and another uh... host used him to commit a genocide this is all donny kates lore so there's a dark and uh... noble history both for this character before he landed in the battle world of the spaceship he bonded with venom around our excuse me with dead pool around this time there's a bunch of crazy retroactive continuity
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_06]: Peter Parker discovers all of the wonderful properties of a symbiotesuit, clothing, mimicry and costume design, dimensional pockets.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: That's a real thing.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like you put bulky stuff in your pockets, but no one can tell because it still looks silly about your figure.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: He has his very own webbing, which means no web shooters, super strength, super healing, it learns at adapts, but it also gets extremely co-dependent.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_06]: Which is often how I, as a therapist, read venom stories, as labels have a co-dependency and stalking, etc, which is another interesting read.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: Each host seems to bring out a new side in the symbiote's self-expression.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: And there's lore that the more people assembly obons with, the stronger and more independent and individual it becomes.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: But the symbiote also feeds on energy, steals memories, feeds on adrenaline, takes over bodies, hungers for flesh, gets obsessed with revenge.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: Occasionally spawns, eats people's heads off their bodies.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: So there's a lot of versions of symbiote's stories.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: Before we get into some of the complexities of venom, I want to toss some genre that each of you.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_06]: and tell me how Venom works as the protagonist in each of these genres.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: Anthony Venom as a noir character.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yes, because the Venom symbiot is so much about the shadow self, right?
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like Venom Venom's stories are about accessing the part of you that you don't want to access or acknowledge.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And noir stories are so much about
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: sort of this, like, nostic awareness that the system as it is currently designed will not work and the only option you have is to break out of it.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like, yeah, it's what it's for like there's the moment in, um, uh, the big, the big heat, for example, where our cop character just like explodes and becomes like basically invents like the vigilante cop genre, right?
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's,
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: that's all it is.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right like that's why Peter rejects it.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has to believe that good has a place in the world and he can't let himself become this kind of violent vigilante so he throws it in the garbage.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: There are little than I'm kind of comics where he's like in a trench coat and a hat like in a phone booth, you know, there's kind of energy.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, your thoughts on venom as the protagonist in a blood and guts horror film or horror genre.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I think that makes sense.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's something a lot of venom comics.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: At least the ones I was reading in the 90s, kind of embraced, right?
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's like, it's tough and bad and violent.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: As venom is, there are worst monsters out there that need to be controlled or taken care of, right?
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I think you can find a sympathy in the host of venom.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: We'll also embrace and kind of as dark or elements.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think I see that happening more and more.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think as we kind of circle back around to not just venom, but the, the corticopia of offshoot character
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: Carnage is only one.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's only a drop in the bucket, so to speak in terms of violent symbiotes taking it to the extreme.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott, Venom in a slasher flick.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, well, I mean, even the early Venom stories, for example, where Venom shows up, you know, to attack MJ.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's the iconic panel, where he's sort of lear egging.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: with his arms up like a T-Rex almost.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is the sort of the creeping thing that's running after you that's going to get you that tries to push you know you in front of the train.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's it's there from the beginning it's baked in
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: and particularly when you get in the stuff like the Mac arrogant, you're where he's just eating people and not even just their brains.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's just fully eating people and you do get some real kind of horror movie slasher kind of stuff going on there.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: Anthony, then I'm in the romcom genre.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, he is a, actually, he is a jilted ex, which means he's perfect for like screwball comedy, right?
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he is like, you could do the Philadelphia story with like Peter Parker, Venom and Eddie Brock, right?
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's, there is a kind of way that fundamentally the symbiote is one person too many in any relationship, a character is in.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's that's exactly the recipe for romcom.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, totally.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh Venom in the slapstick or kind of keystone cops genre.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, like just because super broad with that, you mean?
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: It becomes like that slapstick 90s, you know, mad magazine almost energy.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think you could definitely figure that out.
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think, you know, obviously Venom's powers allow him to take on a lot of physical damage.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: So it makes the slapstick kind of guilt free, which is a big hallmark of the genre.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'd be interested actually, it may be doing more of a scene more of a period.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_05]: Larry Moe or Curly getting the venom symbolia and just whacking this ensues from there.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_06]: Ever read a dog pool or excuse me, a venom pool comic like the it goes so silly in that like that dead pull genre specifically.
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott thoughts on Denna.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: My word Denna.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Not on Denna.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_06]: Quite son of a good.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: That's on Venom in kind of the men's jury and candidate genre, psychedelic kind of military story.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean the flash Thompson stuff in particular with him as an agent of the military industrial complex.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like mission impossible that era.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, it's very much channeling a lot of that late war on terror kind of stuff.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't necessarily go a mention in Canada, but there's that aspect of it there.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you see the
• 25:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: the symbiote being weaponized as a tool of government and state power and all that and it is an interesting angle on that and we we see it in the story that we're going to discuss.
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: Anthony Venom as well I don't know what to call this Venom for babies Venom in the like rug rats mini marbles uh there's a there's an infinity comic right now called symbi about a little space geese
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it goes to something Josh was saying, right?
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the venom syndrome is both like a gumbie and also like makes you invulnerable to harm, which means he's kind of perfect for like a looney tunes, ask kind of energy, right?
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like in fact, it's actually kind of one of the big pleasures of the venom movies is it's perfectly happy to have Tom Hardy have like this,
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: broad slapstick comedy moment where he's crawling into a lobster tank or whatever, so it's like very easy to imagine For example, the venom thing doing like like the Jim carry mask kind of movie like it's kind of actually not that different Tonally so yeah easy to do a baby gets the symbiot and Mr. McGoo's around town and the symbiot sort of is the babysitter or something it's easy to do I think that would be fun
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh Venom in the genre of action hero.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, yeah, that's a lot.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's pretty much every Venom lead story.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: I suppose.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: But if you feel bigger and go John by playing with it right and having be like the commando kind of guy.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's interesting.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: There are a lot of characters that have kind of the symbiotic relationship.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like Blue Beetle, for example, a character I wrote for a long time, who are the Piazza magical sci-fi Scarab attached to a spine that he communicates with, not to the similar from Venom.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: But venom, the symbiote is much more defined as a character than caught Utah, the symbiote, or the scarab pretty traditionally is.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so I do think people find that extra layer of grit or meaning behind the symbiote that maybe other characters with a symbol, similar duality, firestorm, for example, maybe don't get that level of introspection.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: And then my last one, Scott Venom as kind of the outsider, taking on more of the X-Men energy, the misfit that doesn't, you know, the misunderstood, right?
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's, that's, yeah, I think that's, that's the perfect thing.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that that is Venom's original moniker, the lethal protector, where he
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: in a underground community of people and protects these outcasts from, it's been a long time as a Red Louisville protector full disclosure, but from crooked real estate developers and the life foundation and his whole thing early on is protecting the outcasts.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_06]: So when I was doing this assembling this list, it was really shocking to me to recognize how versatile this character is.
