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Colossus Bloodline 1-5! Featuring Jorge Gonzalez and Ben Raab! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Greenmonton Lane podcast.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: We are queer friends and allies gathered to review and discuss the original X-Men comics in continuity order.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: We are going to be releasing this episode in July, twenty twenty five, which means it is Colossus Month, which means you have heard a lot of my thoughts on this character already.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is complicated and there is a lot to say, researching this guy, made me an enormous fan of the character.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: that I hadn't given a lot of thought too previously.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: While I was researching, I got to read Colossus's entire history, and I came across a two of his writers, will people tangentially write a Colossus at the very least.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ben Rab is back on the show, and I'm meeting Jorge Gonzalez for the first time.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm so happy to have you both here.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to ask you both to introduce yourselves with your name and pro now.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let us know a little bit about your bio if you would like to.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then my intro question for you today is what do you love about Piotra Rasputin?
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're just going to begin there.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me welcome Jorge Gonzalez to the show.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hi Jorge.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, are you?
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So nice to be here.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And great to see Ben.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, I've been a comic fan on my life.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Love stories and all forms.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Went to the Cuba school, and it's interesting.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've worked there a bunch of industries posted and keeping countering people from the Cuba school.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But love comics from there got into valiant comics.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to Jose Delbo, who is one of the teachers at the school.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was there for five years, and it was great.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Really not to see a proper company from the ground up.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was down late during it's really early days and got to see it become like that.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was just an amazing experience.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: From there, when to marble, it was funny.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I always had marble at a time when, you know, it was their bankruptcy.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was like kind of a dark time on marble.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it was really interesting time to be there.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And nothing from there, I moved on and spent ten plus years working in live action in the scenic department in New York, working in film and TV.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the last seven years have been in California doing animation work or Warner Bros.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And mostly production, young justice, Harley Quinn stuff like that.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So all over the place.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's excellent, right?
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: What is it that you love about classes for me?
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, I'm old school fans.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, especially during the cochrome and burn era, the process to me was just kind of naive and the just comes off the heart and soul of the team like he was very kind of the innocent
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: kind of, you know, yeah, Wolverine who's like super cynical and, you know, and some of the other, you know, even Storm had been through for life, but it's not exactly easy.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it was interesting because he was sort of a powerful character and yet again, kind of a blank canvas again, and in terms of just really sweet guy, you know.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: They call him PDP your heart for a reason.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I love your metaphorical use of the canvas because he's the painter to see it.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now listeners may know Jorge as the creator of the, the fuggie, mutant twins, corrosion and dismember from us, the Saber two to two.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not serious.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: You may also recognize our other guest, Ben Rabb, as the incredible creator of Baron is blood.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to the show, Ben.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Jen, nice to be back.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate you inviting me, yes.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Love the show.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: You guys are, you a great job.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: You love you too, Ben.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm picturing you sitting there one day thinking, you know, there's a Nazi vampire.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: We definitely need a lady who's like that.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, honestly, we had the mail version, so there's really, you know, at the time there was a finite number of ways to go with it, right?
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: You were really good thinking of a transgender Nazi vampire.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's go with the female.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly, she was.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, I'm Ben Rapp.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think I knew I was who might know me.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I got my career start in comics.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: It did begin with sort of even before I got into the business.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was, you know, next man fan from
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: The early eighties and my childhood who in the early nineties when there was rumor that there was no fauna was gonna make an X-Men movie.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was like I'm
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when I got to college, I wrote a couple of experiments screenplays that were part one and two of a trilogy, which I never finished.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: But those scripts did, I managed to get them in the hands of Terry Stewart, who was the president of Marvel at the time in the early nineties, just before the bankruptcy.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very good to begin.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I landed an internship there, and did that for a bunch of months until I finally got hired.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this has never in the X-Men office, which launched my career before I went freelance as a writer for the past fifteen, sixteen years under working in television.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what do you love about classes?
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've always been drawn to the strong characters.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, as a little kid, especially who, you know, I wasn't a big, strong guy.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there was something very appealing about these really powerful characters and seeing him stack up against characters like the Hulk or the thing.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like what, especially in the early eighties, once the handbook of the Marvel Universe came out and you could sort of compare everyone's stats.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, this was the who went in a fight, age, holcro thing, you know, that kind of stuff.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Blossom is always up there.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just there's something, his look is kind of great look.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, compared to the rest of the X men, like they all were so very unique and different, but something about him obviously is stature, but like he just stood out.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And once I got to write the character, that was a whole, and a whole other layer to my appreciation of who he is and what you can do with a character like that.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have befriended multiple cosplayers through this show.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's like a category of cosplay where it's like a really fit gay guy and they all want to do this like sexy Colossus costumes, but they don't want to paint themselves silver.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I've had the question more than once from people.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you think I can get away with the costume?
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I'm like in his like human form because I don't want to do the full metal piercing.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, you get to decide.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: You have a little bit of it here.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: But yes, there's a specific look to this character that makes him kind of magical.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, we're going to jump into the kind of crazy realm that is Marvel's Russia.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Russia has an interesting thing we've been talking about a lot on my show this month on on both shows actually and the idea that you know the iron curtain red bad guys was like the big thing in the sixties that every superhero got to punch but with Colossus coming in it kind of changed the game we start to put a sympathetic voice to a civilian and then we start to show kind of the horrors
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: But mostly when Russia is written in comics in Marvel comics, it's usually capitalism fighting communism in some form and some kind of way, even though we have a ton of Russian characters as the protagonists these days with Black Widow and White Widow and Red Guardian being right at the front of that list in the new Thunderbolts movie.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Colossus represents a really interesting piece of kind of that lore.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I want to start with the concept of kind of government corruption.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: When we go to Russia and there is the state and there is the military, you've got the KGB and the idea of kind of the civil uprising as kind of a constant backdrop.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is not an easy thing to delve into the complex history of this place.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, Jorge, I'd love to have you start here if you would.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: You wrote Russia in a few different stories, but your Maverick series alone really put us in the heart and soul where you're showing a character named Ivan Pushkin, who's kind of got a Kingpin energy over in Russia, but representing poverty in an odd way or the exploitation of poverty.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, this is the hammer and sickle, which are, if you want to tell people a little bit about the hammer and the sickle and how you turn that into super villains.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, just tell us a little bit about your research and work in Marvel's Russia if you would.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny, the pushing character had hoped to do a lot more with that, obviously, before Maverick.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: This series kind of went away, but the idea was, especially at the time, and he was still saying that, now I'm in Russia where these warlords are really kind of the ones who are these corrupt businessmen are really kind of holding up the government, you know, a word of running the show.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And with Pushkin was an opportunity to show that in the Marvel Universe,
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why I had introduced also that other redguardian character and I spoke to do a whole kind of series of stories there where we get to see a little more of is a dark star is that her name or the there's all these other Russian characters there that pop up every blue moon in a marble book that would kind of would like to have kind of flesh that out a little more and see them more as because every time we saw and I forgot what the name of that Russian group was called
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it changes every few years.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's currently those who are, but it's been the people's protectorate and the Soviet super soldiers that have about three other things.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are always very much in like what you said.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the very, you know, the US capitalist versus the evil Russia, you know, communist state.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it would have been nice to explore some of the nuances of these characters who are basically living under the system.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're, you know,
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That doesn't necessarily mean they're on board with the corruption.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was hoping with a pushman character to kind of get a little behind a little more of the every man in representative in Russia.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: How they're dealing with all this but going to the into that also then the whole.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do they feel about means?
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: was the use thing was very in the US and very clear from what Marble had established in terms of, you know, the streets, the minority that whole kind of would have been the same in Osha would assume so, but I would assume they would have been exploited even more so.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've done a couple of character episodes at this point.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: One of them is the character Ursa Major.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I also have an episode out on the character Blind Faith for those that know.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Go listen to those two.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: We talk a lot more about Russia's complicated history with mutants of Marvel.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's way more crazy than you think.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or, if you want to tell everybody about what the hammer in the sickle is and how you created these characters.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, they were like the name.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're such the symbol of the Soviet Union, you know, suddenly at the time.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the hammer in the single itself.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: This was interesting.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's a symbol they used to represent kind of the joining of the farming community with the industrial community.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it like they put it up on a banner, but really some of them are treated very, very poorly.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of like reinforcing the idea that we all have to give up everything for the government if I'm allowed to be slightly critical.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's it's it's really funny to see this turn into super villains for me because they're really fun villains.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't wish hoping to be able to
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, obviously see them more, but just flesh them out more during the course of this here is that did not get a chance to do.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, my first set, the whole series, which really kind of a nod to a big, inflaming fan and James Bond, and that was really kind of the, it was obviously that our whole Russian thing was smush and all of that was a nod to that.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to see what would that look like in that marble reality with powers and mutants, and that kind of thing?
