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Transcript

Bonus Patreon Release: Koi Boi! With Ryan North! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Walk and Lane Patreon channel where we get to talk all about focused characters that don't get a lot of attention.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is pride month for our listeners this month and as you know, we're going to be doing a lesbian gay trans and bisexual character.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am thrilled to be covering a delightful character by the name of Koi Boy and I'm even more excited to be welcoming one of Koi Boy's creators, the incredible Ryan North who I have been trying to get on
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: years.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am an enormous Ryan North fan.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love your fantastic for, but I have set on my show multiple times.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think my favorite comic book as a reader in the last 20 years has been the Unbeatable squirrel girl.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that every month it comes out.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would sit down for like 20, 30, 45 minutes of reading, every page laughing out loud.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: My husband would be like, oh, it's squirrel girl day, is it it?
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because he'd hear everything.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: He'd learn on the couch.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ryan North welcome to
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for having me.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Very happy to be here.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: God, be mine.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Make it happen.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was a very easy introduction to listen to.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, we're welcome.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a face for radio.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: They say, I know a people that you know, one of my dear friends, Jason low.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know is someone that spends a lot of time with.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's kind of this little corner of comic book talent up there in Toronto.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to tell everybody a little about your background before comics?
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, so my strange secret origin, it sounds like what you're asking for.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it begins born in 1980.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is before the internet.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have didn't a small bill.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's called Osget.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: The only really experienced comics at that time was to go to
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: a comic book store and buy them, and that was in the Ottawa, and I didn't have any money.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I just don't have this big interest.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I like comics around RT comics and new stands, but, you know, I knew suicide in a Batman were just through cultural osmosis, but didn't really know much beyond that.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I grew up and got a job with my first paycheck.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I walked into the comic book store in Ottawa and just bought three comics at random.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And two of them are really good.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: One was a doubt.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I forget what I was going to watch.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Two of them are really, really good.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And over the next couple of years kind of just gave myself an education in comics by buying books at random and reading them and discovering what I like and what I did like and in my last of undergrad I started a webcomic called Dr. Kamus I still do today over 20 years later.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Better than it sounds, it's the same pictures of dinosaurs six panels that change the words, leave the pictures the same, and after doing that for a decade, got an email from one of my readers who had also graduated school and done job in the comics company asking if I wanted to write adventure time comics and I did because I loved adventure time, but that's sort of where my career in in print comics starts people write those comics, one of them was Will Moss, who became my editor on squirrel girl, and that's where you enter the story chat.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I find you're formula for writing books.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I treat comics almost as an academic pursuit at this point.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing a ton of interviewing, a ton of people.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a approach, I can tell a Ryan Northbook from any other book.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have an interesting way of, it has like a Saturday morning cartoon energy.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's always a fun premise consistently, but also there's like a science.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's almost as though you introduce your books with a hypothesis.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: and you have your character through this kind of journey figure out what the answer to the question is, which when you melt that into the Marvel Universe is delightful.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love your run-on-fantastic Thor.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It feels like reading Squirrel Girl except it's with these historically complex characters.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're amping their powers up.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do you want to talk a little bit about your premise?
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do I have it right?
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you start your journey as a writing script with like a hypothesis of some kind?
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've never described that way and it sounds great.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wish I did that.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I might actually do it.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I normally start with plot, which I think is very close what you're saying within our policies.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want some cool stuff to happen.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: The problem is when I write a story with plot, it's just a bunch of stuff that happens.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I guess there's no reason to care.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so what you need to do is get the characters in there and give you a reason to care about it.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: With Fantastic Four, especially I'll begin with an idea.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like what if they had a substance that could
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: to eat through anything, what would happen from that.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, once you have that idea, you can start thinking, okay, well, here's what read might do, here's what Sue might do.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: More interesting, here's what the kids might do about it, because they are making a big bad decisions.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of take it from there.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I do also, I really love this, the shape of comics, the form of comics.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very much a formalist.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the weird stuff.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can do in comics so you can only do in comics.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the thing I love the most about the medium, which is the same as in video games, is that we don't really know where the walls are yet.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we don't know what's good and what's bad.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yet, you look at the novel.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's interesting stuff happening in novels.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: We all love the Britain word.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Pro's it's great, but there's a lot fewer discoveries left we made in straight text than there are in text and word together.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: when I read a great comic, it's not just a great story, great art, everything else.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's usually showing me something that you can do in comics that I haven't seen done before.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's an extremely high bar, but it's routinely cleared by tons of different writers noticed because we're still exploring what comics can do, and that's very exciting to me.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I do start with the hypothesis, let's start with the idea.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I throw in some characters trying to make it a story.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And at the same time, I'm always saying, well listen when doing comics that like you can only do in comics.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: What can we do here that really makes it feel like it was bored in this medium?
