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Bonus Patreon Release: Red Ghost and the Super-Apes! With Molly Lazer and Shawn Porett! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

0:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grey Mulkin Lane Patreon.
0:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I feel like I should uh, open with like a Like we're doing uh, we're doing monkeys today.
0:10
[SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna jump into the world of the super apes who I've always been extremely fond of and researching them made me more fond of them question mark, but maybe also less fond of them.
0:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean while I fucking hate the red ghost.
0:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I've learned what a weird character
0:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Friends, I love all of these guys.
0:29
[SPEAKER_03]: July on Grimalkin' Land on both the main show and the Patreon is all dedicated to what we are calling Colossus Month.
0:35
[SPEAKER_03]: So, over here on the Patreon channel, we are hitting different Russian or Soviet characters that kind of tell the Colossus story from a very different angle and the super apes are not who you think of first, but this is gonna be a fun and delicious episode with two of my very favorite people to hang out with former Marvel editor, Molly Laser, and the voice of Hercules, Sean Porat, it's nice to see you, Bob.
0:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me have you both introduce yourselves with your pronouns and just kind of as an early intro question, what is your personal relationship with monkeys?
1:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have any good monkey stories?
1:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's begin with Molly and Molly, welcome back to my main.
1:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, hi everybody.
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: My Molly Laser, my pronouns are sheher, formal marble editor 2004 to 2008 current high school reading teacher.
1:20
[SPEAKER_01]: My, oh, monkey stories.
1:22
[SPEAKER_03]: That's kind of a weird thing to think about, right?
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have stories about other zoo animals, but not monkeys.
1:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have a favorite monkey?
1:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, favorite current monkey on the righteous gemstones, which is why haven't finished the most recent season, but BJ's helper monkey, Dr. Watson, is pretty awesome.
1:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Excellent, he is.
1:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And let me also welcome it, Sean.
1:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Sean.
1:48
[SPEAKER_02]: That means hello.
1:50
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Sean.
1:51
[SPEAKER_02]: He, they.
1:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm from Solving for Jackson, Exman Test podcast.
1:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I've always loved monkeys.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it stems from my childhood, my favorite.
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, one of my two favorites of the favorite cousins, playful heart monkey and swift heart rabbit.
2:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, goodness, we are of a similar age.
2:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember those like Saturday morning feelings.
2:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are a lot of fun.
2:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna toss some monkeys at you both and we're just gonna see, now if you don't know them, you can pass, that's okay.
2:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Molly, are you more a Gorilla Grod or more Mojo Jojo?
2:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I'm gonna go with gorilla grad on that one only because I actually know who he is as opposed to I've heard of Mojo Jojo Jojo, Mojo Jojo is from the power puff girls.
2:32
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a little chimpanzee, but they're like a Casing, you know, like that's he's not power puff girls are actually past my era
2:41
[SPEAKER_03]: That's fair.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
2:42
[SPEAKER_03]: You're a little past mine, too.
2:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Sean, and we're going to go of an age.
2:46
[SPEAKER_03]: You may not know these McGillika Rilla or Grape Eight.
2:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Ooh.
2:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't really know McGill.
2:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to go with Grape Eight.
2:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you remember Grape Eight?
2:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I do remember Grape Eight with with with with with this friend Beagley.
2:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Beagley.
2:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody look up Grape Eight.
2:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
2:59
[SPEAKER_03]: The 40 foot all purple gorilla.
3:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Molly, we're going to go hit monkey or curious George.
3:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's George and just to note that because I thought of this after I said Dr. Watson, the 2006 Curious George movie with music by Johnson Jackson, that is a quality film.
3:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I would just like to say quality.
3:19
[SPEAKER_03]: John, although we could do this for hours, because there's so many monkey characters out there, King Louis from the Jungle Book or Donkey Kong.
3:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you're gonna have, I wanna be like you in my head all day, but I immediately started that as soon as he said.
3:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
3:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I'm always good stuck in there, rent free.
3:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna go King Louis just because I'm interested in everything like he is.
3:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, gee, King Louis or Christopher Walken as King Louis.
3:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of offended even as of, okay.
3:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I just wanted to remind you that Christopher Walken once did a full musical number as Kiglui and the juggle bookrie bay.
3:53
[SPEAKER_03]: We're here to talk about the super apes today.
3:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, weirdly, I did a monkey episode of my show with my friend Theo Chase a while back.
3:59
[SPEAKER_03]: We covered the 70s mutant character, The Gibbon, who is indelibly associated with Marvel's monkey verse, which we'll talk about briefly today.
4:07
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a
4:07
[SPEAKER_03]: universe out there with all monkeys superheroes i uh i like monkeys a lot i was a kid that like used to read like animal insect lapidias when i was little i would love to like go bird watching and like hang out at the zoo i didn't want to like rush through the zoo i wanted to bring like a sketch pad and like watch animal behavior you know that kind of stuff
4:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Any time the monkeys are like super active when they're swinging around, I really love it.
4:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I love a baby monkey, like you get out of cage with like a baby gorilla in it and they're just, it's so ridiculous.
4:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And monkeys aren't everything, right?
4:35
[SPEAKER_03]: They're, they're connected to human evolution.
4:38
[SPEAKER_03]: We associate them with human characteristics.
4:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Monkeys also used to be sent into outer space quite often.
4:43
[SPEAKER_03]: If you go back into the United States slash Russia,
4:47
[SPEAKER_03]: cold war, beginning kind of in the 1940s through World War II.
4:51
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of complex history, but the US and Russia were both trying to get animals in space so that they could get men in space.
4:58
[SPEAKER_03]: There were some monkeys sent into space in the 40s and 50s.
5:00
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of them died.
5:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Russia also sent out a lot of dogs because I think there were even some cats.
5:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The first creature who ever lived and survived going into orbit was a dog named Lika in Russia in
5:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And the first human in space was not until 1961, which was still several years before the landing on the moon.
5:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Russia put the first human in space.
5:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's again, I'm Yuri Gagarin in 1961.
5:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And then in the US put a monkey in space that same year, named Ham, Ham the chimpanzee, who also survived.
5:31
[SPEAKER_03]: He's the first private that survived space.
5:33
[SPEAKER_03]: When we open a fantastic four number one, it's very indelibly associated with the space race and read is trying to get everybody to the moon and they got a break into the facility and they get bombarded by cosmic rays.
5:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's just a year so later in April 1963, we're standing in Jack Kirby, give us the Russian version of this story.
5:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Ivan Crava, a Crava, who is a, or I suppose in Russian, it'd be Ivan Crava, who is a scientist with iconic hair.
6:03
[SPEAKER_03]: who wants to emulate what they did with the fantastic four.
6:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he has a bunch of monkeys that he's been experimenting on.
6:12
[SPEAKER_03]: He loads them in, they are trained monkeys, and they go into space and get bombarded by cosmic rays and get superpowers.
6:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And they come back to fight the fantastic four multiple times.
6:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Although the story gets amped up really quickly, because this is where the watcher shows up to, and things get kind of insane.
6:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Molly, I know you've been reading through the early FF with your kids over the last few years.
6:32
[SPEAKER_03]: What was their reaction to reading the SuperApes story 60 years after publication?
6:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So we did that really, really early on.
6:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Just for reference, my children at this point have probably read about 250 issues of fantastic four.
6:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We're actually in the Dwayne McDuffy era right now.
6:49
[SPEAKER_01]: After skipping a whole chunk in the middle, we read the SuperApes really early on when they were like four.
6:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And they got a kick out of it.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they were really more interested in the watcher in general.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Thought they thought he was funny.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The eighth were funny.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't come back as much as some of the other villains from that era.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the mad thinker or the puppet master.
7:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, they enjoyed it when he was there.
7:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I've done the trial of the puppet master on my show, and I'm a big mad thinkerhead.
7:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I just haven't been able to fit him into my rotation yet.
7:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I like that guy all.
7:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Sean, were these characters that you were familiar with before I invited you to do this episode?
7:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Were you aware of this super-powered Russian apes?
7:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe he just showed up in one of the Spider-Man comics and that was like my first introduction to him ever so yeah the Red Ghost and it was a very similar story where like he lost control the Apes and they had to figure out who I'd control of them so that was like my first introduction just recently so like you came on right around the time I first heard of him so I am excited for a lesson today.
7:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you might be referencing an Avengers title by Sivor Lando, which is where the ghosts of the ghost, like the cosmic ghosts of the apes, the red ghost used to experiment on.
7:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right
8:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, if you go off of Red Ghost in the 80s, where I first read some of the comics you signed, he's very sexy old man.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got this open shirt with his big strong chest showing.
8:25
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got a long, great.
8:28
[SPEAKER_02]: He's kind of like, I mentioned him last time I was on your show, actually.
8:30
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like riff-fraff.
8:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my gosh.
8:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my gosh.
8:34
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, my gosh.
8:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like long time top with like long hair.
8:38
[SPEAKER_03]: My kids call that haircut a Picard.
8:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Like from like Picard, like it's bald on top and like the ring around the side, but his is like grown out hippie style.
8:46
[SPEAKER_03]: He has a whole era in the 70s where it's like open shirt all the way to the naval and like a necklace on.
8:52
[SPEAKER_03]: He's wearing skin tight.
8:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It's giving very much like a Putin writing the bear shirtless slick energy.
9:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Nice reference.
9:03
[SPEAKER_03]: He's an interesting character.
9:04
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a brilliant scientist who's obsessed with mutating monkeys and then like bossing them around and you know like many characters with much power comes much responsibility or how power corrupts I suppose is the better.
9:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
9:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So he gets to go like full world conquering Vibes a lot.
9:23
[SPEAKER_03]: The red ghost itself that name red implying kind of communism or Russia in the way that like the red star or red square would be and the ghost Something invisible something that you don't see coming and when they go through their their cosmic rays He gets the power of intangibility specifically
9:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Which gets used to various effects over the years.
9:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But again, he's not one of the most often used FF villains.
9:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think he makes a credible threat, Molly?
9:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So, okay.
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I was reading your notes for this issue.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sorry if I'm jumping ahead here.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But where you noted that each of the apes and then also the red goes to have powers that match up with some of the FF's powers, I literally never thought of that before.
10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that was,
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: fascinating.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And that that in itself makes them a more credible threat even though like in the issues that I was assigned to read and also in the summaries of the issues that you sent me that you read, he is really not that big of a threat.
10:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to talk about that power comparison.
10:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Fantastic 413 April 1963 is where we first meet them, the Red Ghost and his indescribable super-Apes.
10:27
[SPEAKER_03]: We open on Reed Richards experimenting on the energy he's hardest from a meteorite and it explodes.
10:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And he once heard about a meteor that fell in Siberia, quote, flattening 100 square miles of forest.
10:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And he's long suspected that the Russians have learned how to harness this energy to contribute to their own rocket propulsion.
10:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Meanwhile, behind the iron curtain, we meet Iván Craig off.
10:45
[SPEAKER_03]: who is dressed in green fur and has the worst haircut.
10:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the long shaggy mane in the bald top.
10:49
[SPEAKER_03]: He works with monkeys, and he loves to rant about his own power as he trains his pre-selected primates to complete specific tasks.
10:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, later, Reconz will show that he has killed a lot of monkeys along the way, but right now, we just see him being kind of cruel and treating his selected monkeys as kind of slaves.