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like Wolverine, I think has a little similar energy as does Deadpool when we're seeing these characters in all these different types of genres.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: So let's talk about the Venom world for a minute.
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: Our dear friend Jordan White has been chairing the Venom office for the last few years and they're taking some really giant swings.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: Venom spawns carnage.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: The life foundation creates scream, riot, phage, and agony and laughter.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: And some of these guys get mixed together to create the hybrid symbiote.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: when Venom's tongue gets cut off one time, it's used to create the symbiote mania.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: And there's a clone of that Venom symbiote that becomes a different kind of scream.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: Carnage spawns to create toxin, Eddie Brock gets cancer, and then rejects the symbiote and it bonds with Matt Garg and the scorpion, but then returns to Eddie, but part of it bonds with his white blood cells, which then forms something called the,
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: anti venom and some carnage symbiote was mixed with some technology to create the guys scorn.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: The government gives the venom symbiote to veteran flashtoms and who becomes agent venom.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: But venom himself has a literal baby with the symbiote and and weighing and that's Dylan Brock.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: Complicated part is a lot of these characters have not only bonded with dozens of hosts, but a lot of the characters have bonded with the same.
• 29:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: Eddie Brock has been venom and carnage and anti venom and I think toxin and there's been multiple symbiote hosts for each of these characters.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: Our symbiote has bonded with so many characters from Red Hulk, She Hulk, Carol Danvers, Reed Richards, Maliketh, Mysterio, Dr. Octopus,
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: Carnage is bonded with Wolverine, Norman Osborn is the Red Goblin, Carol Danvers, the Wizard, Hawkeye, the thing, and our dear friend Anthony Oliver, I got to write one little goof shoot, a brass skull over with Normie Osborn.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: Let me hear some of your thoughts on the world of venom in its complexities.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's quite a robust universe.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: It gets a little exhausting if I'm honest.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yeah, it's, it's a lot, uh, it was when I was conceiving of the cast of Avengers Academy, Normia's born was the one that I knew would require the most homework, because not only is Normia's born by far the oldest character in terms of continuity, although not in terms of age, which is, it's own fascinating problem.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Normia came with all this, like, Laura had to read, but I also had to read all the venom, Laura, right?
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like,
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was helped a little bit in that rascal as a symbiote is not aware of all the venom lore, which means that I had time to do all my research.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I did eventually have to write a story where I just like talked about the actual biology and how it works and stuff where like Lunella is moongirl is like,
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: analyzing the Cindy ending like this is how it works and I had to like find out like what canonically does the Cindy eat in the body and like the thing that I always found the trickiest with the symbiots both for Avengers Academy and now for this swimsuit special story that I'm doing about venom is like what
• 31:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: voice do the symbiots speak in when they narrate, right?
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like when when a symbiote is talking to the reader, how do they sound?
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: How how how intelligent are they?
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: What are they feeling?
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do they feel?
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: What that was important to me?
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that actually that's one of the things that I always find can sort of hurt the reader's feelings, especially with something like the venom symbiote is like they feel like they know them.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when you introduce like oh and by the way, it used to be bonded to a
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like now I don't know the character anymore that I grew up with, you know?
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: So the same thing with like Wolverine origin stories, right?
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, except the added element with venom is like it feels like it's a fresh thing when it comes out of that secret war tank.
• 32:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels like it's learning how to be a person from the jump with Peter.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why it's like
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You were talking about co-dependency and like there is something kind of childish about the way it's feelings are hurt by Peter's rejection that to me feels very different if I know it once committed a genocide right you know like there's something There's something that disconnect there for me.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think like one of the reasons Venom is so popular is because he's basically let's you just do a palette swap on anybody right like you you throw that suit on anyone and the audience immediately is like right I get it I've known how Venom works since I was nine years old now Wolverine has that power go like right like you can do it so easily so over complicating the backstory always freaks me out a little bit.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott, I mentioned a lot of the Venom family.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: If you will, do you have some favorites and least favorites from that group of characters?
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, favorites.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, carnage carnage is iconic, you know, as as we discussed carnage very strong, AIDS crisis, metaphors, also from a marketing perspective.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: other.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's iconic, clearest Cassidy is his own whole separate episode of craziness and issues.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, the Flash Thompson, particularly as anti-Venum, has been a really, just,
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: great take on the character.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also would be fascinating if you could travel back in time to tell Stan Lee that flash Thompson, who is created back in 1963, is going to be a white armor, super soldier who kind of operates as an anti-virus to a goom monster.
• 34:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Mary Jane's going to be a gold goom monster too.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he would go, wow!
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: and take credit for it.
• 34:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's, yeah, you know, a lot of the other symbiots to be blunt are storytelling devices.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're not really actual characters.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, here's the angry lady symbiote.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here's the big red symbiote.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: And I think you like, do you like, do you like Lee Price?
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Small, small doses.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: I feel about Lee Price, the way I feel about the irreducible ant man, I think.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, do you love a big pack of different colored symbiots?
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it makes sense.
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think the popularity of Venom is it's a versatile concept and we're just talking about all the different applications you could possibly put to Venom.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love a carnage.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm a 90s cat.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love that red super Nintendo cartridge that has its face over at.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love trading cards that are shining.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I am a big fan in general of the expanded Venom family,
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: have the narrative lift to make them the ongoing characters that the venom or even carnage are.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: There have been symbiotes, dragons, symbiotes, zombies, symbiotes, prosthetics, little cutesy, baby, symbiotes.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: There have been so many alternate versions of Eddie Brock from different timelines.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: I think there's nine different alternate reality venom dead pool characters alone.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: The remnants of
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_06]: Bedlam is what created Rascal.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_06]: I misploded myself before.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: The Venom Symbiot has also spawned since Carnage sleepers out there.
• 35:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: The Black Widow is currently a Symbiot, bonded with one named Slyver.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: There are so many names in this world.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm gonna give you just a few.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: These are all real characters that are and gentle because we keep creating clones and weapons.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: A Rack Niot, extreme built, Mr. E. There's a blank in the middle.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: Dreadface, raise, plague, silence, the passenger meridius, freedom, misery, which is the Liz Allen symbiote.
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: I loved Liz Allen.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: All blood and I shut you not, there's a really, or real symbiote character named Urinal cake.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: And in today's issue, we're going to meet one named the Tyranus Soros, which is a weird name for a symbiote as well.
• 36:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: ever-expanding world.