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: That again, we've got to explore some of that with hammer and sickle and see a product of that system.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can't know of the other space.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're pretty amped up villains.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're actually really fun and you're writing fabric at such an interesting time with all the legacy virus craziness.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: or hey listeners is going to come back and do a patreon episode with me on the character Elana Ivanova who I'm very fond of.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: She was big in my brain in the way I think Jean Grey is big in a lot of people's brains.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was reading Maverick during high school and I really connected with that character so I'm excited to talk to you more about.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: She had a lot of potential definitely.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's still in a coma I think.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's been like thirty years.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's fun.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: We also did an episode on Chris Bradley recently, which is another one we got to talk about with a lot of your work as well.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's cool.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, sad to me like, years later, I see Chris Bradley very tragic and or does he end up because Maverick kills her.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: He dies horribly at the hands of Maverick.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's, it's really terrible, but I think he's back to life on, uh, Kricoa, they resurrected everybody.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's okay.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So then let's talk about a little bit of your work with the character Colossus as well.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And my initial interview with you, we talked a little bit about your Excaliburron.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: But you inherited Colossus right out of the hands of, I warn Alice if I'm realizing correctly, right after Peotr's parents had been murdered, his sister had died from the legacy virus.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: He joined the accolites and pointed that not in, well, and it got worse after this because he, he's getting ready to die of the legacy virus and get kidnapped up to break world at this point.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: He was talking about your work with, uh, with Piotr.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Beep, your heart was not so pure in this era.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, and part of that was a lot of weight to the sort of throwing that character.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not like he couldn't handle.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the first issue of ex-calibur, I focused on him because I felt like I want to get into him.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to get under the skin of this character.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really want to figure out how to, you know,
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: find another deer for him because it's so easy just to make him tragic, which to me is really fucking boring.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's okay to happen once in a while, but it wasn't my experience with a character growing up, so I was like, I don't want to just repeat what's been done to him now.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to find a way to sort of strike a balance between what's come before, you know, Warren Ellis, what Warren Ellis has done, and where I want to go with
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: building a friendship with him and Megan was important to me.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, a little bit of an attraction too, because, you know, the captain written he was gone.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like this room for that.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just to sort of keep him alive and vibrant and, you know, the one shot that I did with with the two of them was just fun.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just wanted to have a good fucking time.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to remind people that the losses and be a fun character if you let it
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I do a giant academic panel on my show once a month.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: The episode coming out immediately after this will be a tribute to Piotr.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I have a whole panel of people who are going to be talking all about Piotr.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I've written a perception on his love life.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's so funny to me because he is so hearted in his eyes.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's so like he loves the idea of love so much.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Remember he's like dating Kitty who's a teenager.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then there's that healer on battle world.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: So she can he's like, Oh, we'll be with you forever and ever.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this man crashes to Earth his entire family dies.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: He decides to join a team with his ex-girlfriend, who's fucking a new guy.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then he starts flirting with the girl that's getting ready to get married.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I mean, I think that probably comes from, you know, having grown up on the farming collective in Siberia.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He just wants love.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: the one thing that the communist government did not supply.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: We just script readings on my show as well.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we just the old Claremont scene where it's not crawlers like, hey, look at those girls in the mini skirts.
• 13:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like, oh, boy, Shemoy, I know girls did not wear skirts like that back in Siberia.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's a really delightful character.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then you also did some really intense work, buddy, I had to reread this story and it's a rough one.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: You worked with the character Mikhail Rasputin in New Mutin's Truth or Death.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: When I say rough, I don't mean poorly written.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's wonder... That's some of my other shit.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: That one I'm actually kind of proud of.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mikhail, he's a bad bad guy in this story in that he tries to transfer his legacy virus to his little sister in the past.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: He like, he'll take my AIDS.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the story.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, part of it, I think if I recall correctly, against over thirty years, her roughly there used was with the impetus was to try to explain and maybe I think we're dealing on a get it, like how did she get sick?
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: What, what, what
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: caused her to contract.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at the same time that I get to have this fun adventure of the younger new mutants meeting their future selves.
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that part of the series is amazing.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a really fun and just be right.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, because I was able to write like, you know, both rain Saint
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Doug Lock in Excalibur.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was like, oh, cool.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, these are characters who've been through some shit.
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're younger self.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have you no idea what any of this is?
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and the fact that karma was back like it was just, it was, and so much it happened between those two, those two lives of these characters.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I got to do all that shit.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Mikhail, when he was introduced, I hated the notion that there was another recipe and said one.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I like, I don't like undiscovered siblings.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't like the third summer's brother.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't like any of that.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's just me and my mistakes.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm happy with what you've given me.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Evolve and go forth from that.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't go back and say, here's a secret you've never heard of.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it just sort of it hurts me.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: How's there for one moment?
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want you to continue.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: But in Claire months original run.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: his fourth issue on the book, X-Men, ninety seven, when they're going up into space to do the whole adventure with the set nose and when the crash gene becomes the Phoenix, you know what I'm talking about?
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: The losses gets on the road on the rocket and has a panic attack.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when they reach out, he goes, this is how my brother and Mikhail died.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's mentioned, but they didn't bring it until Will's Portashio, thirty years later.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just giving context for him.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, but he wasn't a mute.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was just brother to the continent.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's that to me was enough, you know what I'm saying?
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it was like, okay, so now he's got to have these powers and the reality of working is a very ill defined power set in my mind because you can just do anything.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, okay, you know, how do you, you know, neuter him a little bit?
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you got to deal with what's underneath it all.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the fact that this guy was just a horrible person who, you know, was so corrupted and become this opportunist who saw chance to survive something that he was not going to survive and would do it
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: by any means necessary.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that was just that was the, the thing that I wanted to get under with it.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get to talk more about the Kyle today when we do our issue review, which is a mother crazy.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: This, this, this man is terrible.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we did a Patreon on him this month as well.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm already recorded it.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: We, he's a lot.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've been let me love one more question your way and then I'll turn it back to Jorge.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: When we first see Colossus as well, one of the early stories Claremont gives us exploring kind of who he is as a person in relation to his country is when they go to murder world and arcade brainwashes him into becoming the proletarian.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And even the word proletarian itself is just by like a member of the proletarian or people who like contribute everything for the state, like a working class person.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: The costume is red overalls with a literal picture of Lenin, the hammer and sickle and the letter CCCP across the top, which is the name of the country.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's as obnoxious as Captain America wearing stars and stripes, but way sexy.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, a little red hat.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It looks very Tom of Finland, if you know the reference, which is fun.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: You got to use that proletarian image in your Colossus one shot as well.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to talk about your choice of using that?
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, how could I not?
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's okay.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like if you're going to have a story with Colossus and Arcade, you're going to, you're going to try that ground.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, it was all in an effort to, I don't want to say play the greatest hits, but at the same time,
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: if you're going to have him, why do move past what he's been going through?
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's all part and parcel of it to me, you know, and, and, again, not throwing the, you know, the kitchen sink, but at the same time, it's such, it is a striking image, it's a great cover, you know, like, so I'm like, ah, he's got the Proletarian's got to show up here.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: The costume is crazy, but the picture of Lenin on the front pocket is just not sure.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: crazy.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have a long conversation about Mikhail Rasputin as Lenin.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: In my in my episode about him, which is really interesting.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jorge, you have an interesting grasp of continuity and I know you didn't get to do nearly as many X-Men books as you'd like, but one of your jobs and I bought this in high school, back what I was picking stuff up off the shelves.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was the series Professor Xavier in the X-Men, where your task is to take the old stories and
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And kind of tell them in the exact same way, but with some tweaks that like, you know, give the decades a little bit more credence that the time was passed in the world.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not nineteen sixty three.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's nineteen ninety or eighty two or whatever, right?