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and one of those hypothesis I see you use often in squirrel girl FF and the other things you've written is okay, let's take this one aspect of this character's powers like squirrel girls weird knuckle spikes or her ability to talk to squirrels and what if we create a counter for that like what's the thing what's the story we can tell that uses that power as the way to save the day in the FF we're seeing them use their powers together in certain ways, but
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that you can take Johnny and Ben and put them in a grocery store to see who's the best boy for a month or thing falling in a hole or a squirrel girl and Nancy, you know, gloring at dinosaurs in the savage land, which, you know, as you share your dinosaur history base sets, really, really fun.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a delightful writer and I know you're doing some really big stuff that Doom stuff right now is crazy.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: The launching an event is no joke.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is this a next
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a kind of thing that it's very hard to say no to because it is such a big story when you're doing it A normal comic for Marvel or DC.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're kind of in this sandbox and the way I describe the walls of the sandbox is that in an issue of squirrel girl If I blow out the moon, that should affect what Spider-Man's doing that month
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: like it.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't just blow the mood and get away with it because it affects other books.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you're doing a larger story, like the squirrel grow up is at the universe.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, instead of the marvellian universe graphic novel where it is like one unit of story, you can blow the moon as long as you put it back together at the end.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're doing an event, you can blow up the moon and leave it there indefinitely because you now have the keys to all of the cars, all of the characters, and can go a bit bigger.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's, it's, it's a lot of fun.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's, it's a lot of work.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of, uh, organizing.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You need the mutant power of spreadsheets in these moments.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my, I did, I knowledge of the spreadsheet.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did a mural board for this story.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had all these elements, you know, we start.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you have a spreadsheet, you're like the spreadsheet needs to be more than two dimensions.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I need a three-dimensional spreadsheet.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: You need to take a walk at that point.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And not two, three-D spreadsheets just do two plus spreadsheets.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The interviewing, Jed McCay, again, I've interviewed you a few times recently.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who, I know he's done a couple of events, right?
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, there was the vampire event.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Really?
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: which tied in with you.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he's doing this big new kind of age of apocalypse, they get marvellous and like tag all that together.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, what have I done?
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, this is this is certain energy.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Artists on squirrel girl, primarily being Erica Henderson and Derek Charm.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've met Derek in person.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lovely.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love when.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Correct.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're both wonderful.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: What a charming man.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: My most incredible lovely people, but I love art that kind of turns my eye a little bit, right?
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like squirrel style that it's all its own, which is which is really fun as well.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Squirrel girl was launched during a time when Marvel was really pushing some kind of minor characters, female leads, you know moon girl and other characters coming out around the same time, even Ms. Marvel, who obviously has really taken off.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And a squirrel girl became like an indelible favorite.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: They run lasted much longer than I presume you would even with the revamp in the middle because of all of secret wars.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: 15 minutes.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll talk a little bit about how squirrel girl came to be.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I got an email from my editor Will saying, give an ideas for a squirrel girl story.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Give me your squirrel girl pitch.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Give me the weekend.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And over that weekend I read all the squirrel girl comics there were and they were like a handful They were in a ton like you read all I went for much of walks and by the time Monday Roker around I knew two things that I've wanted be a squirrel girl comic I really want to be the person writing it because what I found what I still But initially was the gig she had before my book for our book was that she can't be beaten
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, how do you tell stars with someone who always wins?
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it doesn't seem like you tell stars by stars with someone who's always going to when you know that going in.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I realized that, you know, Superman's not famous for losing fight.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Spatman's stuff famous for losing all his fights.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you know they're going to win the interest aspect is how and what journey they go on.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I did a pitch and it was all about Squirrel Girl and Galactus, like they're in that first story.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Will landed a rope back.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, this is great.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does she have any friends?
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is there like a supporting cast?
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, stuff of the press, no writer would do.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, yes, one sec.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so set a new pitch that had Cory Boy there and Chip Munkunk and Nancy White had all critical members of the cast and then sent to my first issue.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you liked it, but in that first issue, she just beat Craven up basically.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Will sent me a note that said, you know, I always saw during Green is someone who helps people with their problems.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was like seeing the answer key at the back of a teacher's guide.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because, yes, of course, that is who Dorianis, forget that draft.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here's a new draft.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: In this new draft, he discovers what the enemy craved in the hunter's problem is and helps him with it.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: She goes to the empathic core of the issue and gives him actionable things he can do to solve the problems out of just finding about it.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, in real life, that's not such a big deal.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you and I both have much more conversations than we have fist fights, but in a comics universe, and super universe, they usually fight first and ask questions later.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it instantly made squirrel girl both of really smart young women, but also really empathic and understanding young women.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, she became a hero, not because she wants to punch people to stop doing crimes.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: She became a hero because she wants to help people.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she wants to help fill them as well as heroes.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that just felt really good and really fresh to me.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I bring you up on my show on a semi regular basis usually if it's a character that you've touched right like last November and if you want to listen to this it's actually a really yeah so Tom Breaver came on with me as well as some other friends and we did an episode called about Franklin Richards we talk about his god powers and his complex history and we referenced your work with him but the two times I bring you up on my show most often is there's kind of
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: what would squirrel girl do in this moment?