11:05
[SPEAKER_03]: He'll give them bananas if they do something nice, but he calls them literally my monstrous slaves while he's calling himself a genius.
11:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So he is planning a space flight and he has trained a gorilla to man the flight and he is trained a baboon by starting it How to fire a machine gun and he is trained in a rangatang as the ships repair man Ed so we have a gorilla a baboon and a rangatang as his little buddies the rangatang is it sitting there and it's first panel there's flies buzzing all around it and Craig often like you brainless creature like he does not treat his slaves very well Emily you had some sort of realization
11:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, I did.
11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so if the gorilla is the pilot, when you think about Ben Grimm's body when he becomes the thing, the gorilla asks Johnny is the one who likes Tim Gring with the cars and he's the, and the, and the orangutan is the one who ends up with Johnny like powers.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I have nothing on Sue and the machine gun, but this is like kind of predicting whose powers they will get in.
11:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's not a direct reflection, but we will talk about it, absolutely.
12:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So he says,
12:03
[SPEAKER_03]: at last my crew of apes is ready and now we go to the moon to claim it for the communist empire that is not Russian but that's the red wish you're getting so they launched him to space uh they have timed it for cosmic race to bombard them this is like a little like gamma radiation in marble like we only see the successful attempts at mutations when you got to think like anyone else who's hit by these rays just gets like holes blown open in them or like they wind up with like their testicles withering up or something it's just
12:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It's gonna have to go there.
12:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, it's radiation.
12:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Literally, like, that's what you read about what radiation does to the body.
12:37
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not a pleasant thing usually.
12:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I even, I'm Craig Offshaw, be even more powerful than the fantastic for and so sure my apes together.
12:45
[SPEAKER_03]: We should be Lords of the Solar System.
12:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's kind of like they just opened a box of like birdie bots every flavor beans.
12:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And Yvonne's like, what superpowers will we get?
12:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Wah-ha-ha-ha.
12:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Luckily no one's horribly mutated.
12:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So the gorilla gets massive super strength.
12:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So the thing, right?
12:59
[SPEAKER_03]: He's still a gorilla, but he's super, super strong.
13:02
[SPEAKER_03]: His name is Miklo, M-I-K-L-H-O.
13:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The baboon gets shapeshifting.
13:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is the most powerhouse of the characters, by the way, the reading the baboon history alone.
13:13
[SPEAKER_03]: He's crazy, powerful, and super smart, and like, ingenuity.
13:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I really like this character.
13:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So he's kind of sounds like read to me, right?
13:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Like he's changing his shape.
13:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is Igor.
13:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the orangutan gets magnetic powers, like magneto.
13:27
[SPEAKER_03]: He floats metal around.
13:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is Piotr.
13:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Ivan Evon gets intangibility.
13:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So which is kind of a parallel to Sue in its way, because she turns invisible.
13:35
[SPEAKER_03]: He turns intangible.
13:36
[SPEAKER_03]: My friend David Sexton, who's coming on the show later this fall, wrote the Marvel Mystic Arcana book, like the Marvel Magic Handbooks, and it opens with the idea of magic working in fours, and he does a drug comparison with the fantastic four and other superteams comparing them to the elements where Johnny is fire, read is water, sue is air, and the thing represents earth.
13:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can kind of do that with the apes too, right?
14:02
[SPEAKER_03]: If the gorilla is strength, which is earth, we get the same kind of flow through them with the water magnetic being fire and shape shifting being air.
14:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's an interesting thought-experiment when you look into this.
14:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so both groups, the fantastic for pursue them, they end up in the oxygen-rich environment on the moon.
14:19
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a decaying, crease civilization that has air filters at it.
14:24
[SPEAKER_03]: So we see this used off in the inhumans later live in this blue area of the moon.
14:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's a classic superhero fight, except they're battling monkeys.
14:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And the watcher shows up, and there's a little combat arena, and the babbling turns himself into as best hosts in order to fight the human torch.
14:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And the orangutan, like magnets, sue onto his back.
14:41
[SPEAKER_03]: It is like crawling around with the invisible woman, like stuck to his hair on his back.
14:45
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really good.
14:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And the red goes puts sue in a cell.
14:48
[SPEAKER_03]: He's still starving the monkeys.
14:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And sue compares the apes, quote, to the communist masses.
14:53
[SPEAKER_03]: innocently enslaved by their evil leaders, which is a very 1960s view of communism for them at the American perspective.
15:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Sue ends up feeding the monkeys and they're like, oh, we'll let you out now, which is lovely.
15:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And the red ghost shows up at the watchers house because he wants to steal cosmic weapons.
15:09
[SPEAKER_03]: The fact that the watcher just has this house you can walk.
15:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, if you get to the moon, you can just walk in and steal something.
15:13
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fine.
15:14
[SPEAKER_03]: But the watcher in order to protect himself sends the red goes through a whole bunch of other dimensions and he like floats super speed through like past civilizations and devastated futures and then like lands bag like oh god like that that was not a pleasant experience.
15:28
[SPEAKER_03]: They have end up trapping the red ghost with his like intangibility the super apes freem and they turn on him like planet of the apes style.
15:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Wait, what?
15:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Why are you there to get me that way?
15:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Aiming the ray of me, your eyes, they're gleaming with hatred with vengeance, stay back to you here, be I am your master, I made you what you are, stay back.
15:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And they chase him down the hill on the moon at the end.
15:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a classic superhero introduction, but we have somehow like cosmic time warping involved.
15:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a crazy story.
15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's also an anti-animal testing message, you know, isn't it?
16:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the comparison of the apes to communist civilians is kind of dehumanizing in a way, right?
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: The idea that the brainless masses are following, which is
16:12
[SPEAKER_03]: kind of how liberals will talk about conservatives in America sometimes.
16:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going back to although I voted for her and I love her actually.
16:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Hillary Clinton's like basket of deplorable comment.
16:24
[SPEAKER_03]: If we're getting called apes and monkeys at like the unthinking masses, that's very unpleasant.
16:31
[SPEAKER_03]: but they also say it about us, right?
16:32
[SPEAKER_03]: The woke mobs were compared to monkeys and poor thinking animals.
16:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really arrogant thing to say about anyone, like assuming that someone lacks conscious thought.
16:44
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't have to debate that, but it's uncomfortable whenever I read those types of dehumanizing comments.
16:49
[SPEAKER_02]: No, you have a good point, and I tried to do the same try not to get into that pull.
16:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But my favorite part of hearing you read this was watching Molly's reactions and her shaking your head at just how ridiculous some of it is because yeah, this is like a very classic comic book.
17:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just because in the issue of fantastic for that I read to my children literally like an hour ago, the FF just walked into the watchers house again on the moon.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was just funny that you said that Chad that like, yeah, you could just walk in and chat with the watcher and he'll probably get involved even though he's not supposed to.
17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Who can get it the most, by the way?
17:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you more for the gorilla, the orangutan or the baboon?
17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Who's your power player?
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what?
17:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I like the orangutan with his magnetic powers which are used in pretty interesting ways.
17:33
[SPEAKER_03]: The baboon can get it every time.
17:34
[SPEAKER_03]: The way he uses his shapeshifting as you read these appearances is insane.
17:39
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really crazy.
17:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Sean, that makes you the gorilla.
17:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope we're going to be the super apes.
17:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I'll be piotter, why not?
17:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's another filter, just like the losses.
17:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so in FF29 we see them back.
17:52
[SPEAKER_03]: There's another hilarious attack.
17:53
[SPEAKER_03]: The badminton gets to wear little purple shorts this time.
17:56
[SPEAKER_03]: He also gets to drop in his best host hood with air holes on it on the human torch.
18:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The use of his best host in the 60s is
18:03
[SPEAKER_03]: really insane yeah still a specialist not putting in more reason comics so much as best as in Marvel like we could do a whole as best as episode just as best as themed and there would be plenty to talk about the gorilla gets to tie read Richards to a car that's driving away while holding him in place so it like stretches read out he's like no
18:21
[SPEAKER_03]: The baboon gets to change into a spinning spiky ball.
18:24
[SPEAKER_03]: The red goes drops them on the moon so that the FF will die from oxygen deprivation, but they get to the watchers house just in time.
18:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, there's another little fight and Ivan gets an upgrade because he gets to carry a gun that fires electron disintegrator pellets, which uh, Sean, what do you think an electron disintegrator pellet gun does?
18:43
[SPEAKER_02]: disintegrates electrons?
18:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Which results in?
18:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
19:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, of the red ghost is in purple and he teams up with the mole man in Avengers annual three the super apes are back He now calls them his three beauties and they attack the this is fantastic for annual three excuse me the big read and Sue wedding Issue they attack the wedding and the girl like it's to pound on Sue's force filled while she's in her wedding dress and Dr.
19:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Strange like ends up sending them all to an alien dimension
19:25
[SPEAKER_03]: which feels like pretty harsh, actually.
19:27
[SPEAKER_03]: But one of the things I've noticed here is the different levels of loyalty between Ivan and the Apes consistently.
19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: They work for him and then they turn on him.
19:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of a funny ongoing pattern.
19:38
[SPEAKER_03]: In Ironman 1516, which is actually a really fun read, Ivan is like feeling himself.
19:42
[SPEAKER_03]: He gets tight red pants.
19:43
[SPEAKER_03]: He's got his open shirt down to the naval necklace, some hair gel, so his hair's like all spiked out like Wolverine's style to the side and good for you, man.
19:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And he has spent months nursing the insane
19:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I have a unicorn out there episode out there with their lords.
19:59
[SPEAKER_03]: If you've heard it, you know this character, but it doesn't work So Iván flees and he blows up his house and then he builds a huge cosmic raid device because he wants a new army of Superpowered primates and we get to see kind of a creepy aspect of his abilities because he can like float around as like a red Mist in the air which is really creepy.
20:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a little blood.
20:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a red ghost literally We don't see him use that often
20:20
[SPEAKER_03]: and he says that he can contract the mallet fuels of his missed in order to break things.
20:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so he invades a military base.
20:28
[SPEAKER_03]: He powers up some new apes, one of them is super strong and the other gets telepathy.
20:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And he calls them Alpha and Beta, so we get our first expansion of the primate program.
20:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Ironman and the unicorn are there, they are fighting and there's a big battle with the apes and the apes turn on Ivonne.
20:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, you made us super strong in super telepathic so we can build our own army like fuck you.
20:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they leave and we've never seen them again.
20:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the telepathic ape and super strong ape are just wandering around their alpha and beta just waiting for an X-Men fight sub day, which is, but watching Ivonne's costume go 1970s is really amusing to me as well.
21:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we jump to Defenders 7 and 8
21:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Never again, will I lie myself with apes?
21:09
[SPEAKER_03]: They are too unpredictable, too difficult to control.
21:12
[SPEAKER_03]: But, porpoises.
21:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Their intelligence is almost equal, that of a man.
21:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So, Red Ghost now wants to have a super-powered porpoise RV.
21:20
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a real story.
21:21
[SPEAKER_03]: He works at the beginning Paul Jennings, and he uses cosmic rays to create an army of deadly porpoises.
21:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he sells them to Atuma to attack Atlantis, so they can fight this sub-mariner.
21:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But he also uses a ray to take over the minds of some of the defenders with cosmic rays.
21:37
[SPEAKER_03]: He ends up defeated, but this is a crazy story.
21:39
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think about the shift to the hard shift to porpoises, Molly?
21:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that is batshit.
21:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
21:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I got nothing.
