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Bonus Patreon Release: Graymalkin! With Marc Guggenheim and Tom O'Connor! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Walk in Lane Patreon channel where we get to analyze some crazy characters that often get overlooked and it's really fun to turn an analytical lens on these particular characters.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: For Pride Month, we're going to be doing four character episodes, one L, one G, one B, and one T, which is always really fun to kind of organize around all of them at tangentially connected to the X-Men.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today's character is directly connected.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get to talk all about the character.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't believe I haven't done this yet.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: My show is Grimalkin Lane.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna be talking about Jonas Grimalkin, who is an incredible character, who has never quite gotten the attention and focus that he deserves.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am thrilled to be joined by my friend Tom O'Connor today as well as the incredible writer and creator of Jonas Grimalkin, Mark Guggenheim.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lovely to see you both.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me have you tell everybody just a little about yourselves if you will.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Share your pronouns with us.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I would love to hear Mark when you jump in.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's just begin with how young X-Men came to be.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, and thank you, Chad.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: My name's Tom O'Connor.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I live in Massachusetts.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am a teacher at a middle school.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It had a grade six and seven social studies.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have been the longest time X-Men fan.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've collected comics since I was in sixth grade and basically haven't stopped.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just so thrilled to be here to talk with you all about all this wonderful material.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so glad you're here.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can't wait to hang out again.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tom and I are both dads.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've been chatting back and forth online.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's meeting for the first time today.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then of course, welcome back to Mark.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, well, it's great to be back.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: I always love talking to you.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love this podcast.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: My name is Mark.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm a pronouns or he him.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I used to be an attorney.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: I now I write things.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: I write all sorts of things.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're lots of things.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: I write a lot of things.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: I write a lot of things.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm a workaholic and I'm very fortunate because I get to work in a variety of different mediums and I get to write all the characters.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: The 10 year old me is like, you know, still loves and it's excited.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've been an X-Men fan ever since uncanny X-Men 139, which was the welcome to the X-Men Kitty Pride.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: I hope you survived the experience.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Issue is you just knocked me on my ass.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like I was in and I've been very fortunate.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've gotten chance to write a fair amount of X-Men over the year.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, one of those series was was young X men, which 2008, there's a lot going on an X men continuity at this time.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then young X men is a series that comes out right after kind of the big hit young Avengers, which had a huge impact on the market and frankly still kind of does.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's not it's no fun to be compared to that book.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: That is it is no fun.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know and also by the way not only was it that book a tough act to follow But really it's it's really comes after new X-Men my time with you So anyway, like that book was a super tough act to follow book never quite got the love the characters Which obviously we're gonna talk about gray mulkin never quite got the love either I actually created a bunch of new mutants for that book and I'm super proud of them.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: They never gained traction sets
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's talk about your initial cast.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: How did young X-Men come to be?
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're teamed up with the Antic Pack at.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a whole odd cast of characters.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is like high-body count, buses, blowing up, decimation, people getting crucified on the front lawn of the Xavier Mansion.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was a lot going on and we were coming out of, you know, the Hope Summers crossover.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: I forget why I think it had to send it with the crossover.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Cyclops was unavailable to us.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Someone, it was probably me, had a very questionable idea to have, you know, basically Donald Pierce pretend to be Cyclops and sort of bring in these mutants under false pretenses.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: That, this was a number of years ago at this point, but I can recall, people didn't really dig that.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: They didn't really go for that.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we were kind of, we self hobbled right from jump, just the basic premise of the book was not a winner for people.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think we were sort of, you know, behind the eight ball, you know, almost from the very start, sadly.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: I look back a lot at the complex that I wrote in the early stage of my career.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I go, oh, what was I thinking?
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, I, I, I'm much better right now.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I, I would make, you know, fewer mistakes.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: I would say, or at least very different ones.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the initial cast of the book will get to Graham Alkin, but you kind of open with fan favorites, anoli and rock slide, and then we get dust or surracadir mixed in, who's amazing.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: The lesser known character wolf cub is kind of rounding out the cast, as well as blindfold, who is a character who's beloved from that size spurrier legion series a few years later.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a fun cast, and you put them all through it, which is really amazing as well.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's the thing, like, I kind of grew up on the Claremont X-Men that to my reading really put them through the ringer.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, if you look at that original Kitty Pride Wolverine mini series, if you can look at the original Wolverine mini series, you look at the Death of Jean Grey, you look at, you know, massacre, you look at days of future past, you know, the X-Men were always getting but through the shredder.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: I like that, I always like that about the X-Men.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: I, you know, sort of was trying to do my own sort of riff on that.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tom, did you read the Academy X kids?
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like was that part of your era?
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did read a little bit that as it was coming out.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember liking a null or notally, I'm sure how to pronounce it very early on.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think even before I understood that he was a gay character, he just had this whole sort of self-doubt about him, something that it was sort of resonating with me at the time that he came out, came out or he was like, debut in the comics, either one, picked up one of those.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was more into like the air that sort of repricited it, but I was into Academy X for a real hot myth there.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Academy X is an era of comics where we had a whole new cast of mutant characters.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: The X men and the new mutants, it's always been a school, but they're never been very midi, right?
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And even in generation X, there was only a certain amount of characters.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this one dumps us like 40 characters at a school.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get like a yearbook that shows all their faces and names, and then some of them get more prominence in this particular title.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you remember how you made the selection for the characters you wanted to use?
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, don't.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think there were some characters that were suggested to me as like, hey, can we get this character in there?
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Can we get that character in there?
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, Rockslide was such a fan favorite coming out of New X-Men.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: I knew I wanted him on it.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: I also really wanted the cast to be as diverse as possible.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, to me, that's always been like, you know, a core conceit of the X-Men franchise going back to Genesis X-Men number one.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that was very, very important to me.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then they were like, like, Wolf Cub, I knew I was killing him off.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I basically, like, just, I picked someone I felt like could read shirts.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: But again, even that was in keeping with, you know, to me like foundational X-Men stories, killing off Thunderbird in in X-Men 96.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sort of, you know, throwing the gauntlet down and saying, hey, these characters are, you know, expendable.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: And no one is safe.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: It feeling very game of thrones before a game of thrones was a TV show, felt very of the X-Men to me.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: The big bad you use in the series initially is Donald Pearce.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: The horrible weapons maker, the cyborg leader of the Revers, the anti-button member of the, well, one of the members of the Hellfire Club.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: What made you choose Pearce?
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: You kind of elevate him to big bad status in this series.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Pierce was suggested to me, you know, Pierce was not my sort of first choice and it wasn't like I didn't want to do Pierce.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like just as we were talking about the book, someone had pitched Pierce.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: The thing about young X-Men and its genesis is that because it was coming out of this X-Men event, we actually like started talking about the book in a series of X-Men related summits.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: So unlike, you know, a traditional series, this came out of like a lot of summit-type conversations.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's sort of how the book developed itself.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think like the way we ended up picking the cast and the way we ended up using pierces the big bad.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: That that happened in a less conventional way.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Or I will say like, I before and since I have never done a Marvel book white in the same manner.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: It seems to me like you were planning on this issue or the series last and for a long time.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: You were seeding some long-term plots.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very Mark Guggenheim.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of big reveals.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of weird reveals like the tattoo artist is the Mia's not ink.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: The guy with the tattoo is there's a bunch of those crazy.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: I maintain that that's I may not be my best idea I've ever had in comics, but it is my favorite.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to talk about it?
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'll tell you.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so basically the idea of Inc was that he's a guy whose mutant power, it seems, is every time he gets a new tattoo, it gives him a new superpower, and it's the superpower laid to the tattoo.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So like, if he has wings on his back, he can fly.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: If he has, you know, a lightning bolt on the side of his head, he's telepathic.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought that alone was like, that's really cool because that's a character who can change as, you know, as the series goes on.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But then it occurred to me, oh, wait a second, I can even put a twist on the twist.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: What if it's not the guy who is the mutant, it's his tattoo artist?
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I still maintain it's one of my best ideas.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: I still believe in it.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's got no love except he did appear.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: He did appear in the Days of Future Past movie.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: And to this day of all the comic book characters, I've ever created.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: He is the only one to make the leap into live action.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell me, I just have the biggest reaction.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got, I just put that together just now.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: One, yes, such a cool idea, like, for a mutant.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, yes.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now the day, if you've asked maybe I'm sort of understanding now in real time.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do either of you have tattoos?
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do not.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's your tattoo?
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you got four pick one.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, so this one's Marvel related.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's based on a cover of Jonathan Hickman's new offenders work.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hello.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a different version of it.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It speaks to my love of comics, but...
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a, what superpower would that tattoo grant you?
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: the cover the where the illuminati is sort of like facing an incursion on the cover of like one of the so if it means that I have all the powers of all six illuminati at the time then so be well that's the you have to pick one and you can only channel one at a time otherwise you're overpowered I know I'm going to pick one but the tattoo artist in your series creates a group of super villains by giving him tattoos they call themselves the y-men and Steve Orlando used those characters in his recent series called the astonishing iceman and
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: where there's an orcas agents hunting down the different members of the white man who all kind of have superpowers that aren't really palatable, but they still kind of ping on the mutant scale as a result.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He gives them all names and identities and sets.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really one of the guys I think his superpowers to like find his keys.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's a helpful super power.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Another character you create for the series who I'd love to talk about another time on more detail is Alyssa Tager or Cypher who is amazing.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cypher made it into the X-Men 97 cartoon if you saw that.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: True.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Actually, that's true.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: You're absolutely right.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: But that's why I say the only character mind to make it to live action.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I was thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that she made it into the animated show.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: That was very, very exciting.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I called up Matt Warshauer, the showrunner of X-Men 97, saying, you know, there are more characters where that came from.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know,
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: feel free.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really love about that character.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was a scene in the Jossweed and John Cassidy astonishing X-Men where, I don't know, I think it was like just a editorial mistake, but like, you know, blindfold is basically talking to someone who's not there.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it plays as if, you know, she's just nuts because blindfold is a little crazy.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I thought, well, what if I read Condin, someone that she was actually talking to?