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're reading old comics when people are just like punching bad guys while calling them names like fruit cakes and like they're really all into them.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: The second time I bring you up most often is because of you specifically in your work here, I do this with most character names at this point.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So,
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll pick the random one.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a moment where we talked about the random mutant hair bag, and I'll say, their bag, powers of both hair and bag.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You do with your character so often.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really love it, and it makes me think of a superhero stuff more frequently.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, we're going to focus on Koi Boy himself.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a children's book primarily, and you did this very, very smart thing in bringing a trans character in, but never really saying it on the page.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am a therapist who specializes when working with the trans community.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a rough time for trans people.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to celebrate joy today, but this is a representation of the level that we often have it seen as a character who is a main member of the cast.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of trans people really focus on the idea of passing.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to be accepted for who I am.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to have it be about being trans.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you wouldn't really know it was quite way was trans, except there's that image of Coiboy in a binder, which is a device built to help people who are biologically female, disguised their breasts in a more efficient way to be able to wear clothing.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Binding is very dangerous.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: It can be very problematic.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is when people like put tight straps around themselves, but there are effective ways of using binders that allow you to make your appearance more masculine and more akin to who you are.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you have not had surgery or can't afford surgery, it's a way of presenting yourself to the world.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we see Koi Boy in a binder at a particular point, and that's kind of the only ever representation we ever see of him being trans specifically.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: but here's this trans character just living his best computer nerd upon making superhero life and he's delightful.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear about your relationship with the trans community if you have one and tell us about the decision to put Coiboy in and what's their pushback.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm interested in the creation of this character.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Coiboy was a trans
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: looking around the Marble University a lot of that there and just feel like a very easy thing to do.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: My inspiration with how he was portrayed initially came from growing up in 90s and you know, you started to first have gay men characters on TV then.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what I found so frustrating at the time and still that it's changed was that when you had these gay characters, their whole personality was how gay they were and being gay was all they did.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like do you have any interest outside of being gay?
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to tell.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: All you talk was how gay you are.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me pause you very quickly.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're all the similar age and I've done a lot of study about this.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's an era of queer visibility and storytelling.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: We look like gay character and they're not crazy.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a period of like gay suffering.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: uh, every gay characters wrestling with thoughts of suicide.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then we have kind of an era of gay community that's happening now, which is a very different thing.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, let's just put queer people celebrating, having joy, etc.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: People.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So please, please continue.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we were, this is a visibility part.
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, man, I just want, I want a gay character can be a person that is more well-rounded.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so with Corboy, that was what I wanted to.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things I actually regretted from the comic run was that we did never explicitly say it.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was hard because after the first eight issues we jumped ahead with the new number one and jumped ahead six months in time.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it felt like anything conversations can she get Corboy had with this friends at that point.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: They would have happened during that time skip.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: They would have to be like, as you know, Squirrel Girl, as a Transman, it felt very identical.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: As we never actually said it in the comic, uh, but we did a scroll girl podcast during pandemic, Ronald the characters back for six episodes of this podcast.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You listen to it anywhere.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's amazing.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And during great had a Twitter account, which was so great.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she does.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in that podcast, I got to have him explicitly say he's trained.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I felt like
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: As much as it's great to have visibility, I was worried it could be almost too subtle where if you didn't know what you were looking for, you wouldn't see it and then, you know, does that carry as much weight as a trans character if 80% people reading it wouldn't even notice it.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a little sort of complicated relationship with the character itself.
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you know, because you see this thing where parents learn about a queer relationship somewhere and they're like, no, we are.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We can't let our children read that anymore.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: But for people who knew for people who recognized what it was, that was the representation they were looking for.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You were settled enough to give that powerful voice to people who needed to see it without getting people to like boycott the book, which is we want to say it on the page, right?