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, how was it for you working on that series, which was kind of Saturday morning, part two and early sixties comics energy.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, honestly, that was a lot of fun.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's the first work I did for Marvel.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: My tryout was an issue of that.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did for Kelly Covesy, the editor at the time.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was just a lot of fun.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was, it was an interesting book because unlike the Spider-Man book that Bucieck was doing, he got the lead way to, he could just create new stories set within that time period, whereas we were very much restricted to, you have to reach, you know.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to retell each of these issues, you know, and basically quite it tells something new about the characters.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the way we did that was we bold each story from the point of view of a certain character, where that was Gene Gray or the Beasts or sometimes it was Magneto or sometimes it was.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: ball over trash.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're a little you're aren't on the sentinals expanding that Stanley original work, which is the best part of the original books right in the in the beginning.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's juggernaut in the sentinals is kind of all you need right there before that the other creative team comes on later, but really well done on that arc.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's good.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was thank you.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was a lot of fun.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a book that got a lot of slack.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, at the time, and it was dismissed because it was one of those ninety-nine setbooks and Yadayada Yadayada.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like I said, for me, it was a lot of fun to work on those characters in a great learning experience, too, that you will be telling these, you know, the classics and Kirby and Sam Lee with less of a page count than they had, but you had to tell more.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, so there was a challenge in that and how to make that work.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that was a lot of fun.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, for me, that was a very positive.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a fun series.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was sad to see it go.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was fun.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I really enjoyed it.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it really opened up a whole world of comics for me because it made me want to go read the early stuff.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: That and also like on told tales.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And again, I went on to work on the handbooks later, right?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: So like that really meant a lot to me as a reader back then.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: You both love a really terrible villain.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: You guys can write some evil motherfuckers sometimes.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jorge, you created the character catalyst for your saber tooth mystique series.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like an evil crazy Nazi sort, like a torture kind of guy.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he's really brutal to destiny as well, which is really sad.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: What do you love about a ridiculously evil villain?
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like you got to have a strong villain.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's part of what defines your hero character is, you know, the flip side of that is is is the villain.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when, you know, in this case, where it's a case where the main protagonist or the book are mystique and stay with two, who aren't exactly thanks themselves, you know, and I had those sort of kind of have to ratchet it up a notch to, so you have a villain that is even more retro.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you're writing too horrible people with your protagonist, you got to write a really horrible person.
• 21:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ben, when you're writing Arcade vs. McColle Rasputin, you know, as the examples presented, what do you love about a terrible villain?
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, the thing I always love about Arcade is that he's just an opportunist.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: He feels very relevant to today in a weird way, like billionaire who's got all this money and he chooses to do this shit and he'll contract out the whoever will fucking pay him.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of a... He's giving timeless.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's giving real Batman villain energy for sure.
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He has a theme and he sticks to that theme.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: He fits right in his list.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got a business to run.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, he contracts.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the whole thing.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got a business businessman.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of people.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail, again, somebody who lays upon the sympathies of his family, like, pretty fucking sick.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: When it comes to villains, it's interesting to create a counter-part to your hero, right?
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: So when you're thinking about a villain for Colossus to fight, you're normally going to think juggernaut, like that's going to be your first thought, or the Hawkelyc who can punch harder.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: But when you get a little bit more subtle, Colossus has the idea of a lot of madness in his family, right?
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: His sister gets human traffic to limbo.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Velasco has a dark child side, a demonic nature.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Colossus has always been afraid of the murder or kind of underneath, right?
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's that whole arc again later where he is predicted to be the destroyer of worlds when it comes to that break world storyline.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we've got the character Mikhail who is written not always consistently, but the themes of I am insane and I need attention.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: really bad or he loves he loves to have I don't know he's got like crazy borderline personality disorder he'll murder a bunch of people and they'd be like please feel sorry for me I'll go sit in a hole for a while and I'll come back another time by like it's about to start over and over with this guy what are your thoughts on an arch villain for Colossus what's a counter to this character that fascinates you
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not because it's like, he's not the center of his own universe.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: So his villains have always come from the group's, you know, collective antagonist.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just, that's an interesting question.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like you said, the first instance, like a juggernaut and kind of things like that, but more interesting, I think, would be someone outside of like me, Carol, the family kind of, you know, family knows where to push your buttons and all that kind of stuff.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I see PBS, you know, even artists, each life does it as so someone that would be countered with that.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what that villain would be.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a great question.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: When you read his history, it's really fun to see villains that challenge his morals, right?
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: He likes to think of himself as a hero.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So when someone makes him act in ways, and this is the story with Mikhail over and over again, including in this series, which we'll be doing in just a minute.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's also interesting to see people question, you know, what does it mean to be a mutant is part of it?
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I'm the patron saint of mutants that a lot of ways.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I'm one of the top five that you know.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: The way he left his country though, he's literally a defector and he was able to go and live a life with blessing, you know.
• 24:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So when you see like a villain who was unable to defect and got turned into a weapon, like a mega red, right?
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or you take a character who chose to work for the country.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I stood for my country note through everything and you're the one that left no matter the power sets those create interesting Moral conflicts for Colossus which I think is really interesting and in the series we're gonna review in a little while Colossus is going through a deeply moral journey I mean like what it comes to morality like the fact that he was the killing of Riptide I know is sort of like a sentimental moment which was really shocking at the time
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: More context, because I have listeners who haven't read these stories.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a group of mutants called the Marauders who are just slaughtering innocent people in a terrible hate crime.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: On behalf of Mr. Sinister, who we're going to talk about next, Colossus gets badly hurt by one of them and with bodies at his feet already murdered by this person, he reaches out and grabs Riptide and snaps his neck.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of a brutal murder for this kind of gentle character.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember when that happened?
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like during the fall of the mutants, like uncanny X men to twenties era.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It just seemed justified.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was shocking to see because that's not who he is, but I'm like, you know, I totally get it.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like what else are you going to do?
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nobody else was stopping this guy.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was, you know, whipping around shooting that shit.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, those little Cherkin or whatever, those throwing starts to came out of him.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you're just like, this guy got it.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go.
• 25:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: I get it, but Colossus sometimes will commit the murder and not be always in the right about it as well.
• 25:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Colossus also has a huge tendency to sacrifice himself.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, after you wrote him then, he cured the legacy virus by acting as the catalyst, and it killed him.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I'll cure everyone in the world, but I myself will die, which we see him also make a choice in the issue we'll review today.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's okay.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I can sacrifice me forever.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's very much in Peter's character.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just said that martyr kind of quality to him.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's inherent in the character in that in his backstory and his in his in the way his moral structure is is set up.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's more than just a farmer who turns in the metal, right?
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like yeah, not a complexity.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's interesting for me to line the siblings up to it.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: You look at like Russian archetypes, Mikhail's the Cosmonaut, and Eliana's the Witch, and Colossus is the Proletariat.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's an interesting vision of the three, how they are represented as well.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: We also have to talk briefly about Mr. Sinister.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is a villain.
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: who was just beginning to take his long, long journey as a supervillain.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: When you guys were writing comics, by the late nineties, Sinister was the mad geneticist.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But boy, by the time the mid-two thousands came, he's gone through some things.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: What do you love about Mr. Sinister?
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's maybe the biggest ex-menful outside of Magneto who is often one of the ex-men.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a huge fan of the honest.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like, I, you know, or it is, it's partly because he perceived his history.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: seeds, the early history of the accident, right?
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I understand that the, you know, the nineteen sixties, children of the Adam, all that shit, you know, but a guy who's operating in Victorian era times, it has a very different perception of the world than we did in the sixties about science and all that.
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it is interesting.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is a very mad scientist and I think that is the cool side of his character.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: but he always to me, he just felt his ultimate goal seemed vague and amorphous to me.
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, so I had a hard time connecting with him.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love this look and great look.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, yeah, the visual with the third kept cape and the big shoulder pads.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you hear that voice from the cartoon every time, right?
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's funny.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have similar thoughts to Ben as far as sinister.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we're about a apocalypse also.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess also because they're villains that came after my childhood almost.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like my growing up, my falling in love with the experiment that it took a while for me.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like sinister more now actually than he went.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was first introduced.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I have found it more interesting now in terms of all that I guess because they used them to fix all the metal and, you know, that whole convoluted mess that they had to.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I tangled you know that then that made an interesting in terms of like that being a geneticist and that there would be that kind of there would be somewhat with that knowledge through history like that's an interesting concept so I've kind of warmed up to him a little more now than when I was first introduced to him as a reader I find him exhausting he's one of those villains that's just used so much
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like Kang the Conqueror.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you're trying to write the Marvel Handbook Andrea, and Kang the Conqueror, you need you need three months.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot because it weaves together in such complex ways.
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Senisters like that because he's written quite inconsistently.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: The red cons were there right from the start with Claremont.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: where we had the origin of like sinister being involved with Scott at the orphanage when he was a kid.
• 28:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: But as the time goes by, he's the crazy evil guy behind the marauders.
• 29:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then he turns into this weird geneticist.
• 29:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we go, oh, actually Apocalypse made him back in like the Darwin times that he's been around forever.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if you guys read any of the Krikoa era books, but there was a whole huge storyline.
• 29:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: They amplified one sinister up to the level of like a cosmic god, which is so much.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we also learned when sinister first got created, he also created three other versions of himself.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, Mr. Sinister has the diamond on his head, and there's a version with a heart of one with a club and one with a spade, and they all have white motivations.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: No one's done the Joker sinister yet.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: That could be that could be the thing.