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's where the
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of people can just create a character who's got a power and he sits in the background, right?
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if you look at ink and cipher and then Graham Alken, you create characters that have deeply resonant connections with other characters and deep back stories.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the fact that again, I'm fond of ink, but cipher and Graham Alken in particular have never really had their day in the sun, which is an ironic turn of phrase for Graham Alken, which we'll talk about a moment.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to open the series.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Young X men started in 2008.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Mark Guggenheim and Yannick Pucket.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: We opened the book with a Donald Pierce saying, and it's blurved out of the course, but I'll use your skulls as a lettering, you little fox.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see that blindfold is having a vision of the future where Pierce is killing one of the kids, which turns out to be wolf called a little while later.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then she visits the ruins of the Xavier mansion.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at the end of issue one, we can see kind of a shadowy creature among the wreckage.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not to least you three when we see our first view of Grimalk in himself.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He looks a little like Calabin from the Morlocks.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got that kind of...
• 12:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's pale.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has his skin is the same color as his eyes.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are no pupils in his eyes.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has no hair.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's very thin.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Very deep.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Giving a little bit.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, absolutely.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Creature creature from under the earth a little bit.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's watching an issue three like some of the mutants facing down various threats And we're gonna learn he's talking to Cypher later who is invisible as if we don't know But we get to see him kind of watching and he says I cannot do this.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not one of them.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not an X man.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Man up.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not the only one I'm not the only one who could help them.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is Cypher.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: He also mentions Ruth and the Cyclops hurt her regretful
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I understand what that is very well.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll kill the Cyclops.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not Cyclops.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Donald Pierce posing as Cyclops.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in issue 4, we get to see Grimoch and own the only green pants.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: He attacks the faults Cyclops, calling him turn coat, brigand, I know you, I know who you are, deceiver, eventually everything always comes to light in the dark.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember that phrase and just to move it?
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he knocks the lights out, which increases his strength exponentially.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: He then rips the man's visor off.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rips off his image inducer and Donald Pierce is exposed and says, you're a dead man freak and Gray Malcolm says I doubt that very much in the dark.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is none stronger than me.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even someone who is half machine, Mr. Pierce.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to slow it out here for just a minute.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you come up with the character Grimalkin and you tie him inherently into the line, genetically, of Charles Xavier himself.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where do the ideas for this character come from?
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: But save the big revelation about him being gay, tell a little later.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: The original of the character came from just simply I'm like, Great Malkin is an awesome name.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Why hasn't anyone done anything with it?
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: It really began that way.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then it got me thinking about, well, where does Great Malkin come from?
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: And you know, we know that the Xavier Mansion sits on Great Malkin Lane, but we don't know really anything about that area.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we don't know anything about Great Malkin.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it occurred to me, you know, like, I'm from Port Washington, Long Island, and Port Washington is named for George Washington, who visited that part of, you know, during the American Revolution, like, visited that part of the country.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, they named the town after him.
• 14:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the idea of, like, oh, people, you know, in the 1700s, you know, having land named after them, that was intriguing to me.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And you know, thinking about like the fact that the Xavier mentioned is a is basically a family property that has been in the Xavier family for generations that made me start to think like, okay, well, maybe the gray mulkins and the Xavier's are connected somehow.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Jonas Gray-Malkin is a character who exists in darkness.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he draws his strength from darkness, this idea of shadow powering him.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk about coming up with his appearance?
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: His design.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm assuming it's the anecdote that came up with the visual.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, Yannick came up with the visual for him.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it was sort of really inspired by the two of my favorite X-Men are Nightcrawler and Caliban, who you already mentioned.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I particularly love Caliban because I remember reading that original issue, I forgot the issue number was, but it was very early on in my X-Men reading experience that it came out with Dave Koch from drawing it.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just like that sort of, you know, mysterious shadowy, you know, exists in the shadows type of character and that got me thinking like, oh, what if this was a character who got stronger the less light was around him.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sort of like the opposite of being solar powered.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's darkness powered, you know, that really sort of intrigued me.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then I started thinking about like, okay, well, like the most almost like the inversion of sunspot.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: in a way.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we have this kind of like palo skin, like a more creature in a sense.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: A little bit.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the whole mulloid thing, you know, I forget exactly like sort of how I described him to Yannick before Yannick went off and did the design.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I wanted like that sort of feeling of he spent a long time underground.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that, of course, made me start to wonder, okay, well, why was he underground?
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tom, do you want to tell us about Gremalkin's next few issues?
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sure thing.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is she five?
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get started and peers is sort of winning Gremalkin over.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or winning the fight, at least.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: No winning a bonus.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, sorry.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, right.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Distracted by this modern technology, it seems very foreign to him.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And magma is so great to see her in this way.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's so worst.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know people, I like, I look forward, it's okay.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't dislike her, but I understand, you know what I mean?
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But she gets it in her cell.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: She fires at him, pierce teleports away.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Graham Alken says, what are your intentions of which?
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she replies, if that's your rather silly way of asking if I'm on your side.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remember what I just did to pierce?
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so she helps stabilize dust, doing this whole, like, which I don't know how the science of this works, but I'm sure it does, but like, she does his glass at this point.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so she, like, turns her back into Sam?
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: which very good visual, nice to see.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that not great science, but good visual.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi everyone, one-time Sandman and Hydraman got mixed together and became a sentient mud creature.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You could do anything you want in common.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's common book, it's common book science.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's common book science and I don't teach science that you're social studies.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is where Gremelkin gets his yellow black X-Men uniform.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I will say one of the, like, not conditions, but one of the things I was most interested in was making sure that we brought back the school uniforms and that the school uniforms be black and yellow.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good passing.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he's all this garment is unusual.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Cannonball gets involved.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is the ship.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He meets the rest of the group.
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's Sunspot.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's Rockside Wolf Cup in ink and he's reincarnated with a cipher The woman who is speaking of then he helps rescue Moonsdarrant blindfold.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Jenna Scream.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to rescue you and they go after Pierce But the whole the wolf cup thing happens.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really sad
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's this kind of random mutant ally who just doesn't the middle of everything.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's all chaos and they're like, who are you, right?
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he uses the name Graham Alkin.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an issue six where we see beast who runs an analysis on Graham Alkin and realizes that he's an ancestor of Charles Xavier despite only being 17, but also looking like he's like 200 years old.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then Tom, do you want to tell us about issue seven?
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would really love to because this moment I really enjoyed.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so he's talking to Emma and he's sort of like, wondering if he's crazy, he's sort of going to say he's like, hey, I'd really doubting himself.
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Emma is assuring him, you are not, you're pretty normal.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she says, hey, like, she asked for permission, which do them always.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I already read his mind.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he says straight up, no, which I just hard to me.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge elephant.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I live for her and everything she does.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: But just to hear someone just sort of be like, you know what?
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't think so.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Especially what we learned about him later, given that he and I share a certain trait.
• 19:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, my God, that is incredible.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just, I was, I really looked for that specific moment for a no weird way.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know how to explain, but it was fantastic.
• 19:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And A is where they're going after the Y-Men, and the Grimmel can tell Zanoli, who again is queer, since I was dot dot dot, exhumed, everything has been so surreal.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: My heart is pounding incessantly.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: He also says, the Grimmel can do not shy away from danger.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to notice, he's parading some of his learned language.
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's calling a girl a witch, he's saying,
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's my family legacy, so listen for that in just a moment.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: In nine, when they realize ink is not a mutant, Grey Molkin reaches out to ink and he says, I know something of ostracization.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know what it's like to feel different, be different.
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'd like to offer you my hand in friendship.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an issue 10 where we learned that Jonas was unburied from under the Xavier Mansion during Messiah complex.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Cypher, Alyssa Tager was the one to find him.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then an issue 11, this is where we go to an alternate future.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know Mark, you had like the surprising announcement that the series was getting canceled far faster than you were ready.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't tell.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you went to that.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you went to that great trope of like, let's talk about what would happen if things go in this direction and dust has gone crazy It has murdered everyone on the planet and there's a little team of mutants left over with Grey Malkin as part of the team Do you want to talk about how you got the announcement that the show the series was ending?
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, actually I was on the phone with Nick Lowe, who is my editor.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to talk to him about our artists, because once Yannick left the book, we had just this rotating, you know, sort of, a hodgepodge of artists, all very, very talented.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have to say like it was, you know, Nick got great artists, like, you know, especially like, you know, Benny Oliver, the start of his career and everything.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: And there were a lot of really, really gorgeous looking issues, but the lack of consistency was troubling me.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: like, you know, respectfully and politely voiced my, you know, my concern plot twists.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's like, well, it's not really going to be an issue because you've got one issue left.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's like, oh, wow, I have to wrap everything up in an issue.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it was a bummer.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was, I definitely, I thought it was an X-Men book, so I thought it would run forever.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Alas, the, you know, like I said, I think, you know, the sales were never what we wanted to be.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know,
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm assuming you had big plans for all of the characters.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm officially a little arcs laid out.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is there any idea that you would have pursued that you'd like to share with our listeners some years later, if you don't want to, that's okay.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, I'll be asked with you.