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We want to say it out loud, but in this era, I think it was a pretty smart methodology.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I appreciate that.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm, I'm, I'm glad that I got a chance to have me kicking you to by actually saying explicitly on the podcast, but yeah, that's where it can himself.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this is unfair, but the trans people I know are all very clever with language.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: They put a lot of thought into, you know, what their name is going to be and how they want to be addressed.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I felt like, you
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a very short walk for that to a guy who is just like thinking about language all the time enjoying the puns It's very much part of who I am and so it made it very easy to be like all right can guess all of the dad jokes all of the puns He's gonna be a fun guy to hang around and you're you're not in correct Most trans people I know really have to put a lot of work into discovering who they are and you know queer people in general rank higher on levels of emotional An artistic intelligence.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a thing.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm surprised often times
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think there's a lot of fun where we see we see Ken's kind of best friend relationship with Toma, Sir Chipmunk, Ed, like the deep connection that he has with Doreen and Nancy, and it's just this kind of buddy group.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the Scooby-Dug gang just running around this solvent crime together.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to give any insight to the creation of Chipmunkunk and Nancy Whitehead who are the other, you know, big characters in your book.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nancy being the most prominent outside of Doreen.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I kind of saw Dorina Nancy as the parallel between Ken Chipmunk and Coinboy.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: They both have these close pair friendships that then form a nice French group and they'll mix together.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah, it's very hard to start with a character like Spurogirl and then be like, all right, so who are the four people around?
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, what does their supporting cast look like from scratch?
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when the surrogates I took that I felt really bad about until I talked to other authors and they were like, Oh, right, no, we do this all the time.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: was I just looked at my friends.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nancy Whitehead is early speaking, very close to my friend Lucy Whitehead.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that she is very direct.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's no nonsense.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's clever.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's deadpan.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It gave me the sort of starting seed for a character.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: as a writerly shortcut.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when I learned, because I asked her, I asked Lucy if you mind if I basis character off of you, which she was entirely flattered.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I learned the question you should ask is not, can I base this character off of you, but can I inspire this character from what you've done?
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you don't want to be someone's vision where the real person Lucy can look at the fictional person, Nancy, and be like, is this what you think?
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is this who you think I knew?
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the the other character that you add that seems to be your very favorite.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, oh, you didn't speak to Chipmunkunk.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah Hi Chipmunkunk.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so Chipmunkunk.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Still handsome.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I like the guy who Dream Green's world girl has a lot of personality Chipmunkunk.
• 18:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I thought an instant guy for him would be someone who's been You know a pretty boy his whole life because of that He knows how to skate by on charm, but he's got kind of this insecurity in who he is beyond that like am I more than just a pretty
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was a beat later on the hit in the story where Chipmunkung got to say like, you know, when I got my chipmunk powers, I was a little embarrassed to buy them as a little shame because they're kind of goofy and then my sauce grow grow running around.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I realized, oh, you can be your authentic self.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I want to live honestly and not be ashamed of these parts of myself.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Would sing a loud, sure it doesn't sound like a queer subtextile.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, truly.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's one of the charms of your story is all of your characters are very self confident.
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are what I love.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I like cats and knitting are I like computers and fish puns like you're just very I mean you've got your character Mary who's very like anarchist Yeah, yeah
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then your favorite seems to be brain-drained who's maybe the only one who's struggling with self-identity, but that's because he doesn't understand how humans think Yeah, I mean, I love he was a later addition to the cast and he was a pretty existing character kind of tweaked a bit But yeah, a Nazi scientist brain in a jar turned into like an analog robot my aliens remember of the cast
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, by aliens who didn't know what a human looked like, not the most obvious character to add to your all-in just talking squirrel comic, but what I love about him is he's basically this philosophical man struggling with nihilism and still choosing joy, still wanting more than what he thinks the universe can offer.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not who you'd think would match up well with eternally optimistic during green squirrel girl, but they really play off each other so well that I was like, this
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: really truly a delightful, delightful journey.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I also love about Squirrel Girl before we talk about co-boys specifically.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I could go out on this title.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really love it.
• 19:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, my different Sarah Century had me on her show.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's called Best Issue Ever and it's like pick one of your favorite books ever to talk about and I'll interview you and I chose the Squirrel Girl comic.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: No joke.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, which one?
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, so, okay.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the month that that debuted, I did a full month of content on my show related to the Sentinels and all the all my episodes were about Sentinels.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did a huge episode about like robots in fiction.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what I want on her show, I chose that issue where squirrel girl joins the dating and it goes on.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The date with the Sentinel who's programmed for heartbreak.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just a tough life, that's it.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when you're writing, you don't waste a single space on Squirrel Girl, especially, not only was it dialogue heavy, delightfully dialogue heavy, I might add.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But every little panel underneath, like there's the blurbs underneath of the space.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: that are giving you additional things to think about.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you jump on the Marvel Appendix, there's a smattering of squirrel girl profiles that are all written by me during the pandemic because I just wanted to go back and explore all of those characters once again.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you're not a person who uses splash pages really.