• 29:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: But they did make him a space god for its time.
• 29:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So when I say I'm a little tired of sinister, you understand what?
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: But there's three cinesters.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: You get the really fun camp villain.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Kieran Gillen's most known for writing this sinister.
• 29:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you guys have ever seen like a cabaret, you picture like Joel Gray's character is the MC.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: He writes that.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's the very fancy gentleman who's like so obsessed with themselves.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's hilarious.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's so much camp to it.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the white paint on the face already, right?
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: The second one is the evil geneticist, which is very like the jackal from Spider-Man.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just gonna clone shit and mix it together and you know manipulate bloodlines and I'm obsessed with power.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's fun.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then we get the awful side.
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this is the sinister we're gonna get today.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get the like racist.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I worked in the concentration camps experimenting on Jews.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: and also, like, I've been manipulating bloodlines and murdering babies and womb's energy.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the sinister rigidity in today's series, and it's my least favorite version.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I like the camp sinister way more than the scary science.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's so weak.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a modern story, again, this is Karen Gillen, where someone asks him, like, where are you racist?
• 30:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like, oh, like, I took that out of my DNA, like a few cycles ago.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was a week and a time.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a literal life.
• 31:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: So today we're going to be reviewing, and I'm going a little bit, I'm breaking my rules.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I like to do series that are set in the early continuity.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is not this is a story that set in the early two thousands, but it tells an early continuity story about Colossus, and it's one of the most Colossus focused individual stories out there.
• 31:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: We don't get a lot of those, unless it's like part of an ensemble team, you know, this is a very much a Colossus story.
• 31:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is X-Men Colossus Bloodline.
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is from, in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: So in issue number one, we get these crazy covers on this book with Colossus just as this like centerfold model, like super amped up, showing off as biceps and thighs.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very action-pozy.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very Hulk-like.
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have worked with him.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tim was the anchor on the X-Men books one, I was the sister.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I loved him.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's one of the nicest guys in one of the
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was in the business for that question.
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: What do you think of his rendition of Colossus on the first cover?
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it's full.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really cool.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this is he did do the covers.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It only touched me up how when you get mushy guys like this, it's really common like even in real people, but like the heads just a little too small for the body.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're just so amped up.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: In issue number one, and this book is gorgeously colored and penciled.
• 32:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I really like it.
• 32:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: It evokes a certain kind of Siberian frozen wasteland feel to the whole thing.
• 32:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It feels very austere and metallic a lot of the time with some like really gorgeous color splash.
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we see a pale skin man who is called the pale man, arrive in a small town in Siberia.
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's looking for a mutant named Yuri who heals people for money.
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yuri is sitting in his room watching porn.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a DVD that says Debbie does devravnik.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Amazing.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's wearing headphones and like eating chips.
• 32:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's living his best life.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's not masturbating.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's just eating chips and watching porn with headphones, you know, because mom and dad are in the next room.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the pale man enters and then like eviscerates this guy.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like drains his energy.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: He looks like he got burnt up in a fire by the end.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: We jumped to the exc mentioned where Piotra Rasputin is having a nightmare of being trapped in a room.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: So after he died from the legacy virus, he ended up stuck in a tomb on an alien world for a long time before getting rescued.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he's got a little bit of PTSD from a solitary confinement.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: which is cruel when we're going to get to issue five and just a little while.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he punches his way free.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the way he wakes up.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Emma Frost can tell something is off, but he does not care.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't know if you're business.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: We go back to St.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Petersburg.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: We meet a reporter and this is my favorite character in this series, a Larissa Miss Janko, who is pushing her publisher to write the truth about some crazy murders that have been happening.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: She references real life reporters and they used the actual photos of these men in the book.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Paul Klebnikov, the Larry Ivanov and Alexey Siderov, who were all newspaper editors who were murdered by Hitman in Russia after writing about corrupt government policies.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Real stories, that's a jarring thing to consider twenty years later in twenty twenty five, as we still see stories like that.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: In order to cover her tracks, Larissa has a friend, Tanya dresses her to go to the movie so that she can go off and do her work.
• 34:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the pale man, both murders, Tanya, the friend, and the guy that was going after her to kill her with a gun.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: He leaves them both burnt up again.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: We jump back to the exhibition where Pewter is painting in dark reds, but he covers up his work to hide it from Kitty.
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know what the painting is of at this point.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: He tells her, there's something not right inside me.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Emma enters, she wonders where you painting Kitty nude, and he's like, no, and then she says, oh, true.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some people are more interesting with that clothes on as she gives Kitty some side eye, which
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're amazing to me.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very golden girls.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Kielder said a distress call from his cousin Larissa, so he brushes all the way to St.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Petersburg.
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Where we meet a man named Kielder who has a pink mohawk.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's a big fan of Colossus.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he takes Pielder to Larissa.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's been tracking the murders.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's learned that there are dozens of victims.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And quote, I'm not doing a Russian accent.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: We don't have a large family pewter.
• 35:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Most of our relatives have died over the years.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Iliana, your parents, my mother and father, then there was Uncle Vladimir.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mad Uncle Vlad says pewter.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: He had three children, Constantine, Clara, Dmitry, and we see images of all three of these kids murdered by the serial killer as well.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: All the victims were connected to the Rasputin family line.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Quote, when my parents died, I was left a trunk containing the possessions of our great grandmother Elena.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: She was born in Siberia, but went to St.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Petersburg with her twin brother Ivonne.
• 35:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: She returned without Ivonne, but carrying an illegitimate child, our grandfather.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: She gave the child his father's name, Grigori, ethymovitch, Rasputin.
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Meanwhile, back at the expansion, Kitty uncovers the painting, which is a self-portrait of Colossus as a monster dripping with blood.
• 35:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It looks like
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I know I just covered a lot of ground.
• 35:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: That first issue had a lot packed into it.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then what were some of the things that stood out to you?
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was a really good introduction to to set up the story.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like it was all very compelling and very intriguing and what kind of story you can do for Colossus that hasn't been done before, right?
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Him dealing with the
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: the political side of things, the journalism that there's this thing going on, and he's got a cousin that we've never met before, you know, a homecoming is all very interesting, you know, and whatever, you know, the nightmare he was having at the top, which, like you said, comes back later, I thought it was a very good set up.
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, just, if you want to think that a really good job of setting up with this story is gonna be, I think it's, I can imagine the pitch was, it's about time we address the fact that his last name is Rasputin, right?
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's introduce this very quickly.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Grigori Rasputin
• 36:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: who Peter's grandmother, a grandfather, was named.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's a real historical figure.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Gregory Rasputin was born in Siberia in eighteen sixty nine as a peasant and in time he became a wandering self-proclaimed holy man and developed quite a following.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Very odd guy.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: He'd like brag publicly about like not washing his underwear for weeks at a time.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: interesting person and he was very focused on like getting all of the brides and like young girls that he could very cult leader energy in nineteen oh five he ended up introduced to the Russian royal family the Roman obbs who brought him into heel so reano Alexander's hemophilia and over the next ten years he developed super high influence within the court of the king
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Russia was a monarchy at this time.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: That started resulting in like the amping up of rumors and political controversy.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in nineteen sixteen, Gregory Rasputin was murdered and in nineteen eighteen, the Roman obbs were murdered as well, paving the way for the Soviet Union to form under communist rule in nineteen twenty three instead.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is a huge moment in Russian history.
• 37:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yes, I just told you the plot line of the cartoon anesthesia.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: the big bad guy with the little flying talking back.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we are now revealing in this story that he is Colossus's great grandfather.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: He fathered a child through his great grandmother, Eleda.
• 38:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, like Ben said, it's about time to rest in connection with me.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's family, Bryce put into fascinating historical figure.
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, good Lord, if you wanted to make these stories more tragic, adding this basically baggage to him with his huge.
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I certainly do like all this, explore some of this, getting back in Russia.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like that the mini series is dealing with that.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I think it's an interesting premise for sure.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And did you have thoughts on Emma commenting on Kitty should not be nude for paintings?
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have comments on what Emma's wearing and that, you know.
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very, it's very blanched talking to Dorothy, like it just makes me smile.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then Ben, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that final painted image.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see the self portrait of Peter reflecting the fear of what he is inside.
• 38:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, this mean, bloody mirror, basically.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think it's very accurate.
• 39:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that is what he is.
• 39:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's what Riptide would paint.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, honestly, no, I mean, it's cool.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It also evokes, I think, to me, this whole set up, maybe it is because Mike Minnola had used, you know, Rasput and so effectively in Hellboy.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: They'll just look at the art and everything very much feels like, hey, let's capture a little bit of that Hellboy vibe.