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not that I don't want to share them.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's that I don't remember them.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, once, once like the something dies, like it's almost like I never had the ideas at all.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I know what that is.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: I did feel like I had gone too far with ink, you know, in the Wyman and everything, and I was like thinking of different ways to sort of get that genie back in the bottle.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't remember any other things I was planning on doing post issue 12.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: The idea is no longer needed to stay in my brain.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Graham Hawken, what we know of him by the end, and we do get to see future Graham Hawken punched some sentinels, and then the team like punches the neo at the end, and you can never punch the neo enough times in my brain.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when the series ends, we know he's a man out of time, which is the Captain America thing, but from an earlier time, we know he's connected to Charles Xavier, although that's never really been in depth explored.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think we've ever really seen a conversation between the two, which is crazy to me.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we also learned he drinks his powers from the darkness, and that he knows what it's like to be ostracized.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of where we end.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then we jump forward a little bit to a series called X-Men Manifest Destiny, where Mark and Yannick Peck had to join back together to give us the grandma story that we should have had the whole time.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: How did this story come to be?
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's a great question, and I honestly don't remember that either.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: As I recall, it was something like, again, there was another X-Men crossover, you know, they were going to do, and Marvel was going to publish sort of this tie-in book,
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think Nick was still editing things and I, you know, I, I said to him, like, I would love to be able to tell this back story that I've come up with, you know, that I always had for Grey Malcolm, if not now went, you know, just sort of saw an opportunity to get that story out there.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then Nick, you know, because Nick is awesome, Nick that went and got Yannick to come back, which I thought was particularly cool.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, so I want to spend the moment talking about this or introducing this story and then I want to hear how you came up with this and then Tom and I I don't know Tom it's up to you as gay men in Pride month We can get all kinds of emotional if we choose because every queer person I know has a story like this even if it's not this story obviously so Xman manifest testing number three is where we get a story titled abomination
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I gotta be clear for just a moment.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I grew up Mormon in a religion that taught me that I was broken for being queer.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I was 15, and I've shared this on the show before, the first person I ever told I was gay was a religious leader who gave me a book that had been written by the Mormon prophet in which there's a chapter on homosexuality that is called a crime against nature.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the chapter goes on to lay out how God would never create a gay person.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's completely curable.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if you are gay, it's because you are an abomination.
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's a literal word that was used to describe me.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that book haunted me for years.
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It kept me deep in the closet.
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So even seeing that title is already like, oh, out.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: In a healing kind of like Iki kind of way.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we see Beast running a test from Jonas.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has extreme super strength and invulnerability in darkness, but nothing in the light.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we hear Jonas give this story.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says, that was lovely.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: This night, the meal, the music.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was all quite intoxicating.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't been out like that in such a long, long time as you can well imagine.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And longer still, since I've had such pleasant company.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Please don't say anything.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know why you're here, why you reached out as you did.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're curious.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your friends who seem quite upstanding are curious.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's understandable.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he opens up to a nolly saying, I grew up in the province of New York on the very lands where your compatriots found me.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: The only son of Charles and Marsha Graham Alkin.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was a good life, a happy one.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was much strife at the time, some tumult concerning taxation and representation and the British parliament, but I wasn't overly concerned with it.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was 16 years old and far, far more concerned with what I had discovered about myself, about what I was and you're thinking he's a mutant, right?
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's where the story is going.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was a great day, and I was in the barn experimenting with my newfound identity.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: My father caught me, he was horrified, speechless for a moment, until a single word came to his lips, a word that encapsulated what I had become, a bombination.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: He came at me, a madman's fury, a father's shame.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was no one else like me in town, and the entire colony, I'd imagined
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: None that he knew at any rate, and it disgusted him.
• 25:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: He cursed me.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: He cursed my mother's womb for bearing me.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was about 16 and my father was a strapping man.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was little I could do before the world turned to black.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I came to Nighted Fallen, and my father had been busy, I don't think he knew at least I chose to believe he didn't know that I was still alive, so consumed he was with his disgust.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: His father yells, damnable monster, you are not my son.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: No such pain could ever spring from my loins.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: The earth take you damnation.
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the father beats the son to seeming death and buries him in the yard.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: His powers later activate, but we don't learn until this last page.
• 26:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was not beat to death for being a mutant.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was beat to death for being gay.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: His father had caught him in the barn with another boy and thus the violence.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Mark, let me turn it over to you and then let's talk about the resonance of this story.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things I've always loved about the X-Men is that it uses mutants as, you know, basically a, you know, an allegory for any marginalized group.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, I think when Stan and Jack, you know, created the X-Men and it was, you know, really about racism, you know, over the years, I think it being about homophobia, you know, became very, very resonant.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: But one of them, let me speak to that very quickly.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: quickly, you can identify with being a diverse group anywhere in the X-Men.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the thing that makes it so unique for queer and trans people is we don't choose to be born in the way we are born in all cultures and all families.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we learned in adolescence what our superpower is and there's a very clear parallel.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Very very clear.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I was really like kind of thinking about how to dramatize that parallel in a way that I hadn't seen before in an X-Men book.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: the idea sort of just came to me of, what if I tell a story?
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do it in such a way that the reader really believes that the characters of mute and then surprise them on the last page and say no, actually all that prejudice, what that this character faced was because he's gay.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I felt like that would really drive home the point that being a mutant is an allegory for being gay or queer.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, it's sort of, it fit with something else that I was sort of kicking around back when I was working at Gray Malcolm's Backstory, which is, I had this, again, this idea of like, okay, Gray Malcolm, 1700s, 1700s because, you know, that's people who had land named after them.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so the idea of Gray Malcolm being someone who came from the 1700s, which by the way, that's why the dial logs down to the way it does everybody takes it.
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it takes it.
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't normally, I don't normally sound that have character sound that arch.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: The idea of him being buried alive and being a man out of time.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: It just was one of those chickened the egg things where I fit with what I was trying to accomplish with portraying him as a mutant, but no surprise this happens to him because he's gay.
• 28:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: It all just felt of a piece, especially when this was written in 2008 where there was no game
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and Obama was present and it was still very publicly against gay marriage at the time.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's not forget, you know, 2008 was like, for again, you know, fantastic compared to the life in the 1700s, if you're gay, you got forbid, because there was that prejudice, like you're talking about Chad, you know, with the Mormon book, like dialed up to 11.
• 29:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the idea of Grey Mulkin being gay really fit with him being from the 1700s.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: oftentimes like with my process like that, that's how I know things are sort of working when I've got like this idea from one corner and a completely different idea from another corner and they all just fit together even though they came from completely disparate places and regard completely disparate things.
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: To give the relevance of why this is so fucking incredible,
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was a lot of hints by Claremont that characters were queer, mystique and destiny implied, right?
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's other characters who appear in other titles implied, even Juggernaut and Black Tom implied.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: But North Star coming out in 1992 was huge, and it's right in the early AIDS crisis.
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first character we get besides North Star is Gray Malkin.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's not until late, I mean, and only predates him.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hang on, it's not until 2008.
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And only it's hinted that he's queer in like 2003 to five era, but it's not fully stated on the page until like 2017 to be like explicitly, he's definitely gay.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Iceman doesn't come out when I know that.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bling in 2012, Shatterstar and Richter kiss on the page in 2009 in X-Factor, but Graham Alken as far as my research goes is the first one confirmed on the page in an X book if you count alpha flight.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Since.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, that's cool.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, that's fucking very, very amazing.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Actually, I'm actually shocked.
• 30:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: It explains why Marvel would never let me call him Gamalken.
• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Good, that joke has been cracked about my show more than once.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's great, I mean, that's amazing.
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: I will tell you, like, zero pushback from Marvel's zero conversations about it.
• 30:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like I said, Nick, Nick knew the backstory of Grey Mulkin, throughout the entire run of Young X-Men.
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: No one ever said this is the first.
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: No one ever said we've never done this before.
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think you're right.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's probably because Chris Claremont did such a good job
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: saying the foundation for these things.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I'll tell you, as someone, as someone like I said, who got into the X-Men because of X-Men 139, yes, it's John Burn and it's Chris Claremont and it's a friggin' amazing issue.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I'd be lying if I said the Kitty Pride not being Jewish didn't have at least something to do with how resonant that book was for me.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just like every black woman who saw Storm on the page and as an American who saw Thunderbird and on and on and on.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: So from a very, very early point, I've always associated X-Men with representation.
• 31:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the idea of having a gay X-Men character was just, it just felt very of the world of this franchise.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tom, are you comfortable sharing a little of your own coming out story or how this story about Gremalkin affected you?
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sure thing.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't I mean being privileged in a way that I grew up in a geographic way like more open area of our country My coming out story was not like really one for the books my parents asked me at a time that I was actually coming out to other folks I have one of my answers as a lesbian.
• 32:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just I don't know.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was it was really not a big deal
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I've always known that.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'd face some bullying in school for what I'd like later learn would be behaviors that sort of exhibited, you know, archetypes of, you know, someone who would young gay, but I'm other than that, like I'm lucky to not have experienced a whole lot in that regard.
• 32:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
• 32:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Gray Mockens coming out, I thought, was magnificent.
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the whole story was like the way it's so you pull in like little threads here and there like when beast is you know sort of doing genetic testing and I mean he says like 200 years old like I was like oh okay that's why he talks the way he does and then and this and the whole comment and the whole story and manifest destiny he's like he's talks about his identity but when he's found out by his father like he doesn't look any different and so I was like okay so his identity was that mean like I don't know could he've been experimented with his
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I didn't quite click and then at the end of that issue when it's shown there was like another boy in that barn.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh my god, okay, this is where we are going.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought it was it was great.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was very well done, very well pasted and a very cool story.