• 20:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You, I mean, you like it the art, obviously, but you don't waste a single space, which speaking as a person who has written comic book scripts, that is not an easy thing.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: You put a lot of time and effort into your books.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the bottom line is that comics is a not inexpensive hobby and I want to make sure people feel like when they pick a book they're like, yeah, that was a good unit of story.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel good about that.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The other challenge that you're writing a big two book marble.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you see you're looking at 20 pages 20 pages hard limit.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not a ton of space to tell a story and to make it feel real and to make you fall in over these characters and do all this horrible thing.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very, very tight.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I like the idea of literally cramming jokes in the margin to make it more value and I like the idea of the comic being dense so that yeah, this book took months of human labor to produce and you can read it in three minutes, but maybe squirrel girl will take you if
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: or in a half minutes, so you got a bit more out of it.
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not joking, I'm a fast reader.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: A single issue of Scorollero would take me like 45 minutes.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would like sit down and enjoy it.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's great.
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's slow, right?
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, yeah, I was listening to Amy Polar's podcast this morning, which is so lovely.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's called Good Hang every time, every few seconds, I'm smiling.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she always asks her guests on that show, like, what's something that makes you smile?
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, oh, I'm going to interview you right at North.
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's a smile.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so important to find things that make us smile today at age.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let's talk a little bit about the adventures of Koi Boy.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Koi Boy is, I don't know if you've met or had the pleasure of meeting Charlie Jain Anders, who was wonderful, Charlie created the characters, Escapade and Morgan Red, Escapade is a director who's had a huge presence in the X-Men books over the last several years.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Currently in Anthony Olovera's Avengers Academy, and I know you in Anthony are so bad.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: The character Morgan Red is a character that Charlie told me is very based in the idea of intersectionality.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like an asexual Chinese mutant.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's like eight different identities that are layered in.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And quite a bit comes across that way very much.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: he is a trans character, he's Asian obviously, he's a superhero, he's a student, but his origins are never really explored.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is the secret origin of toy boy, Ryan North?
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So how much time do we have?
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: My hot take on origins is that in most cases,
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: is they're unnecessary.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll sway that a bit because like you talk about Spider-Man, radioactive spider.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fine, we all buy it because we grew up with it.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if I say squirrel girl got bit by radioactive squirrel, that reads as a joke.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't take it seriously.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic four, cosmic rays.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We buy it just from the sixties, but we know that going into space now doesn't give you superpowers.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just makes your bones a bit old.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no superpowers there.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So again, it doesn't add anything.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It requires more of its suspension of disbelief.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unless there's cosmic rays,
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are cosmic creatures, cosmic rays are a real thing.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: They just cause mutations, but not like cool mutations.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I kind of was in this head space where I'm like, I don't unless the origin explains something about the character like Batman's, where his origin tells you why he does what he does.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't sure that getting into the weeds of how chipmunkon can coy boy got their powers would add anything.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And also, I kind of like to do, like, when you're telling a story in a Marvel book, you're telling not to be getting or the end, but the middle part, and so I'm also telling the next middle part of it.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So leaving some stuff open for where this could be where this could go.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: In my head, it's the same as squirrel girl where she was just born with it, and it became part of who she is.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you could be very easily have the radioactive coi that fit him at the zoo if you want, so like there's options there as what I'm saying.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: You give me real, this is a huge compliment.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm picturing you at the library like I need books on squirrels and coi and chipmunks and everything about them because you would turn it away.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Herobilities into some of these.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk about some boy boys super abilities as related to real coi fish?
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, he, uh, the most unseen one is he very slowly grows to fit the size of his container, but he has that much of a chance to, to do that, uh, with what's world girl, I took out at least books on squirrels and, you know, read about their facts.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: She can, they've really good, uh, crunching power in their jaws for nuts.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if you scale that up to human size, you end up with the ability to crunch steel in terms of pressure, which is great, gave it a lot of ability,
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: range.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he sends to me more fish adjacent and then Chloe specifically talks to fish.
• 25:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love that he gets to get the fish to the names like three and gives us squirrels to the names.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Favorite thing to do is name squirrels and name fish.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is a power right up on the Marvel appendix sign on Koyway, which I wrote.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, I used to do the handbooks the writing program.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is my powers and ability section written.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Koyway can talk to fish, swim both through water, and recruit his own body slowly to fit the size of any
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Coiboy has extremely strong core muscles and can flop on the ground, propelting himself into the air, allowing himself to move across the city of fast speeds.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Coiboy also possesses magnetic sensitive cells, which just navigate well through Earth's magnetic fields.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Coiboy is a talented computer science student with a great love for puns.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, officially kidding.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really enjoy in your comic as well how you would pull characters that I would never expect to see.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mojo to the sequel or the character in Digma, you had a lot of fun honoring Marvel continuity and giving gloves to characters that aren't often seen very well.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: You want to talk about how you would make selections for super villains?
