Latest / Graymalkin Lane the podcast / Bonus Patreon Release: Blaquesmith! With Robyn Moffat and Ben Rome!

Transcript

Bonus Patreon Release: Blaquesmith! With Robyn Moffat and Ben Rome! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Walk and Lane Patreon channel.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am joined here by two of my favorite people from the show, Robin Muffet and Ben Rome.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Robin's been on a number of episodes recently with me and you may know her best as the voice of a more dynamic Taggart in our X-Vetscript readings.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then my friend Ben has joined me.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben was on the Thunderbird informative episode earlier this year with me.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, whenever I'm taking these little character journeys on this channel, sometimes I have themes, sometimes I assign a character, but I'm always, I always love it when a guest gets to choose which character we're going to cover.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Ben and I had a little bit of like back and forth, like which character fits, and we ended up landing on Blacksmith, BLA QUE, SMITH.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, this is that trend where we switch a letter with another letter and then it makes it cool somehow.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blacksmith's a weird little character.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like the Yoda two cables Luke Skywalker He's not a little bug guy from the future and kind of a fun guy He has an interesting story along the way So it was fun to read him front and back.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome both of my guests to the show today Tell me some of your initial thoughts about Blackquist Smith
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Going back to, so it was an interesting question when we were talking initially about who to pick, I admittedly was a huge X-Men X4's, X arc fan back in the 80s and 90s.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I seriously collected comics, they were my main, my main jam for every week.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, trying to dig back in there and find, you know, characters that, you know, did the topic that we wanted to discuss.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: In that conversation with Chad, I kind of didn't really like to cable.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really like Bishop that whole future apocalyptic, come back in time and kind of mess around with things that comics are really well known for.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: We did kind of move into more of that secondary look and blacksmith kind of stood out a couple of times because
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's really like that master of puppets behind the scenes manipulator.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that kind of intrigued me and like going back and digging into it more is but you know, continue discussion today.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Really pulled out some interesting things.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's really kind of a linchpin to the whole X-Men universe and I think that's, that's what's fascinating to me.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love taking these characters from odd corners and discovering interesting truths about them along the way.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Robin, I love that you're willing to just come on anytime and hang with whatever direction I take you.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're like, sure, let's do this a little weird little bug guy, welcome, Robin.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love this little bug guy.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is so much fun.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just going to jump in.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love black.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to call him black with Smith all throughout this because I heard that on the cerebral podcast.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it was Holly Raven that said that.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And ever since it is just going in their like brain worms, I have to pronounce it like black with Smith.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So sorry to everyone, but it's going to happen.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I first met him in Ed Bryson's X-Force, which is actually his last of a appearance.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we've not seen him since it was just before Kakao.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I read this comment.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was just
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Who is this strange little man?
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is just sure not part of nowhere.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had no context for him.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, hmm, he's associated with cable.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He Rachel Summers is in the story.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Therefore, I love black wasmith because Rachel Summers is my writer die.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm obsessed with her.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then I discovered, oh, actually he has such an association with a genre of xman.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love him obsessed with when they go into dystopian for a future.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it is such a fun realm of sci-fi and get
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: cable all the much better.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love this little guy.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm obsessed with him.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so we're going to start with the complicated stuff before we get into the character specifically.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've been rewatching one of my favorite series of all time lost with my husband and children and lost when it gets into season five season six, especially starts to involve time travel and paradox.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: This thing that happened already happened, so a character from the future goes to the past and does a thing that ends up influencing the thing that happened to them in the future.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of that in the X-Men, and it really actively begins with Chris Claremont's Days of Future Past, which is this dystopian future with concentration camps.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Elderly Kate Wilderly, adult Kate Pride comes back and inhabits the body of Kate in the past and manipulate certain events.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, this future ends up kind of getting erased, but
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: develop.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So our timeline gets forever not.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not going to become the days of future past timeline anymore.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in that future timeline is where the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey Rachel Summers comes from.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rachel is turned into a haunt.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a lot of thoughts on Rachel that I think are fascinating, but we won't focus a lot on Rachel today, even though we
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rachel ends up coming back to the present and becomes an integral part of this timeline and because of a lot of the decisions Rachel makes It ends up setting up different versions of the future and past of the X-Men along the way So fast forward a little bit tear my loves the character Rachel she becomes an integral part of a Excalibur
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: X-factor happens.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cyclops is married, Madeline prior.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Claremont had very different plans, but the story that ends up getting told is they have a child, Madeline is a clone.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mr. Sinister is trying to create this perfect mutant who's going to be super powerful.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Nathan Christopher Charles Summers is the heir to the X-Men.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cyclops is the heir to Xavier.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cable is the heir to Cyclops.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Nathan is kind of this messianic figure who ends up becoming the savior figure in a lot of ways.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's the person who's going to save everyone from the great evil.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And over time, he has a daughter named Hope who also becomes this savior figure.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they're all interagually connected to the Phoenix Force, which is like this elevated mutant energy god level presence, which is, again, maybe it's also just Gene Gray is like emotions release.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rachel ends up getting sent into a far future, 2,000 years in a storyline in Excalibur, where she grows into an old old woman named Mother Eskani, but this also ties into the later X-factor stories where they're trying to bring Cyclops and Gene back over to the main X-Men book, and their kid Nathan feels like baggage, I suppose.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Apocalypse captures this child
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: In order to save him, a woman named Scottie, who's the first character we meet bearing that name, comes to the past and takes Nathan to the far future, where he's like the promised one, the chosen one.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because in this particular dark future, which is separate from days of future past, we have this dystopian world where apocalypse has learned how to rule everything.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: The humans are subjugated.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's this awful wasteland.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the only people who really stand against him is this kind of clan or cult of people called the Eskani, we'll talk a lot about the Eskani today and the religion that forms around that over time.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nathan also gets cloned, so there's a different version of him that does not have the Technoorganic virus.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: This character is known as strife, both strife and cable end up coming back to the past.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a whole cast of characters from this 2000 years in the future that get woven into the past.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Rachel is motherous Connie who in the far future sets up the religion that raises her little brother Nathan up to this kind of messianic figure who comes back to the past and does all of these crazy things.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm leading a lot of this into just one quick conversation.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a little continuity dense.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a little time travely, but the two main things we're going to be talking about in relation to blacksmith.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: are the Ascani and the way it exists in the future 2000 years, and this cast of characters who end up coming back to the present, which shape the different kind of futures, so the place that cable and Rachel spent 2000 years in the future will no longer happen in our timeline, because they've officially changed the time events, but much like days of future past, that is also still a realm that people can travel to.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Last thing I mentioned before we talk about this for a bit at Cyclops and Gene have a series that's quite famous done by Gene Ha and I think John Francis more the adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix were after their wedding in the mid 90s they get pulled into the far future where they inhabit different.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: bodies.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they get to be involved in the raising of young Nathan.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's this crazy, beautiful art.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a really unexpected story that talks about the childhood of cable before he comes back as an old man with a metal arm and a glowing eye.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: The president, the lathe, owned creation.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's really crafty under Fabian, you see, as a primarily.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is what we love and hate about the X-Men is all the time travel crazy.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it gets way bigger than this, but we're going to keep it contained to just that conversation for now.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's already a lot.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me hear from Ben and then Robin, as we delve into the time travel flippy floppy.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you love this or does it make him crazy?
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, for me, I mean, just having been out of the space for a bit and then coming back to it, it's very, very tiny, whiny to quote a phrase.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it can be exceptionally hard to follow.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I'm more about character when I do story and what's really always attracted me about the,
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: X series is about the story and about the characters and less about the story.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I may get details wrong here and there And I'm glad you guys are here to correct me because I have like I can't keep it straight I mean, but then I understand I think I'm more meta level to you know and I've had this conversation life sometimes it seems so crazy because they're trying different ways to tell the character story and doing them in different versions Like if you want to see what this character would be like they weren't sick or if they were sick If they didn't have or didn't have did have or didn't have or had a different background or whatever
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you do like these these really crazy amazing tropes like the cloning or moving them forward or backward in time or appering them with the character that's in a different dimension and things like that.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're even inhabiting them with the weird quasi-imagical spiritual force like Phoenix.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then it's just a matter of like exploring character character in that way and all the different things that go on.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's the beauty of it, you know, drilling back down into like the different characters that come into play.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we get to see how mainstays work with each other, even if their relations
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell us one more layer early quickly although we won't spend a lot of time on this character I do have another character episode out with my dear friend Amanda Martini about the character Madame sanctity who is the daughter of the creator of the sentinels who has time travel powers who also gets yanked into the far future and becomes a leader in the esgani and also manipulates events
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: from there, back into the present, to craft a certain kind of future.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And good Lord, are we not going to talk about the 12 today, although I'm sure the conversation will be completely breached.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it gets, it gets more and more layered as we go, because a number of characters from that far future have come back to the present, including Cable's son, Tyler, who becomes Genesis, including Blacksmith, including Chivère, and a number of others.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Dark Sisterhood is a whole mother journey.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We could take some time.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Robin, what are your thoughts on the time?