• 33:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: We analyzed this from kind of a modern perspective.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're looking at areas of kind of queer representation.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: When North Star comes out, this is an era of visibility, where we're like gay people exist, and they're not evil and they're not horrible.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the early 2000s, the comics took a very dark, violent turn.
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're seeing hate crimes performed on the page.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, students crucified to crosses on the front lot of the mansion as a real story.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we see a lot of stories both in modern movies at the time and in shows, if you think to glee, for example,
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're seeing queer representation differently, but a lot of the stories are about queer suffering and queer survival.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you think of the years after Matthew Shepherd, I've literally made a documentary about hate crimes.
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's something about people when they feel like if you learn someone is gay, you have the ability to visit violence upon them.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things I mentioned about Grimmothin's character early on, Mark, that I think is subtle, but not explored very much, is how he's kind of parroting what he heard his father say.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's parroting the times when he sees a woman turn on fire and he calls her a witch.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a literal curse to
• 34:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: the books in a certain way.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: When my little sister came out of the closet, I was in my early 20s and I went through a full identity crisis and I was horrible to her.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've written a memoir about my life, the graphic memoirs coming out in a few months, several months from now, early next year, I think is the day.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I get to tell that story.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're dear to your friends now.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just linked this page for you guys.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a palm I wrote about my sister after my own coming out called experiment.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Find an infant little girl, no older than three months.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hold her in your hands.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let her little palm wrap around one finger.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Smell her sweet little baby smell powder and wonder.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Touch her small nose or soft spot around stomach.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Count her 10 little toes.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wait for her to open her soft little blue eyes.
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Look into them.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hold her up and tell her you are vile, disgusting.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: How could you choose this?
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would rather you be dead than gay.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Could you say this to her then?
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: How could you say it to her now?
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now speaking as a man who grew up and was called in a bombination and it kept me in the closet until my early 30s and also speaking as a therapist for the queer community and also speaking as a father of a gay son who came out very easily to meet age 12 and has been loved and accepted ever since.
• 35:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: A parent visiting violence upon their child for any reason but particularly
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now we're shifting into an era of queer survival, but also queer celebration.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're seeing queer people in healthy relationships, we're seeing queer villains, we're seeing queer stories, explored parents.
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are sexually open characters, there are trans characters, but it's accompanied by 2025 America where every queer person I know is living in fear again.
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: fear of their rights being stripped away, fear of the handmade's tale becoming a real thing where gay people are hung on the wall, fear of people being deported and put into camps and tossed into prisons that they don't belong in.
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: People are literally leaving the country, so to be reviewing this character Grimmolkin and what he represents for the X-Men franchise in this particular era feels extra empowering.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It feels like a fuck you to the system that exists right now.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, so that's a lot of information Mark, but I'd love to hear your thoughts because this character I think is more resonant than you realize.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a big deal.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I before you come and I want to go back to that initial line I highlighted.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know who you are deceiver.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Eventually everything always comes to light in the dark.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, first of all, thank you.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really, I so appreciate the fact that the story resonated with you the way I correctly hoped it would resonate with people.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Obviously, look, I, you know, clearly a Democrat.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: I, you know, I, every day, you know, find some new level of depression to count for my reactions to what's happening in this country.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's becoming a country that I don't recognize.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, to that country that it was back in the 1700s.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, at the very least, I think, you know, Donald Trump, you know, very clearly wants to take us back to the 1950s, which as we know was not a good time, unless you were a white man.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And a rich white man and a rich white man.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: And preferably question.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really, you mentioned the handmaid scale, but I don't feel like that's hyperbally.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's, we are talking about people who would love to see a theocracy.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: love to see the wall between tertian state diminished, if not outright destroyed, the subjugation of people of color, of different sexual orientation, of different genders.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you name it like any form of prejudice that they can embrace, they're going to embrace and it's horrible.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like it's happening, you know, I don't want to speak for anyone else, but like,
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: I feel like it's happening and there's nothing we can do to stop it, you know, when you grow up in a democracy you feel as if you have an ability to change things and we're all discovering that we kind of don't have that ability because I think there's a shift though I think I think it's always been shitty for diverse people but something about this last presidency tipped it all on its head decency on now there's no expectation of decency any longer.
• 38:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think because of that, what I'm seeing in a lot of diverse communities is the, it's always been bad, and now it's worse.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So why would I even want it to go back to the level of bad that it was before?
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which leads me to the poetry of your statement of everything comes to light in the shadow.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: We could criticize that if we chose to.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: The idea that I have to stay in the shadow to find my strength for a gay character is an odd thing, right?
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was not the intention.
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, but queer people for years have had to find their strength in their shadows.
• 38:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It had to.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It has to come from an internal place because society has shaped me in this way and told me, I've had to draw upon my own strength in order to be strong.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Graham Alken finds that strength in his shadow.
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a literal thing.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I don't know if you knew this, and I'm going to fast forward a little bit here, and I'll come back and add the middle interim part.
• 39:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Gremalkin is in a relationship in the comics now.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: As of the most recent Marvel Voices Pride by Steve Fox and Rosie Camp.
• 39:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Gremalkin is upgrading a kid from Academy X, whose name is, his name is Spector.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Spector, his power is to manifest a living shadow.
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's this awesome thing where they get to go and to combat together.
• 39:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And oh, like, I like the Spector gets to toss his shadow around Gremalkin, who's like running into action.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get to see him in a relationship literally celebrating the idea of shadow.
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh my God, that makes me so happy.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: That makes me so, so, so happy.
• 39:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: This makes my day.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love this.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I had no idea.
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is terrific.
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's incredible.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's so cute.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're, they're almost just happy.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: That Graham Allkin is finding some happiness.
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, you know, for guys, you know, I threw a lot out of them, obviously.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: The fact that he's like finding love is really just very rewarding.
• 39:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's awesome.
• 39:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every year in Pride Month, my dear friend Seth Martell and I put out a one page story that's not canon.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just celebrating a queer character.
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: This year we're doing Grey Malkin Inspector.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to put a whole page story.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll tag you when we put it up there.
• 40:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: You also got to use Grey Malkin as an agent of shield very briefly.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk about that?
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, upon the way talk about, you can talk about another Marvel book on too soon.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was doing this run on a book called Agents of Shield, which was the race on DETRAVE.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was, it was set in the Marvel Universe who was set in regular continuity, but the cast of characters was largely, you know, their television analogs from the live action show that was on at the time.
• 40:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, like, the two favorite characters, honestly, I've ever created were ink and gray mullkin.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Whenever I'm doing a Marvel book, and I have the opportunity to introduce a character, my first question is, can it be ink or gray mullkin?
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was just an opportunity in this shield book.
• 40:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, oh, wait a second.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, yeah, why couldn't gray mullkin be a agent of shield?
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Graham Hawking is gone for a long time after we learned the truth about him and then he comes back in Agents of Shield number nine where it's that crazy stuff with a civil war too and you list us the future seeing in human.
• 41:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has the vision of Graham Hawking setting up a bomb and Carol Danvers sends all her agents to look for him but it turns out
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's like a test.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: The shield has like set a trap for the mutant hunters and gray mockants auditioning to be an agent.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fairly, I didn't work out.
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you have fond memories time of the Civil War 2 event?
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's complicated.
• 41:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can I be honest?
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: No.
• 41:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was just like, I also say like, I know I said earlier that like I never stopped collecting but like there was a weird like two, three-year period where like I just sort of like just didn't read anything but that was also like Civil War 2 is sort of with the onset of all that.
• 41:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I don't blame it or anything
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it was followed up by X-Men Inhumans.
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yay!
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I loved Carol before, but she became such a cop and like, and I like as that was all the, as a whole event was unfolding.
• 41:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I don't know, oh, oh, oh.
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I just like, I couldn't mess with it.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there was a lot of X-Men fans that were struggling through this era.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was working on the Handbook Steering this era.
• 42:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I was keeping track of all this shit.
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't even imagine.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god.
• 42:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We secretly mocked in a bunch of crowd scenes over the years in some various X-Men conflicts.
• 42:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: He fights the scrolls during secret invasion.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's at a holiday gathering in the Marple Holiday Special.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's in the streets like protest during in San Francisco from Utenwrights during the Utopia era.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see him training against Cloak and Dagger in Cloak and Dagger during that time when they were being pushed as mutants.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: In schism, he goes to the Gingray School.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see him playing in the baseball game in X-Men Gold one, which is another Marguinheim story.
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's also in full X-Men uniform in generation X-Volume 2, which is a super queer book with a lot of queer characters but he's not featured prominently, but he does get to both punch a purifier and slap-foot and choir across the face, which is maybe his best moment.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: He gets to say you are more trouble some than helpful as he slaps and kid omega goes.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know you were a farm boy, but you desperately need to get into the hand-moisturizing game.
• 43:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which is a busy are you are you a quick and choir fan I like I'm not like I'm not not a fan But I understand why he is like problematic to so many and like I super agreed the slap was magnificent It was royal it was wonderful
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Gremalken's also on Cricola when Professor X gets assassinated in the early x-force book, he gets to be drawn in that big crowd scene by Luciano Veccio with all the queer heroes in Marvel Pride.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's also back in Bishop War College, where he's getting combat training, and then we get the very fun Steve Fox story in Marvel Voice's Pride, volume three, number one,
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: and he's dating specter.
• 43:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: The training team they're on is D-cell and Kafka and gimmick.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's super-queer team once again, and they get to fight not an infestation in Central Park.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And those are two villains that Steve later got to use in the Maddie prior series, Dark X-Men.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also see them together in the Hellfire Gala, in an X-Men unlimited infinity comic 105.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then finally, most recently, in that big group shot in rise of the powers of X-Men, all the mutants make up the Phoenix Force.