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, what I would do is I have this Marvel guy book that I would flip through and look at characters.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: The nice thing about squirrel girl was that this was a book.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: There it is.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they see what squirrel girls said.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted the book to be accessible for people who don't have, you know, 60 years of Marvel Continuity knowledge because I didn't have that Marvel continuity knowledge.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I only saw the movies You know, if you look at the first people that squirrel girl fights outside of maybe they're all written as other cravings I always like craving They're all the movies like I just were going off movie stuff.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like give myself a education as I wrote these books So as you're reading Marvel history, there are tons of wacky characters that
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: were used once or twice and then discarded because they weren't doing anything great.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there's so much to love in someone like, you know, brain drain a guy who's was bladed on by an alien shit and put together wrong as a predator.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's terrific.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's awesome.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and Digmo is a guy who's split into two guys and then do that recursively.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also seems fun.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I just sort of browse these resources and try to find someone I thought was interesting.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The funny story there is it's
• 27:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did a squirrel girl episode where she and Koi Boy and Chipmohawk and Nancy went up against this guy's name is Swarm and he is a bunch of bees.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also went Nazi.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He said Nazi bees.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nazi bees.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought this guy was a big deal because I bought an action figure of him when I was a kid.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, yeah, everyone knows Swarm.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Nazi made a bee.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: You see the famous Marvel character.
• 27:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I wrote this issue and sent to my that of Will and he's like, where do you find these guys?
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never heard of Storm
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's just not C.B.
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is this is literature.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was a that was your choose your own adventure issue, which was good fun Do you want to talk about the the design of quite way quite way is again Asian character Scaly trunks orange coat doggles over the eyes always ready with a fish pun did Erica design all of these characters She did um spur toy boy and ship my con.
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I believe we went with the first thing she had So just she got in one right like these these guys look great
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Her squirrel girl, the first thing Marvel did before she even met me, was, you know, draw some squirrel girls.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you, what do you think she's gonna be wearing?
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Erica is, you know, great art is also very, uh, fashion conscious.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, I think, fictional characters that have more than one pair of clothes.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: They should wear different outfits.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so she drew all these different outfits for squirrel or both in civilian and superhero modes.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we,
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like these earrings, these acorn earrings are terrific.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: This headband with the ears, terrific, but still these different elements from different designs have put them all in one, and that gave her her design.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So with her was a bit of like a jigsaw puzzle with coy boy, she was just like, yeah, he's got the gold fish scale pants, he's got the goggles and the kind of blacks look like fish eyes, it tells you who he is, it's great.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: where there are other characters that we're almost.
• 29:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for example, you have a funny, funny, funny story where Red Skull puts on a fishhead and calls himself Bass Lass.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where there are other characters that almost made the cut that we're rhyming animal pun names.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you have cracked the code because when I was trying to think of her supporting cast, I was like, Squirrel Girl, that rhymes.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: What other animals can I rhyme with?
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what produced Chip Munkunk.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: and quite boy, and also bass last, and I was like, bass last is not a great name, but I don't think I can sell this.
• 29:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for a smaller character in a imaginary story, it really fit nicely.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and there's a, where there are others on your list that you want to share.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jeff, where I don't remember them now.
• 29:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I might be able to find the best cat brat.
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was a one-moment in school.
• 29:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's many, but maybe left so hard.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a whole plot line where they're teasing because they don't know if it's a chip munk hunk or chip munk hunk.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so funny to me.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a fun.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't find the dog.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's here somewhere.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't find the document somewhere.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have a list of animal names.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's that's really fun.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: So boy boy has a lot of fun moments.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to recount all of his adventures very specifically.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But feel free to jump on the Marvel appendix.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've literally written an issue by issue summary of this character.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's a go which is for all characters I love.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now I produce a show.
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I don't write any of those anymore.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's how it goes.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He gets a lot of really fun moments.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to give you some of his most quotable lines.
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: A squirrel girl, of course, has a thing where instead of beating the criminals up, she has fun punching, but she prefers to be your friend instead.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, hippos rampaging, and she's like, well, let me get you a job instead, right?
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's one of the big early moments, which is delightful.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: The only people she can't reason with are the ones that are major villains, like a doctor do, or Melissa Moreback, etc.
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, quite a book gets a lot of moments where he says things like,
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who would have thought that the only thing my fists of justice couldn't punch was his heart.