• 36:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: So fun facts for X-Men fans, a symbiote named ZX, ZZZXX, once bonded with Rosa Longnife, and later got to eat an alternate reality version of Charles Xavier.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am all for anyone eating Charles Xavier, so good for them.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're living my life, you hate to see someone living your fantasy, but whatever.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: Uh, stored once created hybrid symbiot brood monsters and they bonded with both Abigail brand and death bird Scott thoughts like to see death bird when do not like to see Abigail brand when so it kind of washes out.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, a time-traveling teenage Jean Grey, when she was in the present, once bonded with a symbiote, was then taken over by a poison, died, blew herself up, and then rebuilt her own body from cosmic dust all before going back to the past to bond with the Phoenix Force.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, that's just an afternoon for Jean Grey, so I'm not surprised to hear any of those.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: Anthony, the venom symbiote became a horseman of apocalypse in one future timeline.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: The symbiote itself no host.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that feels right.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean apocalypse is an inclusive employer.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's he doesn't he's about survival the fittest.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's fitter than the venom symbiote?
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good for him.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott Carnage and Deadpool once bonded together to create a big symbiote dog named Princess.
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Princess is a fun character.
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Read a read a little long run on Deadpool.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: And Josh, Mr. Sinister once bonded the DNA of the original X-Men all five with Craven the Hunter and the symbiote and created a real character out there named X-raven X-R-A-V-E-N.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: Why, I guess I have to read the story, but why create that?
• 38:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: It was a Spider-Man X-Men team up, and I think that just we're looking for a way to bring those old characters together, sure.
• 38:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: So, the symbiote's do interact with our world, and I'm really enjoying the quality of this conversation.
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: We could go on a lot of tangents, but it gives me a lot of resonant thoughts about Vatamin.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's fun to do a Vatamin episode on Korean Malkin Lane.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_06]: So now let's jump to 2018.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: We have just met Null, the Dark God, who created the symbiotes.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: Null created the first symbiotes in a series of experiments that's also resulted in other life forms, including a race of symbioted dragons.
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's a series of one shots called the web of Venom, which are launched because Donnie Cates is writing the main Venom title volume 4 of the book in 2018.
• 38:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: These little spin-off stories are exploring themes that were established in the 2018 book.
• 38:59
  [SPEAKER_06]: The one we are reading today is web of Venom VNAM.
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: That's so annoying.
• 39:06
  [SPEAKER_06]: Null has created a hive mind species.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: They end up getting cut off from Null and they've been beginning calling themselves the Clintar, which is their world's race for, or excuse me, name for Cage.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: Null has now been caged.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's a big event Null's gonna break free and attack the Earth and in the current comics, Hela is becoming the new Queen and Black character, currently being written in the stories.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: So in 2023, we learn all is defined as a void god.
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: He's connected to oblivion and the celestial's.
• 39:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's this sword called all black, the necrosword, which is like the first symbiote hammered into a weapon that like bonds with people.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: And it's this process of creation that created the vulnerabilities to heat and sound, which are the two things that can hurt the venom symbiote fire and saunics.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: two thoughts.
• 39:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: One, if it was 1974 and you had a van, this is the kind of thing that you paint on the side of your van while blasting deep purple.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Number two, the character is in the abstract.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think really interesting.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it fundamentally changes venom,
• 40:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: from being the sort of street level, you know, character into the sort of grand cosmic space god at times.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if that's for the better or for the worse.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So complicated feelings.
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, do you like a big Venom monster?
• 40:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: Venom as a T-Rex?
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: Venom as a Dragon?
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think once you can make a Venom at anything, we got to make a dragon.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: We got to make a
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: Um, and then Anthony, we have this kind of concept of like the race of symbiotes, the planet.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: Venom goes very, very sci-fi, which is yet another genre.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: And we go almost like heavenly origins, bees, like horror movie, Barbarella, energy with some of these stories.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: Do you have thoughts on these kind of deep bizarre origins?
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: And again, we do in this with like Darkhawk and, uh, and other characters, where we've just made them so cosmic.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: Ghostwriters' origins are so complicated.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it you mentioned the alien franchise and like the alien the first one is just like a horror monster Right like it's basically haunted house.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's one scary thing running around and it's like it's Unknowability is what makes it scary and the second movie is like now there's so many and like now the Marines are fighting them And it's like a complete genre shift aliens the sequel is
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: a fantastic movie, but it's a different genre, right?
• 41:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like that Xenomorph 2 now has gained like cosmic origins where like the progenitors of life made it to kill us all and everything.
• 41:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like there is a part of me that's like, okay, well, clearly this concept is so plastic, it can be reworked into all these things, but
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is still a part of me that's like, oh, I miss when the xenomorph was just like an unknowable monster and the more you stack on it, it's harder to make it work.
• 42:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like the richness of the like Donnie Cates mythos is obviously so generous and so popular that like it works.
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, now it's harder to figure out how to bring Venom back to being a scary
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: thing like the textility and the like the biological component of venom really matters to me and if it becomes too magical I feel like it's harder to ground it again.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: So the book we're about to read is set in the 2018 continuity.
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: In venom number one by Donny Cates we are introduced to a bunch of new characters including a guy as a man of color named Rex Strickland who's literally based off of Danny Glover's character in Predator 2 that's
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: So he gives the revelation that he and a bunch of veterans had been on a mission for shield.
• 42:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's connections to Vietnam.
• 42:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: There was an ancient symbiotic dragon that was found in an iceberg, basically.
• 42:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: They drew of its essence and targeted into a weapon and a bunch of soldiers got transformed including Strickland himself.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: The soldiers ended up being put into cryogenic stasis except for Strickland, who's been working for the government to try to find some sort of cure.
• 43:06
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is all tied to the null storyline, but this breakout special word about to read V-NAM is a detailing of that early origin story for the new character, Rex Strickland.
• 43:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: So there's all of the preamble that we need before we jump into this book itself.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, do you have thoughts on the title V-NAM first of all, Clever Ridiculous, both?
• 43:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, they was hanging right there.
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: I totally get it.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_05]: I totally get how that's this got green lid probably based off the title alone, but this isn't just a grown, a grown of a title for me.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: The logo of the title is literally in camouflage.
• 43:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: cover is an old-timey photograph of a bunch of soldiers back in Vietnam in the 1960s and we're not going to go super detailed but the reason I referenced Alien, Predator, and Jurassic Park at the beginning of this is this thing this this book seems to be kind of tributes to that genre even there's like even a King Kong energy when you're telling the story of the soldiers and the ancient monster on the on the isolated land right?
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Do you have thoughts?
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: And I'm gonna ask some kind of isolated questions as we go through the book a little bit.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm not focused on a page by page detail thing here, but anything you guys want to bring up is great.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh thoughts on the design of the symbiote's here.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: We have kind of a really evil, eerie, leering, fang, mouth, and like a red circular.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's giving almost the demigorgan from stranger things for me a little bit.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: It kind of reminds me of Anamana Pia from the Kevin Smith Green Arrow, Ron, actually.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I really like the designs.