• 44:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's nice to see them around.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's nice to see that he's on Kuroa.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, there were so many, there are so many mutants.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: of general.
• 44:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, we all wanted to see our faves and our D.E.F.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: or G-list faves show up in Kkoa.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And some of them didn't quite make it, but you know, I'm so that he was there.
• 44:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was nice to see him in background shots in general.
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: As it is, you know, all the other sort of like visually recognizable.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: characters.
• 44:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: We need more than queer violence, which is why I'm so happy to see him in a happy relationship now, which is wonderful.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that, like you pointed out, the whole power in the darkness is such a resonant thing and such like a pain.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I would, I remember getting like the CD single to Whitney Houston's her song, Heartbreak Hotel, because that was a great song, but because the D side was the centerpiece remix of it's not right, but it's okay.
• 45:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, we came gay dance anthem of like the late nineties of like the turn of the millennium really But I when I listened to it, I would it would be quiet like on my speakers because you know It was there was like it was like 1998 and 99 where um, you know, we had sort of stereos in our bedrooms And and and I didn't understand quite then that like you know my family would be so wrecked like so welcoming to me when I did come out But like me feeling that I had to hide it like I like listening to like my gay music in like in darkness
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know, it was such a cool, like, and thank you for drawing a parallel to that.
• 45:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, it's crazy even as as a gay parent of a gay child, my child is fully accepted at home.
• 45:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is no question that he belongs and that he is loved, but even though he's very comfortable in his skin, he still feels the need to closet at school because he's afraid that kids will tease.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's still an element of shadow even when we raise kids in the light, right?
• 45:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's such a huge part of our story.
• 45:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, what are the gremel can stories that we need?
• 46:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mark, thank you for this joyful, wonderful character that we love and celebrate.
• 46:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know he's off to overlook.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd be he deserves his time in the sun metaphorically speaking.
• 46:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But with his shadow boyfriend.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love that he has a shadow boyfriend.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love that the boyfriend has a super power to avoid I guess trademark and copyright disputes.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, that's awesome.
• 46:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, that's I just, right now I'm going to, you know, I'm going to go on Marvel and limit it.
• 46:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to find, you know, find that issue of pride that's fantastic.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I will even, I'll even send you a PDF.
• 46:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thanks.
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to see this character prominently featured.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to see more of his background.
• 46:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to learn more about that boy.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: He made out within the barn and what happened to him.
• 46:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the story we need more than anything is a meeting with Charles fucking Xavier.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so shocking to send it.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like you are my direct relative and I was buried under your mansion.
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, didn't cerebral go off?
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, did you ignore me?
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We did, it was like, it was,
• 47:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: What was it like for him in that fucking cave for 200 years because that's a terrible existence?
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are your questions like on Krakowad, did Saribro acknowledge like Krakowad in the ground?
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh my gosh.
• 47:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an interesting theory to me, like he was so wrapped up on himself in that shadowy cave that he's power's making somehow immune to detection, right?
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think there's some interesting things to explore, but that scene between him and Charles has to be written.
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: between he and Legion, or any of Charles' other kids, right?
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, Zandra in the Shia Empire is related to Jonas Gramelkin, who is like a direct ancestor of hers.
• 47:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or about evil baby, that Charles had been mistaken one time, like if there's no other self, his characters that are directly related to Jonas Gramelkin, and we've never seen it explored.
• 47:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also don't really know much more about the Gramelkin legacy outside of the specific character.
• 47:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So his relationship with the mansion itself, like this is his family's land.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also don't get a lot of him as the man out of time.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what's it like being in this modern society where mutants are everywhere, where queer people are everywhere?
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't get to see a lot of deep thought from him.
• 48:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's a lot to explore.
• 48:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
• 48:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's again, he's a good background character because he's visually recognizable.
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But who really has picked up those plot threads?
• 48:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm glad to see him and the pride that she used, but like,
• 48:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's made some key choices.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's been involved in a lot of key conflicts even though he's never the focal point He tried to be a shield agent.
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has been in public fights with all sorts of things and now he chose to enter that war college, right?
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like there's a choice he's making to live in the light and embrace the shadow along the way.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Any other stories come to mind as far as like this way as you'd like to see with this character My gosh, I mean, I just I want any gay character to just like live their life and just have us have us and the general public just see it Just see it happen see it go well or not just how any normal.
• 48:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is it my go?
• 48:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think if yeah, that'd be great to see is he still with specter or still or Who even knows man like her clothes gone now like where is he what's he doing?
• 49:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope he's okay, you know?
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, go see the one page story I'm putting out there.
• 49:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not canon, but we do talk about this
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to write this character.
• 49:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think he's fascinating.
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's also a character that would make me research.
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'd have to figure out his voice from his unique perspective.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, another story that would be fascinating is watching him, you know, his dad buried him alive.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a time travel story where he gets to go back and confront his dad while he's still in the ground, knowing he can't dig himself up because it would like a change history, right?
• 49:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have ideas about that in my own journey.
• 49:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, what if I'd come out earlier?
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: What if I could talk to my younger self?
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's some interesting potential with this guy.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if he goes back in time looking the way he does and he's like, hey, this is me now and is that being like, what an earth are you talking about?
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh my gosh, because he looks like, I don't know, like, I don't know how like Lord of the Rings savvy you are, but like, he's like very like sort of like late 70s early is like cartoon, like rock and bass version of Golem meets the, yeah, he, he looks sweet.
• 50:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He looks like a baby, like this is a baby.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I also got, I shouldn't share ideas because I don't know, I want to write these stories, but he goes back in time and fucking discovers that his dad is secretly gay.
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: He catches his dad with it, with another guy, right?
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a, and then there's like a forgiveness story in there.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's some really powerful things.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, do you want to share some of your own journey with the X-Men over the years?
• 50:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like what have they meant to you?
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who are your care?
• 50:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I went into a whole saga or anything, but I started with the cartoon from early 90s.
• 50:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was certainly my gateway.
• 50:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like being so into it, I think, you know, my father noticed that I was sort of like thing about talking a lot watching like these characters so very much.
• 50:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He sort of like one day he got home from work and like sort of hand be like some assortment of comics he got from who knows where.
• 50:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's like there's two issues of incanny.
• 50:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember if it was like 291 or storms like sort of like back in the in the sewers of the more locks or there's a 298 or like the accolades attack like a bunch of children are bus.
• 50:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, both in that era.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so like either one.
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, of course, they're like, you know, seven inches apart.
• 51:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like that era sort of when I was like, oh, here we go.
• 51:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there were some other Marvel issues in there that he got me into, which got me into like the mystic and like the cosmic set of things.
• 51:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like, X-Men was always, I first let him to storm.
• 51:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like some of the more blisters like Banshee, I learned to like learn to love Emma as like the years went by.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've just, I've been in this like for so long.
• 51:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just feel like, I don't know.
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been on the uncanny X-Men.net, like boards forever.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: My go to that site, like all the time.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's such a huge part of my life.
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even like, can't even tell you like, where I began.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because right now where it is, it's almost everything, you know?
• 51:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I fully understand it's been a part of my life in a very similar way.
• 51:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was a huge part of my surviving my shitty adolescence.
• 51:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was the place that I escaped to, you know?
• 51:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tom, where can people find you online?
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything you want to plug for June 2025?
• 51:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: My Instagram is private.
• 51:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do have, I have my own kids too.
• 51:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I do keep a sort of pretty private social life.
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if I can plug anything, it is the Constitution.
• 52:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was democracy.
• 52:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: kindness, which was written in a compromise between slave owners and non-slave owners.
• 52:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So maybe it's not even that great, but also good Lord, have we needed to reinterpret it?
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good God, though.
• 52:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if, yeah, if I'd apply anything, it'd be those.
• 52:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exhausted.
• 52:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for this.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't ever get to talk on this level about Southern fandom that I love so deeply.
• 52:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this has been such a wonderful experience.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it again sometime.
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really a beautiful thing to be part of this community.
• 52:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been kind of life-changing for me if I'm honest in the last three years.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Chad Anderson.
• 52:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I keep my own social media private because I got kiddos.
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can follow the show Grimalkin under squirrely and on Instagram.
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Pride Month, as I mentioned, we are celebrating queer characters on the Patreon channel.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's Grimalkin.
• 52:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Over on the main show, you can please watch for in the next episode after this.
• 52:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: A review of Marvel team up number 38, which is Beast and Spider-Man vs. vs. Griffin.
• 52:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I guess on that episode our Tom Brevort and Mark.
• 53:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at the end of the month, please watch for the trial of Heather Douglas Moon Dragon, one of my all-time favorite queer characters.
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what way to listen to this one.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so fun.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't written.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited about it.
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're keen people find you online, and is there anything you want to plug for June 5th?
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am returning to the scene of the crime.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: At the end of May, I am launching with Cari Andrews, a new series, new ongoing Spider-Manimal Marine.
• 53:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I get to return to two characters who I wrote at the very beginning of my college, Comple Career, hopefully taking advantage of all the things I've learned in the past 20 years of writing comics.
• 53:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm really excited by the book.
• 53:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Carry is, you know, he's a ridiculous talent and the book just has energy and paythose and it's a non-stop thrill ride that I'm really excited to get out into the world.
• 53:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: In terms of where people can find me, publish a semi-weekly newsletter.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Late late's been more emphasis on semi than weekly with apologies called legal dispatch.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that can be found on sub-sex.
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if you guys
• 53:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: go to morkooganheim.subsect.com.
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can sign on up.
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'll talk about, you know, writing and behind the scene stuff and work updates and, you know, I occasionally get political camp can quite, you know, censor myself entirely.
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm also on Blue Sky, you know, my name and Instagram.