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just insane.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Red ghost in the super porpoises just doesn't have quite the same ring.
21:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you got a new porpoise in life.
22:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Teams like, you know, he shows up.
22:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody possibly his own apes turn on him and then he gets defeated.
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He's never like a huge threat.
22:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And that kind of carries through going forward as well to an extent.
22:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It will the apes are definitely a bigger threat than he is.
22:19
[SPEAKER_03]: like he's not a good leader.
22:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it's the old thing of like I don't know he's using the word slaves when you enslave something and want them to call you master's and I'm gonna end well like that's an uncomfortable parallel here, right?
22:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's about the treatment of animals.
22:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
22:34
[SPEAKER_03]: We also get that kind of like early vibe that that like meteor read reference that fell in Siberia.
22:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You almost wonder if the apes were initially transformed by that.
22:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
22:43
[SPEAKER_03]: There's there's some interesting thoughts, the cosmic rays of it all.
22:46
[SPEAKER_03]: In Iron Man 8283, we're just covering the funny parts.
22:48
[SPEAKER_03]: The soup, the original super apes were back with Red Ghost.
22:52
[SPEAKER_03]: They fight Iron Man, but it's actually happy Hogan in the armor.
22:55
[SPEAKER_03]: and he gets hit with like a blast of energy and goes spiraling like the magnetic energy and then the baboon changes into a bush and like gross some branches to tie ironman up.
23:06
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the crazy thing to do?
23:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I'll be a bush today and then they throw him off the roof and like the gorilla bitch slaps ironman hard and he's a caption.
23:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a sack of soft potatoes, the unconscious industrialist is slung across the grim gorilla's shoulder.
23:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Then the
23:21
[SPEAKER_03]: astonishing simmin turns swiftly to his companions.
23:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Grows what somehow sounds remarkably like orders, and the gibbering baboon furiously nods his hideous head, clenches his eyes tightly, concentrates, and an ablinding blur of motion begins to change.
23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Instance after, a grotesque glider, sails through the benedit sky, carrying three most unusual passengers,
23:44
[SPEAKER_03]: The gorilla roars out his triumph, pounds his chest proudly.
23:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And if one didn't know better, one would almost swear the ape was laughing.
23:52
[SPEAKER_03]: You guys, the Babylon changes into a full like Starship.
23:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I ran the country and this is so like 1970s cartoon energy it makes me smile so big they end up going to a submarine where the red ghost has been trapped in his intangible form and he looks like he is in the disco like he is ready to go dancing
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it makes me think about scrolls and I have a thing about scrolls, but back when scrolls were used not the way they're used now, but used like in a cooler way like anything could be a scroll.
24:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And now this, you know, this ape can be anything like I had to read that caption a couple times before I realized that the the the bedroom was the rocket that's so cool and random and absurd and I love it.
24:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Deep shifters need much like telepaths, you need limitations, you need specificities, you know, Megan's powers work different than mystiques.
24:47
[SPEAKER_03]: The baboon I think seems a little bit more like that character ape from the more locks, who can like shapeshift into like objects.
24:54
[SPEAKER_03]: But this is a crazy power upgrade to be able to shift into a whole power ship, like, and fly with passengers and nuts.
25:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Molly, as one of the editors from Secret Invasion, what's your opinion on the scrolls?
25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, no, no, no, this could be a it's own podcast episode.
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I think scrolls are awesome and I think the way that they came to be used at a certain point made me want to slam my head into a table because the cool thing about scrolls again is that anything or anyone could be a scroll but when everything and everyone is a super scroll that's not fun anymore.
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had very strong feelings.
25:28
[SPEAKER_01]: about that um when it happened when there was like a super school for every team there's a fantastic for a super scroll and an X men super scroll and a defender super super school no stop it.
25:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The cool thing about scrolls is that they could be anyone I mean and they did some of that in secret invasion but like that chair could be a scroll and I think that's neat so.
25:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I really like the original Super Scroll.
25:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I love a bunch of FF villains, but Colbert, the Super Scroll is a great character.
25:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I really like him a lot, actually.
25:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, we're jumping to Iron Man 83.
25:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, covering just kind of the loose stuff, but Iron Man has been, or it's Tony Stark.
26:02
[SPEAKER_03]: He's been captured, and the Red Ghost wants him to build like a certain kind of game.
26:06
[SPEAKER_03]: canon for him that again doesn't really make a lot of sense.
26:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's called a cosmetronic canon and he thinks it's going to be able to like get him out of his stuck intangible form.
26:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You guys remember that time kitty pride got stuck as a ghost for a long time.
26:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Like had to learn that back out.
26:20
[SPEAKER_03]: This is very that for Ivan Craig off.
26:22
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a point where the apes have to pass over an electric fence so the gorilla digs under it.
26:27
[SPEAKER_03]: The orangutan magnets himself over it and then the baboon changes himself into an arrow and fires
26:36
[SPEAKER_03]: This security system is terrible, so Tony Stark fixes Ivan and then they all end up fighting Iron Man and he kicks their asses and the baboon gets to change into a steel ball and an axe and and also a flying buzz saw, he's amazing, Tony Stark beats them and in the Andy Vaughn as it goes to get in it.
26:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is another really fun appearance for these characters that most X-Men fans probably have not read.
27:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Sean, I need thoughts this for.
27:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm seeing why you love these apes.
27:08
[SPEAKER_02]: They're a lot of fun.
27:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not seeing enough Piotter.
27:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to see myself in these stories some more.
27:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I love a cat villain.
27:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I saw on his favorite villain.
27:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I love a character that just feels like a ranting crazy person.
27:19
[SPEAKER_03]: and an army of superpowered apes.
27:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just fucking delightful.
27:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really fun.
27:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We see them in FF90, 197 where Red Ghost goes back into space and cosmic rays give him his like corporability back.
27:32
[SPEAKER_03]: The baboon gets to be a ladder and like a vest in this issue, which is crazy.
27:37
[SPEAKER_03]: We jump to Amazing Spider-Man 223, which is another pretty big appearance for these characters.
27:42
[SPEAKER_03]: They materialize in the Empire State University campus, and they're trying to steal quote a rare mathematical treaties which would prove an invaluable aid in my attempt to increase our cosmic ray induced powers, because we didn't die at the first time, so let's up the radiation next time.
27:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So they end up like fire like setting fire to a building and they're really trying to cover their tracks so they don't get caught and end up in a fight with Spider-Man.
28:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Spider-Man grabs a fire extinguisher but surprised it's a baboon and he also gets to be a parachute, a sheet of pliable rubber, a net, and a little tornado.
28:15
[SPEAKER_03]: He turns into a tornado, which is crazy to me.
28:19
[SPEAKER_03]: This guy's like got a cosmic cube.
28:21
[SPEAKER_03]: So they eventually run for it, and Iván is like, you stupid monkeys, you disappointed me yet again.
28:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you have to bring flaming ruin down upon our heads?
28:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you have to act like child to show off instead of mature adults, then sir, you are one to talk, dressed the way you are at your age?
28:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Ivan calls this guy Hockberg.
28:39
[SPEAKER_03]: They're chasing a pucillamonious, excuse me.
28:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Pussela, Pusselanimus, wrench, wrench, Pusselanimus, wrench, which I love a word I have to look up after what.
28:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Fighting fights them.
28:51
[SPEAKER_03]: The monkeys escape and we also see the baboon turn into like a huge fucking bird and they just fly away on his back.
28:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So this baboon is amazing to be jumping to Spider-Man 255.
29:03
[SPEAKER_03]: We see the black fox who's a thief an old man thief that's connected to the black cat.
29:10
[SPEAKER_03]: He's trying to steal a vase but it turns out it's a baboon.
29:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So he gets captured and he wants trying to build a new device called the Cosmysizer, which sounds like something Suzanne Summers would have promoted in the early 90s.
29:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, actually, I think he's trying to boost his cosmic rays.
29:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And he wants the black fox to like take over the super apes and like go, you know, let go commit some robberies and I can get the money, which is very like, dude, my children are exhausting.
29:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you please babysit for us?
29:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They're back in Quasar number six, where there's this kind of odd story with the watcher and Quasar.
29:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like tying into that time, Red Ghost got lost in those like cosmic loops that plays in and out.
29:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they're back again in PowerPack 61 and 62, where they're fighting those like little alien powered kids.
30:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So the baboon gets to shape shift into Franklin Richards this time, which I think is the first time we've ever seen him use his powers to become like a humanoid.
30:09
[SPEAKER_03]: They end up fighting a little guy, a little alien dude called the infant terrible who's an old fantastic for alien baby that has like cosmic powers if he cries like you will regret it.
30:20
[SPEAKER_03]: There's also the chameleons like the horse aliens here.
30:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Igor gets to turn or the baboon gets to turn into a gun at one point and also he changes into the power kids mom for a minute.
30:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So again, some more amped up spaces and then finally going into the mid 90s we get Marvel shadows in light number one.
30:35
[SPEAKER_03]: The red ghost and the super apes are like capturing Rick Jones in the past because they're trying to duplicate his negabans and they fight Captain Marvel And the baboon gets to turn into a whole monster this time frankly this is just the baboon episode the others are just it's his world Yeah, it was living at it.
30:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
30:52
[SPEAKER_03]: He's my favorite
30:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a bunch of stuff.
30:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, the red ghosts get stuck in the negative zone here as well.
30:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a lot of like leaving this guy floating in other dimensions.
31:01
[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on the journey of these characters thus far?
31:04
[SPEAKER_03]: They're kind of recurring bit villains and the super apes themselves seem very much caught up in whatever evons like we need more power.
31:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Plot is and they'll just they're just happy to fight some super heroes.
31:15
[SPEAKER_03]: That's kind of they're live in their best life.
31:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
31:16
[SPEAKER_02]: They really have no reason at this point to still follow you on.
31:19
[SPEAKER_02]: They kind of are like doing their own thing at this point And I like that he's starting the baboon of course that you got to steal is turning into people now, which is exciting He's very much like becoming a mistake villain in this world
31:32
[SPEAKER_03]: He's like really amped up sometimes, too.
31:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
31:35
[SPEAKER_03]: The starship and the giant bird and the monster, and like the gun that fires energy blasts out of it, right?
31:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, if you're turning into a ship, it's like a whole engine inside.
31:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's a lot of weird potential with this character.
31:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You just have to wonder why they keep going back to him every single time they turn on him, which is a lot.
31:54
[SPEAKER_03]: He gives them bananas, Molly.
31:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that's not enough, that's not enough.
31:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
31:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what they're bringing into that age.
32:02
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost as though they're programmed with some sort of subservience, right?
32:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, he's the alpha and they have to follow him, but once in a while, they turn out, I don't know.
32:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe the cosmic rays connected them, because why does the FF keep going back to read Richards?
32:15
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a question I have to.
32:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
32:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Molly, will you take this next section of history?
32:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to make you jump into the 90s and early 2000s.
32:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know if you've ever read a single one of these books before.
32:28
[SPEAKER_01]: No fun fact, actually worked on a couple of them.
32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to start with FF unlimited number five, which has this nifty cover with the FF but not the one you're the FF you're expecting.
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Johnny, Sue, Ben, and Scott Lang, Aunt Man, who was there for a while while Reed was like sort of dead.
32:43
[SPEAKER_01]: They're fighting the frightful four, which this time is the wizard.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Sharon Ventura, although I had to it took me a while to figure out.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: That's who that was because she said, I love her so much.
32:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And then claw in the red ghost and on the cover, he's got like this giant head sticking up like nose first through the ground.
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And the wizard is assembling a new frightful for and the red ghost like phases into the wizard's headquarters and says that he wants to take over the group and claw forces him into the tangibility with his sound powers and the four and the three of them agreed to team up.
33:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Red ghost his face is looking like weirdly pink and that actually comes up in the dialogue.
33:17
[SPEAKER_01]: He uses a tractor beam to zap Ben Grimm into the headquarters and then Ben says red ghost only with your face died to match your cold war politics.
33:28
[SPEAKER_03]: So I run this issue in the rough y'all.
33:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, ready to go.
33:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Scows in Tangible and then Ben mocks him about having been beaten by the power pack.
33:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it turns out that it wasn't red gossed at all.
33:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the bad food who turns it to spaghetti to trap Ben and that doesn't work.
33:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But then the gorilla attacks and the real red ghost tells Ben that he no longer leaves the super apes.
33:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he he did not just the leader.
33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: He controls their every movement with his own mind.
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: and all three apes attack Ben and they subdue him, but then the wizard like screws around while fighting Johnny and Ben gets a second wind and tosses the apes off of him and the orangutan hits the red ghost with a magnetic blast and Ben knocks it out and then the apes get away and red ghost claw and Sharon run away from the wizard and then in some weird ending that I didn't really understand everyone's
34:19
[SPEAKER_03]: The claw, Molly, when I worked on the Marvel Handbooks, the claw was the single most difficult entry I ever wrote for a book profile.
34:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It took me so long to figure out how his powers worked.
34:30
[SPEAKER_03]: If you guys picked up the Handbook with my name and it and read the claw entry, I worked my ass off on that power section.
34:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It's he's a crazy character to write.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: He was the first one to make sound constructs, right?
34:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but sometimes he is sound and sometimes he's human with like a sound horn and other times he like I don't know if you read like secret wars There's like an image where like the beyond her has the sound on a tape like claw on the table and he's like sliced him up into pieces and claws like hey everybody He's just laying there like all hacked up.
35:00
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a crazy character to wrap your brain around.
35:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I I'm not a fan.
35:03
[SPEAKER_03]: He's very Nazi colonizer too Which is terrible
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so next there's FF 400 a watcher, but not our watcher.
35:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Watcher is dead and he's been killed by the Celestials and another rogue watcher, Aaron, is trying to turn the solar system into a pocket universe, like if it's this kind of weird watcher business going on.
35:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So he has this universal converter, which is formally an alternate ultimate nullifier, and he takes all of the FF villains and transport them to where he is to distract the FF while he's working on his converter.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: and the red goes in the super ape show up and they fight Ben.
35:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and because this is the 90s, there's actually a beefest and butt head reference that kind of threw me off here.
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is one of those anniversary issues, but there's like a billion characters.
35:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So Ivan's actually only there for one page.
35:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the end, the day is saved and a lot to sense everybody home probably.
35:54
[SPEAKER_03]: This would be a harder story to grasp, except we now have the what if Disney series where the watcher becomes like a playable character.
36:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So just picture that guy going evil, that's 80s.
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so then we go to FF volume three number three and that's legacy issue 432.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: This one has a delightful cover.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It says Mr.
36:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic goes ape and reads being attacked by all three super apes on the cover.
36:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And the issue title inside is even better.
36:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's happy New Year reads, reads, reads, reads, reads, reads.
36:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Now die, amazing.
36:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So this takes place at Empire State University where a grad student is researching monkeys, and she finds synthetic fibers in her research subjects tissues.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And she calls her advisor, but there's this like big ape-like shadow behind her which is the red ghost and all three super apes.
36:39
[SPEAKER_01]: this time.
36:40
[SPEAKER_01]: The red ghost is standing hunched over and he looks like an ape himself, like just the head with his posture and the apes to attack the grad student.
36:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, read is her faculty advisor and he rushes over to help her and they've got her tied up the apes have her tied up and they're destroying her computers and they reveal they've been posing as lab animals.
36:59
[SPEAKER_01]: a security guard shoots the baboon who turns into like metal, I guess, and deflects the bullet, and then uses magnetic kinetics, met up to grab him, and reads been hiding, and he notices the apes have become more intelligent.
37:12
[SPEAKER_01]: They reveal 1,000 gallons of nerve gas that they made themselves at night, like you do.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: to release and kill everybody in Times Square, Ree comes in and fights the apes, and he notes that each of the apes has adapted the powers of the other three.
37:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess the red ghosts is included in that number and that they got their new intelligence from him, because he's like way more ape-like and only speaking and like,
37:34
[SPEAKER_01]: got role single word phrases.
37:36
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also like really obsessed with a bunny in this episode.
37:39
[SPEAKER_03]: This is also something we see in the FF every once in a while.
37:41
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like swap powers or like one will lose their powers to all the others will as well.
37:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's cosmic grace.
37:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's interesting to see that component explored here.
37:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the gorilla goes in tangible so they definitely have red ghost powers and they want revenge for the experiments on animals that are taking place at ESU and read defeats the apes and the rest of the FF who have finally shown up put them in quarantine and read wonders if the FF will also begin to merge personalities and abilities because of the cosmic race.
38:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we go to Spider-Man Human Torch No.
38:11
[SPEAKER_01]: 3, which comes from a cool series that I worked on.
38:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So each issue takes place in a different era of Peter and Johnny's friendship, and this one takes place in the 90s when the Spider-Mobile was a thing.
38:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Peter and Johnny are in college, and Johnny's hitting on a Russian physics student named Nina, who is one of Reed's interns, and Peter of course happens to be the other intern.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: has invented a gravity localizer, which basically lets people walk on walls like Spider-Man, and of course, you know, because she's Russian, Nina is working with the red ghost to try to steal the gravity localizer.
38:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But before she can do that, Spider-Man and Johnny steal it to add it to the Spider-Mobile and like drive it on walls.
38:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the same time, the red ghost is headed to the backster building to steal the device flying with his apes on a piece of metal that one of the apes, the orangutan, I guess, has materialized.
38:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And red ghost phases through the wall and comes in shooting only to find the devices already gone.
39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see the spider more be old driving up the sides of the building.
39:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So they know where it is.
39:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Peter almost hits a man with a trench coat, in a trench coat with his car.
39:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, that turns out to be the red ghost.
39:10
[SPEAKER_01]: The apes attack and steal the Spider-Mobile, and Red Ghost stands in front of a fire hydrant with that he sets off to quench Johnny's fire.
39:18
[SPEAKER_01]: The grill is ripping apart the Spider-Mobile, and we learn the orangutan can parallel park better than Spider-Mam.
39:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It's hilarious to me.
39:27
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, Bidie, it like it comes up as like a major point here.
39:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Spidey distracts the apes with off-brand hostess fruit pies.
39:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Then jumps back into the car.
39:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Johnny uses the gravity localizer on the red ghost to hold him in place until read and the police get there.
39:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Read fires both Nina and Peter, but let's Spidey drive the spider mobile up the side of the bugle building to piss off Jay Jonah Jameson.
39:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a really goofy story.
39:49
[SPEAKER_03]: But really fun, too.
39:50
[SPEAKER_03]: This is Crystal's gauge, right?
39:51
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think it's Stan Slot.
39:53
[SPEAKER_03]: There's, oh, it's slot, yay, of course.
39:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course.
39:58
[SPEAKER_01]: We can slot with Pi Kemple 10.
40:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, delightful.
40:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So then we got FF-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-
40:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Molly Lazar.
40:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So in this series, like kind of the concept of the whole thing, the math, the math thinker and the puppet master are having one of their many team ups in attempt to get the DNA of the FF's rogue gallery and control all of them.
40:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So at this point, reads working on building a version of the vault in the negative zone to house all the villains, which I'll note is also something he does in the Civil War crossover issues of FF, which came out a year later, in which I just finished reading to my children.
40:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess that's like just something he does
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: of zone.
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: The FF are going around and catching the villains to house there, including the wizard, whom they embarrassingly stumble upon while he's on the toilet, reading villain weekly.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: The red ghost is the last villain they have to catch, but when they burst it on him, it's just a machine version of him, like a kind of like a doom bot, which explodes.
41:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the real red goes burst up to the floor with these like giant power gauntlet things on his hands.
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: The orangutan holds up read with magneto powers while the bad boon turns into an asbestos blanket, more asbestos to stop Johnny.
41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: The gorilla hammers at Sioux's force field, but Sioux puts a Sioux puts a force field around the red ghost and then compresses it and breaks his gauntlets.
41:22
[SPEAKER_01]: and then she gets the apes into a force field after the other FF members defeat them.
41:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Red goes materializes behind Sue, but Johnny throws some flame balls at him and reads slaps a collar on him so he can't de-materialize.
41:33
[SPEAKER_01]: In Issue 6, Red goes his in the negative zone prison when the alien wife of the architect just roll with it, stages a gelab rate.
41:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Red goes to size, he's not up to the quote, physical challenge and escape would obviously require and goes back and sits in his cell.
41:48
[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on the character journey through this portion?
41:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems very similar, even like really trying to power himself up, the apes kind of big superhero antics from time to time, but not getting a lot of will.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that the volume three number three one is the most interesting, where you've got the red ghost who's basically like regressed into an ape and the apes being super intelligent, and I kind of wish they went forward with that, because that's really interesting.
42:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and then Sean, I have assigned you the, oh, you're welcome.
42:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I hope because I know you're the X-Men fan.
42:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I assigned you all the X-Men relevant section.
42:23
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a, there's a bizarre little moment in history where the apes fought the X-Men in places you don't expect quite often actually.
42:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thank you for this.
42:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So I apologize in advance.
42:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been holding this in like an uncomfortable fight.
42:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I am going to go on a big rant in two seconds here, but I will keep you involved.
42:39
[SPEAKER_02]: They promise.
42:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So Beast is relaying his life story to ship.
42:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is the apocalypse ship that they took over.
42:45
[SPEAKER_03]: This is an eight part beast story from Marvel Comics presents 85 through 93 with again, big crazy art.
42:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's talking about his first day as an X-Men.
42:54
[SPEAKER_02]: He remembers working out in the danger room and he's being like kind of itchy and Professor X is basically like Beast come to my office.
43:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And we find out Professor X and all his ass holiness, he race beast friends,
43:09
[SPEAKER_02]: to protect beast.
43:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And this ties into the original beast origin stories from the 60s where beast gets recruited to the X-Men in Xavier like wipes the whole town's mind of the memory of him being mutant.
43:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I think we have a big easy.
43:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he really did that to anyone else, right?
43:25
[SPEAKER_03]: But he did it with other members of the original X-Men.
43:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
43:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Was that your rant, by the way?
43:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry to be.
43:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that was the start of it.
43:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Professor X left Beast with these memories.
43:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's such a jerk move to take away Jennifer's memories, but leave Beast with the memories of Jennifer who now doesn't remember.
43:45
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my rant.
43:46
[SPEAKER_02]: We, you can forget about Jennifer.
43:48
[SPEAKER_02]: She doesn't show up anymore.
43:49
[SPEAKER_02]: But meanwhile in Brussels, there's a body that's found scratched and mutated.
43:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Brussels police are basically like, we need to fix this because the mutant symposiums coming up.
43:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is hanging out on ship.
44:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And suddenly the male person, a male woman, comes to deliver a letter to ship, you know.
44:06
[SPEAKER_02]: 1-800 or 1 repurpose ship lane.
44:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what address he'd put for this ship, but she gets attacked and Beast goes to save her and then back in Brussels it seems to her man's like, well damn he got the letter so Beast wasn't supposed to get this letter so Beast
44:21
[SPEAKER_02]: boards of plane to Brussels, we get kind of a flashback of his past love Jennifer Niles who of course doesn't show up anymore in this story.
44:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Except for she's a keynote speaker at the meeting symposium that Beast has just been invited to.
44:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So Hank fights with the constrictor, the constrictor has been hired to take him.
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: out beasts of dudes that constrictor and then the apes come, the apes start fighting and then they abduct Jennifer who is now in the story I like to you and then beast finds a new friend the Frenchman and I don't think we have a good name for the Frenchman do he's just the Frenchman.
44:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this is L Agila who is a French mutant with Wayne.
45:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I like Gila.
45:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, okay.
45:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So the Frenchman tells Beast about commander courage, our lieutenant commander courage, and that he arrested the red ghost.
45:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So Beast thinks this is rather convenient.
45:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so we get to talk by the red ghost and commander courage, bring him into custody, like I think something else, something's going on here.
45:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So they connect the dots between the red ghosts, the super apes, and the disappearance of the Belgian scientists, they go to infiltrate the Belgian ministry of defense, and they find that the red ghost has been tied to a chair and he's being interrogated, a beast asks Craig off where the apes took Jennifer, and he doesn't know, because apes are no longer under his control, a theme that we see quite a bit here.
45:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Commander Kurds in our subspace and tells him he wants to exploit his connection to the Avengers Beast is thrown out of the ministry and I love Beast for this.
45:50
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like wait a minute.
45:51
[SPEAKER_02]: The enemy of my enemy is my friend So he goes to constrictor and he's like, hey, we're both being used.
45:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't we team up and constrictors based on like sure But I'm still gonna kill you because I hate you They go back to the ministry.
46:02
[SPEAKER_02]: They bust their way back in their attack
46:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, reanimated wear boards.
46:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had to look up what wear boards are.
46:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So these are the bodies reanimated with like cybernetics.
46:15
[SPEAKER_03]: That's Commander Kerch's whole thing.
46:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's an army of wear boards.
46:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, very start check.
46:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
46:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Beast realizes these are the victims of the Brussels serial killer reanimated turned into weapons.
46:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Hank is able to find his way to Jennifer, but she shoots him in the chest, which has consequences.
46:32
[SPEAKER_02]: As the red ghost lays dying in apparition of one of his apes comes to him and tells him they were being controlled by commander curses and they promised not to leave him again.
46:42
[SPEAKER_02]: See, the super apes attack.
46:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Constrictor holding him at bay and beast is now imprisoned by commander curge.
46:49
[SPEAKER_02]: The commander tells beast he plans on using Jennifer and her research to turn the techno organic virus that's reanimating the wearable works.
46:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't say that with the straight ways.
47:00
[SPEAKER_02]: The wereborgs, um, that's reanimating them.
47:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Beast thinks the commander for telling him the plan and then he bust loose from the cage.
47:07
[SPEAKER_02]: He grabs Jennifer and they disappear.
47:09
[SPEAKER_02]: The angry commander courage demands his wereborgs to bring him.
47:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Beast had Beast's clandestinely hanging hangs upside down over the crowd of villains holding Jennifer's mouth shut.
47:19
[SPEAKER_02]: The constrictor takes out the super ape Miklo, but he still has two left to deal with.
47:24
[SPEAKER_02]: He just mad they don't get his witty bansher.
47:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're like, they don't understand anything same.
47:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Once everyone leaves Beast Hobbs down and restraints Jennifer as he excesses the computer, he finds Commander Courage's plan to mine control five important leaders to rule through.
47:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So Red Guardian, who we know is Russian because he has read in his name, Zoom, and
47:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Inlet Varia, Henry Geirick and Tony Stark in the U.S.
47:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is the U.S. like wanting, oh, we have two smart people.
47:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You only have one.
47:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And a Madison Jeffries in Canada.
47:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So early appearance of Madison Jeffries, a Jennifer was not aware of this part of the plan.
48:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Constrictor defeats the eight, but then he is surrounded by wear boards.
48:03
[SPEAKER_02]: The Frenchman comes to his rescue.
48:06
[SPEAKER_02]: He reveals his scientists, friend was the one who developed the wear boards, but that Commander Courage killed him and took his research.
48:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Constrictor knocks down a wall and they find the right goes close to death.
48:15
[SPEAKER_02]: They save him.
48:16
[SPEAKER_02]: They're confronted by Commander Courage.
48:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Just then, Beast finds the control to free the super apes.
48:21
[SPEAKER_02]: They show up and help fight off Commander Courage.
48:24
[SPEAKER_02]: With the crisis ofverted, Hank asked Jennifer how she got caught up in this, and she tells him,
48:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Ever since her mind suddenly changed back in college, she's been obsessed with mine control.
48:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks a lot, Professor X and randomly Technorganics.
48:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just a really tickled her face.
48:40
[SPEAKER_02]: This classic story of Red Ghost coming to her when Adder Lewis, when she had lost funding.
48:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's why she joined him.
48:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Hank and Jennifer Kiss, Jennifer kind of remembers her lost memories of Hank.
48:51
[SPEAKER_02]: in that she subconsciously invited him to the symposium.
48:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see, the super apes kind of just start fighting everybody.
48:59
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just kind of protecting Krag off at this point.
49:01
[SPEAKER_02]: A courage shoots Jennifer, she lays dying.
49:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It's this whole thing where Hank is like should I bring her back with their wear boards, but it's all right.
49:08
[SPEAKER_02]: She goes to the hospital and she gets better after only a week from there, a red ghost is kind of the hero.
49:14
[SPEAKER_02]: He puts a spike through Commander Courage's chest, which is intangible and he turns tangible,
49:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's about everything.
49:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But to get this tease that the Techno virus is still alive in Jennifer, which definitely comes to fruition.
49:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm seeing a Falonx tie-in for sure.
49:31
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a fun story and it really jumps to some unexpected places.
49:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to see a Commander Courage Professor Power team up.
49:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And something like this.
49:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so to me.
49:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Did you enjoy reading this old story from?
49:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I did.
49:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It was fun and there was definitely like a Star Wars reference, which I'm a huge Star Wars fan, so this was fun to read.
49:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a little batshit.
49:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And then where else do we see the super apes fight the X-Men?
49:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And I want to remember the Wild Kingdom crossover?
49:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I willfully forgot it.
50:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is a crossover that runs from X-Men 175 and 76 into Black Panther Volume 489.
50:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the build up to Storm and to Chalice wedding, so the X-Men are getting involved here.
50:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I'll say the one good thing real quick, just to tease, there is some really great to Chalice and or like back and forth, and this, it's very much the will they won't they play up and it's brilliant.
50:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Africa has turned to Anarchy with the death of Inbutu, specifically in Aganda.
50:28
[SPEAKER_02]: A news reporter is live on the scene in Africa and he suddenly attacked by a huge, like, mutated gator in its car in camera.
50:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I had it through the scene because of our podcast, but back at the minute.
50:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Tells Emma that something's up and he's trying to get her to come and she's like wait I'm I'm you know messing around with cerebrus.
50:47
[SPEAKER_02]: She's picking up on mutinactivity in Africa Pavix shows for the news and it's basically Visual of what she's been picking up on everything's going crazy.
50:55
[SPEAKER_02]: There's these mutated gators Animals seem to be mutating now in Africa so the team prep to leave storm and sis She's going along she tells how she's coming and have it's like no, you're not and she's like oh, yes I am and she just gets on the plane
51:10
[SPEAKER_02]: um, they traveled to war in Tornaganda.
51:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Emma stays behind to monitor the mutating animals.
51:16
[SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men landed in Naganda and it is the neighbor of Wakanda.
51:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So Emma reaches out to tochalada to be like, hey, this is your neighbor.
51:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually you can evolve what's going on.
51:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But tochalada doesn't answer.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So they start entering a cave and storm is nagged by a mutant gator and taken under water.
51:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's storm.
51:32
[SPEAKER_02]: She calls on lightning and she basically like takes out the whole lake.
51:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the X-Men, like, take out the day's gators, storm saves a man and woman from a radical group of being tormented, and the team follow clues from old factory, where there's caged amutated animals in the factory, Wolverine smells something and follows it.
51:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Follows his nose to Chalda.
51:53
[SPEAKER_02]: He's sitting in the middle of a room knocked with knocked out men everywhere, so to Chalda has been looking into it.
51:59
[SPEAKER_02]: He basically like took out everybody in the factory, and he's researching on the computer now.
52:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Being the X-Men, of course, they don't listen.
52:07
[SPEAKER_02]: A scientist appears and says, Panther is creating the monsters.
52:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Panther seals off the room.
52:12
[SPEAKER_02]: The rogue uses her sunfire powers because she had like absorb sunfire at this point.
52:18
[SPEAKER_02]: He's as her fire powers to break into the room.
52:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It turns out the scientist, Dr. Eric Payne,
52:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Dr. Payne has the ability to absorb powers.
52:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So he takes ice man and a few other powers and basically escapes to Tullichel's tells him that this scientist goes all the way back to Genocia.
52:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So he was like experimenting on mutants in Genocia very Nazi style.
52:39
[SPEAKER_02]: He got out of Genocia before it was destroyed and he set up shop in Nagonda after bribing the officials.
52:46
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll conduct, uh, to Charlie tells him we'll kind of couldn't intervene in the Gonda because, um, it would have been seen as moving against them, but to Charlie clandestinely took out and boot you as the ruler in order to kind of help detentions the battle causes a power outage which allows some mutant animals to get free c drastic part for more details.
53:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Knowing the X-Men would come for him, pain experiment on himself and gave himself powers to challenge, suggest storm to try to quell the riots, so only the X-Men that pain already absorbed should go after him, so it doesn't get any new powers.
53:19
[SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men leave in storming to challenge a little moment, and the X-Men are stopped by an automated attack systems, Wolverine is stabbed from behind with the pain's claws that are the war Wolverine's power.
53:30
[SPEAKER_02]: We also get this T-sword to Chalice like, ooh, I could smell that Wolverine really wants you.
53:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a very like battle for Storm going on in the background.
53:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Outside rioters are about to attack innocent Storm electrocutes them.
53:43
[SPEAKER_02]: The Chalice hacking away at the Nagandan systems, and he is attacked by the talking monkeys by the apes.
53:49
[SPEAKER_02]: One of them hypnotizes him.
53:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Pain has the X-Men captured and he's ready to experiment on them to Chalice save by the door Milage Right before he's completely hypnotized.
53:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course though, as they're like pampering him storm walks in and she's like a nice hair and bitch.
54:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And she walks away To Chalice like I know some of your hot teammates, and she's like, yeah, well, I'm jealous of the whole warrior force of brides and training that you've got bites
54:17
[SPEAKER_02]: um, pain is busy chastising his hypnobaboon for letting to chocolate go.
54:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So did the baboon have hypnopowers before this point?
54:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think so, but it might be a different baboon too.
54:27
[SPEAKER_03]: We also had that one telepathic guy.
54:29
[SPEAKER_03]: He's gonna skip the one time.
54:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Eight on, that beta.
54:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll burn you.
54:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.
54:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, the baboon blames pain for not training him better.
54:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Red ghost is seen meeting with pain so they are working together.
54:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Pain takes ghost the unconscious X-Men, pain plans on a moving part of their brain to turn them into mindless weapons, but is Polaris actually sleeping?
54:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Later I'll you find out she is.
54:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I just put that because I thought she was waking up.
54:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So Emma orders Storm to check on the X-Men she ditches Panther, paying freezing X-Men, he shows him that Lorna is being slowly fed snake poison through IVs and he tells him they have to kill Red Ghost in order to save them.
55:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Storm joins back up with the team.
55:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, Red Ghost doesn't trust Pain, he craves money too much.
55:13
[SPEAKER_02]: He orders the Apes to start his own plan.
55:15
[SPEAKER_02]: They go to Free the Baboon and the Baboon tells his own plan to spread an anti-human virus across Nagonda.
55:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a plan with in plan with in plan.
55:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody has their own plan.
55:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
55:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So the experts start on their mission to save Polaris.
55:31
[SPEAKER_02]: They go to kill the Red Ghost, but they actually team up with him.
55:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So we find Panther has been left fighting Dragon Man, who suddenly Dragon Man is here.
55:40
[SPEAKER_02]: The Abe starts to prep the virus.
55:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Red Ghost, look, Red Ghost goes looking for them.
55:45
[SPEAKER_02]: He becomes tangible.
55:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Rob nox him down.
55:47
[SPEAKER_02]: have it tells Red Ghost they are being blackmailed to kill him and have it offers a team up to save Red Ghost and Polaris.
55:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I promise I'm almost done.
55:55
[SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men bringing Red Ghost to Pain, then they spring their trap.
55:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Just when Pain gets the upper hand and touch each holiday dragonman, they dispatch Pain momentarily to chocolate freeze Polaris.
56:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine and Rogue engage Pain in combat.
56:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Pain takes down the X-Men until Red Ghost rips out Pain's heart.
56:17
[SPEAKER_02]: While their upstairs preparing to infect the human crowds below, they throw the can, the apes through the canister but storm uses their power to catch it.
56:24
[SPEAKER_02]: The crowds hail the return of the goddess.
56:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Storm decides to stay and will con and focus on yourself.
56:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And she kisses to Chala and flies off the end.
56:32
[SPEAKER_03]: There is a distinctive character, what a new monkey named Cuddleface introduced in this arc, who is capable of speech.
56:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you kind of almost wonder if this baboon, it is a brand new character and it does show up again in Black Panther volume four number eight and nine along with another mutant gorilla.
56:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's there's like an expansion of the apes mythos just a little bit.
56:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really fun to see this very thoughtful story in a lot of ways.
56:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought it was a really delightful one.
56:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Sean, what was it like for you to read?
57:00
[SPEAKER_03]: This old deep kind of fantastic four continuity mixing with the X-Men.
57:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, it's been a lot of fun.
57:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's sometimes it's fun going back and seeing where the Marvel comic started because I feel like up until the 90s they were a little crazy.
57:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Like things just happened because characters are just thrown in because like it's a it's a fun ride.
57:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm going to cover the rest of their history quickly.
57:20
[SPEAKER_03]: We jumped to New Warriors volume three number two, where we get to see the super apes move to like a private zoo that this old rich man had, and they liberate all the animals we're there.
57:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a super hero fight, but basically they just leave the apes to live there at the end.
57:35
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, hey, go have a good time.
57:37
[SPEAKER_03]: The Avengers stopped them during a Marvel apes special in number one, and when we jump to the Marvel apes speedball special We see Ivan and this is the whole ape universe again.
57:46
[SPEAKER_03]: We see Ivan back in charge of the apes But he learns that there's this whole universe of other super powered monkeys two of them are unoperating on our planet There's a monkey speedball in a monkey apex jumping pin around so there's a big fight and he wants to like he's like I must rule the world of the Marvel apes
58:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And he's like trying to get through this portal.
58:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But when he gets there in Marvel apes, the amazing spider monkey number one, he discovers that there's an outbreak of zombie monkeys.
58:11
[SPEAKER_03]: He's like, no!
58:13
[SPEAKER_03]: He's like, he got it.
58:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Much crossover, much crossover.
58:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It really is funny though.
58:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
58:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's really delightful.
58:20
[SPEAKER_03]: We end up seeing the red goes join that group of like super thinkers called the Intelligent Cia with an NTSIA that fight the Hulk through the early 2000s.
58:30
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a team with like Mad Thinker leader, Egghead, Mothock, Awesome Android.
58:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Mr. Sinister shows up here a little bit and Red Ghost has some parts in some ongoing stories.
58:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't see the X-Men as part of it until X-Men or excuse me, until Hulk volume two number 20, where he and his apes fight the X-Men and the Red Hulk, and there's nothing super huge except the baboon gets to fire some lasers at like Cyclops and Ice Man.
58:52
[SPEAKER_03]: The orangutan overpower storm briefly with a magnetic tornado.
58:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And the gorilla just gets to fucking pound beast into the ground.
59:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But then the red Hulk attacks and literally rips the gorilla's head in half.
59:05
[SPEAKER_03]: You know that old King Kong movie from the forties?
59:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the old claymation King Kong, where we see like the the eight dinosaur fight and he like pulls the T-rex's head in half.
59:13
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's claymation is the old monster movie.
59:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very bad.
59:16
[SPEAKER_01]: About like a hairy housing.
59:17
[SPEAKER_03]: But but the gorilla is dead.
59:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So we immediately see the red ghost make a new super powered gorilla And this one is a baby in a diaper and he has super strength and his name is Gregori And we get to see the apes fight the she-hulks and the baboon turns into a fucking tiger it's that issue
59:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, we also get to see an amazing Spider-Man 676, the Magnetic orangutang, powers up a whole device that like is like interacting with Earth's magnetic fields, which is very, very power up, instead.
59:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So, Gregorys, the new Baby Gorilla, and the diaper, who's super strong, which, you know, rest in peace, Meeklo, but I'm here for Gregorys.
59:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he's kind of great.
59:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Ivan also gets like, you know, your sideburn game here.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's like the, the big, like, whole
1:00:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean mustache that grows into sideburns through this like the old west photos, I think it's great.
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And they briefly show up in a winter soldier, the series, and they're back in like FF with like the watchers stuff.
1:00:15
[SPEAKER_03]: They're in like Steve Rogers, where like the hydra evil Steve is there.
1:00:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And he seemingly evil evil Steve or Steve O'Rodgers like seems to kill the gorilla again with his shield.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_03]: They're in the Ziggy Pigs silly seal book where they join up with a group called the Masters of Animal Evil with a bunch of like a super powered animal characters, Armadillo, Dr. Octopus, the evil Nazi bees that make up swarm and a character that's only shown up here once called the Doomfish, which is a goldfish and a Doommask and they fight the pet avengers.
1:00:48
[SPEAKER_03]: They're in the recent Thunderbolt series where Jim Zab wrote them like the baboon in the orangutan or like leading an uprising of apes in central park fighting the Thunderbolts.
1:00:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the aforementioned Avengers assemble volume three number two is where we see the Avengers fighting Ivan in a small town where he's built this gun that coagulates people's blood, wood, and
1:01:09
[SPEAKER_03]: He ends up getting terrorized by the radioactive ghosts of his early monkey experiments, who are like ghosts that are unrested, like the Avengers helped like release these spirits into their next life.
1:01:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, that was a lot of super-ape summary in a row.
1:01:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's take some time to talk about these characters.
1:01:27
[SPEAKER_03]: What is it about them as we summarize them that kind of makes them magical or formidable?
1:01:32
[SPEAKER_03]: What are the things that come to mind when you think about what these characters are capable of, or what they represent?
1:01:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's really like when you think of like comic book villain, like that's the kind of thing you think of like crazy Russian guy with super apes who have crazy powers like that's your comic book super villain.
1:01:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they could be a lot more formidable than they are.
1:01:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it seems like, you know, in this giant summary that we had, they just get smack down a lot or they turn on each other and like that's it.
1:02:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, we've said the bad boon has these like crazy powers.
1:02:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we've seen the orangutan do like really cool and weirdly powerful things with its magnetism.
1:02:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think they could be a lot more formidable than they are, but they're just kind of goofy.
1:02:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's a, there's an odd kind of energy.
1:02:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost like mole man powered up three mole loids.
1:02:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And more like your my team now, you must worship me, right?
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_03]: There's, there's an interesting kind of brain chemistry and power chemistry connection between those original characters hit by the cosmic rays.
1:02:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, you know, like the experiments that have replicated the others.
1:02:39
[SPEAKER_03]: There's like an odd potential for like an ape society with the original apes ruling and Iván kind of becoming a character that's like preserving them and like changing his ways, right?
1:02:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Like he's a fun camp villain, but I think there's some potential where we change the slavery mentality of the story into a conservation one.
1:02:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's one way to make these characters really interesting is to make them more noble.
1:03:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I think of the super age, this is gonna sound weird but go with me.
1:03:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It makes me think of Hocus Pocus.
1:03:05
[SPEAKER_02]: When a Fred Sanderson is such a powerful witch and the only thing that is her like Achilles Hill is her sisters and her love for her sisters but they're bumbling idiots.
1:03:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I see the super age is kind of that in reverse.
1:03:17
[SPEAKER_02]: The age is super powerful but their love for Kragoth is their, you know, sisters.
1:03:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that's the only thing that I think that holds them back is they have this weird like loyalty to him.
1:03:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I think if they were to go out on their own
1:03:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we saw in Wild Kingdom, they were about to do their own plan and it was gonna work.
1:03:36
[SPEAKER_02]: They just barely got stopped by storm.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd like to see the apes, like you said, I wanna see them kind of break free, kind of stop seeing this whole slavery thing and more of like, let's subjugate Kragov.
1:03:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I feel like we haven't really seen that.
1:03:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting for me, if we can tell a story where we amp up the apes mines a little bit.
1:03:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And it becomes kind of an anthropomorphic story of like a character, you know, much like when a robot develops sentience, right?
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Where we get to kind of see their exploring what it means to be human or superpowered creatures in this kind of weird world where all the habitats are getting eaten up.
1:04:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's some interesting parallels that could be made there.
1:04:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I think Red Ghost is hilariously can't be.
1:04:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think we have a lot on the interior world of this character.
1:04:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, Mulman and Dr. Octopus are characters that I sympathize with, but I really have no sympathy for the red ghost.
1:04:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd tell me that some sort of like a relationship that matters, right?
1:04:26
[SPEAKER_03]: You just dump them in a dimension or make him trapped as an intangible person, or you, you know, erase his mind.
1:04:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's all these weird things.
1:04:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's the story I want to write if I did a super ape's exploration.
1:04:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it could be like a one-issue thing, although it'd be really fun to play it out over a period of time.
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they almost have like a great lakes of engers energy.
1:04:46
[SPEAKER_03]: If you guys are familiar with those characters, we're, I don't know, like the thing in the human torch, like have a bet on who can make the super apes, like the best super heroes.
1:04:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like this kind of crazy antics story of the two of them winding up fighting each other when the super apes secretly had the plot to win all along, right?