• 44:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: I assume they're all done by the artists here, want on the Ramirez.
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think they're all so very sharp.
• 44:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think this is something they really excel out is kind of finding texture in the symbiote form.
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't feel overly slick.
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: It feels gritty.
• 44:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: It kind of matches the overall tone of a Vietnam War story.
• 44:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I like the designs quite a bit.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: Stranger Things being that other, you know, we've tapped into the other world.
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're trying to turn the monster into a weapon.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: You know, it's that same kind of story.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, the art here is one on Ramirez, a Felipe Cibraro on Colors and Clayton Cowl on Letters Nicklo on Edits.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: Beautiful art.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's a really pretty book.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_06]: We jump over to Scandinavia, shield and this is in the early formation days.
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: So like Nick Fury was the CIA agent who launched shield back in the sticks.
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: He's sliding timescale be damned.
• 45:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're just gonna let it view what it is.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: They find a symbiot dragon in an iceberg, which is a crazy thing, and immediately trying to turn it into weapons.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_06]: Wolverine gets brought into the story because they need someone to help hunt down this symbiot.
• 45:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: So we have a surprise Wolverine appearance back in the Vietnam era.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: He's a Canadian soldier at this point and it is post-weapon X because he does have his metal claws in this story.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I first almost gave myself a stroke because I was trying to figure out when this is in Wolverine's history and I just said no, that's the path of madness because I can't have like a chart with like him and Maverick on.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to piece together when this is, but I
• 46:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: Well in the in the team x days we had to address this in the handbooks actually and the team x days there were a lot of missions where the Canadian government was like renting him out to different armies because he's all over the world at this era he's in Japan and America like there's all these places where you see him doing all these things so you just have to assume it fits into that era of like the team x mercenary time right and before Mac Hudson and the child
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I feel like if you're going to tell a story about the venom that is a strong riff on predator, command of all these movies, I feel like a Logan is a natural character to slot in there.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to keep it, you know, semi-serious, him or the Punisher or one of these characters who was very much tied to war.
• 46:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: So we get a couple lines of dialogue between Fury and Wolverine, and this is a funny pair to me.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: Nick, this is the first time we've discovered Ali in life, right?
• 47:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: And Nick Fury's all business, he says a Logan gave me some credit, who'd be dumb enough to put you on a team.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: These two has kind of a buddy comedy as an interesting riff thing for me, as they banter back and forth both the grizzled heroes and military operatives,
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was surprising to re-encounter white Nick Fury in a Marvel comic this lake, right?
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like, oh yeah, right, that's still a character and it's something about the the the sun character becoming the new Nick Fury.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think really let's writers lean in on how sinister this version of Fury gets to be like this is a pretty negative depiction of Nick Fury in the end.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was always kind of a skimmer, but like this is
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: out and out like he's perfectly willing to blow up people and he's part of these experiments and everything.
• 47:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's the men with the cigarette from the expiles.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 47:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 47:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was very worried when this comic started because I was like, oh, Vietnam.
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like we're going to talk about Vietnam.
• 48:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like a thing that Marvel mostly avoids, right?
• 48:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like especially because of all the continuity issues you guys are talking about, right?
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like usually if we're going to talk about this sort of thing, they talk about this, what is it?
• 48:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, which is like meant to fix the problem of like how do you how do you anchor these things in time while there was a war when was it never not and right like because Vietnam and Korea are Specifically linked moments we had a moment when I was doing the kid juggernaut thing where I was like it has to be the Korean war We're not going to use a fictional war for this.
• 48:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if the title was just so tempting they couldn't not make it Vietnam
• 48:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I was really glad to see that Fury gets to be this negative because it is sort of about the American presence in Vietnam and it's like, well, it's just sort of this generalized destruction being visited on these characters.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think there's a lot of people to root for in this story.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: I just watched the episode of Invincible in the new season where they're fighting those little starfish alien guys and everybody's getting symbioted into these creatures and they have to kill the big creature.
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: Again, it's like the stranger things finale, right?
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: We got to go in after the mind flare.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: So these two American soldier, well, an American and a Canadian soldier are infiltrating and they find...
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: They find the grizzled Vietnam veteran in the woods.
• 49:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, my manner, Dad, the symbiots are out there.
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: We have to get them.
• 49:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: And there's a attack with giant monsters as the goo kind of expands.
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: Nick Fury turns out to be an LMD and dies in a big betrayal with Wolverine.
• 49:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: And he's gonna literally blow up the island.
• 49:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like, hey, I'm not there, but I'm literally gonna set up a Duke.
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: We've got our symbioted dragon back here.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: And then they decide to kill the dragon, which then affects the monsters on the island.
• 49:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: sure.
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, did you have thoughts on kind of the portrayal of this story, the big monster in the Woods energy of this whole book?
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: No, I think it's a lot of fun.
• 49:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm like Anthony said the title alone kind of meant to be like, oh, we're going to time out Vietnam, aren't we?
• 50:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is going to be what year is this book coming out in?
• 50:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: But what?
• 50:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: But it's a monster story.
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's fun.
• 50:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of excitement to it.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: I kind of roll my eyes when we do a Nick Fury flashback, classable rain flashback because it's like, okay, like it's one of those things where like we have three characters who exist before 1960 and they all have to hang out with each other all the time.
• 50:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: But I do like the monster mash and element of what's going on here.
• 50:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: So, the moment I want to highlight as far as a Wolverine standpoint, they discovered the betrayal of Nick Fury, the LMD.
• 50:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: Logan says, they're called LMD's life model decoys.
• 50:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's a fancy way of saying coward, if you ask me.
• 50:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: What's the matter, Fury?
• 50:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: Not man enough to handle your own mistakes, or are you just scared of what I would do?
• 50:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: What I would do to you when I found out what caused all this.
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_06]: Fury from a safe location far away says Logan Wolverine interrupts save it.
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: I just bonded to one of these damn things.
• 50:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: I know what you did, what you're still doing.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_06]: You want to tell him or should I refer into a to Strickland.
• 50:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: Fury, the dying LMD, says we couldn't have known when we discovered the sample.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: We had no idea what it was, what we had found.
• 51:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: And when we discovered it was alive, Wolverine says you tried to figure out how to kill it.
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: We had to Logan.
• 51:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: We had to know how to hurt it if we were going to
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: We couldn't have known that they shared a hive mind the way they do.
• 51:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: We didn't know it would drive them insane.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: We didn't feel, excuse me, we didn't know it's spawn would feel the pain of the original.
• 51:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: Wolverine says, you put something in a cage, poked and prodded it until it broke, and you act surprised when it comes back to bite you.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: Is that what made you think of me for this, huh?
• 51:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: One animal against another.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: Fury says I needed this cleaned up quietly.
• 51:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: You know the score Logan always have for what it's worth I'm sorry it had to end like this.