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I will say I like that you say that we're not going to touch on madam's entity.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're not going to touch on the 12 because I read all of this stuff as preparation for today because I love this shit.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not like we're not going to do a deep dive.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: We got to keep it.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, it's nice.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, honestly, um, for how much I have read in preparation of today, if I were to go off, this would take about seven hours.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm not going to hold you both hostage with my thoughts a bit mad and sank today, so don't worry.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: I actually really agree with Ben.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that one of the things I really like about X-Men and
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: comic books generally I think the way that they can explore alternate realities, the way that you can see how alternate circumstances would or would not change people, and how quite often the strength of someone's character actually shines through in so many aspects of them that may be circumstantial in the 616 still come through from different causes in different realities.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's really interesting and I think that a byproduct of that exploration
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: character is that you get really messy, convoluty continuity, like the ascany, like black wasmith, like all of this is interesting, but it's something I really do love to be X-Men, and I think if you do love X-Men, you have to at very least be able to accept that this is there.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I studied classics at university, I was obsessed with ancient Greek mythology, and
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: comment you really are the modern-day equivalent of that mythology where you can just go I'm just going to pick and choose these aspects of this character and rework the story to fit the narrative that I want to tell.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think people get too hung up on trying to make sense of the continuity.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: The stories are there too.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: The stories create the continuity.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: The continuity should not be a barrier to telling good stories and I think the fact that we have this multi-versal madness
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the other timeline that gets dumped in the X-Men quite often, which is very similar like this always happened.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if you change the past, it just diverges into a different future, but the future you came from still happen is Bishop, right?
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like Bishop's 80 years in the future thing is another that's hugely woven in because we have Fitzroy and Malcolm and Randall and Charlotte and like all these all these characters.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, we also think this is where things start to get crazy when you jump to like Marauder's volume two and like the two billion years in the past threshold civilization that that the like both Cassandra Nova and Katie pride and strife were all partially responsible for creating.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: But that's what becomes cracoma in the like it gets really it gets crazy we love it when it's done in a certain way.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have to have the Escanic conversation right away as well.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's this dystopian future, everything is like, it's crazy.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of Bible stuff worked into cable story.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very like, you know, all the people have to gather their children and go back to their city of their birth to get counted.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like, you know, all the journey that Christ takes if you read the life of Christ.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: people's stories often match that, but with a lot of crazy science and like mutates and tech and you know, again, clothing, so much body horror to it all as well.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really relate to the character of Nathan, but a large part of his upbringing is directly related to the Ascani, which changes over time.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Robin, tell us about the Ascani and what you love about this group of people.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, I believe the correct answer here is that the Ascany are a clan founded by Rachel Summers and others to fight against Spocklet.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: My personal real answer is that they are a beglez bean orgy in the future.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: They are wonderful, they're great.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: like the thing.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the Escani are kind of insane if you take them at face value because the simultaneously are like a military, like a sort of vigilante military organization.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're also a religion.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're also the sort of monastery where they train up super heroes.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: They kind of take on a lot of different aspects, but really they're just a lot of fun.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: There are basically Rachel Summers arrives in the, I believe it's the 41st century.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, this is terrible.
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Great, it's a little gang of heroes and fights back again.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Neuro, one of Apocalypse's administrators, kills her.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: and then that starts the way for the Ascani to come through as this like what eventually grows into a big massive resistance against apocalypse and then persists past him which is really interesting after apocalypse is torn down from his position of power.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Ascani still exist but they're now like
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just mad and sanctity alone in a house with like one single woman looking after who's like this mad and sanctity's lost her mind and I don't really know what to do with it, which you know, just leads to my theory that it's this is what happens when one person stays behind at the lesbian origin.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of Star Wars woven into all of this as well, right?
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's this kind of group of the Jedi fighting against the evil empire, kind of energy.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fashion in it is really fun.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's lots of spikes and dark reds and coats and crazy hairstyles.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Robin has thoughts on the fashion I can see.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, the fashion is wonderful.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you have not looked at any of these comics and you're listening to this, please just go and look at some of them.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of it is drawn by Junha and Junha is wonderful.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: The visual impact that so much of the stuff has is really what grabbed me initially and then I stuck around for the lesbians.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Mother of Sconey or Rachel is running this group.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's it up.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is a rebellion against a wider empire in a world where people are living in poverty.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The tech is kind of mixed in with the wilderness.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we have another group often referenced called the clan chosen.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is cable's kind of,
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: freedom fighter group.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is where he meets his later wife, Alia, who goes by Jen Scott, characters like Hope and Tetherblood, you know, and you see as a sets a lot of that stuff up in like the cable blood and metal series and there's a bunch of people woven into that group.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they have big guns and they're fighting like the forces of apocalypse and strife who are called the new canonites.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So trying to set up the mythology without delving to deep.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the backdrop
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, do you have thoughts on the asconi and then do you want to tell us about the visual for blacksmith who is very Yoda coded like we have to say that right out for a I mean, yeah, yes, so blacksmith very much is Yoda coded.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was going to say, you know, you said that there's less towers is she those wrote woven in through here and blacksmith definitely is like he plays that Yoda slash, you know, mentor that role, but it's like more that mystic obscure phrasing, you know, trying to affect the future without affecting a future.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me that you're Yoda without telling me that you're Yoda.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting that that seems to be like a type in shadow that they used to kind of create that character.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, as far as like the escawning, it's, I guess going back a little bit to arrive on my things.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you know your mythology, I say I love mythology.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I part of my writing course to take myths in mythological characters and reinterpret them into different settings.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: or in different ways, you know, modernization or what.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting how there's a lot of core relevance in a lot of storytelling, especially here with, you know, this Connie and just, you know, this whole X-Men tale, you know, it is truly our modern mythology.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: How are we retelling the same stories with the same
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: With the same impact points that should affect us and help us to draw those moral judgments and things by reinterpreting them in different ways that help us to appeal to us in a different manner.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, if you distill down to the elements for each of these characters, I'm sure, and I'm sure that somebody else is doing a PhD on this.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, using their, you know, fun IPs now is our modern mythology and using, like, so, you know, I am not fully versed in the Escanian and these storylines, like in some spaces I did read, you know, I wasn't able to read the comics and so, but I did some research in it, because like I said, this wasn't fully into where I was at in the comics.
• 18:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, we're going to cover today, we, there's like, one a times the amount of material that we could, yeah, we're going to keep this focused on blacksmith, but it's a really rich and developed world is and I think that's what the appeal is that all of us, you know, we, we all look, you know, it's for reason why science fiction and dystopian and apocalyptic fiction is really impotular because
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It shows like the worst of us if we got ourselves out of hand, but the hope is comes into their way that moral character can arise out of this darkness or this bleakness, like, you know, Rachel seeing, you know, what's all of this and then finding a way to make purpose and build something that resists the apocalypse is rule.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's really where, you know, comes into it.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you really just kind of play into the character look at the characters, this way, how would that spin out and work in that sense?
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they think finding how blacksmith finds his way in there and what he represents in different ways.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: like, you know, he represents free will versus predestination in some manners and then how he interacts with other characters of different different moral tropes and how those work together to create this, you know, you may not understand this setting 100% cleatable, you recognize the story and that is where and is Robin mentioned earlier, how we play when we, you know, we even as creators play and manipulate with different things, but it's the essence of the character that
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: setting instance or circumstances where even realities they find themselves in.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what stands on a that's the enduring, that's the enduring attraction of the entire experiment franchise.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're reading this in real time, I don't I don't want to get too lost at this because that we're going to truncate our time to talk about Blacksmith.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're reading this in real time, so again, baby Nathan's been sent to the future.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rob LaFeld is this new kind of MTV generation vonderkin that they bring in to work on the X-Men art is crazy.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The new mutants is ending, and a character named Cable is introduced.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's an old man with a glowing eye and a tech arm, right?
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: He ends up kind of rebranding the team and then X-Force is launched.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: NECS is mostly kind of working with whatever layfeld tossed at them, so we've got Shatterstar and Farrell and all these crazy characters, but there's an early reveal where Stryff, this character, and this giant metal shiny suit pulls off his hat, and he has the same face as Nathan, and you're like, ooh, which one is he both?
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is he bad guy?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: The mythology of both characters is as quickly established, and Stryff has brought people back from the future with him, including the
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: who is a character.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to do a Patreon on some time.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Keeble starts to get the mythology expanded.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's the giant revelation during executioner's song that he is the child of Scott and Jean from the future.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of the stuff added that added to that is Rhett Condon.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: popular character he has a long running series at this time that I was buying off the books and I've told this he has at this end an interview that I gave once a cable was a character I really imprinted on because he's this character who has ultimate power but it's held in check by this technorganic virus that he has to contain through all of his energy.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if he ever lets it go a little bit, it's going to overwhelm him.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is truly how I saw my queerness growing up.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like it's something I have to contain or it's going to overwhelm and ruin everything.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So cables like deep sense of responsibility is something I imprinted on.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we're going to jump forward to cable 21, which is the beginning of blacksmith.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jeff Loeb is now on the book, it's July 1995, already Georgianson is the initial creator of this character.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know who designed Blacksmith, but the cover is cable holding the body of a little bug looking mutant as the sun shines down on the wreckage that caption says enter Blacksmith.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cables left exports behind, Domino and Calabiner with him, and he senses Blacksmith around.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Domino's met him before, he and Cable have a deep history, and Domino's
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you getting mixed up with him again?