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I think there's a lot of fun, but we have to make the apes capable of talking.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got to give them the ability to like interact as characters more frequently.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so they do have that ability briefly, and then sometimes, yeah, these are interesting things to and because this is Colossus month on the show, one of the reasons that makes this story interesting, most Russian characters and comics are as Molly said earlier, just kind of caricatures silly super villains, if they are Russian, they have the weird accent.
1:05:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, we're living in a time where if you saw the recent Thunderbolt movie, there's like three Russian characters running around all at the same time when you look at Black Widow, Black Widow and Red Guardian, right?
1:05:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And they are all very, very storied characters, but we've never really seen that with a lot of characters, and Colossus was certainly the first.
1:05:49
[SPEAKER_03]: first.
1:05:50
[SPEAKER_03]: The super strong mutant who escaped all the crazy, right?
1:05:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is another example of the corrupt Russian government, the obsession with kind of cosmonauts and radiation and developing weapons.
1:06:01
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of interesting components that capture some of the themes we're exploring with Piotr this month on the show.
1:06:06
[SPEAKER_03]: The Shaddi have a lot's.
1:06:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that you put a crack-off in Colossus Month and you're right crack-off.
1:06:13
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know anything about his backstory So yeah, he's a typical Russian.
1:06:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that they've they've kind of fleshed out Colossus.
1:06:20
[SPEAKER_02]: He has a family.
1:06:20
[SPEAKER_02]: He has a sister Yeah, I'd like to see that treatment for crack-off.
1:06:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to know more.
1:06:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and crack-off versus Colossus would also be fun
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Mostly though, the super apes are super camp.
1:06:29
[SPEAKER_03]: They're really funny to consider as villains.
1:06:32
[SPEAKER_03]: They give very much like I feel like I'm watching the old like 1970s Spider-Man cartoon, and you know, like there's cookies, sound effects, and like kind of ridiculous animation.
1:06:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They're hard characters to take seriously, which is why we get that most recent Steve Orlando story with the radioactive ghosts of the monkeys, and it kind of hits in a resonant way.
1:06:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Like these are creatures that are suffering that need to be laid to rest.
1:06:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It definitely felt a lot darker very much today's tone than these comics that we've covered because yeah, you're right, the Apes were in a lot of pain.
1:07:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It was almost kind of like a resin type story.
1:07:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It was scary story.
1:07:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I would love to see that get fleshed out more and see kind of the darker side of his country's mind controlling Apes and like messing with their physiology.
1:07:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to see that.
1:07:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And my most important question thus far, Sean, Fuck Mary Kill, Dr.
1:07:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Pain, Commander Courage, and the Red Ghost.
1:07:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I'm gonna kill the Red Ghost.
1:07:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to...
1:07:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna fuck Commander Courage because, I don't know, you don't want to keep him around too long.
1:07:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And on Mary Payne, yeah, he's got all these powers so he can be fine.
1:07:43
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a delightful kind of journey and it's an odd one to kind of wrap your brain around.
1:07:47
[SPEAKER_03]: These characters are not treated very seriously, but they're super powerful.
1:07:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And when you get them involved in like, American super villainism, that's one thing.
1:07:55
[SPEAKER_03]: but you involve them in kind of ethics, like world ethics, or even Russian politics.
1:08:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's where the characters start to become really fascinating and a way that kind of sings.
1:08:05
[SPEAKER_03]: But give them some things that make them special, right?
1:08:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Give them some characteristics.
1:08:09
[SPEAKER_03]: You know that the gorilla is super into like making cosplay for people.
1:08:14
[SPEAKER_03]: You learn the orangutan, um, um, to read Dostoevsky in the bathroom.
1:08:19
[SPEAKER_03]: But you learn that the baboon is an amazing chef and we'll use his like shape-shifting powers.
1:08:24
[SPEAKER_03]: to turn his hands into like egg beaters and like oven timers to like you give them a little bit of character and I think that makes them beloved in a way that people never forget the beginning that's my kind of resident thoughts on these guys do we have any final thoughts or questions anything that left you confused this is actually a little bit off topic but Sean just to go back to what you were saying about what a dick Charles Xavier is.
1:08:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Earlier, I posed a question of the day to my reading students.
1:08:51
[SPEAKER_01]: A time we have class and this week, the question one of the questions happened to be, would you rather have telepathy or telekinesis?
1:08:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And almost everybody picked telekinesis.
1:09:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But one of my students was like, oh, hey, I know Professor Xavier has both of those.
1:09:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Ms. Laser, do you like him?
1:09:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, fine.
1:09:11
[SPEAKER_01]: The hatred of Charles Xavier was like sleeping through this student and I thought that was kind of amusing.
1:09:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I just just thinking about this.
1:09:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it'd be fun a new place to take Red Ghost would be in both the stories that I covered.
1:09:23
[SPEAKER_02]: He turns out to be the hero.
1:09:25
[SPEAKER_02]: He comes full circle and defeats the bigger villain.
1:09:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it'd be funny if he comes to a realization that maybe I would make a better hero, but then his apes to become smarter, like, what the hell?
1:09:36
[SPEAKER_02]: This dude just totally betrayed us.
1:09:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So we get this kind of struggle of him trying to convince the apes to like be heroes with them.
1:09:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I love that actually, but he only seems to want to be a hero out of self-preservation.
1:09:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, like, that's the only time I want to do something good.
1:09:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Which is why I think a character upgrade here would be interesting for this guy.
1:09:55
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no key relationships.
1:09:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, my favorite version of him is on the intelligentsia.
1:09:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I don't like him cosmic.
1:10:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't like him in the watchers house.
1:10:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't like him floating around other dimensions.
1:10:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Petty, villainy, and or some deeper motivations are needed for that specific character.
1:10:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, what happened to that ability to turn into the creepy red mist floating around in the air?
1:10:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Cause you.
1:10:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's something that got squirted into anti-gravity.
1:10:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's gross.
1:10:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I wanted to light the hang with you both.
1:10:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Just a silly kind of fun episode.
1:10:28
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fun to work in some of these FF villains that I'm so fond of.
1:10:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It's to find reasons to bring them in.
1:10:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So stay tuned on the show.
1:10:34
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to put this out on July 17th.
1:10:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to get a little ahead on the show so I can travel this summer So we're going to put this out on July 17th on the patreon on the very next episode Please watch for an episode about Our exploration of the characters the presence and starlight over on the main show all Colossus content So the next main episode will be a review of the series X-Men liberators
1:10:54
[SPEAKER_03]: with a series writer Joe Harris and Marvel editor, a former Marvel editor Jason Lee Big, will close out the month, of course, with the trial of Pewter Rasputin.
1:11:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So stay tuned for that.
1:11:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Where can people find you both online?
1:11:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Anything you want to plug and any final thoughts?
1:11:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's go shot in then Molly.
1:11:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, so my name is Sean.
1:11:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find me on Solving for X and XMintest podcast or on words of the witches.
1:11:16
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find both of those on Instagram or TikTok.
1:11:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find me at Seany Havick on Solving for X right now.
1:11:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We are in season four, XMint evolution, and we'll be giving a recap of uncanny experience last weekend.
1:11:30
[SPEAKER_01]: who you can find me on blue sky at at Molly laser on blue sky my post star mainly pictures of my cat and also posting about comics and doctor who at the moment.
1:11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: My books are available on Amazon and at bookshop.org.
1:11:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Molly, when we release this school will be over and you just get to sleep all summer, right?
1:11:53
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what you do not like.
1:11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I just sleep all summer and no.
1:11:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I have various
1:11:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I'm teasing my mom was the first great teacher.
1:12:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I always remember people being like, you're so lucky to have your summer's off.
1:12:05
[SPEAKER_03]: She's like, oh my god, I'm so tired.
1:12:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Except my mom would ever say, oh my god, that would be like swearing for her.
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, everybody.
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, thank you for learning about the super rave.
1:12:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was the silly and fun.
1:12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And thanks to Molly and Sean for hanging out.
1:12:19
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you all back here next time on the Grimochen Lane Patreon.
1:12:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism, as a special guest tonight talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
1:12:33
[SPEAKER_03]: The Swastika is an ancient symbol with roots stretching back more than 3,000 years.
1:12:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It appears in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Greek, Slavic, and indigenous cultures as a sign associated at variously with good fortune, well-being, the Sun, or cyclical renewal.
1:12:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Its name in Sanskrit, sphastika means conducive to well-being.
1:12:53
[SPEAKER_03]: In the late 19th century and early 20th century, several European nationalist thinkers wrongly interpreted the symbol as an emblem of the supposed Aryan race.
1:13:02
[SPEAKER_03]: These pseudo-scientific racial theories were circulating widely by the time the German Volkish movement adopted the swastika as a mark as a marker of the imagined racial purity.
1:13:12
[SPEAKER_03]: It'll fitler encountered the symbol in these nationalistic circles and chose it as the emblem of the national socialist German workers party, NSDAP in the early 1920s,
1:13:21
[SPEAKER_03]: He personally designed the final flag, a black swastika tilted at 45 degrees, with a white circle on a red background.
1:13:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Hitler claimed the red symbolized the social component of Nazism, the white, the nationalist component, and the swastika the struggle of the Aryan race.
1:13:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Once the Nazis rose to power in 1933, the flags used became mandatory in public life replacing traditional German symbols and becoming central to Nazi propaganda through its association with the regime's crimes in genocide.
1:13:49
[SPEAKER_03]: This wastica has since become an enduring emblem of fascism, anti-Semitism, and racial violence.
1:13:55
[SPEAKER_03]: The eagle, however, has a long tradition in Germanic and Roman iconography, symbolizing authority, imperial strength, and martial power.
1:14:03
[SPEAKER_03]: The Holy Roman Empire used
1:14:04
[SPEAKER_03]: the Reich sampler or Imperial Eagle for centuries, and various German states continue to employ forms of it into the 19th and 20th centuries.
1:14:13
[SPEAKER_03]: The Nazis adopted this image deliberately to place themselves in a supposed continuum of Germanic destiny and Imperial heritage.
1:14:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Nazi leadership stylized the eagle into what became known as the partia odler, or party eagle, and a rike sawdler, or state eagle, each holding a wreath containing a swastika.
1:14:31
[SPEAKER_03]: The eagle facing right was typically used for state purposes, while the left facing variant denoted the Nazi party specifically.
1:14:37
[SPEAKER_03]: These symbols appeared on uniforms, official seals, banners, currency, metals, and architecture.
1:14:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Their intent was dual to evoke historical continuity with earlier empires and to announce the authoritarian militaristic nature of the regime.
1:14:53
[SPEAKER_03]: The Eagles aggressive modernized form and its integration with the Swastika created a unified visual language that communicated dominion national unity and ideological purity, key pillars of the Nazi propaganda.
1:15:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I think sometimes it's helpful to learn the history of the symbols that we see.
1:15:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to jump into Captain America, number 50, this is a book from the late 90s, this is a story in the middle of the book called Relics by Brian David Marshall in Igor Quarty.
1:15:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of our X-Men fans may recognize Igor Quarty's name.
1:15:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Captain America is having a board night at home when he gets a message on his old hotline from some kids saying they found a nuclear bomb.
1:15:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, hey, Cap, what a hundred.
1:15:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Yuri says this is not legit, but Cap writes his motorcycle in anyway and finds a bunch of senior citizens dressed in black coats with red skull masks.
1:15:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Overwhelmed, Cap gets captured and strapped to a nuclear bomb and the leader of the faux skulls, laughs and cap space.