• 51:43
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is some cool characterization for Logan in this era Josh thoughts on this interchange.
• 51:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: No, I like it feels it feels solid to to the credit.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: This could be I think this is actually a pretty well structured story.
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: It has a lot of great turnpages reveals.
• 51:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think the characterization of Logan and Fury works for me.
• 52:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a there's a
• 52:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: you know what I mean?
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think this is handled with some grace and some cleverness as well.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: And then Scott, any resonant moments from this issue stand out that you want to highlight?
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, obviously the life model decoy reveal, which is both very Nick Fury.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very shield.
• 52:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very CIA in the 1960s.
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, he's not going to go up river and
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, conceptually as a whole having the the soldier who is bonded to the symbiotes, who's a black soldier, just based on the history of America doing terrible things to
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: numbers the military and particularly black members of the military to the Tuskegee experiments all of that.
• 52:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was really resonant to see both the soldier who has his experience of basically being an experiment for the military and then at the end see it flipped around where he is now working with fury as part of the program and sort of getting subsumed into it was an interesting sort of like twist.
• 53:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anthony our life model decoys queer.
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I think they feel very straight to me.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: They, yeah, and they did sex dolls.
• 53:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it feels, yeah, I don't know.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if they've got like a candle situation down there or what, but I feel like, well, maybe Nick Fury would want it to be sexually functional.
• 53:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
• 53:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so.
• 53:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, there's something very dehumanizing about it.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: Some like model decoys are sexually functional.
• 53:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's very Westworld.
• 53:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maybe.
• 53:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, to Scott's point, like it reminded me a lot of Deathlock, actually.
• 53:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it felt like the same kind of, um, Yeah, a black soldier who is being used in weaponized by his government and dehumanized in the process.
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do think as Josh was saying, like,
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wolverine's characterization here as being a student enough to realize this is another biological mutation that is trying to be used right and he he sides with the symbiot on the those grounds I think that's good I think there's like the way this thing past issues both predator and alien is really fun like even just like the
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The LMD reveal is so alien right like all it needs is like the milky goo shooting out of the Nick Fury or something, but I don't know if it has a ton to say about Vietnam or whatever, but doesn't feel like it ever puts its foot terribly wrong to me, at least.
• 54:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Now, in the current Venom comics, we see still a lot of genres happening.
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: All you went very high concept, sci-fi.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: We have a father's son kind of story being told with Dillon Brock.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: We have Mary Jane as like a girl power fun buddy comedy.
• 54:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: We have Eddie Brock carnage.
• 54:59
  [SPEAKER_06]: We had that recent like murderer.
• 55:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: What's the story they just did Scott in Spider-Man?
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: There is that like spiral guy murder and all their families.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: So we have the serial killer slasher.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, I forgot that guy's name the the codex whatever.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, well yeah, I will open it
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, I was like, oh, that his name was Torment.
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Torment and the whole sort of like life spiral thing.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah.
• 55:24
  [SPEAKER_06]: So Jordan White, beautiful job, my friend, as always, giving us some fun venom comics these days.
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_06]: How are we feeling about venom?
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: As we are wrapping up our conversation, I'd love to hear you in your resonant thoughts.
• 55:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: As always, just what a delight to hang with each of you.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: I love each of you and your big beautiful brains.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: So thanks for hanging with me today.
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean it's it's one of the most versatile crayons in the Marvel box.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think as we've been talking about like you can do any genre with it.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The audience understands immediately what you're doing.
• 55:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as a writer, you kind of get to decide how much of the freight you want to bring along, right?
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like are you going to have to explain null in the all black sword or not and like.
• 56:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The audience is willing to play along.
• 56:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think as much as you are.
• 56:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I love that this character's around.
• 56:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love that you can do something silly or something serious and usually something gay.
• 56:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, love it.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: Augustin, my show everybody, we're gonna theme around Dark Star and the Dark Force.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: So this was really interesting for research for me to do as we're building into that concept next month.
• 56:26
  [SPEAKER_06]: So stay tuned to have a lot of thoughts on that.
• 56:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, final venom thoughts.
• 56:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, just our conversation today kind of like highlighted the things I like about Venon.
• 56:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: I do like the mysterious other side of yourself that you're challenging again.
• 56:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: I do think it's a Logan situation than where we know about the past, the less special and the less mysterious that becomes and that shoots a couple of potential stories, you know, in the knees, but I like what we write today.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think there's a venom for everyone.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's the most amazing part.
• 56:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: And if you want to spend 99 cents, you can get a new venom skin and literally any mobile
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Scott?
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think Venom is a fascinating character who has become a pop culture icon in a way that, you know, that's reached the levels of Spider-Man Logan.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's instantly recognizable.
• 57:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the character has, you know, so much staying power because of a lot of the reasons that we discussed today.
• 57:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the incredible versatility.
• 57:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can tell a comedic Venom story.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can tell a terrifying Venom story.
• 57:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: you can tell Alan Newings been telling extraordinarily high concepts, sci-fi, venom stories, and there's really something there for everyone.
• 57:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just have to find your particular flavor of venom.
• 57:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: Talking about genres and making it X-Men again, what are your thoughts on venom bonding with this character?
• 57:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Anthony Venom bonding with Dup.
• 57:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I think that I think that you always have to zig when you expect a zag with Dup.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that Venom can't bond with Dup.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dup is too deep.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: That would be my take.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Scott Venom bonding with Storm.
• 57:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's sort of overkill.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's already a goddess.
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Venom is sometimes a space god and you know, it's a hat on a hat.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Josh Venom and Dazzler?
• 58:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I'm into that.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: But the sonic element would kind of be a problem.
• 58:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Would it not?
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think there's a cool design to be had there.
• 58:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know how you circumvent the two things we know for sure about Venom, what the one thing we love about Dazzler is her music.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: Anthony Venom and Saber Tooth.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, perfect.
• 58:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's kind of, I'd be stunned if it hasn't been done, actually.
• 58:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's kind of exactly.
• 58:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a big mushy blonde murderer.
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like that's what Venom does best, right?
• 58:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: thought Venom and uh and strong guy.
• 58:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: He does like big guys from New York.
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: I think you can probably work with that.
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Venom and multiple man's interesting too.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: Can he, can he duplicate the symbiote?
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hmm interesting.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: The symbiote can handle that much self-loathing.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: and Josh finally Venom and Toad.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's something there.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's a cool design to be had there.
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's harder when you make a Venom symbiote to maybe a character that doesn't have the wealth of stories behind them, the wealth of characterization that's been consistent.
• 59:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: It just becomes Venom being Venom.
• 59:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I think it's always more interesting when you find a character who is very clearly defined and used to row a symbiote onto them.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: Who is the Eddie Brock of the X-Men?
• 59:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: Is it Alex Summers?