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: They track him aboard a massive docked ship, which is kind of his initial place Where where we see him and they find a bug looking guy on board with a big buggy eyes He kind of looks like a pill bug like those little potato roly polis or he kind of looks like a bug like if you pull it shell off And there's kind of like the soft white under skin underneath He looks like a creature that dwells under a rock a little robin so disturbed by this description But it's not
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's horrified, but it's so accurate, it's so good.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, I don't know, three or four feet tall.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got big buggy eyes, and his arms kind of look like tentacles, although they don't, they're not consistent with that later.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's speaking in the Eskati battle language, which looks like Cracco in a little bit.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a bunch of like futuristic looking symbols.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cable respects and tells him to speak in English.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're not here five seconds, and already you're giving me orders.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now we're going to learn blacksmith is a mutant.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has mild kind of telepathic powers.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's also kind of a tech whiz.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's he's he's kind of cable's forge in some ways.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's he's building with a lot of tech cable says despite what's happened in the past I will always be there for you blacksmith response.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So still trying to make your x-force project work hadn't even mastered your own powers and yet you teach others you're still with domino I see I guess you did learn something from me after all They're talking telepathically cable assures blacksmith the domino doesn't remember a certain mission There's something omitted from her brain.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It turns out onslaught has attacked
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: and that's why blacksmith triggered because onslaught is stealing intel on cable from blacksmith's ship.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know you won't take this lightly Nathan, there are lots of ways of finding you, but coming through me makes this person not only smart, but deadly.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got an agenda, my friend.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've got something he wants and he's willing to kill you to get it.
• 23:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: and then cable asks for help in designing tech for X-Force.
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So clearly, there's a lot of history.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is one of cable's big secrets.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now we have everything kind of coming to a head because right around this time is when Legion has gone back in time and caused the age of apocalypse and the world is ending.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a relaunch on all of the books.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So don't worry about it.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in X-Men Prime Number 1, Blacksmith has tracked the landing of X-Man on Earth.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: postage of apocalypse.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we now have cable and strife and I told you we'd keep this simple, but another reality that has influenced our reality very consistently over the years despite that it never happened.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because you know, dark beast and sugar man and all these characters,
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: A younger, perfect version of Nathan from another timeline that was created by Mr. Sinister.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is now landed on the earth and his name is X-Man.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Blacksmith is very disturbed to learn about this.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this dominates a lot of his early stories.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, cable 23, cable goes back to Blacksmith's frigate.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I only came here because I need someone I can trust, despite what happened in the past.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do trust you.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ever the liar, Nathan, is there that much that you were taught that you forgot?
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or maybe it was a responsibility says cable, I was never meant to have.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't ask to be called the chosen one.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then just keep on ignoring your destiny.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've got a pretty good job of it already.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Look, I didn't come ever a fight.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've had way too much history between us to go over this again.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I need help, Lex Smith.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I need you to help me find Tyler.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's been trying to contact me.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is cable shit kid from the future who is also back in the fast, just a terrible, terrible person.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Blacksmith Tyler, the bird and you must bear, you have all people know the promise I made his mother.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was only making an observation.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Genesis, which is Tyler's code name, is far more powerful than you imagine.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Genesis doesn't do a lot, but he does run the dark writers who do some really awful shit to Wolverine for a minute in this era.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: The soon blacksmith is on his own, he's meditating, he knows it's impossible to manipulate cable, but more dangerous to tell him what he actually knows.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then he communes with mother Eskani across the thousands of years to separate them in the future, and he's speaking in Eskani language.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: I know you are troubled blacksmith, but each of us must play their role with so much at stake, and you accept it your just he's long ago.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, but what if that destiny demands I put the Eskani son's life in danger?
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: his trials are not yet done, and truth they are but beginning.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: The adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix is one story, but Kabel's story is picked up in another series called The Scanies on which jump to Kabel 3rd at 24, Kabel surprisingly brings his wife, Jen Scott at a much younger age from the future into Blacksmith for healing.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a whole different story.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Kabel seems to lose faith.
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do the teachings mean so little to you.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Blacksmith's a little bit of a zealot.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's very devoted to the Escani.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's very strongly holding on to this idea that he has to shape a certain kind of future.
• 26:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says, the ways of the mother Escani are oftentimes mysterious or have you simply forgotten that the why of any situation is secondary to the situation itself.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then he reminds him in a Scotty, which is the phrase that the religion uses most often.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is is?
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when you apply that to the time travel paradox stuff, what is is what always happened was meant to happen.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot packed into those three words.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: He also gets to say, who among us can predict how a wrinkle in our guest today will perfect our tomorrow?
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then he prays and mother of Scotty appears before him again.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to jump into the the Nate Gray cable connection of it all.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I still remember reading you know that first appearance of him is to suit different.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You feel like there's a weight of a story that's about to first forth and you're not really sure.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: What it all means for cable and what's about to come.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I really feel like you know in these early iterations of Blacksmith he saw himself as a as a fate maker and the protector.
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything had to fall in line according to the way that he believed and understood it to be and that's why he kind of took that role as a mentor Not necessarily to provide to provide knowledge, but to really kind of make sure that cable is falling through in the direction that he knew he had to go and he couldn't explain that to him, which is why you know
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: He carried the weight of, he knew it was to come.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: He knew as cable's role was supposed to play in that, and you can't necessarily explain that, because you could alter what that looks like, moving forward with cable, because like, you have knowledge you're not supposed to have, and all of a sudden, you know something you're not supposed to know, and therefore you could collapse time and we're changing things clearly around.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, having him like this mystical connection bridge between current time and, you know, thousands of years in the future with the Asconey and this mysterious, you know, we don't fully know what's going on with that
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Having these touches, it's really just like brings like every time blacksmith was on the page It felt like there was a you're seeing glimpses of the largest story at work These little window pieces that are happening and you get intrigued But then you continue for actually like when is the next image show?
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?
• 28:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: How does that happen?
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's what the fascination was with
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So all of this is additive.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: They weren't planning these storylines at the time, but this is what's going on.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: We learned the story of Blacksmith is basically to make sure that cable completes his mission.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if cable was a 20 year old, that's crazy, but he looks like he's like 55, 60, and a lot of these stories.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And his job is to make sure that he's there to help cable along his way.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the mission, ultimately,
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: is that cables going to stop apocalypse in the past so that the future will never happen.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Rachel knows better.
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rachel does it's going to be a divergent timelines.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: She knows she's setting up stories that are going to bear fruit in the long run.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is setting up hope summers.
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is setting up the ability for the X-Men to move
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: None of that is in the story at the time, or when Blacksmith says something what is is, we start to see a here's a Nate Gray from another timeline, and then we jump to cable 25, where we go to the far future where cable and domino are there to help Jen Scott on a mission, and cable who is an old man meets young Blacksmith who knows young Nathan.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is already, again, it was additive.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We didn't know that at the time when we just got this what is is speech, but Blacksmith already knows what cable looks like in the far future because they've already met 2,000 years from now for him, but not for Nathan you've come on the eve of the most crucial battle in the children of the Escania have yet to face if this battle is not one than both of our world past.
• 29:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: and future will be lost.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: All a scan you know, each person has a role to play.
• 29:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It turns out young days bring a sick, young strife is attacking, young blacksmith needs old cable and old professor who is the apocalypse ship AI.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to get into that today.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: They need them to make young cable better, young days bring better.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it works.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, future cables save the life of young cable because of time travel and Blacksmith knows what is what was always supposed to happen and he wishes the Eskani Sun good journey as they had along their way.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: The same month Blacksmith gets a right up in a monthly X-Men news letter that was appearing like the Marvel Bullpen page.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to read it to us Ben what they have to say about Blacksmith who they're really trying to set up as huge here.
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: A mystery unto himself, very little has yet to be revealed about the mutant known thus far, only as blacksmith.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those of you who have been reading Cable have already met this plucky little fellow, I'm the interesting description.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shame on you, those who haven't, and you know that whoever he is, there's someone out there who's got a reason for not wanting him and Cable around.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see, blacksmiths, a tinker who's abilities to create technological weapons and equipment, rival that of X-Factor's resident machine Smith.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: for.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is used his mutant powers to establish a base of operations inside a rusty old dilapidated shipping frigate that can detect an intruder's presence.
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The moment he or she sets foot on board.
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also, Blacksmith's talents may have allowed him to travel from 2000 years into the future backwards to the recent
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: past.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: While the true reason blacksmith actually made this tiny leap is still open for debate, it is most definite that he shares some kind of history with both cable, fellow time traveler from the same future era, and the enigmatic domino, who for reasons that are a story for another day, just as soon never seen blacksmith again.
• 31:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So lots happening and they're working to set them up.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to jump into the X man crazy of it all.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is a big story, but we'll cover it quickly because ultimately it's not super consequential for blacksmith.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we've got strife, Nate Gray, and Cable all involved in this coming story that's a crossover between Nate and Cable.
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as a reader at the time, this is exciting.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, okay, I want to see X man and Cable cross paths.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: What happens, right?
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's the old grizzled version and then the young untapped potential version.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Blacksmith is track Nate gray down, there's a fight with the Dark Beast, who's also from the Age of Apocalypse, and then we get a backup story in X-Men number 9 called Teeth of the Storm.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Stan Lee presents Blacksmith in his first solo adventure, and we learned he was sent back to the past to watch over Cable on his mission, but he's been forbidden from ever contacting Xavier, who would then be able to read his mind and have things, right?
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also see him plot a ship through a hurricane, and that's kind of the whole story.