• 54:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Congratulations on your phenomenal success in and all of the ongoing work.
• 54:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm super excited for the new book and just happy to know you my friend.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you Thank you today and let's talk about ink sometime.
• 54:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 54:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I really appreciate answers They're like honestly like this.
• 54:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is really really really really miss a lot to me So thank you.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
• 54:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you Mark.
• 54:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you everybody for listening.
• 54:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much to Tom and to Mark for joining me today What a tremendous honor.
• 54:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna be buzzing with this all night We will see you all back here next time on the gray malkin main patreon show
• 54:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism, as a special guest tonight talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: For today's historical anecdote, I'm going to take you to a weird place.
• 54:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to talk about the weirdest habits of Adolf Hitler, a man who made people salute his name with a raised arm while he was committing genocide.
• 55:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's take that into consideration at advance, but he was in fact just a man and kind of a weird narcissistic crazy guy at the same time.
• 55:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler proclaimed himself to be a strict vegetarian, and on top of that he was also a hyper-contractor.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: He
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: frequently lectured about the evils of eating meat.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: He considered it barbaric.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He would talk about how people would eventually evolve to a point, ask needing to eat or consume animals.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: When he was stressed, he would wash his hands repeatedly over and over,
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: and was known to pace for hours at a time, ranting to himself or his closest states, particularly during times of extreme political stress.
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: A freight of being poisoned, and well, that's fair, because a lot of people tried to kill him, he employed a personal food tastester, so every meal had to be made twice, once for the tastester, and once for him, and all under watch.
• 55:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: While he was secretly sneaking liver stuffed pastries because he considered those quote, not real meat.
• 55:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: He would eat them away from on-looking eyes.
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are also many accounts of him suffering severe digestive problems and chronic gas.
• 56:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Obsessed with fighting his ongoing flatulence and bloating concerns,
• 56:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: He would sometimes take mixtures of strict 9 and atropine and he had one of those crazy doctors like the one that Michael Jackson would keep around assuming Donald Trump keeps around.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: This guy whose name was Dr. Theodore Morrell.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the 1930s he was a celebrity doctor in Germany and he would kind of follow Hitler around and was very odd and eccentric and no one around Hitler really liked this guy but he became part of Hitler's inner circle.
• 56:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this guy, Moral, would prescribe odd experimental treatments like amphetamines and injections of bullseemin.
• 56:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you heard me correctly.
• 56:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are documented cases.
• 56:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Moral also kind of kept hitler in a constant state of drughase with mixes of the modern derivative would be called methamphetamine, oxycodone, sedatives, atropine and again bullseemin.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: which is giving very Elon Musk in a very odd way.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: That like very hyper, a big energy when he's giving those speeches.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So by 1944 Hitler's erratic speech behavior grew weird or he started getting obese and he begins significantly declining between the end of the war.
• 57:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go back and watch Charlie Chaplin in the great dictator film and the parody is not far from the reality.
• 57:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler was also known for going to bed at around 4pm and then sleeping until after noon.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He required his military commanders to wait until he was awake in order to make any decisions which really caused some problems during the war, but he also didn't love strategizing
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: While the world was at war, instead he wanted to keep himself calm and he would watch movies.
• 57:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: His very favorite, by the way, is known to be Disney's Snow White in the Seven Dwarves.
• 57:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: This man never had children, but he would watch three, four, five movies a night before going to bed and then sleep well into the afternoon.
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Obsessed with certain numbers and astrological predictions from occult advisors, it's widely believed as well that Hitler would often suggest military strategies that favored his astrological charts.
• 57:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: and believed himself some sort of vaginary and figure of destiny.
• 58:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: But later, he outlawed anyone from consulting psychics or mystics as a matter of national policy.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler's staff was not allowed to sit unless he invited them to sit.
• 58:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he had punitive actions for anyone in his presence who did not laugh at his jokes.
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can look this up, by the way.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 1940, this is on YouTube.
• 58:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: When Hitler got word about the successful invasion of France, he did a little victory jig,
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: and he tried to have all footage of it erased, but it was passed to the Allied forces too soon.
• 58:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler also had a tremor in his hands that increased throughout the war, likely to be either result of methane, fedemine use, but some people think it may have been Parkinson's as well.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler also had a beloved German shepherd that was misbehaving consistently.
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: The dog's name was Blondie, which is the perfect name for the Oregon guy, dog, right?
• 58:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, and we're gonna finish our anecdote here, there was a song trending in the troops around the world during the war That's a stark reminder that men and power are only human and this has been shown in multiple films and television shows This is historically accurate So I'm gonna sing for you this morning Gregory.
• 59:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope you're ready Hitler has only got one ball Goring has to but very small himler his rather similar, but poor old girls has no balls at all
• 59:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Rommel has four or five, I guess.
• 59:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: No one's quite sure about rude, off-hess, shmelling is always yelling, but poor-o-gurbles has no balls at all.
• 59:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's one more verse Hitler, has only got one ball, the other, is in the Albert Hall, his mother, the dirty bugger, chopped it off.
• 59:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: When Hitler was small, she threw it into the apple tree, the wind blew it into the deep blue sea, where the fishes got out their dishes, and ate scallops and ballics for tea.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Real, real wartime song, everybody.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I hope you enjoyed that.
• 59:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Addictote, I have a better singing voice when it's not early on the morning.
• 59:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to jump over to the world of Nick Fury, agent of shield numbers 45, and then we're going to jump into the world of silver-sable number 15 and Captain America 419420.
• 1:00:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Gregory Wright is here with me today, who's the writer on the first two stories here.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Either to impress the Red Skull for his faith in her, the Viper tried stealing some decommissioned warheads in Russia, but Nick Fury stopped her because Vaughn struck her turn against her, prioritizing his own agenda with the Red Skull.
• 1:00:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, at the Shaleib base, the Red School plays the shirtless Baron von Rufgang von Strucker on his favorite sex toy, the Wheel of Sorrow, which is canon from Mark Runewald's Captain America.
• 1:00:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Scream out of Rufgang, there is no shame, my friend.
• 1:00:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Wheel of Sorrow was meant to shatter one's own pain tolerance.
• 1:00:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Von Strucker says a charming device, Yohan, you'll threshold of pain or eyebrows my own, says the red skull, the red skull, confeding, conceiting inferiority, who would have thought it.
• 1:00:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But soon after Strucker gathers his hyperforces, and they stand and rose, chanting hail, hydra, and a very Nazi-like way.
• 1:00:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Over in the world of silver-sable, the wild pack is going after the Viper on a contract, but she has employed look like pit-vipers who keep getting in the way.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Captain America gets involved,
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: learned the red skull is behind it all.
• 1:00:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: He knows his old foes still alive.
• 1:00:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we jumped to cap 419.
• 1:01:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: The red skull is very disappointed in Viper.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had such high hopes for your Viper.
• 1:01:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here was a person I thought whose evil was in striking distance of my own.
• 1:01:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here was a woman who understood the value of terror of grand-deduct designs of cruelty for its own wretched sick.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But my hopes have opened, dashed, while you are intelligent, ruthless, and resourceful.
• 1:01:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: All attributes of the ideal ally, you have one fatal flaw, a flaw that makes it impossible for us to work in concert.
• 1:01:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I believe in fomenting chaos in order to bring about a new order while you believe in fomenting chaos for the sake of chaos.
• 1:01:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it turns out he's the one who hired Silver's able to take her down, by the way.
• 1:01:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, there are some truly horrific images in this issue of his bloodshot eyes and red teeth and like he looks like he's deep.
• 1:01:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Once myper has been captured, Red Skull has a new iron monger, the only one appearance for this character, break her bones until she reveals her secret plot, which is to use American television to make people blind.
• 1:01:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Captain America stops here.
• 1:01:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: We jump to 420, final one here is called Skull Sessions, Viper turns on the Red Skull, leading Captain America, and the forces of shield to storm his secret Shalei in the Rocky Mountains.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: school has left behind armed military and a dummy dressed as him with a note that says always one step ahead of you and a bomb detonates the base.
• 1:02:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Later he rants.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So once again, I am obliged to abandon what is my basis of operations.
• 1:02:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Perhaps a retaliatory attack on the Avengers headquarters, so the shield hell carrier might be an order.
• 1:02:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, that would simply intensify their interest in me as of this moment, they know I am alive, but I cannot be linked with any known subversive activity.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he decides to stay in hiding with his gay employee, machine Smith.
• 1:02:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, he sent an ex-others after an unafiliated blazing skull.
• 1:02:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just sum it up a lot of shit, but let me welcome one of my very favorite people, the incredible Gregory right to the show.
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Gregory, I just threw a lot at you in the morning.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you a red skull fan, my friend?
• 1:02:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure you want to say fan, reds call isn't he's enjoyable to to write, although your your vocalization of both him and struck are I don't think I'll ever be able to read those characters again without hearing your voice.
• 1:03:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's homes and friends and they have to pump it.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know it's just but you know it's it's interesting when you have to write the two characters because there there's a there's so similar you know in such so many ways
• 1:03:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Redskill gives me very like party loyalist and like cruel where Strucker gives me very like military commander.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It almost feels like the the the conflicts between the state and the and the military forces to me when these two interact.
• 1:03:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it depends on which writer has chosen to write them incorrectly, I guess, which the entire this whole Viper storyline actually it began
• 1:03:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they utilized the Viper incorrectly.
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Mark Greenwald, you know, who was always in charge of all of the real continuity didn't like it.
• 1:03:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he called me up and he said, we have to fix it because Chuck Dixon had basically written her as a self-serving any sort of villain with her own, you know, cadre of bad guys for profit and stuff.