• 59:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Catholic who hates himself.
• 59:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's great for Daredevil for that exact reason, I guess.
• 59:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: That would be another one that would be surprising if they haven't hooked up.
• 59:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: Wolf's name?
• 59:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that could be fun.
• 59:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like Joggerna checks some of the boxes.
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: Simply don't juggerna.
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's a lot of genres for this guy.
• 59:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: All right, I had a delightful time with each of you.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much for spending your evening with me.
• 59:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: I just adore all of you.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thanks for your time.
• 59:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: Everybody can follow the show at Graemalk in Under Score, Lane on Instagram most readily.
• 59:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: Mark Bernardo, and we're reviewing Logan Shadows Society number 1.
• 59:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: Over on the Patreon this month, we are exploring all characters with the wings.
• 1:00:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: Scott's going to be joining me for a conversation about Bloodhawk from X-Fent 29-9 as one of our featured episodes.
• 1:00:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: If you have not looked at my book game Mormon Dad, it'd be widely appreciated if you did.
• 1:00:12
  [SPEAKER_06]: I hope you loved it.
• 1:00:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: If I will be at FlameCon and the Uncanny Experience conventions in the next couple of months, thanks everybody for the ongoing support.
• 1:00:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes Scott social media usually Scott free Mr. Scott free.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will also be at FlameCon.
• 1:00:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will also chat.
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be at the uncanny experience.
• 1:00:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm one of the featured cause players by this point.
• 1:00:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's probably been announced.
• 1:00:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Captain Britain all weekend.
• 1:00:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, come say hi.
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: You can find me online at Lost His Keyes Man, I Lost My Keyes Man, and as far as comics goes, my story with Bradley Clayton and Marvel Pride, we're going to open a rate of Ultron came out May, that hasn't come out yet here, but you know, timing works.
• 1:00:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then I have a short in an upcoming Marvel Tocon rivals anthology that will be announced any minute out.
• 1:01:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It can find me on most things that aren't occupied by fascists at Miyakupa, M-E-A-K-O-O-P-A.
• 1:01:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you like Venom and Horny stories about said character, you should check out the Marvel Swim Suit Special.
• 1:01:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go see how I have already implemented all of these thoughts about Venom in there.
• 1:01:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: The art is by Pablo Colar, where I work with Anna Vendor's Academy, and it looks incredible.
• 1:01:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go check that out.
• 1:01:33
  [SPEAKER_06]: Anthony, we did, it'll come out at the start of June, but we did a script read of classic X-Men number 12 or 11 and we got to reference your Phil Haloran story from Avengers Academy with really fun revisit that that little nugget.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll have her in the number two appear in the app.
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, the we son your phrases once again at working in those games very well done.
• 1:01:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: All right, everybody, it's so lovely to see you.
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, and if you haven't read Josh's Planet of the Apes meets the fantastic four series, please go check it out.
• 1:02:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's delightful mix of both worlds.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: Josh, I really enjoyed it.
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, thank you.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, getting this long box has to go find those eggs.
• 1:02:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Alright, everybody, thank you.
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: Take care of yourselves.
• 1:02:12
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hey everybody, thanks for sticking around for our newest episode of Expoze.
• 1:02:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: Here is your official content warning.
• 1:02:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're about to get a little saucy, and this may not be one you want to listen to around the kids.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: I have three lovely guests here who have no idea what they've signed up for, and we're just going to jump right in.
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to start with Justin Cosmic.
• 1:02:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: Justin, welcome back.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: My simple question for you as we're beginning is Alex Summers,
• 1:02:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Um, and the words of demand to Martini, he is a hymbo.
• 1:02:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And honestly, I see it visually.
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: As somebody who caused plays the character and knows a bit about him, even though he hasn't been written well in quite some time, he's just a blunt, pretty boy.
• 1:02:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: Russell Donaldman just did that new cover of him and like the goblin prince thing and he's giving a lot of s-cheek.
• 1:02:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: Can you're like, okay, okay.
• 1:02:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, let me also welcome Rob Solerno.
• 1:03:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: Rob just had to get up and close the door so his mom couldn't hear this conversation.
• 1:03:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: Rob is Alex Summers fuckable.
• 1:03:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh 100%.
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am Alex Summers, Chief Defense Attorney.
• 1:03:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alex Summers may have been my first crush.
• 1:03:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so funny that this was the topic of conversation.
• 1:03:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was actually thinking about this today when I was at the gym.
• 1:03:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think one of my, like, I imprinted on havoc.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like, that's my first Marvel character because people were trading the Marvel cards.
• 1:03:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: the 1992 set or 1991 set and there's this gorgeous drawing of havoc by Jim Lee that it's just he's like blowing up a giant building or something you can't really see what it is that he's like shooting and then on the flip side of the card because he's wearing the black costume on the front.
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the flip side, it's him just his face, like the mug shot that Jim Lee draws and Jim Lee draws a perfect man.
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think, Jim Lee, I think that drawing may have ruined me for other blondes.
• 1:03:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't date blondes, but that like image, just like that's, it has imprinted me.
• 1:04:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, and I have always just followed him through the ex-books.
• 1:04:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ex-factor was my like book of choice in the 90s.
• 1:04:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's had a rough couple of decades.
• 1:04:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: of writing, but I will I will stick with him.
• 1:04:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: Robin, I got to talk all about havoc on the havoc trial ages ago, and luckily we can only see Robert rub from the neck up right now.
• 1:04:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: We don't need to know what's going on.
• 1:04:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: Let me also welcome Dante Rodriguez.
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: Dante is Alex Somersfuckable.
• 1:04:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Chad, this is a really tough question for me.
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: As a coarser, cause player talking about my son.
• 1:04:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: But otherwise, yeah, he's a total babe.
• 1:04:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like that man can get it.
• 1:04:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's gorgeous.
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Rob, let me have you take this one first.
• 1:04:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is a category we call fuckdate and bring home to mom.
• 1:04:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: If you look at Alex's love life, you can pick someone he's dated or someone he hasn't dated, but who is the person Alex should fuck?
• 1:04:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: I do think we want to define Alex's primarily heterosexual.
• 1:04:59
  [SPEAKER_06]: I think that that's the way the character swings, but who's his best fuck?
• 1:05:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: If we must.
• 1:05:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: Me says rough.
• 1:05:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: right so unfair.
• 1:05:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think okay because there's really only been like 3-ish, 3 in a bit havoc love interest over his nearly 60 year history at Marvel Comics.
• 1:05:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Polaris Madeline, The Wasp, and Scarlet McKenzie-ish.
• 1:05:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would, I would, of those three, I think the fuck would definitely be Manlton.
• 1:05:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: I, uh, I think he, I think he, uh, would fuck Faitel.
• 1:05:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: That's my, uh, that's, that's my deep-dig answer.