1:15:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, clockwork from your predictable reaction to the
1:15:50
[SPEAKER_03]: the hotline to your unwillingness to strike your elders, I will save this all more.
1:15:55
[SPEAKER_03]: All the more if you exhibit your vaulted fighting spirit, you're an impressive specimen.
1:16:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a shame you chose to enslave yourself to this mongrel nation, this pitiful democratic society that rewards the weak, capitalized.
1:16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: What would anyone wearing that mask know about a democratic society?
1:16:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I could tell you more than you care to know, says the man.
1:16:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I will only hear at the behest of your government.
1:16:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Myself and countless others you see with me were smuggled into this country.
1:16:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Our war crimes expunged, in exchange for meaningless information about the Furus plans for a nuclear device.
1:16:27
[SPEAKER_03]: At first I was content to chew my card and grow fat in my split-level home.
1:16:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Here in Chansey I even paid my taxes, then we were forced from our homes, but the very same government, a government so vast and corrupt that one tentacle was unaware of what
1:16:43
[SPEAKER_03]: We were about to splinter of the spear, but we knew we could stab at America's heart.
1:16:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So they learned of this abandoned nuclear bomb, though it took them years to find the core of it.
1:16:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So these are old Nazi war spies that are coming out of the woodwork.
1:16:54
[SPEAKER_03]: By the time we found it, we had aged from a vital army to a suicide cult.
1:16:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I have lived on hatred for many years, waiting for this moment, 15 seconds is just enough time to think about everyone you have ever loved.
1:17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: When all this is over, there will be a glassy crater when New Jersey used to be, and lying in the center will be your indestructible shield.
1:17:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And everyone will know that America's champion failed them, but of course cap breaks free.
1:17:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me tell you about America, Nazi America is a place where you're free to think and feel however you choose, but you can't hurt people, you squandered your chance at the American dream.
1:17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: You gave up your chance at tomorrow, and that's the difference between us.
1:17:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Even when things seem hopeless America always finds hope.
1:17:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Later, when Cap was believed that the real red skull shows up for just a moment to provide some commentary, I only regret that my own two hands weren't the instruments of his death, may he rot in hell and may this be the knife stabbed into the heart of your damned America at long last.
1:17:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Let me welcome my buddy Alan White to the show for this crazy conversation.
1:17:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, or are you a red skull fan, my friend?
1:17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been a red skull fan.
1:17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Just only, you know, because of his ideology and because he's a Nazi, it's snuck up on me because not just capitalism to overcome them, even though he was all the odds are against him, but then the follow-up because that is a nuclear bomb.
1:18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: He throws it out of the window or he
1:18:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like a regular explosion and it's a big explosion and everybody thinks he's dead.
1:18:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the country thinks he's dead and then you have all these, like you just read the red skull ways in on his opinion about Captain's death.
1:18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you have all these other think pieces from other heroes and citizens that think he's dead and they give their thoughts in their well wishes.
1:18:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's snuck in on me and I got to hear you.
1:18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, because that's what it would feel like to have a national symbol that you laid a lot of hope in and then lose that national symbol, lose that hope and cling and just kind of try to move forward after you've lost hope.
1:19:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Our country has certainly lost great leaders in our past and there have been times of kind of national grieving as a result when one of those leaders is lost.
1:19:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Martin Luther King is an amazing example, but even as recently as some of the candidates in office that seem to represent American values, there's just a there's a grief that shows up for people when this happens and I like when they capture that in a cap story.
1:19:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, Cap gives a lot of words in his little, you know, final speech, but he basically says America is a place you're free to think and feel however you choose, but you can't hurt people.
1:19:38
[SPEAKER_03]: That's where we drum by.
1:19:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And here we have a story called relics.
1:19:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell me on the old Nazis, putting on there.
1:19:46
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a senior citizen brigade of baby boomers.
1:19:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because after the original Nazis aged out they started to attract all these other disillusioned baby boomers into their town right and all those numbers that overcame Cat weren't just the original Nazis But they were also disillusioned elderly American
1:20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so what is that telling us is telling us that as we go forward in time, we might be leaving behind people that without keeping our eyes on all the citizens of every generation, we might be fomenting a kind of mindset of people that feel left out feel unheard anymore.
1:20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: feel like they've lost their country, right?
1:20:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And those people are still voters.
1:20:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we wind up like what we have now, I think, is just people, they don't, the people that don't care so much about the new values and the new generations with all of our diversity of every kind including sexuality.
1:20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: They feel threatened and left out and they got to the polls and they said we're not gonna stand for it.
1:20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's hard to even talk to them if we don't listen to them.
1:20:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and I think the title relics says a lot.
1:21:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Like these are old antiquated thinking, the world has moved on.
1:21:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But here we have these symbols.
1:21:05
[SPEAKER_03]: We see the swastik and the eagle here, which I thought was a good time to talk about the adoption of those symbols.
1:21:10
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the American flag in many parts around the world does not represent freedom and safety and opportunity.
1:21:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It represents murder and oppression, like overthrowing of governments and want and profiting off of people.
1:21:23
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's interesting to kind of watch that idea around symbology and the real symbol in this issue is not the swastika where the eagle but the symbol of the red mask, the skull face that they all put on to represent who they are is akin to the white hoods that may have been used to the point in our country's history.
1:21:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes stories like this will show like, oh, this was an American person who is latching on to Nazi ideals, but these are literal old Nazis
1:21:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It's after America versus men of his generation, but he's in perfect form in his Aryan body, well they're all elderly.
1:22:00
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm before before I sound like I am a sympathizer for.
1:22:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh no, it's on that way at all, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
1:22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, um, because there are, as we, if we try to listen and this is a thing that I'm, I'm being more and more aware of because I am a African-American.
1:22:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm, I'm not an African-American, I'm a black American.
1:22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not from Africa.
1:22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere long way down the line my people are from Africa, but I don't know from where because things got severed, but I don't have the personal experience of having like an uncle or a grandfather or anybody like that that's going to I'm going to sit the Thanksgiving dinner table and I'm going to hear stuff that I that just hits me to my core and and just kills me because of what they believe and I'm related to them.
1:22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have people like that at my personal family, right?
1:22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we'd have to listen, but I know that there's a limit of what to listen to and where you draw your line, right?
1:22:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they just know that we are trying to talk to them by listening to them at the same time, we might get a dialogue going.
1:23:05
[SPEAKER_00]: These red helmeted, these red, it did not see.
1:23:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Red Skull wannabes, they're not they I don't know whoever they had conversations with but they're all having conversations with one another and they're willing to die now to just stab it I in the America that they feel betrayed feel like through them out of the neighborhoods they promised they could have.
1:23:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, willing to die for a cause, which is a crazy thing to consider.
1:23:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But for all these years, these men, their story is literally like, we came here, we profited off of your country.
1:23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: We've grown fat and comfortable, and we have communities.
1:23:40
[SPEAKER_03]: But now it's our time to prove ourselves to the motherland once again, like the idea of like these old ideas being poisoned themselves, and when you can't let go of them, you don't change.
1:23:50
[SPEAKER_03]: I think is a different line here too.
1:23:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's a pretty smart story.
1:23:53
[SPEAKER_03]: for a short, like, cap feature.
1:23:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's a lot packed into this.
1:23:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not 100% successful, but I do think it's a pretty solid read.
1:24:00
[SPEAKER_03]: How you doing in 2025, my friend?
1:24:03
[SPEAKER_03]: What are talking about ancient symbols and how we're trying to survive these days, you know?
1:24:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as you know, and as you are, on a therapist is like, you're a therapist, and so I'm preserving my peace on purpose.
1:24:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So I could be of any good to anyone else who's coming to me for help.
1:24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: In the therapeutic relationship with my clients,
1:24:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm fighting hard to preserve my piece.
1:24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means I am limiting my intake of the media.
1:24:28
[SPEAKER_00]: When I need to know something about what's going on in current events, I seek out a source where I can just read it at my own pace, and it doesn't come with a lot of
1:24:37
[SPEAKER_00]: voice.
1:24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't come with a lot of images and a lot of like media presentation.
1:24:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I can get you really hyped up or really draw you in appeal to your emotions, whether they be negative or angry or positive or whatever.
1:24:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I just give me this just give me the information.
1:24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me read it in a neutral space.
1:24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll know what's going on without it also snatching me by the
1:25:03
[SPEAKER_00]: when I will need to dismiss that and now be a therapist.
1:25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to preserve my peace.
1:25:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, this is an active choice.
1:25:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's a different story for all of us, right?
1:25:13
[SPEAKER_03]: There's, there's interesting.
1:25:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We could have a whole long conversation about the shifting dynamic of therapy in 2025.
1:25:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Because for me, you know, normally,
1:25:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So I do crisis work for example when someone comes into sit for crisis work if they were to say something like I don't like gay people That's normally a thing.
1:25:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not going to talk about that's not what I'm there for I'm going to let them process through their stuff But when people are coming in even in the face of tragedy and starting to share like I think the transgender people are possessed by the devil and I am a Trump supporter I believe in him.
1:25:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I think he's the returned Messiah But I'm hearing that shit.
1:25:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think I can draw the lines that clearly or right like
1:25:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Where's the boundary for safety?
1:25:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's a shifting dynamic in our field in the kind of crazy rhetoric.
1:25:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm in Utah, you're in New York.
1:25:58
[SPEAKER_03]: We're in different places, but they each have a way to history.
1:26:02
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's an odd time to be a therapist is what I'm saying.
1:26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's a therapist on that came across my social feeds and she is a, what did she call herself?
1:26:14
[SPEAKER_00]: She's clear about she's not going to be the kind of therapist that just catches intolerance and hate.
1:26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: When I get her information, I'll urge you to or I'll put um like a comment underneath the IG if you put it on your IG.
1:26:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm happy to.
1:26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: to link to her because she's right in your face about it, but she is completely therapeutic about it.
1:26:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And everything that she says about it is well-reasoned and even even though she has a motion in her voice when she's saying it like determination, like I am not going to sit and allow that kind of dialogue in a therapeutic space.
1:26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to protect someone who is violating other people's civil rights, like that kind of thing is clear.
1:26:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm completely on that page.
1:27:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fortunate, but to your point, I am in New York City and so my clients are not as polarized as that.
1:27:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're going to charge crazy.
1:27:08
[SPEAKER_03]: You're going to charge the burger for us.
1:27:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, recording these always are very educational for me.
1:27:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And I love to form connections with friends.
1:27:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I have really enjoyed befriending you through the show.
1:27:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's always a great joy to have you on.
1:27:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can't wait to hang out again.
1:27:20
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got some big friends in February.
1:27:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I think.
1:27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for bringing me on like I love your hope.
1:27:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the whole community you built.
1:27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I love your show.
1:27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I love your personality.
1:27:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I just couldn't stay away.
1:27:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you very much, my friend.
1:27:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I've done through a lot of changes with the show.
1:27:34
[SPEAKER_03]: It's been interesting to reflect my journey.
1:27:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Like this year 2025 shitty.
1:27:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I did this is one of my favorite years in my life, but show has continued to create a place of solace even as I've gotten kind of more serious in my presentation, but it's still fun to just giggle right like we're having a
1:27:49
[SPEAKER_03]: time always.
1:27:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Alright everybody, thanks for listening.
1:27:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Please take care of yourselves.
1:27:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you Alan for joining me today.
1:27:54
[SPEAKER_03]: We will see you all back here next week on Grimmothin Lane.