• 1:04:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: when, you know, she's an analyst.
• 1:04:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we came up with this whole story with the pit viper's and things to correct that very story in which I had the real viper actually kill viper number 12, pit viper 12 who was the one in that story and explained what all these these viper.
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, the whole storyline really came about literally because Mark Ronald didn't like that.
• 1:04:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: That she was written improperly.
• 1:04:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you worked from all.
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So editors are given certain characters.
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're supposed to make sure that those characters are utilized correctly.
• 1:04:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes, their characters that are not main characters, like Captain America, you're not usually going to see somebody use Captain America improperly.
• 1:04:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the vapor, like the vapor and the red skull
• 1:05:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were frequently just used as, you know, like, you know, Star Trek red shirts just some bad guy of the moment and they wouldn't be written correctly and the editors wouldn't stop it.
• 1:05:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Mark was always very keen on checking all this stuff.
• 1:05:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So frequently, Mark and I would, we'd write stories to correct content.
• 1:05:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know I do a lot of character analysis at the station my career and when a character is acting wildly out of character you always have to find a reason but even on the handbooks we had to do that as well.
• 1:05:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, you know we wrote a weird one for X-Men fans because he's like a mega mole you know he's like the fawning toti and one issue and then he's like planning murders in the next one.
• 1:05:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right
• 1:05:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's fun, you know, but it was a lot of fun to create all this stuff, and it was a lot of fun to go back and get to work with Mark, because we crossed over with Silver's Abel and Cap.
• 1:05:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he was really happy because he got to write Battlestar again, because Mark and Kear and Dwyer created the Battlestar character and Mark had given me Battlestar for Silver's Abel.
• 1:06:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he was really happy to get to write Battlestar again.
• 1:06:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, Viper started out as Madam Hydra, you know, Jim Stranko created her.
• 1:06:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then she broke her ties with the Hydra and then became the head of the Serpent Society.
• 1:06:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: She actually was the second Viper.
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've done the trial of Madam Hydra on my show for those that would like to listen.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have a lot of thoughts on this character from early 2024.
• 1:06:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, January 2024 is when we did that one.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: What was it like for you to jump back into this these old stories from this perspective now like it's some time as fast You know it's things are so out of whack today, you know, so if I was writing these sort of stories They would be very harder they would be a lot harder to write because there's just stuff that we have things that are going on today You just you can't grasp why I mean it's almost like people, you know You used this have to you know when we writeville and you have to come up with some kind of point
• 1:06:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: why they're doing it, otherwise the story doesn't work.
• 1:06:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And today's villains, they don't seem to have a point sometimes.
• 1:07:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: They, it's just, I want X and that's it.
• 1:07:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you have people backing them for reasons.
• 1:07:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just can't, it just doesn't make any sense.
• 1:07:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: something like the Viper, you know, which side would be embracing the Viper?
• 1:07:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who would be embracing Baron Bonstrock or who would be embracing the red skull?
• 1:07:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: They probably would be the skull and the, and Bonstrock would probably be at odds.
• 1:07:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they'd probably wind up destroying each other and everybody else could just sit and watch them.
• 1:07:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because this is what we're, we're watching this happen in real time.
• 1:07:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, people who are supposedly on the same side are attacking each other.
• 1:07:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll come back to the silly at a moment, but you know, I've spent a lot of time We're recording this shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah and I work as a crisis responder So I've spent the last several days and of course I won't betray any confidentiality here because that would Jeopardy's my legal professional license, right?
• 1:07:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I've been sitting down with a lot of kids who like really really lean hard into a Christian.
• 1:07:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a good person.
• 1:07:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: The woke
• 1:07:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: people are destroying the world, like immigrants are a threat, transgender people are a threat.
• 1:08:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why do people keep picking on me?
• 1:08:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to belong.
• 1:08:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things I have to thank compassion for people as I'm working them through trauma because you know seeing this man shot was a clear trauma for people.
• 1:08:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I have a very clear line in my brain between there's a difference between someone who doesn't know better and someone who refuses to know better.
• 1:08:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's also a farther line where someone who definitely doesn't know better, but's making the choice anyway.
• 1:08:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, I think
• 1:08:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see stories often where like a Marvel writer will try to take like, oh, let's look at the sympathetic view of why this person joined Hydra or Orcas, and like like we can treat it with some a certain amount of love.
• 1:08:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, to a certain degree, right?
• 1:08:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: The character becomes irredeemable at a certain point when they are willing to stand for these kind of fascist ideologies.
• 1:08:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Captain America comics over the years, it's a crazy time to be an American, it's a crazy time to be a comics fan itself.
• 1:08:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we do want to lean into the silly of all of this, right?
• 1:08:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: We, uh, I went to the silly with Hitler and in my opening stands because we open on you, uh, you know, strucker and red skull are both so gay all the time, even though they would never say it.
• 1:09:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I want you to come up to my house.
• 1:09:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want you to take all of your clothes off to your onto
• 1:09:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of scenes like this with this man, we've talked about him wrestling with his in his underwear with so many people to tell me about your decision to open on the wheel of sorrow.
• 1:09:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, at the time, none of that had occurred to me, you know, and now the humor of it just cause man, if only I had thought to do that, it, you know, it was really tough, it was just stuff to show their, you know, I'm more manly than you kind of,
• 1:09:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bravado, non-sense and you know you don't have any control over I don't know gravey artist draws I'd be a little gay, I'm just saying It could be you know, but you know you write something and it you you visualize it in your head one way and then an artist draws it and that can you Know really put it this other direction.
• 1:10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's even in in Nick Fury versus shield There's the there's the shot of Nick Fury kind of on this Salvador Dalai like cross You know
• 1:10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: with his arms and hands up.
• 1:10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's wearing the most bizarre like weird bathing suit underwear thing that's, you know, it's, it's like, uh, you know, it's like something that Borat would wore, you know, and, you know, when that came in, I'm thinking, I remember, like,
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why is going on here, you know?
• 1:10:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've had a lot of conversations with writers that I've befriended.
• 1:10:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Simon Furman and I did one about his end of Alpha Flight.
• 1:10:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like Simon, you have a whole issue.
• 1:10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Excuse me, make it men fighting in the woods.
• 1:10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like there's little whispers of smoke covering their genitals.
• 1:10:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was like, I've never thought about it that way.
• 1:10:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, but it is, it's funny because, you know, there was, you know, there's an issue of silver stable where the character Chen who is a lesbian assassin, her original like her group of assassin women were part of it and she had had a romantic liaison with the leader.
• 1:11:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And somehow the way it got drawn and the way it came out in the comic, I had people saying, oh, it's, you know, I created this secret lesbian assassin society and I was like, I did, you know, you know, so they, you know, when I go back and I look at it, it does sort of feel like that's what it was, but that wasn't what I wrote, what I wrote was, you know, these two were the only lesbians and it wasn't really a big part of the story.
• 1:11:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Someone asked me on social media yesterday, like Chad, why do you have to make all of these stories gay?
• 1:11:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like the opening line of my show was queer friends and allies, and I think I'm allowed.
• 1:11:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's interesting because the, the, the alpha-flight plant panel that I attended at Daphne Khan, you know, was really fascinating.
• 1:11:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, Darrell really did an amazing job, you know, doing all the research on and on his, his book and stuff.
• 1:11:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I went back and actually re-read a whole bunch of that stuff because I didn't realize how much stuff was intentionally there.
• 1:12:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, burn, burn put a lot of stuff in there that was, you know, we used to have to kind of hide stuff in the background a little bit, but you know, it's there.
• 1:12:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then other people picked up on it and some of it's not intentional and some of it's intentional, but it's.
• 1:12:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, when somebody actually goes through and looks at it, it's fascinating to see somebody else's, you know, I like to say an educated take.
• 1:12:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:12:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and I think it's perspective too, right?
• 1:12:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the week and get lost in the weeds here, very easily.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: But for gay people, you know, male relationships or something we have to analyze and for women.
• 1:12:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're a straight rider, you're just right in guys, right?
• 1:12:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But like, if you're queer, you're looking for that stuff.
• 1:12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: But for trans people, trans people's ownership over their bodies
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of ways for storytellers who didn't really intend it, like, oh, let's put this character through this body transformation issue.
• 1:12:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's say a little or let's change them into a woman or, but for trans people, we're really leaning into that hard.
• 1:12:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mistique becomes a trans icon for that reason.
• 1:12:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it that never occurred to me until somebody brought it up and I thought there's a whole lot of interesting part of that character that I don't think had been explored because, you know, people that created are they didn't consider what is it like for her to Yeah, I've been taught, I haven't been taught to Tom Breeboard about this.
• 1:13:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, shift through all this stuff, you know, it's just stuff.
• 1:13:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because we weren't allowed to do that kind of thing for one thing.
• 1:13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we just didn't consider stuff.
• 1:13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I mean, I had to sneak stuff in and do it, and then people was like, wait a minute, I didn't know all this character was this, and I'm like, yeah, but it's not, why didn't you say it?
• 1:13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I say, because it wasn't important to the store.
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the, and the object of male fantasy for so many years, most of our classic books that we love from Rambo stretching all the way back to like John Carter at Mars.
• 1:13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: it's you drop the white man in the foreign society.
• 1:13:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: The women want to sleep with him and of the other men, but also he gets to run around and underwear in the woods with his other guy buddies.
• 1:13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is the place where he can show emotion.
• 1:13:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like it's it's a truly wild concept when you use the queer lens.
• 1:13:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, we opened the show today by talking about the crazy Adolf Hitler stuff, right?
• 1:14:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I've been doing a ton of research, lining all this up, like reading a full, like article about his gas and his weird doctor that pumped him full of meth and like, I'm like, what the hell?