• 32:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So after all that set up, it did do a whole bunch.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It continues in the next issue where Blacksmith does enter the Xavier mansion, and he is stunned that there is sheer technology inside, and he meets Xavier.
• 32:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I apologize for the intrusion, sir.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I assume you have sky-sized Scandinomy, Xavier, says, I have rules about violating other people's minds.
• 32:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I scanned you only long enough to determine if you intended harm.
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: You did not.
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love when Xavier assures people of his ethics.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: You just don't believe it.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And blacksmiths are all blacksmiths.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a friend of cables.
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, maybe not exactly a friend, but I'm actually not here to see cable.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's UIC and Xavier says and you do that reluctantly.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That much I was able to read in you as well as fear.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Afraid blacksmiths says, yes, I am.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Most definitely.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you should be too very, very afraid Charles Xavier.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am from a future.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: A cable has a destiny within that future, which I really can't say much about.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: My role is to help him keep track of it.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's in the ideal scheme of things you and I should never have met.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But now Xavier's trying to confront Nate Gray, Astraly, and Gray simply does knocks him off the Astral plane, which is like Holy Shit.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's some canonites involved and Blacksmith allows himself to be shot multiple times in order to allow the others to escape.
• 33:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that story kind of heats up in its own way over time.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to continue it here because Blacksmith's role in it is done.
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We assume he just healed.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's fine.
• 33:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not really referenced again, but he's really fucking freaked out by the idea of Nate Gray.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: one of the first things we learn is you are under no circumstances meant to speak to Charles Xavier because he is far too noisy for his own good and the first thing that Blacksmith does is hi Mr Xavier is lovely to meet you like he is truly a little chaos gremlin just moving through the timeline doing things he is playing chess against but can only assume himself I guess this is how he keeps himself entertained
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's really interesting, it's such a strange character to set down and talk about because so much of his existence and the story is just about sort of providing a little bit of grease for other characters plots to move across.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think he's definitely interesting, he's like if you take the mentor.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: of Yoda, the like tragic figure who sometimes gets struck down in combat but then just appears again anyway of Obi-Wan Kenobi and then also the tech was a weird looking guy of Chewbacca and just put them all in a blender.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's so fascinating but very strange.
• 34:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: But also, we're in the thick of it.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Listeners may have a headache here, because blacksmiths seem to be a thing to explain right now.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you throw strifexman on slot, mother of scony, like this is a crazy complicated characters, it is not easy to solve any of them up in just a few seconds.
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's doing his best, you know, he's triad hard.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we have the Eskani Sun limited series.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, pick this up off the shelves, which is firmly set in the far future in North America.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we go back to seeing Blacksmith becoming born and becoming one of the most devoted followers of the Eskani religion following the sacred teachings.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to see more of this in future stories, but basically he was just this kind of lonely little mutant guy, a little pathetic.
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And someone brought him in and he devoted himself fully to this cause he learned to believe in it at all costs, which you know he developed some importance in this future.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: This time in history, the Ascani have been obliterated, wiped out, and Blacksmith was unsure if they even still existed.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he is personally training Nathan Summers, the prophesied mutant for a period of years, very much the Yoda to his Skywalker, learned how to manipulate the force cable.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he stands tall.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's an alien looking mutant with a large frame manipulating tech around him to bolster his skills and when young Nathan Day Spring falls ill from his powers Teather blood, who is his like best buddy, a man of color in the future, takes him to blacksmith for help.
• 36:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Day Spring's a powerful time displaced mutant with intense telepathic and telekinetic powers, but he's been infected by the T.O.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: virus and blacksmith helps Nathan discover that the celestial AI professor exists in his form.
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: what is is guys?
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Blacksmith seemingly sacrifices himself in the Canaanites attack, Nate and Tetherblatt escaped.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We jump to issue two, we learn he survived.
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: He starts testing Nathan's skills.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: None are so deaf as those who will not listen he says.
• 36:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: If we give that a Yoda spend, we just move a couple of words around.
• 36:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He finds Nate in a bar fight and he's like, you're a messiah.
• 36:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: If all you do in this life is respond to the world with questions, then you can little expect advice from fools, pushes him toward the Iskani again.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's accessing the astral plane.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: In issue four, we see day spring has had a series of crazy adventures and Blacksmith helps him realize that his path has led him not to mad him sanctity, but to Alia, the woman who will later become his wife.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The long path to your destiny begins with the first step he says, and then he disappears like a ghost, which is kind of giving Ben Kenobi energy as well.
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben did you?
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's got his son at the time.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you remember picking this book up off the shelves?
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do not know.
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I first time I knew that I was like out there was the right up that you sent over to us.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So now I've got to think I want to kind of dig into it a little bit more because it definitely sets up some holes that I'm missing.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's quite good, and Robin is this a series you've had.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I, so yeah, I had read this before I reread it this week, and I really really enjoy this story.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, and the Phoenix many by John Francis Moore, three of them together are just like a great way to see this story.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Read them in any order because it will make, there's time travel, they'll make about as much sense in any order, but yeah, they're really good.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I know I'm jumping around quickly, but we're also like being slightly comprehensive as we kind of bounce from adventure to adventure.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cable 29, this is maybe my favorite blacksmith moment if I have one single one.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: He gets to look at a picture of baby cable like Lil' Tiny Nathan, this photograph, how archaically charming.
• 38:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've never seen you prior to the Technorganic Infection.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I must say you were rather cute.
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wonder in what ways your powers would have manifested themselves had you not been hampered by Apocalypse's affliction?
• 38:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He soon meets Cyclops and Gene, it blocks his thoughts from them, and is odd of being in the presence of the first ones.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Storm, Moira, Xavier, are there to discuss mate Gray.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: been keeping this all a secret from cable, the risk is too great, the boy was unforeseen, he should not exist, he could destroy all the way of thought and plan for, so now we're master manipulating behind the scenes in a new way, then he freezes all the X-Men in place, this is a scony business, and cable needs to handle Nate Gray all by himself.
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: cable holds a gun to blacksmith's head, leaves him behind, this jumps farther into the crossover, blacksmith follows cable, monitors his battles with X-Men, and keeps trying to undo any damage
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Grays should not exist, and what is is, as cable, which is his fun way of turning all this back.
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Exodus gets involved, we don't have time.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: We jumped at 31, where Blacksmith is time-shifted forward to win cable, and X-Men's attack is finished.
• 39:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he encourages cable to kill Nate Gray, but he refuses.
• 39:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blacksmith says, by the bright lady, have I made a mistake?
• 39:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is Destiny something that is to be created with time, built by action, and not blindly followed?
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Celine gets involved and Blacksmith has to save cable, erases some memories from X-Force's mind, onslaught attacks, and blows up Blacksmith's ship in cable 32.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: In cable 54, we jump forward a little bit.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blacksmith has been held captive for weeks, while someone's get trying to get intel from his mind on cable.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he's doing his best to resist.
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 55, Blacksmith telepathically Skulled's cable for losing sight of his destiny.
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 56, he loses it on cable like you're being, your Messiah in wrong cable, how could you do this so wrong?
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 57, he's tortured by Ramah, taught time traveler, you wanna get complicated.
• 40:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's fucking talk about Kang the Kong or Rere, we are not going there today.
• 40:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The astral path,
• 40:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: plane breaks here for a minute everything's fine it's good 58 there's more checking on cable's powers X man 45 and 46 he senses the pending return of apocalypse so blacksmith creates some little guys called tech nooms and sends them after X man who's hanging out with the red queen we don't have time evil version of Jean Gray from the future posing as Madeline prior in the present truly insane got an episode on her out there too
• 40:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you not see them yet, children of the mind, patterns of chaos, carnage spreading out across the globe, woven like snakes through every straight-up society, everywhere, signs of his time, his return, the Ascani sign, unfortunately, is not available at this moment and not enough, not alone.
• 40:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if you two are indeed the only chance for this world now, then all may be lost already.
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he sends the red queen and ex-man to Latvieria to stop strife in a dark writer's plot again.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just not gonna go deep into these cause Blacksmith is a little superficial through all this.
• 40:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me cover two more and then we'll pause, I promise.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Kable 63, Blacksmith gets really bossy with Kable and lectures him about spree.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: but also gives him his simitar, which is a psychic simitar.
• 41:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: A 64 through 68 is when Aussie Mandius, I got an episode on that guy out there, approaches Blacksmith with warnings of the future and he gets to see all the carvings in the wall and the 12 is here, and they just fight and bicker for several issues in a row, and things culminate in cable annual 1999, Mr. Sinister attacks, cable 78 Blacksmith hurts his arm saving Irene Mary weather, because the Harbinger of Apocalypse is attacked.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Apocalypse is defeated and the 12 is over because Madam Sanctity all set it up in the first place and Cyclops is dead except Apocalypse imhabits his form and in the coming months we see Blacksmith tracking cables Tio virus giving advice about evil time Witches designing tech for cable cable loses trust in Blacksmith for a minute because he learns that Blacksmith built some weapons for the dark mother and the evil sisterhood from the future I am just gonna sum all of that up in one crazy place
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's focus on what Blacksmith is going through here as the through line for this character.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any favorite moments?
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what do you think he's experiencing as I just give all this X-Men crazy in one giant paragraph?
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just going to pick out one single moment for be a scanyson unfortunately is not available at this moment.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: He has turned himself into cable secretary taking calls for me like, oh sorry, isn't it business meeting right now?