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Koi Boyd, defender of New York and protector of the scales of justice.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Really delicious moments.
• 31:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: All of the students are going to, all the heroes are in secret identities and going to Empire State University, that big fictional college at Marvel where all the crazy happens.
• 31:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Ken can talk to fish.
• 31:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see him in lectures like introduction to databases.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see him mention in dialogue.
• 31:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was up all night because all the fish are upstead.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ed people are picking fights in their classroom.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it turns out, Ratatowsker, the evil as Guardian Squirrel God is making everyone upset.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ken said Ken tends to be just to say, I'll have the fish force on alert just in case if she goes for a swim, we're definitely gonna hear about it.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Radotusker, as the counter to squirrel girl, as the evil squirrel god was a deep pull, and then just find on this guy's insane.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk about using Radotusker?
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, you know, we're talking about doing squirrel research.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You very quickly have discovered there's this squirrel god in, uh, I was going to say, ask her idea, but that's fictional in real life, Nordic mythology that runs up and down the tree of life spreading rumors.
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Big drastically.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so there's something there.
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting.
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: A smack talking squirrel feels great putting it into the book as a villain felt good.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we kind of left it there for most of the run of the book and then brought her back near the end as an ally and the relationship there I intended to be like a buddy cop thing.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: These two people don't like each other.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're forced to work together.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Squirrel doesn't like red toss care because she is.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: mean and makes people fight.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Grat tossers and like squirrel grow because he's no fun, but they have to work together to solve this problem.
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: The response I got from this to you, it read more as like these two characters have this unannounced attraction with the telly that they're they're fighting their way through.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like it's it's a great reading.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes it sparkle even more.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's the thing about squirrel growl and coy boy and chipmaco because they have these animal theme powers.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're kind of alone in that.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's no manual for these powers.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: there's no book you get that says okay so you've got squirrel stuff here's what's happening you kind of to make that understanding yourself and realize okay I've got this is tail and this teeth or I can talk to fish and I can swim maybe I'm related to this so it is a process of exploration and discovery for them I think that can be kind of isolating which is why I like they all kind of found each other.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Found family, that's what my show doesn't bring me all the link because it's found family.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's all where all the mutants leave their families and make friends together.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm all about it.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, fantastic for us often said, oh, this is a this is a family book.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: This book, what family, that's like, I don't know how to write family.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I only know how to write friends.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just write family as like friends that you live with.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and the fantastic forward version of this is they have such deep and complex histories.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a lot to reckon with much like the world of the X men is for writers who are incoming.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, so just some random coiboy quotes from across, we're not going to hit a context for all the simple adventures, but comments on anything.
• 33:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Noble Coie is one of nature's most overlooked powerhouses with strength and agility and perfect balance.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: uh... we get a scene where uh... they're fighting a villain dourine y'all squirrels attack and uh... tomasiyos chipmunks attack and can y'all's koi stand ready for when we knock her into the water
• 34:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have a plot device where Dorian just teaches all of her friends to teach how to speak to squirrels so that they can all talk to Tippito and everyone else, which is hilarious to me.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: How does Dorian teach them how to speak to squirrels?
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is the thing in the Marvel Universe, they've got to have a language.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's not, she doesn't speak to squirrels through magic.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: She speaks to them through understanding the language.
• 34:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it implies that all the squirrels and potentially all the animals in the M.U.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: are sapiens, sentient, and communicating as humans do.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: which is a big thing that gets slid in there without even noticing.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, the anthropomorphism of it all, yes.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Coiboy gets to say once my fish eye goggles provide a single memorable distracting detail that obscures my true identity.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's so many puns in your book, which I love.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We just don't have time.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the Trishart Adventure issue, which is number seven in volume two, you get to be the unsecable Coiboy for a full page.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's studying.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: finite state machines and preparing for a serious test, but it gets to call and he has to help during fight swarm.
• 35:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he helps for realize that they could hit the bees with water.
• 35:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he teaches some local fish how to spit like angler fish, which is a real thing.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have those at the local aquarium, and there's a big one like this.
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a fish sign of my fishing advocate that I've read a bunch of times.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also say, we see him say he can swim along the surface at super speed, creating a huge bow wave.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And by dieting at the end, I allowed it to continue without my body disrupting the high amplitude surface ways beneath us.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's like using hydrogen dynamics to like down evils, nuts EVs out of the air.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He also gets to say, I'm big into fish and the fish adjacent.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: which is really delightful.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: When they're fighting Mollman, who one of my favorite moments in comics of all time is when Mollman makes out with the tricephalist monster at the end, where it just grows.
• 35:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of recurring puns, where Koi Boygits to say things like, holy, carp, and everyone looks at him with side eye.
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, what?