• 39:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this was a nice added layer to that, I thought, through the painting.
• 39:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, just this is on self-loathing.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: So here's my early thoughts on the review of this series, and I always find things to love, because otherwise, why would I do what I do, right?
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not fun to just poke critiques and things like, I think this starts and ends very strongly as a colossal story.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the entire middle, it becomes just a story about ancient history that I'm not sure we needed.
• 39:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It will talk more about it, but I do think the book ends the one and five are very good at telling a colossal story when it's his name on the book.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: When we jump to issue two, we're back in Lake by call, which is where Piotr grew up.
• 39:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a bearded mad man out there.
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is the Uncle Vlad, they referenced earlier, who's gone crazy.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: He traps a rat and he's singing to himself.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: We go back to St.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Petersburg.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Larissa is suggesting that Gregori Rasputin, the historical figure, might have been a mutant.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Peter ends up changing to metal, he beats up some cops that are after them.
• 40:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's wondering what's happening to him.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: He feels like he's going mad.
• 40:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Larissa believes that the madness runs in their family.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Look at Eliana, who has a literal dark child, look at Mikhail, who's basically committed genocide at this point.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we reference the legacy virus story earlier.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is not a good person.
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Even Larissa is struggling with depression, she says.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she shows him the scars on her wrists that show he, she, you know, she's struggling.
• 40:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: uh... they end up finding uncle glad back at lake by call but they're followed by the pale man and he unmasks you're expecting it to be gregory rest but it's fucking mr. sinister and behind him in the shadows we learn on the first page of the next issue it's fucking mehile rest but great reveal this sinister at the end because i wasn't expecting that
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I will say my my my biggest issue with the story is it was really that I wish Peter were to got more agency.
• 41:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I felt he was almost a special like you said, especially in these the issues two and three is like a spectator in his own story more than having and, you know, that he's not the one driving the story and he's being manipulated by all these different forces and given a big history lesson.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I do like in the artwork's family fits though when I'm looking at it.
• 41:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: the mood of the story and creating that clique, what it is like.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you've ever been to a communist country that's indecline and it's bleak and beautiful.
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a beautiful book for sure.
• 41:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: They really did a job with the color on those pens.
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's nice.
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, for a character that I always saw is despite his own self-loving and his darkness, clearly, a very moral character, or trying to be and kind-hearted, so it's just tough to even get more mild on him.
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's just, uh, this darkness in this family, like this multi-gen or, you know, like feeding into his self-loving.
• 42:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Odd, odd take that I just thought of, but, uh, it's Colossus, the Daredevil of the X-Men.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: interesting thought experiment.
• 42:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't dump and dump on the guy for a fourth thing.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ben, when you saw Mikhail, did you think, oh, it's my favorite character.
• 42:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: My old buddy Mikhail, Rasputin is back.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did not.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because again, it's one of those things.
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I like the character.
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like there's a finite number of things you can say with him.
• 42:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, and I also didn't, I don't what I knew about him reading this.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's what I wrote and then there's stuff that came after.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I, and I was unaware of the bridge between the two.
• 42:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for me, it's just like, okay, I'm seeing this guy again and what's new and different about me's been trapped and avoid.
• 42:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: When we put it out, I'll tell you, or I'll give you the link to the McCallip.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: So if you want to listen, it's interesting.
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: But Jason and Aaron did some really cool stuff with this character in some recent comics.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Actually, it's, it's really great.
• 42:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jumping to issue three, this is like, you do just take the classes out of the book.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's not even here basically.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have Mr. Sittister giving a very long detailed flashback about his time in the Darwinian times.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you read further adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, beautiful book, you learn how he lost his wife and became a crazy geneticist for apocalypse and was basically tasked with like seeking out what he calls the Essex Factor.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: But here, we get like supremacist Nazis in a stir, who is just basically seeing everyone as inferior races.
• 43:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see him use the term Mongral race.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: We see him use the phrase congenital idiots and cripples.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: We also see him directly commenting on wanting a pure bloodline.
• 43:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Of course, David Hyde does not stand for any of these things, but it's always so, I don't know, when you write the red skull as a comedic supervillain, it's kind of fun, but when he starts talking about mongrel race, as you just remember why superheroes exist in the first place, because these are the worst.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we learned that Gregori, again, the historical figure, was instructed to father as many children he as he could through his quote, Celestial Brides.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sinister injected some stuff into all of the fetuses of the impregnated women, which would increase their likelihood of being mutants.
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And one of these women was the only one that the only celestial bride, quote, unquote, that Drogory actually loved, which was Colossus's great grandmother, Elena, who again had a twin named Ivan.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: He thought it's up to her to God, Rasputin, and the public turns against him.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you remember, I mentioned he got assassinated.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, in this version of the story, he's like a magic sorcerer guy and also maybe a mutant.
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And somehow he does a thing where he passes part of himself on into all of his grandchildren, which is an odd story about hatred.
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I suppose, like the more generations go by, the less the more the programming changes.
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: The idea here is that he is inspiring madness in each of his ears because he's inside each of his ears.
• 44:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then we jump to the present where Uncle Vlad has lit himself on fire.
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then do you have thoughts on issue three?
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the revelation of Gregory and his, I don't know, brood mayors.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, this is one of the things why I didn't like this, the sinister backstory, which is like here, we're seeing, like, this is the moment we were seeing.
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It looks like Colossus ancestors have some sort of mutin abilities, levitating her in front of a crowd.
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's meant to me all this kind of stuff.
• 45:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: undermines the conceit of mutants and when mutants come into the world and become a thing it's like so again I know we have other instances like apocalypse or whatever but that that pre-seed the marvel universe but it just it adds another layer that makes me ask questions that I don't want
• 45:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: the story.
• 45:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It takes me out of the story.
• 45:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes me go, yeah, I guess you can get away with it within the context of this particular tale.
• 45:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in the larger tapestry of the Marvel Universe, it feels a little disjointed.
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, I mean, look, recipe and lighten himself on fire.
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, or of last season, he's lied.
• 45:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lighten himself on fire.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will get to know why in the next issue.
• 46:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: But like, it's, you do not do anything.
• 46:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's just standing there.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's here in the story.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: It feels, this is where, to me, I was
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: like, oh, was this just an excuse to tell Mr. Sinister's story?
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of already been told.
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because Frank Terry wrote Mr. Sinister in Auschwitz, experimenting on Jews, like he met Magneto when he was a kid.
• 46:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: We also have those old black womb stories or Alamagordo.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mike carried to the story with Sinister experimenting on Charles Xavier in the womb.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, this guy has had his hands and everything else where he gets really exhausted sometimes.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Get genetic tourists throughout and throughout time.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm going to tell you I'll give you this fact really quickly and it would make me mad except the stories are really fucking well written.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you remember the other three sinisters I mentioned?
• 46:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this sinister with the diamond Mr. Sinister is obsessed with mutant science and the guy with the spade on his head is called Dr. Stasis.
• 46:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's obsessed with human science and the guy with the club on his head I think I'm getting these right
• 47:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: had mixed those two up.
• 47:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: His name is Orbus Stilaris and he's obsessed with cosmic science and then the one with the heart is a lady and her name is mother righteous and he's obsessed with magic like it's sinister sent versions of himself out kind of like multiple manhood like hey go learn all you can about everything and then bring it back to daddy it's
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still can't have passed the card date on the forehead.
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: That makes no sense to me.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it just seems like this whole image of Vlad on Tony himself on fire.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, this was certainly not a clone in a comics code.
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we were there.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is the violence for comics for sure.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so it is you for and I'm over summarizing a few things.
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yvonne died.
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sinister reveals that he's basically been killing all of the Rasputans as the pale man because every time he does a little bit of Gregory Rasputin will gather in all of the others.
• 47:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: So picture like a demon that's possessed a bunch of people.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Every time someone dies, the rest of them get a little stronger.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very Phoenix five with the Phoenix force for those that read that story a few years back.
• 48:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So eventually the mind of Drogory will maybe be able to take over one of the airs.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, this is very love crafty too.
• 48:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now that I'm thinking about it actually, this is a super love craft story.
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Mikhail is involved because he thinks I'm already mad.
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've been hanging out in another dimension all by myself.
• 48:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody noticed I was gone.
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I needed some attention and I came back to Earth and if I kill all of my relatives, then Drogory Rasputin couldn't go on and live in my body and have access to my reality altering powers.
• 48:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Great plan buddy.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's really what's going on.
• 48:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: But before that, he's like, after I get the him inside me, I will go off in a dimensional void and then just give up on my life.
• 48:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, if you care about me, then you'll call it's a sinister killerissa, which is horrible, single touch to the neck.
• 48:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's gone.