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can we phone you back?
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like the
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: it's insane.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: See, when you put all of this into just like three paragraphs, Chad's, I don't know how Black Christmas has got the time.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I understand he can tame travel, but how can he be bothered or my God, it's far too much?
• 42:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Who stressful?
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: The number of spreadsheets he has to have, just to keep track of these psychic characters and time travelers is intense, strife, the dark sisterhood, like there's so much going on here, the harbinger of apocalypse, like in just a bajillion stories.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you think his
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: faith, especially, you know, and later, you know, he didn't, they didn't foresee any problems and just all the different things that are questioned that are pushing back against his always known.
• 43:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that, and no, let's self-triggers a crisis moment.
• 43:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a main character, you could to explore that.
• 43:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you like as we progress towards this point, he becomes like this cross between a doze at Machina and a cue from Tim's Bond where he's a reference point.
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: you need to move the platform to give critical information, go to blacksmith or blacksmith shows up, gives it where if you need a cool new weapon, you need to cool into tech, he's the one who rides it.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he kind of slides in from this.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he starts his like this shadowy figure who's you know, very established and what, you know, he believes moves more into the forefront about how he's interacting with cable in the game and then moving a little bit backwards in that space where things are starting to culminate but not the way he thought the writers didn't have, you know,
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: years in advance.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's whatever writer does.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You start taking these moments in finding ways to connect your story and then you know feeding it to that and everyone has their input into that.
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think at this point it felt like they weren't quite sure where to go with him and how he was going to play in the future story or they were studying stuff up on the side and they were like, Lex Smith will probably have some interaction with him but it's not a main character so we don't have to worry too much about inserting him here and then you know at some point in time they move him back from that cue figure all the way back into the story itself which what I mean there's some runs where I talk about minute on where he does kind of
• 44:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think in the core of all that, I really feel like he is really questioning.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: As he matures as a character, we all mature as people.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: We begin to question the core ethos of why and what our purpose and destination is.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we're starting to see that with him, just in a different way, he's either integrating or pulling back and helping and not helping in situations.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the additive of all this, right?
• 44:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get future stories after this, where like teen cable, murders, old grandpa cable, and then like, there's so many pieces that are along the way, that most of Blacksmith's journey is cable, you have a particular destiny.
• 44:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Apocalypse must be defeated.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And cable succeeds in that, but then Apocalypse is still around, right?
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: The 12 of it all, the Madame Sanctuary of it all, this is a toy in the toy box at a certain.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And writers use him to tell certain stories along the way, right?
• 45:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a playable character.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when you look at it from his side, he has given up everything to journey back in this past and it's his great honor to craft the journey of this character.
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he's so exasperated because cables just keeps doing it wrong, you know?
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And everything is so crazy.
• 45:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: All these alternate timelines.
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But again, what is...
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Robin, what are your thoughts?
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I would love for you to take the reins and tell us about X-Men, Phoenix, and X-Men, the search for Cyclops, both of which are journeys.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: The very much are, I think it's really interesting to hear Ben talk about the journey that Black X-Men has clearly went on in the background of his sort of crisis of faith, because these next two series, you see the complete opposite ends of the spectrum with a BEM, and X-Men,
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: We are introduced to, I understand to be the earliest appearance of Black Liz Smith in his timeline, because he is just like a young guy.
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: He shows up, and I have the panel here.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: He shows up complaining about a little transformer that he's bought from some trader, whilst Rachel Summers is talking to him.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: He shows up complaining that it's not working properly.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: He notices that Rachel's currently telepathic of some capacity.
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's got a resonance
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: say that he is not a mutant, which Rachel disagrees with, they could start to journey together.
• 46:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And throughout it, there's some very interesting ones in first of all.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just have to point out, the visual representation of Black with Smith just in the story alone changes dramatically from issue to issue and even from panels.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some times he has massive bulbous eyes, some things are tiny, some things he has big, or head bulges coming out like boobs and something he doesn't, some things he's grey and sometimes he's pink.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's fascinating how much he exists to like to murder everyone else's stories, but actually there's very little consistency paid to him even from an issue on issue basis.
• 46:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: But one thing I did think is really interesting is at one point he says the phrase,
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: I find mischinery much more easy to understand than people and I didn't want to disappoint you bright lady.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is just there to impress this lady who has been kind to him.
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: He ends up taking that and running with it for his entire life.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: He goes off in this journey of being like, I'm going to time travel.
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not going to have my own life anymore.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I am just going to do what the bright lady wants of me because I feel respected and seen by this person.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's to this, there's a piece of this that we haven't considered from his perspective.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's living in a time that's not his own, right?
• 47:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's the man out of time.
• 47:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: His future's devastated.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: This world is vibrant.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: His future mutants are hunted.
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: This world they're vibrant and active.
• 47:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he knows what the potential of if things don't go correctly.
• 47:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: He knows what's going to happen.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the world he comes from.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think there's a great honor.
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: But also he must be a very overwhelmed by the potential of what he's seeking to avoid.
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: The other thing I will throw in is at the end of X9 Phoenix.
• 47:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Basically, his story lane just exists to reach the story lane.
• 47:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is the tech guy, the assistant for Rachel's group of heroes that she brings together to fight Neuro, who is a pop-lip-sizzic administrator.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's really fascinating.
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: She has this power she can draw other people's powers out of them by killing them.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Every until ends up giving her the Phoenix at the end of it.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And like blows out her powers and just renders her human baseline.
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: hates this and she is left to die in Antarctica and the way that they make all this happen is because Blacksmith, as I said, is good with machinery.
• 48:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's this machine that attacks for some reason.
• 48:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not really explained why it just shows up and starts tearing the Antarctica at the exact point that it does.
• 48:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: but he manages to sneak under and he takes out the machine and because that breaks down Neuro appears, Rachel takes her out.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Back with Smith is the real hero of the story and he is totally under appreciated.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: However, when we then move on to the search for Cyclops, we're then seeing a completely different side of him because this is him much older, he's much more jaded.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: He actually hires an assassin to hunt down and keep
• 48:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Chill, Cyclops who is merged with Apocalypse at this point after the 12 storyline, then it was meant to be Nate Gray that you took over and instead Apocalypse ends up going into Cyclops's body.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Lacquist myth knows that Cable will not be able to fulfill the mission.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is not going to be able to kill Apocalypse if he is within his father's body, and therefore he hires in the assassin to do the job for him.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's really interesting how you compare it to this bright-eyed, very optimistic little guy from Xman Femix.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: You move into the search for Cyclops and suddenly he's like, you know what, the bright lady wanted me to look after the Escanism.
• 49:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the Escanism is no longer up his script.
• 49:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is not going to do his job and therefore I'm going to get someone else to do it or him.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's simultaneously a lot of humanity in trying to spare Nathan from having to make that decision, but also quite a cruelness and not finding another way.
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: He goes, no, no, the mission still has to happen.
• 49:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a shame that Cyclops is there as well, but Apocalypse must die.
• 49:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is very eager and willing to make hard decisions on behalf of the people that he can
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: here's a boat at this point in his life, which is such a stark comparison from when we saw him in Phoenix, where he is such a kind and warm character, and it is fascinating to see the way that this non-life that he's led has completely changed his moral compass.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think comparing Blackwasme, I think you see in these two stories alone fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: The design of Cyclopselips is just lives in my race.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is going to be my sleep paralysis
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Would you rather cause play as blacksmith or cyclops ellipse?
• 50:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, cyclops ellipse only because he has a massive red face shield, which was once the visor of this marriage then to his own skin.
• 50:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's some good body harder there.
• 50:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: The thing with blacksmith, I don't want to have to put the boobs on my head.
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I paid a lot of money to get them on my chest.
• 50:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: So.
• 50:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll cover two again very very quickly because he's just part of the story in Frank Terry's Weapon X which is a rough ride every time I have to look at this series.
• 50:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blacksmith is part of the mutant underground working with cable to undermine the concentration camps set up by the director.
• 51:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of a bit character in this.
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also see him in cable 157 in a story where another time travel crazy cables like techno organic virus is infected with a kidney metus who is after cable over time and Blacksmith
• 51:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, kind of a bit supporting character here along the way.
• 51:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we have his most recent appearances.
• 51:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: X-Force Volume 5, 5th or 9, Avengers X-Sanction, which I hate.
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about that, that four issue series is a rough for video in a few ways.
• 51:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then finally, cable 10 through 14.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, do you want to talk to us about Blacksmith's most modern history?
• 51:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are interesting to go over, and a couple of, kind of, skin road, red, some of these, and, you know, really just kind of get the overview of things, because I really want to dive into and really kind of grasp your spin a while.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, so we'll go to X4's the LIM5, and that's number five through nine.
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was about what five years ago, six years ago.
• 51:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, in essence, this is a fractured timeline.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blacksmith recruits Kidcable, who's a teen version of Nathan Summers, to prevent the future where a immune search started, because this time displaced original five X-Men never came back to their era.
• 52:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, Blacksmith gives Kidcable a tech core since it backed big three.
• 52:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kidcable builds his own X-Force, confronts strife in the far future, and then stabilizes the timeline Blacksmith's guidance.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The interesting thing here is that Blacksmith basically replaces old men cable with Kidcable's kind of hilarious way to think about Kidcable.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't think of cable as a kid, but basically Blacksmith is stepping in to manipulate things when he sees the cables really failing the mission.