• 1:05:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there's something though about Faitel.
• 1:05:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Faitel definitely fucks Nate Gray in that one issue.
• 1:05:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, is this a, like, you know, um, uh, gay on goal, like, uh, SunSwap, the family family dick.com thing that we'd be looking into here.
• 1:05:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It just, it's a little skinny.
• 1:05:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't, I don't want them to mix.
• 1:05:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: I don't want them to like cross swords Dante from Alex's love life.
• 1:06:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: Who's the person he should date?
• 1:06:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ooh, who should he date?
• 1:06:06
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, man.
• 1:06:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Is it less?
• 1:06:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if they need to keep going at it.
• 1:06:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, to be honest, like they've had such a rocky relationship.
• 1:06:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, but they're always on and off so much at some point.
• 1:06:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: You kind of have to just call it.
• 1:06:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: Is it Jenna Van Dine?
• 1:06:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: Rob, I'll notice you left out one of have great loves, certainly not intentionally.
• 1:06:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Did you leave out Annie Gazzakanean?
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, good God.
• 1:06:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry, look, the Chuck Austin run.
• 1:06:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is something special about it.
• 1:06:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It exists in a parallel universe as far as I'm concerned.
• 1:06:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
• 1:06:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: So don't say, what do you think?
• 1:06:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think considering his history with all of these women and honestly, a lot of trauma that comes with it, I think he needs like an original, maybe non-powered character to settle down with.
• 1:06:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like if anybody deserves to like get written off stories and have a happy ending,
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, okay, and then Justin Kyle.
• 1:07:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh Kyle, shall I do?
• 1:07:04
  [SPEAKER_06]: Justin, who is the if we're Alex's mom still alive?
• 1:07:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: Who's the girl he would take home to mom?
• 1:07:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Who's his forever love?
• 1:07:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Um, so this is gonna be wishful thinking and maybe it's a little projecting just you know, maybe ingain having dressed as Alex, but Alex kind of gives messy by energy to me with all that some projection and trying so hard to like measure up to the expectations of his brother
• 1:07:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: between the comparisons of him and Polaris, being kind of like the B to your Scott and Jean, I don't ship those two again.
• 1:07:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: I want Lorna to do her own thing.
• 1:07:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: If anything, I've always been a ship, I know we're getting a little off topic with this one.
• 1:07:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've always shipped Lorna with Gambit, but I mean, Rogues kind of in the way there.
• 1:07:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, getting back to Alex, as far as his past relationships, I do think Maddie is the best one, even if Maddie,
• 1:07:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: it was married to his brother as far as like the existing ones.
• 1:07:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: As far as new loves go, you can't get any more intimate than constructing Iceman's body out of his urine, and that's canon.
• 1:08:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thanks for Boston.
• 1:08:10
  [SPEAKER_06]: I think Shadow Stark had rock his world, but I really don't see what you're just mentioned about like a human character.
• 1:08:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: We could chip him with Annie.
• 1:08:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: I could see it after me yesterday.
• 1:08:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: You don't think of Annie, not Annie.
• 1:08:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I actually used to ship havoc with Gambit.
• 1:08:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's like a scene and executioner song where they're like interrogating Cannonball together and there was something in that energy that like reading it as a I don't know I guess I was nine I was like there's something here cannonball would watch but pretend to close his eyes
• 1:08:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, Justin, this question's for you.
• 1:08:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: What else are Alex Summer's turn-ons in bed?
• 1:08:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, looking at his history and who he's been with, I think he likes to be submissive.
• 1:08:48
  [SPEAKER_06]: He likes a woman with a spike heel.
• 1:08:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's a bit of a sub-bottom, even as a straight guy.
• 1:08:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: Even to Annie, he was in a coma, so she was, he was her sub.
• 1:08:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, like even in even in the mutant juxtapera like again, he definitely needs someone to like stroke his hair until him.
• 1:09:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: He's been a good boy, right?
• 1:09:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like a part of it.
• 1:09:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Rob, what are what are have X turn off in bed?
• 1:09:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He, I mean, the the conpo the opposite of that.
• 1:09:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like he doesn't he would not do well with like having to take charge.
• 1:09:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think he'd constantly like
• 1:09:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: he would feel like he's not doing a good enough job and he'd need to like constantly ask questions, which is like kills the mood if the DOM is asking all of that stuff.
• 1:09:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you know it's so hard to figure out like what would actually like be a deal breaker for him because like honestly like Maddie was absolutely talking about Scott while they were fucking and that didn't like that wasn't a thing.
• 1:09:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: I mean, like it would be so funny to see him end up with someone like husk and like be so grossed out but so turned out at the same time.
• 1:09:52
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's there's some interesting parallels for him like in the bedroom where you're like, okay, he's looking at me.
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think the thing is like he's probably you're probably right that like husk would be a turnoffer.
• 1:10:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: He he does give like he gives kind of like vanilla sub like like he's not going to want to do like gross out stuff.
• 1:10:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, like none of that's gonna work for him.
• 1:10:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: Monet would break him in half.
• 1:10:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: Right.
• 1:10:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: But he likes it.
• 1:10:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
• 1:10:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: He likes it.
• 1:10:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: He likes it.
• 1:10:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: But you know what?
• 1:10:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, let's just be real here.
• 1:10:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's, let's not like have him like mixed up with the Gen X kids.
• 1:10:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cause like, I mean, I guess at this point now, they're all like, you know, adults.
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's giving talk about the Chuck Austin run.
• 1:10:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me say.
• 1:10:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're, we have that infamous scene in the sky.
• 1:10:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: I know what you're talking about.
• 1:10:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay Dante, this is a section we call what those powers do.
• 1:10:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: Could Alex use this power in a specific way in the bedroom that would enhance his sexual experience.
• 1:10:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: So the first one is his ability to absorb ambient cosmic energy and store it inside himself as an energy source.
• 1:10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, let's see.
• 1:10:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: If the bedroom is in a setting that's close to the sun, maybe.
• 1:11:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, something where he's like he can kind of protect the person at the same time while pleasing them.
• 1:11:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: Do you know who I see Alex with?
• 1:11:10
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh my god.
• 1:11:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's perfect.
• 1:11:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's it's outlaw.
• 1:11:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like the cow.
• 1:11:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, who's like, who's like, when you got, I love it so much actually.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Brilliant.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's hilarious.
• 1:11:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, Justin, what those powers do?
• 1:11:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: Number two, what can, and this is a funny word for this section.
• 1:11:26
  [SPEAKER_06]: But what can havoc do with the plasma bursts?
• 1:11:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well.
• 1:11:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: plasma burst.
• 1:11:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: I guess it depends who he's with honestly.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think he could literally heat up the room.
• 1:11:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Make it almost sound alike.
• 1:11:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I do the you'll talk more energy.