• 48:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then Mikhail takes Colossus into another dimension.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: He tells Sinister I'm gonna go kill him.
• 48:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, hey, I'll just leave you here for a few decades.
• 48:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's done this to this man like four times.
• 48:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you get really lonely and another dimension, then you'll understand how I feel.
• 49:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Peotr is very the energy.
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Peotr attacks.
• 49:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, if I, you know, I'll kill you all through a rucks at your head.
• 49:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you know, if I kill you, then Grigore can come inside me.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then I can live in the dimension all by myself forever and ever.
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't pass on better, Mikhail, and Mikhail just leaves him there instead.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, bye, and he's like, no, not the dark place.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think just keep shoving him in a hole basically he's it's a such an easy target right like because
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so ethical because he's so sacrificial fucking martyr.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sure.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I really hate that they killed the rest of it.
• 49:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think, you know, let's introduce an interested educated rebellious woman who's related to Colossus.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a character who has potential, but she just gets touched and is gone.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think that was an unnecessary part of the story.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think she could have survived and it would have made this story stronger if I'm sure.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, she was like, you know, like a Russian lowest lane.
• 50:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, there was potential for that character.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know,
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wrote a journalist character in the X-Men Hellfarm Club in these series, sort of under the origin of the Sebastian Shaw and his family.
• 50:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I get, like, that's why this sort of appeal to me from the beginning with Barra, I was like, oh, this reminds me a little bit of that.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm curious to see what this spy thriller kind of murder mystery journalism thing is going to be.
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then she just, she's also just a bystander for us to this time.
• 50:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll definitely have you back on to talk about the Hellfarm Club.
• 50:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll get, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're,
• 50:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Finally, issue five, we see Pewter stranded in the other dimension, but then there's this big rule.
• 50:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's really, I don't understand why this revelation was such a big deal.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: We go back to the past again, and Elena, the great-grandmother who's pregnant with the son that will be named Gregory, she tells Gregory, like, I will go kill my brother, Ivan, like, just don't come out.
• 50:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then she comes back with blood on her hands.
• 50:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she's like, oh, he's dead.
• 50:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: But because there was like a secret necklace being worn, Mikhail realizes, oh, Elena didn't murder great grandpa Ivan, which means I should still care about Colossus, even though I've slowly watched every other relative that I've ever cared about, including my cousin, who I really like, everyone needed to die.
• 51:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: But now I've had a change in heart because I saw this necklace.
• 51:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't, I don't like this reveal.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he thinks Colossus out of prison and then Mikhail basically says Sinister has been mentally manipulating me this whole time the only reason I got control back is because I was away and this other dimension with you for a minute.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't buy it
• 51:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very, he's covering his tracks.
• 51:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then, Colossus, who promises I will never kill anyone in anger ever again, decides to let Mr. Sinister escape.
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mikhail departs.
• 51:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, I will now go off into another dimension.
• 51:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Feel bad for me.
• 51:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I hope you remember that I exist.
• 51:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Goodbye again, very borderline personality disorder.
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then, Colossus takes his grandmother's amulet back
• 52:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: to the expansion and sits in front of it holding it his family legacy in his hand while looking at this portrait he's painted of himself as a crazy monster.
• 52:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jorge, what are your thoughts on the conclusion of this series?
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: As we're talking about it, I don't know that I understand exactly what it was trying to accomplish, but it's a solid fucking story.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's good.
• 52:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting, it brings up, I mean, again, I love all the look at the return to Russia and I look at that.
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I agree that a loss of the racist character was a lot of story potential and just to have someone, I mean, because at this point, have they still don't feel Lyanna and his parents to already have others.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, so you have someone to connect to.
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: In the early nineties, maybe in the seas it did that story with the soul skinner, where they go back to Russia and there's a deadly mutant.
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the government storms the house.
• 52:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're going to age iliana back into adult hood so she gets her powers back and his parents are gunned down.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then iliana at age seven gets the legacy virus and dies.
• 53:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like he's on a rough journey for a while here.
• 53:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it seems like this just piled on more as opposed to some resolution, you know, like his way band give us a joyful Colossus and Excalibur right?
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm looking for it.
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's have some laughs.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's really shitty forms.
• 53:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hold on.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, he's the Daredevil of the X-Men, I think.
• 53:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's right.
• 53:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Then what were your thoughts on the conclusion of this series?
• 53:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So here's the thing, the image at the end of him sitting for the painting we've already seen it.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was blowing an issue on, right?
• 53:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, had they been able to hold that off?
• 53:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think maybe it would have been a little bit more powerful.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, very.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: image that we didn't expect, you know what I mean?
• 53:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not just like, again, any of this broody, morose colossus.
• 53:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the backstory of him being trapped as a kid and the brother saving him and doing it again with that was great.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: That felt like this is, this is what this story was meant to be about and I wish that the intro
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: with each other and put the past trauma behind them and move on with the new beginning.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I would have liked.
• 54:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it could have been self-sacrificial and I'll actually be kind of ended up in the dimension and doing whatever it is to sacrifice it all cool.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I just want more about the story of these two brothers.
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think it's very, it's very much a story about the monster inside me.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mikael says, I only acted in this way because of sinister manipulating me.
• 54:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: But also the story for all of the rest students is we had this evil in our blood the whole time.
• 54:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's like been madness, like mutant madness within us.
• 54:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: So is Gregorian, Rasputin, the one possibility is that he cast a spell and put himself into the minds of his descendants, right?
• 54:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Again, very lovecrafty.
• 54:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the other is like his mutant power is like animate himself in other descendants.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's the, again, it's like a multiple man thing, right?
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I can transfer my consciousness into a dupe almost energy.
• 54:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It hasn't quite been explained and Gregorian Rasputin has been used in other Marvel comics over the years, often as like an an a spirit at on rest.
• 55:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you go look up his his Wikipedia, you could find some of that.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't like the sinister part.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's I mean, we we love a super villain, but I don't like Frank Terry's sinister very much, and this is very much Frank Terry's sinister.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, for me, I would have liked to have seen Colossus end up in a better headspace.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I agree with Ben that I would have liked to have seen that the relationship with his brother really is the emotional core of the story that would have loved to have seen more of that.
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jason Aaron again did that very well in his tacky.
• 55:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's quite good the story he wrote between the two of them.
• 55:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But where's that fall between with this, you know?
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this came out in two thousand five.
• 55:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: This came out in two thousand five.
• 55:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Jason Aaron wrote that in like twenty twenty two.
• 55:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: But Peter gets dumped on.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He gets mind controlled for like a whole year.
• 55:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he has to murder his girlfriend.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's rough.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's rough time.
• 55:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: He drips in the Kyle's heart out of his chest at the end of the scene.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's like this.
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he got our feet on this one.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right?
• 56:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
• 56:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is a pure joy to just have men of your talent and caliber.
• 56:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: So thank you for spending this time with me.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had a great time with you both today.
• 56:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'd love to hear any final thoughts.
• 56:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to put this up for listeners on July twenty fourth and if you'd like to share any final thoughts, where can people find you online?
• 56:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anything you would like to plug?
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's go Ben and then Jorge.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to give him a given where we are in time when you're recording this Peter David just passed away.
• 56:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like we should give a shout out to someone who was part of the ex-family and ex-factor, you know, one of the great writers in Marvel Comics history.
• 56:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had the fortune slash miss fortune of following Peter David on his epic run on Spiderman's twenty ninety nine.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wrote the last two issues when the series have been canceled.
• 56:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you find, I mean, listen, I had a long history of following much better writers in my career and it was really an honor to be able to sort of play with Miguel Harris for a couple of issues and something that the peer data was so integral of creating and it's a real loss to the business and to come fandom.
• 57:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're recording this everybody in late May.
• 57:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I told you I do an academic panel once a month and I just the day we're recording this I just released our academic panel about Jamie Madrox the multiple and boy do we talk about Peter David because I feel like that's a signature character.
• 57:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like the whole genus bell and multiple mad, you know, that's not a fair try to treat.
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I he just a phenomenal talent and again, it's still a very fresh wound.
• 57:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: But may he rest in peace.
• 57:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I understand it was quite ill and it's always a relief to know someone's no longer in pain at the same time.
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I spent the past year recording music on my own, which I would love to have people listen to if they feel so inclined.
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's on Spotify.
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was lucky, isn't it under your name?
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, it's under my mind.
• 57:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I record under my musical pseudonym, is it idle hands?
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 57:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: My most recent album came out a few weeks ago.
• 57:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's called elsewhere.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's all instrumental.
• 57:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's all, you know, home produce.
• 58:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just a thing that I've always wanted to do and finally got the courage to get up and do it.