• 52:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mission is, you know, as it always has been, to tick down the apocalypse.
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, in all of this story, you really see him re-sort as mentor, enabler, puppeteer.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's always pushing events on a subtle basis that helps and allows exports to complete that.
• 52:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that really, you know, extent that the whole arc of the four really kind of tells that it's an interesting sort of placement, you know, find one that tools not working so you're a place with a better tool or one that is a little more agreeable to what you want to what you want to what you want to.
• 52:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, that kind of is always really good.
• 52:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, what was a couple of things that maybe stood out.
• 53:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like any she buy blacksmith takes kick cable aside shows him a really bleak future Iceman's dead you can type new kind wiped out or gone So that's when he takes the great milk and time core and puts it into kills are and then he says the old man failed It's your time now.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's it's like a literal passing the torch, but it's also like the true point You realize blacksmith will do anything
• 53:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: He needs to do to carry out the prime mission and that is like really key even cable who he has Mentored over year centuries, whatever.
• 53:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is willing to sacrifice that for the greater focus of for the greater good in his in the way he sees and I think that is like That's kind of a stunning thing.
• 53:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really interesting look
• 53:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: at how blacksmith views his role in everything.
• 53:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mission is everything.
• 53:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it a question of faith at this point?
• 53:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't think so.
• 53:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think core essence of him is he may question.
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all question our core, the core parts of us.
• 53:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in the end, it's what stands out.
• 53:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is the essence of blacksmith's care to maintain that.
• 53:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we see.
• 53:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, increasing levels of complexity as the story is go crazy.
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Time traveling original X-Men, time paradoxes, teenage cable murdering his older self.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the hope summers of it all, which leads us to Avengers X-Sanction a little.
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hope summers, ah, there's a giant story.
• 54:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And cable is like this giant martyr.
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a huge story that results in cable's death.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then he's immediately back in this weird Avengers X-Sanction series as like, oh, actually didn't die.
• 54:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just got hurt.
• 54:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now you've got to try to save me.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Story like makes me crazy when they do that in comics.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hate it.
• 54:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, here, so the plot of one through four, which I think it was done seven years before the previous 2012, I think is when it came out.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Laxman, Binds Cable, dying of the technical granite virus, reveals that the Avengers, the ones who caused to up to death, would say, you know, your Avengers fan, that's kind of might be surprising.
• 54:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Since cable back to the present with one day to live, and a mission to stop the Avengers, it's like, it's like Jack Barr and 24 all over again.
• 54:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, one day to do this, one day to execute the mission.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's cool is you see, you see cable battling everybody.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see a battling cat, Iron Man, the others, normally you're seeing him battle with the X-Men, or fighting in fighting with X-Force and X-Factor over the years.
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you really see him take them all on.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Blacksmith, who's, you know, watching his, his mentee, going a little too far, contact Cyclops and hope then it shows up, channels to the Phoenix Force, Kira's cable device for the first time.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see Blacksmith again, carrying out his mission.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: He saves cable, but he does it through some
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: basically betrays him a little bit by pulling and hope and and Scott into the scheme.
• 55:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then that changes everything for cable because now he's finally free into that virus that is basically his primary definition of him as a character for years.
• 55:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: The entire existence he's got which completely changes him and a lot of different
• 55:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: ways.
• 55:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the destiny that really stands out in all this is in four.
• 55:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blacksmith tells hope, you know, he believed in you, show him he was right.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's when she unleashes Phoenix that purges the system.
• 55:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's, you know, in the tropesense, it's a resurrection.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It reboots cable.
• 55:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And any Blacksmith's looking at this as a way to restart his mentee, to put him back on the path, you know, to pull him away from the brink of going overboard and off-hat and pulling him back into his face, giving him a new breath on life, a new way to kind of look at things and, you know,
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it altars cables live completely, you know, and I think for all of us, we all have that one defining moment in our lives that truly shapes us and reverse where we are at makes a step from what we were doing whatever might be into something that really, you know, is more beautiful and really redefines and focuses like us.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Making it, so I'm making this was the artist here.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see a more grounded and human version of Blacksmith than this.
• 56:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: His bug-like traits are released of you.
• 56:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't look like a walking brooch brooch.
• 56:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's got more brown around her head, visual expressions, that kind of stuff.
• 56:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the thing is is that you always, almost always see him in shadows or from behind, which subtly enhances that whole manipulator aspect of that he has that whole behind the scenes, I suppose.
• 56:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then it's also a softer visual style, which you know, considering cable, the very muscular, you know, big, over the top cable, it makes blacksmith feel like an outsider, even within the wrong that he's in in the series.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So visually it's a very stand out piece, I like it when the artist really kind of make these characters stand out without saying a word and defining their roles and showing why they're there and with their purposes.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then do you have any thoughts on cable export?
• 57:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Really, blacksmiths in engineering to cure for cable through a lot of different means, deception, tilt rotation, emotional Malaysian, just showing more about how far he'll go to commission, you know, we've got a whole hope and new hope, you know, with the identity of strife, she's gonna
• 57:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is for everybody.
• 57:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the Sysper, your series.
• 57:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's so much crazy.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: The stories are so dense and so thought-provoking and it takes like 40 minutes to read a comic book.
• 57:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean it's because you've got old hope, new hope.
• 57:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've got, you know, it's from an instead of old cable, new cable.
• 57:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hope it's hope, hope is part of the story and this is really important.
• 57:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: She has to choose compassion, which threat eds the threads or storage balance to everything.
• 57:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blacksmith is, again, the manipulator.
• 57:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: He took a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit
• 57:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: just, you know, does it all there?
• 57:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he's, you know, he's in control of all of it.
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you see, what is it?
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blacksmith watches the two versions of Hope Argyover, Cables' feet, and then Older Hope finally for Lentson says, you know, I've always loved him, even when I forgot how, which speaks to her essence of her.
• 57:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: She then hands over her cemetery, Blake Smith, and then tells her, now you know, he gave everything work.
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he think that really shows his sense of closure and understanding and his place as far as like Cables is like a Cables.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blacksmith through this, he's seeing a teen version of the Grand Palma Sia.
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: He saw in the far future, and then he's seeing the granddaughter, basically, right?
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The baby Messiah that is not something he was ever told about or planned for, because that's not the mission he was told to expect.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He already saw one Messiah reached their mission, and now there's another, but also there's a teen version who existed before the Grand Poe version in the first place, and you almost wonder if Blacksmith ever even knew about that, or is it a complete divergence?
• 58:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yet another version of teen cable, like X-Man, that he has to handle.
• 58:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: The other thing here that's really interesting is what is is a question he's stating about cable all the time.
• 58:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're being the Messiah wrong.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're doing your destiny wrong.
• 58:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blacksmith must also be kind of trying to grasp his own destiny.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's trapped in this past where crazy things are happening for mutants all the time.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's seeing concentration camps and tech viruses and future despots and type travel crazy to this and decimations, right?
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's all these things.
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There must be a lot of like holy shit what did I sign up for.
• 59:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of stories I want to see about this guy, but the one that we need more than anything that has not happened is we have never seen him cross paths with Rachel Summers, who exists in this timeline as a younger version of herself, except it's not because the old lady version of Rachel got turned back into a younger woman that exists now, so she has full memory, she knows blacksmith is out there, and it's wild to me that we've never seen that story.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd also love to see him interact with Xavier, Scott and Jean, characters like that much more often,
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: I need someone to do like an Escanny and Cable mini series where Blackwasme shows up and is like, ah, you're a lot.
• 59:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're in younger than I expected you to be Rachel and Cable, you're a lot.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, you're kind of the same.
• 59:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I just, I need, I need to see that sort of interaction because it, I think that is one thing.
• 59:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: The fact that Blackwasme did not at any point show up during for Core is that it blows my mind.
• 59:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: How they didn't just have him step out of the shadows and when a cable
• 1:00:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then just step back into the shadows and disappear like it's the exact sort of like role you'll do that I would expect from them.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've not seen them in so many years.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just want them to come back because when he shows up, it means that the timeline has gone wrong and that is when people get to have a terrible time and I love it when people's having a bad time.
• 1:00:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's so much fun to read.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I almost want to see like a blacksmith gone wild story a little bit like he starts drinking a little bit and realizing like what's the cosmic purpose of fucking anything and like just believes behind the asconi and goes to find himself there's a crazy mutant adventure out there for this guy that's like him testing his faith and becoming kind of a playable character in a new way.
• 1:00:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's really interesting things to find there as well.
• 1:00:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: You have just, so they always go back to the age of Apocalypse.
• 1:00:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: What currently have an age of revelation?
• 1:00:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: The next one, age of black was Smith.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna make it happen.
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think he ever has the ability to be main character, but I think there's like a cable story that could be done, where, you know, blacksmith his mentor has gone a little bit off the rails and I think there's some really interesting things.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's also an interesting member of a team, but there's a hundred other telepats and the little tiny, the little tiny bug guy may not get the feature that we hope for.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, what are your thoughts?
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think, you know, what really stands out to me is this constant question, like how could how would I go about if I like my primary mission was to remove apocalypse and then you do and he's still around I mean like how do you feel and then now you feel like you've got to go stamp like like roaches across the multi dimension universe.