• 1:14:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because it's just, I feel like a vegetarian heart attack over again.
• 1:14:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: The vegetarian thing that I was like, wait, what, you know, the rest of it I go, yeah, that seems about right, but I'm like vegetarian, you know, like loudly vegetarian, like, you know, it's like, I had never, I had never read, read, you know, read that.
• 1:14:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: See, and then after you go from that, you go to, you know, your, your dramatic reading of, of, you know, that issue, you know, and just like, it was so much entertainment entertainment from you.
• 1:14:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so odd for me to, I don't know, draw the comparison between Hitler and Trump, which I mean, I'm not being shy about that any longer, but his obsession with like fast food and the way that it's prepared and the way he prioritizes certain things and the way everyone has to laugh at his jokes and like the weird way he does is make up and like it's this stuff, the cast of characters are such
• 1:15:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: comic book caricatures of real people.
• 1:15:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I keep thinking of Rudy Giuliani's like hair dye melting down his hair.
• 1:15:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's representing the government.
• 1:15:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's nonsense.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you look at stuff like the great dictator or Hitler has only got one ball or the recent South Park episode featuring Donald Trump in very graphic ways.
• 1:15:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a reminder that people are human and like they seem to be so powerful, but they're nonsense at the end of the day.
• 1:15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, it's crazy to be.
• 1:15:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, you can't write this stuff.
• 1:15:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think, man, I thought I was writing some outlanders stuff when I was, you know, working at Marvel.
• 1:15:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think, now, I think, wow, you know, I couldn't, nobody would believe half the stuff that is just happening every day.
• 1:15:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: that's going, you know, in there.
• 1:15:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's like, you know, when I, again, you know, going back to Charlie Kirk, you know, it's a horrible, horrible tragedy for this.
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, when you find out that somebody that thought he wasn't going far enough, just, I can't even, you know, it's one of those things, I can't wrap my head around that somebody would, you know, actually, you know, assassinate this man, you know, for talking.
• 1:16:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, that it would be somebody that it's because you're not going far enough.
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you can't, you could, I wrong.
• 1:16:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You just can't write this sort of thing.
• 1:16:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't, I can't really grasp it, you know.
• 1:16:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really, really well, but we do write these things all of the time.
• 1:16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is a place I keep landing.
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, I'm going to be back there today.
• 1:16:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: This won't come out for several weeks, but I'm recording this live in the middle of the Charlie Kirk craziness.
• 1:16:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm working with these like very conservative kind of fundamentalist Mormons as I am doing some of this trauma work.
• 1:16:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And something I just want to say to every one of them, if we're taking conservative estimates of the trans community across the, across the world population, conservative estimates say that 0.5% of the overall population is trans, but closer probably to one to two percent.
• 1:16:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: and then it increases from there if we start using non-binary as part of the definition.
• 1:16:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: But just trans people, if we say one percent, if we take a generous estimate of the amount of Mormons on the Earth, Mormons only make up 0.001 percent of the Earth.
• 1:17:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Really?
• 1:17:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, truly.
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's crazy to me when you consider the numbers in that way like here's this organization like rallying against the the the the weakest among us quote unquote when really they're the strongest they're the most persecuted and they're the Christians are talking about being persecuted for the beliefs another thing that really dawned on me over the last few days and I've noticed for a while, but it was subtle I keep hearing people describe themselves not as Trump supporters, but as Trump believers it's almost as though he's been elevated to this kind of messianic status in a way that Hitler expected as well.
• 1:17:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a truly odd, like, again, we can't write this shit, right?
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: The wheel is in the front row and struck your strap down shirtless, like you can't write that stuff.
• 1:17:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did write that stuff, that's the last day, we do write it.
• 1:17:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not, I don't remember if I knew you should be short on this one, or not, I don't know.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll never be able to look at that scene again, again.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You did an excellent job, by the way.
• 1:18:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:18:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, you know, I now I kind of want to go back and rewrite it, you know, as, as if they, you know, as if they actually actually are against you, what would it wouldn't be right though, because if I get it, I wouldn't get it right.
• 1:18:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is, for me, this is Red Skull saying, Baron Strucker, my dick is bigger than yours, unless you prove otherwise.
• 1:18:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's exactly what I want.
• 1:18:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mostly Red Skull's true love is Captain America, like he is obsessed with this myth.
• 1:18:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: He, he, he, he, he, he, he.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: nothing more than to just be with him forever.
• 1:18:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's really ridiculous when you read it that way, but also these are Nazis.
• 1:18:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So unpleasant when you- There is that, you know.
• 1:18:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really nice to be there.
• 1:18:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people are the crazy with the humor dome.
• 1:18:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it is a funny thing because a lot of the villains are nothing without the hero, you know.
• 1:18:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, that's a weird psychological thing that I don't think a lot of writers really played with as much because it doesn't make sense.
• 1:18:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, when you're writing a story, it's like, no, no, the villain has to want something other than just the attention of the hero.
• 1:19:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Had you ever heard the Hitler's only got one ball song before?
• 1:19:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I heard it.
• 1:19:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I didn't know that it was something that, you know, had actually been circulating, you know, was the only one.
• 1:19:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they sing it.
• 1:19:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: They sing it in the movie, Bridge Over the River, a quiet.
• 1:19:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that what it's called?
• 1:19:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that's where I heard it.
• 1:19:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's from there.
• 1:19:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But they've used it in other television shows.
• 1:19:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you know, I heard it in the man in the high castle, like a series that was on.
• 1:19:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, when I was a kid, you know, every school seemed to take that song and throw weird insulting lyrics towards another school or something.
• 1:19:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't.
• 1:19:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, it's not the other day too.
• 1:19:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm like, that song should have been in there, you know.
• 1:19:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I grew up, it was a comment.
• 1:19:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes your mouth feel clean.
• 1:19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it takes the gasoline comment.
• 1:19:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes you vomit.
• 1:19:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So by some comment and vomit.
• 1:19:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, on school, must be saying that a lot.
• 1:19:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: How did that become like a national song?
• 1:19:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like because you know, we didn't have the internet But everybody knows that song where did we hear it?
• 1:20:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's it's a famous song It's a it's a famous like classical song, but the comment thing.
• 1:20:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: What how did the comment video?
• 1:20:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know I mean
• 1:20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was in Western Pennsylvania.
• 1:20:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You were in Salt Lake City.
• 1:20:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: How the hell did we, and you know, and I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm a good bit older than you.
• 1:20:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, wow, that song is, you know, it's, it's more popular than, you know, uh, Jingle Bell.
• 1:20:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, when you hear song is the Colonel Boogie March.
• 1:20:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:20:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It must have been on some cartoon or something, you know, because, you know, it was a kid.
• 1:20:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course you didn't see a version of it about Lisa in the early Simpsons.
• 1:20:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is still a, I mean, this was, there was no Simpsons when I was a kid.
• 1:20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, sure.
• 1:20:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, because do you remember fanzines, you know, back before the internet, you know, and I don't even know how I found these fanzines, because I had like a Star Wars one, and I had, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
• 1:20:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was just like a little sci-fi one that, you know, somebody that was just a fan was putting it together and, you know, and it was always fun and I was like, where are you getting all this information?
• 1:21:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But even that, I don't remember, you know, there was no singing, we didn't get, you know, like the little record on the back of the cereal box that had that.
• 1:21:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, Greg is always a joy to see you.
• 1:21:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope to see you in New York in a couple of weeks when I'm there.
• 1:21:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll touch bases.
• 1:21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to get a cocktail or hang out.
• 1:21:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's let's make it happen.
• 1:21:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or both.
• 1:21:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Any or both.
• 1:21:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:21:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any final thoughts on today's story or anecdotes?
• 1:21:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right.
• 1:21:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's just a lot of fun to go back and revisit, you know, this story, mostly because it really, it sort of reminds me of working closely with Mark Greenwald, you know, who was who was my editor at one point and, you know, dear friend.
• 1:21:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it was just funny to think of Mark's obsession with continuity and how how this story came to be and, you know, how we kind of figured it out.
• 1:21:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, it was fun to like think up these different characters, you know,
• 1:21:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why did I put solo in there and, you know, you know, all this stuff, but, and Mark's dialogue for struck her in the red squad, both sound the same as my dialogue, which my dialogue was kind of based on the way Dan Chichester was writing him currently in Shield, because Dan had been trying to like resurrect struck her in Hydra, and of course nobody was paying attention.
• 1:22:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Dan, Dan, another friend of mine through the show and through you, who is the only writer maybe to ever take Baron Stark a really seriously.
• 1:22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, that was the whole thing, you know, but now I'll never be able to take him seriously.
• 1:22:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you, did you, did you do that imitation for Dan?
• 1:22:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and he was very Muslim.
• 1:22:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He must have loved that.
• 1:22:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was very entertained as he was he was for shirtless all the time.
• 1:22:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know if we rode him shirtless or if the artist, you know, because I had John he big and he had butch guys drawing him there are a hundred images of Nick Fury and Baron struckers shortless fighting
• 1:22:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very Lawrence of Arabia, like the big wrestling scene, like, you know, trying to prove your stronger, but mostly you just have to assume that they're hooking up in the bathroom afterwards.
• 1:22:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, you know, it's, you know, now you don't think about that.
• 1:23:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, Chad, you ruined my life.
• 1:23:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am so, I am so okay with ruining that specific degree.
• 1:23:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, my friend, it's wonderful to see you.
• 1:23:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody who's listening to care of yourselves.
• 1:23:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a crazy world out there.
• 1:23:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Be safe, create joy.
• 1:23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you all back here next time on The Dukai Malkenlancho.