• 58:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as I did with my comics career, I'm putting it out there for everyone to be critical and hateful of it if they want to be.
• 58:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to listening to that.
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 58:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 58:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's all I have.
• 58:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Working on an online game, it's called Best Concert Ever.
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can find it.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a free website.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can go.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can play game every day.
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a new musical prompt where you get to play the role of concert promoter and you pick an opening act, a second opener and a headliner and it's a different theme, different genres each day.
• 58:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: People who, you know,
• 58:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: The audience gets to vote on it.
• 58:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just a fun little thing you can do.
• 58:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: People wanted to check that out.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: That would be awesome.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's best concertevergame.com.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the last thing is a little early to announce.
• 58:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'll give the full details.
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm going to be doing some work back in the publishing world in the comics publishing world with an indie publisher that does not just traditional American comics.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: They do manga and monwa Korean manga, which I'll be doing something for them.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's actually cool.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ben, this is gonna sound like such a small thing.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Last summer, I went to New York Comic-Con, and I was just kind of wandering around feeling like an outsider, loser by myself.
• 59:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, like, there's people here I know, but they don't remember me, and even though I interviewed some, Ben came, like, storming across the aisle.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's so good to see you.
• 59:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that like warm welcome, like set a trend for the rest of the next three days that I was there that it just turned out to be lovely.
• 59:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So thank you for just being a kind lovely person.
• 59:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was really nice to be a person last year.
• 59:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Listen, I was there by myself as a loser as well.
• 59:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, to gravitate for others.
• 59:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't like to recognize my face in person.
• 59:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a lot.
• 59:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really appreciate it, man.
• 59:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course not.
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was there for, you know, for John Cascades Memorial.
• 59:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's why I was in town for that specifically.
• 59:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I was trying to figure
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: and Black Raider, and we all miss him too.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, for me, as far as part I've been up to, I mean, I've been working animations for the last seven or so years in the production side of things.
• 59:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So young justice, Bartlett Queen, are some shows, my Tyson mysteries, stuff I worked on a lot of fun.
• 59:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, I'm actually going back into writing.
• 1:00:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been a long time.
• 1:00:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been out of it for a while, so diving dive into it with a friend of mine working on this series of graphic novels that we're going to be chopping around in the next couple of months.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: to soon really to say anything about it.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we'll definitely let you know once once we're up and running.
• 1:00:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And hopefully maybe it's funny.
• 1:00:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been to New York Comic Con in many years.
• 1:00:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me try and go this year.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We connect with a lot of old friends.
• 1:00:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have there that I haven't seen in a while.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll definitely get
• 1:00:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm going.
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going for Flamcon a few weeks before.
• 1:00:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm pretty sure I'm going to NYCC and for sure I would love to grab a coffee or a cocktail.
• 1:00:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It'd be great to meet you.
• 1:00:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Lastly, I keep my social media private because I got kiddos, but follow the show at Graeme on an underscore lane and what you can watch for on the show next week.
• 1:00:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: It will be the trial of Piotr Sputin.
• 1:00:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: So watch for that.
• 1:00:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have an incredible lineup of guests and it's going to be a really thought provoking episode.
• 1:00:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: If this one made you think that was going to make you think more, I promise.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Over on the Patreon we're covering characters tangential to Colossus.
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the next episode after this watch for one on classic Marvel supervillain, the Presence and his wife Starlight.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Very interesting comments to talk about all those two characters.
• 1:01:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then we're closing out the month on the Patreon channel with Jorge rejoining me.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to talk all about Elena Ivanova from the Maverick series.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: All right, everybody.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you to Ben.
• 1:01:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you to Jorge.
• 1:01:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you all back here.
• 1:01:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Next time on the Degree Multinationals.
• 1:01:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest tonight talked about a red skull story and its modern application.
• 1:01:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I like that I'm at a point where meeting you feels like an honor and I'm not a scared nervous wreck anymore.
• 1:01:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, here we go.
• 1:01:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: In nineteen thirty eight, Germany annexed Austria.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: In nineteen thirty nine, Czechoslovakia and then Poland in nineteen forty Denmark and Norway and Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Meanwhile, the Soviet Union expanded into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, pressured from the overwhelming threat.
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria all allied with the Axis powers, feeling they had no choice.
• 1:02:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: While Greece and Yugoslavia were invaded.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: In nineteen forty one, Germany invaded Russia, including Belarus and Ukraine, and with the resources spread so thin, this is where the movement began to fall apart.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's jump over to astonishing tales number four and five for a crazy story where Dr. Doom has just settled an uprising from rebels in Latvia because Prince Rudolfo tried to reclaim the throne and then he went on vacation literally just soak it in the thunder relax after quelling the civil war.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And while he was gone in swoops the red skull and his Nazi elderly exiles there to take over, realizing that the civilians there will have little ability to resist their rule.
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And from this new power base, they can rebuild the fourth Reich, which is a phrase we're going to see a thousand thousand times from the red skull in the future.
• 1:02:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: attack the civilians, they conquer the villages first, and then take the ruined castle, Doomstot itself.
• 1:02:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: They hang swastikas immediately.
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: They assemble a bunch of old loyalists.
• 1:03:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's this panel of the Nazis all raising a salute, and a bunch of old-wisoned Nazi soldiers who've come out of the woodworks joining the Nazi parade with their arms up in the Highly Hitler pose.
• 1:03:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And immediately, when Dr. Doom returns, he has captured.
• 1:03:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: They put him in a public coffin in a living kind of death
• 1:03:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: to be humiliated by the public, and they're planning to slowly click him into death in front of everyone.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: But of course he escapes.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: While he is going through this though, the Nazis immediately on the page, begin sending the old the sick and the subversive to concentration camps.
• 1:03:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they start beating any civilians who are disobedient or who ask too many questions.
• 1:03:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: But Dr. Doom, of course, frees himself, he defeats the exiles, he hypnotizes them all into believing that they've been shrunk to the size of six inches high, and then he fires them on a little rocket into the atmosphere.
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Nazis have been repelled and let Veriat was saved by a less dangerous despot, Dr. Doom himself.
• 1:03:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a recent story in Marvel Comics where the evil of the Red Skull has been defeated.
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in swoop, Dr. Doom to take over the world, which is what's happily happening in Marvel Comics right now, which is interesting, but he's definitely the less evil version.
• 1:04:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: This also sets up a future confrontation we'll be talking about on the show, Dr. Doom, and Red Skull fight more than once.
• 1:04:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let me welcome my esteemed and incredible guest, my friend Annie Nescenty, to the show, to talk all about this crazy story.
• 1:04:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, any, this is my first question for everyone.
• 1:04:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Are you a fan of the red skull?
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, I, I, I never wrote a red skull story.
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know anything about red skull, but other than he was, I don't know who created him.
• 1:04:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, these stories that you sent me have Dan and his brother Larry.
• 1:04:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more brothers, really, who are writing this.
• 1:04:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this goes back to, I guess, the origins of Captain America, how it was the Jewish creators that reacted to how the, like you put it at the beginning, you're a little talk about how they were invading all the countries across Eastern and Western Europe.
• 1:05:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Captain America was created as a pointed directive to Roosevelt that we should get into, we should stop Nazis.
• 1:05:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Red Skull is obviously a Nazi.
• 1:05:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Red Skull is the Hitler's Prodigy.
• 1:05:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a story where Hitler back in the World Wargo is, look at this man, this bell hop in this hotel.
• 1:05:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: He, I can turn him into the greatest evil.
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll give him a cost to him.
• 1:05:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, he becomes Captain America's arch nemesis, and he's this kind of recurring returning threat of fascism, the low level measure of evil in Marvel comics forever and ever.
• 1:05:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's crazy that this is a kid's story, right?
• 1:05:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like they're literally pushing Nazi propaganda immediately into Lot-Varia as they take over.
• 1:05:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Concentration camps in Salutes and Swastikus.
• 1:05:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like it's right there as soon as they take over.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Interesting, because I don't, I never really thought of Marvel Comics as stories for kids.
• 1:05:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think the readership was always quite a bit older than that.
• 1:06:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Marvel at different points and D.C.
• 1:06:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: have tried to capture the younger market, you know, but they haven't been all that
• 1:06:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I never thought of these stories as for kids even though kids did read comics, but yeah, I think I saw we saw the red skull who created the red skull by the way because of Captain America being was Captain America was a red skull was created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
• 1:06:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's perfect.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly who created Captain America.
• 1:06:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I so they they two Jewish creators who were who came came into the comic field at a time when anti-Semitism was so severe in New York City that they couldn't get work in the in the normal ways that creators artists got work, which was the advertising industry.