• 1:01:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: to stamp out every single one of them and the futility factor has to be one of those times where you have to see them there has to be some closing sequence receiving a bar just drinking away going what the absolute F did I sign up for what you know I cannot believe I did all this and yet here we still are.
• 1:01:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's the, you know, yeah, speaking is a guy who's left or religion behind.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and and my, you know, we've all had, you know, our transformations and anyway, but I think, you know, speaking about what we don't have and I would love to see this to this exists.
• 1:01:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have missed it.
• 1:01:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I would love to have an entire issue just blacksmith and the watcher at a bar just go in.
• 1:02:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And tell in tales the entire night like a fireslight chat just their sharing back at board Did you believe could you that anything would be super interesting because you know You've got the watch on one hand with this perspective Especially with the MCU version who decides to intervene when you should and then you've got blacksmith who is not really supposed to but doesn't
• 1:02:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I always love these conversations because it really like solidifies a character for me.
• 1:02:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: This isn't character that I love, but I do think there's some really interesting potential.
• 1:02:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a cable story to be told here.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, hope is gone now, right?
• 1:02:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hope fulfilled her Messianic purpose and is no longer a playable character.
• 1:02:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you read the end of Khrikawa, she did what what she was supposed to set out to do.
• 1:02:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is is?
• 1:02:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what that means for cable and blacksmith, I think, could be interesting.
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even a blacksmith and bishop story, but you found to do.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any other thoughts on his personality or what you love about him?
• 1:02:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: um, I'll just run that I really enjoy the way that he just kind of stepped as I said earlier.
• 1:02:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: He stepped out of the shadows, has a sassy comment, hits cable with a stick and just disappears again.
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that he is the problem with Black with Smith and I think the reason that is hard to really get your teeth into him is that he really just operates as like a bit character to rom into other people's stories and
• 1:03:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think it would be interesting to see now that the person that he wanted to be the Messiah, well, he still hasn't done his job, but his daughter has never achieved her job as a Messiah.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I want to see him come back and give cable into trouble for like, you have short-term responsibility so badly, Apocalypse is still around, but your daughter has achieved the Messiah status and you still happen, you are a failure.
• 1:03:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want to see him be the disappointing grandparent, I think it'd be really interesting.
• 1:03:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's always there to give that a tiny bit of explanation or a push and a shove where it needs to be done.
• 1:03:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's always great.
• 1:03:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if he would be any more interesting if he was a more proper, unflop character all the time.
• 1:03:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that might be a bit too much, because I think there's a little mistake and like ability and the fact of how we see him.
• 1:03:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I had a wish list aside from the watcher, the watcher and him haven't drinks would be a buddy cop style comic one off with him and cable Just snap it back and forth each other, push on each other's buttons to no end and seeing what that ends up being like like full frontal It would be just I think that would be hilariously weird
• 1:04:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, five-page story, a short story, I write.
• 1:04:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blacksmith is having his crisis of faith.
• 1:04:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is in a bar.
• 1:04:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: We make it X-Men timing why me crazy, right?
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's having a moment where he's talking to someone just off panel and he's saying, you know, I gave up everything to come back to this time.
• 1:04:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's trying alcohol, he's feeling super overwhelmed.
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He brings it all up.
• 1:04:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I was, here's this messiah, but then there was time travel and extermination in the original X-Men and strife and X-Men and holy shit, it's so much, the fucking harbjor of apocalypse,
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did everything why have you forsaken me God?
• 1:04:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we turn and it's Rachel at the bar next to him And she remembers everything and she gives him that comforting, you know my life didn't go the way I planned either My future is wiped out.
• 1:04:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I became a hound the Phoenix force here I am and I'm still on the path and you got to be too buddy and then they go off together You know, and it's like a simple story that like really connects him with this version of his God But I think gives us all the path those and the frankly that could be the last blacksmith story ever red and I'd be happy
• 1:05:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: because he's not my favorite supporting character, but this is an interesting journey.
• 1:05:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I love doing these really complicated episodes once in a while, where I'm trying to sum it all up in an hour because it just bucks with your brain so much.
• 1:05:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love this conversation.
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear any final thoughts, but thank you both for taking this time to take this odd journey with me on this strange little mutant telepath tech bug guy from the future.
• 1:05:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, even a story blacksmith going back to the future and like feeling super dissatisfied
• 1:05:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, like there's so many versions of this that could be so interesting.
• 1:05:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, as we're wrapping up any final thoughts, where can people find you online?
• 1:05:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And anything you'd like to plug before mid August.
• 1:05:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you coming online at Venetrume.com?
• 1:05:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is my website.
• 1:05:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It posts a lot of stories, thoughts, thoughts, fiction and mind, spanning a large number of things that I've done keep a game design communication strategy and short fiction.
• 1:06:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I currently have a short story in an anthology that just came out.
• 1:06:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the heritage series where we take prominent women from history and flip their story to a more positive bend and how that kind of positive impact.
• 1:06:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mine is on the Pirate Grace O'Malley.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite Irish good quote.
• 1:06:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just want to see, I look forward to 2020 sexes, age of blackness, no featuring at Marvel Comics.
• 1:06:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know who's going to write it, maybe me.
• 1:06:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll see what happens.
• 1:06:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, um, we're going to write it together Robin.
• 1:06:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, fine.
• 1:06:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're going to have cool rating credits.
• 1:06:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're welcome.
• 1:06:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, um, yes, besides that, silliness.
• 1:06:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: You can find me on social media.
• 1:06:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I still do have Instagram but I use it less and less these days.
• 1:06:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you want to see my personal Instagram account, you can follow me at Negasonic Training Warhead.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you want to find my drag account, you can go to October underscore fist.
• 1:06:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you want to see me talk a lot of crap about the Eggman, then you should go over a blue sky and follow me at Red Breasted Robin with a Y.
• 1:07:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Chad Anderson, I keep my own social media private because I got kiddos, the two of you are welcome to Adney, just ask, but you can follow the show at Grimmolk and Under Score Lane on Instagram most easily.
• 1:07:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Over on the main show, please watch for the trial of David Cannon, the whirlwind at the end of this month.
• 1:07:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next week on the Patreon, where whatever happened, what is is, it's what was always meant to be on the Patreon.
• 1:07:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and it's modern applications from the moment
• 1:07:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: hit Lair came to power in 1933, the Nazi government launched an aggressive campaign against cultural material that it deemed undurmin or degenerate.
• 1:07:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: American jazz, Hollywood films, pulp magazines, and comic books were officially condemned as a morally corrupting and racially inferior product.
• 1:07:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Often associated in Nazi propaganda with Jewish influence and quote, Negro music and quote,
• 1:08:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: The regime organized book burnings, banned foreign publications, and helped the infamous 1937 ex-exhibition of degenerate art in Munich to shame what it considered a cultural contamination.
• 1:08:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yet, despite this public denunciation, American popular culture proved stubbornly resilient.
• 1:08:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: not just among civilians, but even within the Nazi military and political elite.
• 1:08:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you've likely seen listeners' stories about like American propaganda being snuck into places like Russia and Korea and other spots.
• 1:08:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's always a kind of like counter-culture oddly because it represents freedom of thinking.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: While I had troops moving through abandoned German bunkers and command centers during the final years of the war, frequently reported having confiscated American items, hidden alongside Nazi propaganda.
• 1:08:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jazz Records, Hollywood photographs, pin-up images, foreign magazines, some Nazi officers were found to own secret personal collections of American music.
• 1:08:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: and film memorabilia, interrogations conducted by Allied Intelligence Services after the war also revealed that many German soldiers, even those who had publicly denounced American culture, were intimately familiar with American movies, slang and consumer trends.
• 1:09:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: The underground fascination
• 1:09:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: did not, did not reflect ideological sympathy rather exposed a psychological contradiction.
• 1:09:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: The very culture of the Nazis labeled degenerate proved impossible for many within the regime to resist.
• 1:09:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: What hypocrisy and fascist leaders?
• 1:09:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: How could it be?
• 1:09:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Comics and illustrated adventure stories particularly superhero narratives in Pope's style action heroes were,
• 1:09:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: among the most frequently confiscated items.
• 1:09:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Though not always documented by title, American comic book circulated privately and illegally in occupied Europe, passed upon young people and soldiers alike.
• 1:09:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: The exaggerated imagery of powerful righteous heroes fighting clear evil students stark contrasts to the brule reality of the Nazi ideology yet ironically mirrored the regime's own propaganda depictions of the perfect Aryan warrior.
• 1:09:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: a forbidden fantasy and a distorted intellectual mirror of the authoritarian image that Nazis tried to construct for themselves.
• 1:10:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do not think this history exists, but God would it be fun to see how it all Hitler reacted to that photo of that cover of Captain America punching Hitler in the face, or even more to Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator film.
• 1:10:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm guessing it's a little like Trump recently reacting to that awful photo of him on the Time magazine cover.
• 1:10:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And just somehow brings me joy or the self-park episode.
• 1:10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to jump into a story from Captain America, Red Wedding Blue, that the fourth story it's called Faces, it's by Nick Brutosi and Paul Poet.
• 1:10:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Red Skull acts as the evil principle when a young Nazi boy is found reading a Captain America comic book in the classroom.
• 1:10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Professor Strumpf tells me that you are not the first boy to be caught reading such forbidden material in the class.
• 1:10:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh no, you are not the first, but you will be the last someone has been infiltrating our school with this this filth someone is trying to corrupt our minds, Uli.