• 1:11:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Do you think when he orgasms little concentric circles below.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now that's a visual I want to see.
• 1:11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: the cannon ball of it all, because he's not invulnerable when he's blasting.
• 1:11:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: I guess the only other thing to with the plasma blasts is like if they're doing it in the dark, it would be great to light up the room.
• 1:12:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, a little laser show.
• 1:12:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, and then Rob, the third thing, what those powers do, what could Alex do with an immunity to the powers of Cyclops and Vulcan in the bedroom?
• 1:12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was wondering, what is this third power?
• 1:12:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's as many others in for power.
• 1:12:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think he would use his plasma blasts to like, oh, I'm lighting sexy candles like he wouldn't go like the where where my mind goes, which is like We've seen like dildos with heating elements in them and shit like that like he is
• 1:12:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: there are fun things you can do with with heat powers, but like the whole thing with like being invulnerable to his brother's powers, Jesus.
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I mean like we're getting back into that family dick calm discussion here, uh, or he can just fuck outlaw in the punch dimension, but he's completely immune.
• 1:12:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: How would outlaw get?
• 1:12:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like would she survive in the past?
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's like she hulk, man.
• 1:12:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:12:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: She'd be okay.
• 1:13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 1:13:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: I've been leaning into oh, I'm sorry, Rob.
• 1:13:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no, I'm I'm like I'm also just thinking like okay.
• 1:13:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there is there a way around the the like the incest element of this and it's like well, what a mimic was the third in this party and then you know like mimic is just
• 1:13:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: like unloading on him in from every office in concentric circles.
• 1:13:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Although this discussion with his use of powers in the bedroom kind of got me thinking back to the ship too, I just haven't popped into my head now.
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Here me out with this frenzy.
• 1:13:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: She was in love with Scott.
• 1:13:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: She was heartbroken.
• 1:13:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think her getting with his brother is very on theme with him getting
• 1:13:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: We forced her to, a lesser choice, but friends, he's amazing.
• 1:13:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I
• 1:14:10
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, this last section I've been leaning into character tropes as I put these together.
• 1:14:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: So if I look at, if I look at Alex in kind of the horror genre, we're left with kind of the being that has like the black hole at its center, right?
• 1:14:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: So here's three characters that kind of fall into this trope.
• 1:14:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: Fuck Mary Kill, one is no face from Spirit at a way.
• 1:14:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: One is the anti-spiral from a tension-topped gutter lagoon, and one is Oku from Samurai Jack.
• 1:14:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: And these characters are kind of oddly similar, but very distinctively different at the same time, all basically living voids that are gonna chill whatever goes inside them.
• 1:14:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: What do you think Alex would answer here?
• 1:14:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: He would fuck Aku because Aku is a shape-changer and he can change into Anybody that Alex wants so anyone from his past anyone that he would fantasize about So that just opens up a whole realm of possibility.
• 1:15:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mary.
• 1:15:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's gonna marry No faith no face like reflects back emotion.
• 1:15:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's such a soft boy like he needs somebody that He can really relate to
• 1:15:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: No face is like the third for he and Madeline.
• 1:15:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: I can actually really.
• 1:15:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, honestly, like, and then yeah, we're going to kill anti spiral.
• 1:15:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, Justin, Rob, did you get it right?
• 1:15:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I pretty much agree, although I'd probably swap no face in a coup, but for very mighty.
• 1:15:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think no face could match his free kiffies in the right mood.
• 1:15:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just like looking at the, so I don't know anything about these characters, but I'm looking at the pictures that you sent me.
• 1:15:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this character, Aku, is for some reason like giving me Madeline prior.
• 1:15:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like maybe it's the cinched waist and the flames in the background that are making you think this, but that's, it just feels like it's the closest match to his history.
• 1:15:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's why I picked Mary for Alex.
• 1:16:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here's the thing like if he's fucking no face and he's like not bringing the right energy to it and no face is reciprocating that energy that could be like a really sad moment you know like not really an enjoyable fuck fast well and Alex with all that ambient energy storage you put him like in a room where he can absorb more cosmic energy and it just goes on and on right there's a fuck fest happening for him here
• 1:16:26
  [SPEAKER_06]: These are interesting conversations.
• 1:16:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: We've learned a lot about Alex Summers when we didn't even mean to, but thank you for joining me for the Havik Expoze.
• 1:16:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: Do we have any final thoughts?
• 1:16:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I am just so grateful to be in the room with this conversation happening with two people who love, love, love,
• 1:16:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: We've done this with Colossus and Storm and a couple of others.
• 1:16:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: If you go listen to the exposés, we have an Iceman one that's pretty fun.
• 1:16:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: But Robin, particularly, I think you'll love the Colossus conversation a lot.
• 1:16:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fantastic.
• 1:16:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would just like to say, I, to me, I still think Alex and Lorna are one true pairing.
• 1:17:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I, like, it's so, it's
• 1:17:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: weird to me like that that era in um X factor under Peter David and Jamie Midhase.
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: They just have like the perfect chemistry.
• 1:17:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that the way that they relate to each other, that they tease each other, that they they really love each other.
• 1:17:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And um
• 1:17:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's always just been like, there's never been a really good reason for them to break up other than like mind control and I have a I have major X man writing aspirations and this last few years I've been writing a lot of original content just to practice professional script writing and I wrote a four issue literally a written it wrote a four issue scripted Polaris limited series.
• 1:17:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: where I'm trying to shine her into this spotlight.
• 1:17:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: And she's legally changed her name to Polaris.
• 1:17:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: She's living in the city.
• 1:17:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: She's working in a museum.
• 1:17:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: She's loving her life.
• 1:17:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: But she's gone back.
• 1:17:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's like some weird threats showing up based on her being the daughter of Magneto.
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: And she's gone back to therapy with Dr. Leonard Samson, who's just really fucking up her brain.
• 1:17:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: And he just really gets in her head one day.
• 1:17:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: And she has a little too much to drink.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: And then she wakes up in bed with Alex Summers.
• 1:17:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: And he's like, God damn it.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_06]: I can't get away.
• 1:18:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's a whole scene.
• 1:18:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: I wrote, I'm really happy with it.
• 1:18:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love this idea of Polaris in the city, but it's like Caroline in the city from the night.
• 1:18:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: There might have been, there might have been some similar thinking patterns.
• 1:18:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: I try to find templates to look like characters and to, all right, everybody, much love.
• 1:18:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you for listening.
• 1:18:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's always a joy to make silly content with friends, loves you and y'all.
• 1:18:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: Have a good night.
• 1:18:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: We'll see you back here next week for another expose.
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.
• 1:18:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah, with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.
• 1:18:37
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• 1:18:44
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• 1:18:50
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• 1:18:52
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• 1:19:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: We'll see you back here next time on Grimmulkin Lane.