• 1:06:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, but they found that no one cared that they were Jewish in the comic industry would have been timely back then I think and it would have been Martin Goodman maybe, but so that it was a full year before Pearl Harbor that Captain America came out famously punching Hitler in the face.
• 1:07:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this was very these stories were driven by two Jewish kids who were who were the you know anti-Semitism was really impacted on their lives.
• 1:07:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the story here and again, it's kind of a silly story.
• 1:07:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's drawn in cartoons, but we see a country that is in a vulnerable state and some evil ideas start to spread.
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: They start in the villages.
• 1:07:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: They start in the civilians and then they build a base of power before going toward the capital itself and immediately hang the swastikas, right?
• 1:07:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a very uncomfortable parallel to what we see happening in America these days, which
• 1:07:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know in the early nineties when we all saw the rise of Trump and everyone thought of them is because if you were in New York in the eighty you knew this guy Trump was around and he he was famous for not paying workers for building shitty buildings that would fall down you know that would have a lot of problems
• 1:08:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: for discriminating again, black people and not giving them housing.
• 1:08:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he was a real shitbag back then.
• 1:08:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I did a comic, a Batman comic, where I had the gold tea being risen.
• 1:08:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: higher on the skyline as Trump built a building that basically cast a shadow over New York and blocked the lights of everyone else.
• 1:08:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it was a symbolic story, obviously, about him as a shitty con artist, you know, to see forty years later, him still at it.
• 1:08:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all the parallels in this of the symbols like he him wanting his name Trump everywhere, you know, and wanting to add himself to Mount Rushmore And all the yeah all everything and you know, and he's being hustled now like that could cut her jet They've been trying to sell that thing for so long that What's wrong with that jet?
• 1:09:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's way too heavy.
• 1:09:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's too big.
• 1:09:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it makes any sense So you know, he's getting conned all the time himself, but
• 1:09:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the parallels to today reading this little story you sent me, the parallels are completely, that's sort of what's saddest.
• 1:09:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like nothing has changed.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, here we are, shoving immigrants into detainment centers where not even a congressman can go make sure the conditions are okay in there and the reports coming out or that are they are horrifying?
• 1:09:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Army, army, ICE agents and dehumanizing people who are against their policy.
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: very the brown shirts.
• 1:09:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll talk more about this.
• 1:09:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's this image and it's one single page in this story where again, they've taken over the capital and the flags are hung and you get these kind of old soldiers who come out of the woodwork.
• 1:09:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: The people who have remembered what it was like to be Nazi the whole time and we're seeing so much of that these days is the ideas spread in the camps kind of polarized.
• 1:10:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's no sitting on the fence at a certain point.
• 1:10:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: You have to either stand for or against.
• 1:10:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we opened before we started recording.
• 1:10:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I know you've been protesting.
• 1:10:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're recording this in mid June, twenty twenty five.
• 1:10:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tell her.
• 1:10:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Tell her listening how to answer a little about your your protests.
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think you're so incredible.
• 1:10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I live.
• 1:10:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I live in New York and so I'm right near the federal courthouses.
• 1:10:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the the park there has been doing from five to seven every single day protest against ice and of course against everything.
• 1:10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, the and you know,
• 1:10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: one of them AOC came and she was amazing and then I came up state and I did the no kings march and up in the country where you're you're very divided there's a very divided populous up here red and blue you know the further you get out of a city the more red and less blue and you know I'm a
• 1:11:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: big believer in talking to the other side, not having it be, you know, us versus them because there are more ways that humans are alike than they are, unlike.
• 1:11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that in some ways, it's the rise of the acceptance of fake news.
• 1:11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, you watch the press conferences in the White House now and, and, you know, all these people like Chrissy Kristy Nome and that
• 1:11:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: that see divorce whatever her name is the education.
• 1:11:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: People who have no idea what their job is.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They don't have any intelligence about their job and they just repeat lies and the lies are amplified.
• 1:11:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this is a cult really.
• 1:11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a cult and it's people.
• 1:11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I think AI now with being able to generate movies.
• 1:11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And images, it's becoming really difficult to even know the difference between the truth, what's real and what isn't.
• 1:12:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 1:12:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's either a tool used in the hands of people who want to create a safe space for everyone or a tool used in the hands of people who are divisive and want to hurt people, right?
• 1:12:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like it's so scary to consider the implications.
• 1:12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I also think that the brainwashing has been going on for since Roger Ailes, you know, Roger Ailes and the rise of Fox News.
• 1:12:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was their little test case for whether or not you had a populist that would believe lies that would embrace lies.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's basically what's happening now.
• 1:12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what's the other thing that's interesting is that, you know, the, the agriculture, there was just recently, you know, a pullback on ice going into certain places, but only red stain, you know, it's like, you know, Trump must know this is awful and wrong, because he's not inflicting it on red spaces.
• 1:12:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's doing it to blue spaces, you know, going after immigrants.
• 1:12:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's so awful.
• 1:12:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this comparison between the sides.
• 1:12:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like it's like that thing where racism exists for black people, of course.
• 1:13:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then white people say, well, yeah, but people are racist against us too.
• 1:13:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's simply not the same thing, right?
• 1:13:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's historical and trench racism is not the same as you feeling like you share privilege.
• 1:13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and because I spent years in Haiti teaching film and Haiti, and I was often was in situations where I was the only white person, and I never felt even the slightest bit of fear ever anywhere I went.
• 1:13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we were getting a humanitarian ward for our work in Haiti, and we went to the Sarajevo Film Festival, and I brought Kezia, who is one of my students.
• 1:13:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was looking around, and Sarajevo is,
• 1:13:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: majority white.
• 1:13:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we were walking around and she was like, oh, it's all white people.
• 1:13:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where are the black people?
• 1:13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then she went, Annie, is this what you feel when you go to Haiti?
• 1:13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, no, not at all.
• 1:13:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, a white person in a sea of black people, I felt completely safe in Haiti.
• 1:13:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: not the city.
• 1:13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's no comparison, you know, but you know, that's of course it was the film community.
• 1:14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they were very welcoming and embracing of her, but I was like, nah, Casio, I didn't feel what you're feeling now, you know.
• 1:14:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you have any final thoughts on the red skull or the rise of fascism in America in a fifty years later from this story?
• 1:14:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I just think it's like insanely relevant and it's amazing that you're doing this because it is something to study all the things that you already so eloquently said about how the how this story plays out.
• 1:14:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's
• 1:14:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would hope people in our industry and the comic industry please get brave.
• 1:14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know I mean you are you if you work from for Marvel your to a certain degree handcuff by whatever Disney wants but I mean in terms of independent comics I think it is the time to be as brave as possible which I can say as an older person you know it's much harder to be brave
• 1:15:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: when you're younger and you're at the beginning of your career and you're afraid of being trolled, I would say that we have to get forever.
• 1:15:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Doing these historical kind of dives is really fascinating to me.
• 1:15:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Number one, watching how a writers take this concept of fascism with the red skull and change it over time, because the way the stories are told in the forties in the seventies and the nineties are very different as the comic era has changed.
• 1:15:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we're also recording this, I have an X-Men show, right?
• 1:15:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: You were writing in the Korean era where we have a mutant nation and mutant pride.
• 1:15:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And now in the comics, although they're definitely written and still wonderful, the mutants are in these divided camps where they're being attacked and their minorities and they're struggling to survive again.
• 1:15:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: It feels aptly weird to recognize that that's kind of how the world feels for queer and teens people right now.
• 1:15:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Especially people who are disabled and immigrants, it's a rough time.
• 1:15:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we have to tell these stories.
• 1:15:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have to understand it.
• 1:15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I also think that the X-Men were always by definition the other the hated-hounded others.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So even if they had a safe space for a while and that was wonderful, the whole of that whole crack-o-up thing and the whole...
• 1:16:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But they are the hated ones and that's who they are.
• 1:16:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they serve a certain purpose in the Marvel universe to constantly show how people who are not like the majority are treated.
• 1:16:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's okay to go back to the old school.
• 1:16:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Even when we learn to thrive we still have to learn to survive absolutely.
• 1:16:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, my friend, I think you are just the most phenomenal person.
• 1:16:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're one of my heroes.
• 1:16:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm so grateful for you today.
• 1:16:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
• 1:16:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
• 1:16:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to be in New York this summer.
• 1:16:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's get a cocktail.
• 1:16:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would love to see you again.
• 1:16:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 1:16:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have a great day.
• 1:16:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 1:16:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Any new sentie, have fun, moon, and your love.
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Bye.
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Bye.
• 1:16:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.
• 1:16:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.
• 1:16:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.
• 1:16:58
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• 1:17:04
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• 1:17:11
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• 1:17:12
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• 1:17:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you back your next time on Grimmulkin Lane.