• 1:10:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Red Skull rants about the heroes a secret, shedding the blood of the Uber farm to save Brune Hild, resulting in the Aryan race.
• 1:11:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a Nazi lore in their weird Aryan mythology.
• 1:11:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: That blood is us, the Aryans, the Master Race, from the polluted blood of the Uber Vroom, that is, that oozed forth all the lesser races, the Slavs, the Gypsies, the Jews, the Negroes, as well as the Americans and all those who are, we are destined to conquer, as Siegfrant conquered the Worm, Pek Siegfrant, we must remain brave and pure, we must shield our minds from the lies of our enemies.
• 1:11:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: He then gave the boy a gun with one bullet in the chamber, hinting that Ulyssia killed the man
• 1:11:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the Red Skull watched as the tortured boy completed the killing of the school cook, who was a kind man from Switzerland who dared hand out a comic book.
• 1:11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It seems the boy may just make a fine Nazi after all, says the Red Skull.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so happy to welcome my friend Michael Celeste to the show for this crazy story.
• 1:11:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Michael, my friend, are you a Red Skull fan?
• 1:11:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am by no means a red skull fan.
• 1:11:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think red skull is probably one of the creepiest perhaps especially perhaps in especially after today's story.
• 1:12:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, even more now.
• 1:12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm saying far, far away from now on.
• 1:12:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to tell everyone your thoughts on on this story that we read today faces?
• 1:12:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think this is a really powerful, dark story.
• 1:12:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Starts off with a bunch of students at some sort of academy, swastikas are everywhere.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're obviously being indoctrinated, but the main character, Uli, is a boy who's reading a comic book of Captain America.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he gets brought to the...
• 1:12:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: principle who is the red mask gets in trouble and faces this terrible situation of trying to hold to account the person who gave him the comic book.
• 1:12:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who's this really dapper sexy cook?
• 1:12:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uli has to make this choice of whether or not to, yeah, basically report the cook or take account for the cook.
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: The red mask hands over a gun to Uli and says, you know, kill the person that gave this to you and has to make the choice of whether or not to kill the cook who's a good friend.
• 1:12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a really dark story, you hope for a redemption arc for the character, but you don't quite get it.
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, did you ever see the book thief?
• 1:13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did not.
• 1:13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: The film.
• 1:13:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so there's kind of a genre of, I mean, there's a whole genre in Hollywood pop culture films, like set during World War II where
• 1:13:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: it's the kids going through it.
• 1:13:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some of join the Hitler's Youth and others are trying to be individual and I watched all of these like films and shows when I was prepping a lot of this content and there's the story of like that one kid who turns in the other.
• 1:13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's the story of you know the kid who tries for the big ideals but just let's end up letting everyone down.
• 1:13:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's the kid with the hidden jazz record but the Gestapo finds her and then her whole
• 1:13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's all kinds of stories in this genre, but that counter-culture piece.
• 1:13:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's weird seeing the Red School as the high school principal first of all, but this is a powerful story in what propaganda can do to our children, right?
• 1:13:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like the this kid we just wanted to read a comic book and then has to commit murder as a result.
• 1:13:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a dark fucking story.
• 1:13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and this idea of putting a child in a situation where they have to make this, you know, they're at a real fork on the road of if you go this way, you basically are following the dark side of the force or you can still make a choice and get out.
• 1:14:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for this child that was an impossible choice, it was either killed a person that gave you this comic book or we're going to have to figure out what to do with you.
• 1:14:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: All under the auspices of training children to become Nazis.
• 1:14:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, it's, it's.
• 1:14:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was interesting to read, but not a fun one to read.
• 1:14:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have a particular set of life experiences that I think makes this conversation even more fascinating.
• 1:14:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because, you know, these like witch hunt things where the queer community has to turn each other in or we'll call you queer yourself.
• 1:14:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: The idea of like band books and the burning of things.
• 1:14:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell everybody your thoughts just from your perspective on this topic.
• 1:14:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an intense one and it's very pervasive.
• 1:14:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: The organization I work for now is called writers and books and it's all about connecting readers with books, the power of books, and this idea that sometimes what we read and consume is threatening to certain regimes or fascist regimes, right?
• 1:14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: The power of artwork, the power of the written word, and the power of comic books, right?
• 1:15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I thought that was really interesting to see how the comic book was seen as a threat.
• 1:15:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see even now how art is seen as a threat to different fascist regimes around the world and of course in the United States.
• 1:15:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that art is ultimately one of the the forms of expression that I think can really still call truth to power.
• 1:15:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even though there's so much that is being done to try to subvert the efforts of artists and journalists and anyone who's really trying to call truth to power.
• 1:15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the queer community understands this, I think the queer community, you know, for instance, with what's happening in Gaza.
• 1:15:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there, I've seen a lot of among my queer friends, a real sympathy with people who have been subjected to the worst that fascist regimes have to offer.
• 1:15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that there's that that empathy has has been there, that understanding of the plight of the other, and wanting to see justice prevail.
• 1:15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when you see these systems being so huge, so overwhelming, as in this comic where you hope that the child will be able to overcome,
• 1:15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: unfortunately that doesn't happen.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, but the power of that comic is still there, right?
• 1:16:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if maybe that comic will, you know, find its way into the hands of another child.
• 1:16:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe there will be some sort of redemption down the line if not for this person.
• 1:16:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let me give this little history very quickly.
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk more about this another time, but the burning of books.
• 1:16:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: My husband and I were just shopping the other day for Christmas.
• 1:16:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: We passed a table full of band books and there was like, oh my god, that book is banned.
• 1:16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's some books in America that are banned.
• 1:16:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not all just
• 1:16:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: the Tarzan series, because Tarzan and Jane are not legally married when they mate in the trees.
• 1:16:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where the wild things are, which was deemed scary for children.
• 1:16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Harriet, the spy, and Franks, the diary of a young girl, Dr. Susa's The Lorac,
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: the little red riding hood and Hansel and Gretel and the Giver and where's Waldo and 12th night by William Shakespeare and James and the giant peach and the Harry Potter series and brown bear brown bear what do you see?
• 1:16:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because they worried that the book taught Mark'sest theory.
• 1:17:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I can go on mouse, which we've talked about on here multiple times, and perhaps most shockingly, but also not at all, the dictionary, because it has words in there that they don't want children to see.
• 1:17:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's jarring to consider that part of history, and what we consider propaganda.
• 1:17:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm getting ready to release a book next year that has the word gay in the title, and Michael, I know you have also written extensively about quote,
• 1:17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: where things, how are you doing in 2025 with these topics all around us?
• 1:17:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're saying gay and schools not allowed anymore.
• 1:17:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's absolutely frightening, and I think when we're in a situation where we are banning books for the language that's used, the characters that are shown, books that don't have anything to do with hate speech, right?
• 1:17:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they're simply telling stories or reflecting diverse perspectives.
• 1:17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it speaks to the fragility of the regime and the people who
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: who hold positions of power, who can try to control what reaches young people.
• 1:17:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That said, I do firmly think that when you do ban books, it does raise interest in what those books are.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So people will find their way to them if they want to try hard enough to get them.
• 1:18:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what is unfortunate is that why, why create barriers?
• 1:18:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of celebrating diversity for where it is, and welcoming people and being kind and appreciating all those perspectives, why choose the alternate path of closing that off, closing down our minds?
• 1:18:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the fact that that's still happening today in so many different places is the sign of the weakness and fragility of the society.
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: and unfortunately it's a country that I just read the book one day everyone will have always been against this by Omar L. A.K.
• 1:18:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: who won the National Book Prize and it speaks to these ideals, the supposed ideals of the Western world that we uphold these principles but in practice it's all a farce, right?
• 1:18:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're not actually living those ideals on the on the day today and we're not affording equal rights and opportunities to everyone, it's for certain people.
• 1:18:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So my last question today, how are you in 2025?
• 1:18:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: How am I in 2025?
• 1:18:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a busy, I think I think with a change of jobs, a change of location, a lot of change in my life over the past year I've almost distracted myself from everything that's happening around me.
• 1:19:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I've gone to a lot of protests now here in Rochester, New York.
• 1:19:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was living in Brooklyn for a while.
• 1:19:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was actively going to a lot of those demonstrations and protests as well.
• 1:19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Feeling drained by what's happening politically, it's not a good time, feeling very disappointed with the United States of America and whatever it's trying to do in the world and in its own country.
• 1:19:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what it's doing to its own people.
• 1:19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a really depressing time, but I think I find...
• 1:19:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Happiness, joy and light in family and friends and the people around me and nature and in creativity and in art.
• 1:19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So whether I'm reading something or creating something, I think this is these are the spaces that perhaps we need to focus our time on and effort on so that we don't lose our sanity.
• 1:19:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You are smart and talented and so good at what you do.
• 1:19:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm grateful to know you.
• 1:19:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you're extremely impressive.
• 1:19:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And thanks for taking time to talk about, you know, like a mega mutant, cosmonauts, one episode, and red skull being the principal of the next one.
• 1:20:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I always appreciate friends who are willing to take her ride.
• 1:20:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Very strange to do with the principal, but anyway.
• 1:20:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you so much, Ted.
• 1:20:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was awesome.
• 1:20:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:20:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody.
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Take care of yourselves.
• 1:20:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Make sure you are creating acts of joy in this crazy world, and we'll see you back here next week.