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's fish themed, you guys, it works.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you agree, chums, because chums is another name for Sharkbait and we're kind of salmon.
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Come on, you make nut puns, Dorine.
• 36:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, you got to use it in moderation, buddy.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's a little bit too much.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes I'm free.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a dad?
• 36:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 36:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, you're not a dad.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have friends react to your dad jokes like my children react to my dad jokes?
• 36:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been freelancing.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been working on the Iron Man game that Motors making Montreal.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's not in frequent that I say something, usually upon in the work chat that gets me fired.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They say, Ryan, you're fired.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm hired back the next day, but I've been fired many times for the jokes that I make.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Get out.
• 36:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're done.
• 36:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're griss.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get to see Al-Yu-ing who I've also befriended through the show.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you've ever met.
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll take Squirrel Girl into new Avengers book.
• 36:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's, uh, there's an issue where Roberto de Costa's believed dead and into Avengers, squirrel girls friends are there.
• 36:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Coiboy sitting next to Chipmunkhunk in the funeral procession and Coiboy says, uh, funerals give me the f-eels and chipmunkhunkos.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: No fish and or sea-related puns.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a place of warship.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ken goes, uh, place PL-A-I-C-E. Ooh and ship.
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: and squirrel girl.
• 37:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you guys, this is a real funeral that's like really actually happening.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I can't get to slap Koi Boy on the back of the head.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Was it fun?
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we also get him to say when he's fighting aim, time to write thin to your tail of wickedness and everything's like getting your quotes.
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Was it fun working with Al, who picked up some of these characters for the new Avengers run?
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, it's a joy and that was all out like that's I can take zero kind of for that, but the joy of it was you invent these people and you you pour your soul into them and then to see someone else be like, yeah, you know what that's good.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to use that.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to do other stuff.
• 37:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: The characters obviously live forever on the page, but they live more when they get to escape the bounds of your stories and other people use them.
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it just feels the close I can say, I'm not a dad, but it feels what I imagine is like when you're sending your kid off to school that first day in junior kindergarten or like you've done on you can and you're seeing them get on the bus and you're like, all right, they're going to have adventures that I'm involved with now for the first time.
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope they'll do well.
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a shared universe, which is really fun unless someone just kills your character off horribly.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, I would.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never really thought of someone killed Koy boy.
• 38:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would just be like, I present.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm done.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you'd have to bring him back.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what would happen.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wake up from a dream and say, what a crazy dream that was non-tanden.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, I'm with my day.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I want to talk about three trans themes.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then we'll share some more silliness, really.
• 38:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is subtle.
• 38:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not even sure it was your intention in some of your writing.
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: First of all, there's an epic book that's so big called the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl beats up the Marvel Universe.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every page, every panel is huge.
• 38:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're so much delight in it.
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a wonderful book.
• 38:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what an undertaking, right?
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an enormous project, like outside of the other books that you're already doing.
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in this moment, this is where we see Ken in the binder.
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're running off to action.
• 39:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just one scene.
• 39:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they get stripped down to their underwear.
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we see Ken in boxer briefs and like a tank top binder.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: In Unbeatable Squirrel Girls 16, which is where they're going to Melissa Morebeck, who's an evil lady who's promising to give them like flying suits.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's flying squirrels and flying fish.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get one single line from Ken, but I think really talks about a lot of the trans identity for some folks, even though it's a superhero parallel.
• 39:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ken says, it's good we're arriving in costume.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I prefer to keep my identity secure, especially to unknown entities.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this idea of his privacy being his to own the secret identity formation for this character is really interesting.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to speak to that?
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think there's a lot of parallels in the language reviews around superheroes and arenas.
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The squirrel will run ends with Dorine's secret eddy being revealed and she's like some more back out of me and you know that that parallels pretty obvious.
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure for that one in particular if I was
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember his aiming for that connection or not, it feels right, but I want to take credit if I did not do it intentionally, but it's like you're always going to put yourself in the characters head, right, and Ken is someone who I think opens up to his friends a lot, but
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also draws a line between people he trusts and people he doesn't know.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, another piece or layer of this is in unbeatable squirrel girl 21 Which is delicious Dorian and Nancy are gone for a little while in the negative zone visiting her evil twin a land It's so dirty, but we get a cover where it just says boys night out and We see chipmunkong and brain drain and coy boy.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll just hang it out and it's not mentioned of being trans It's just a guy hanging with the guys and
• 40:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: and you don't have to put it out there for the trans characters who are reading this, it really matters.
• 40:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's also a really lovely space here.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get to see Ken wearing like a suns out, guns out, tank top, and making my scrambled eggs extraordinary, but a brain drain is a character that almost reads as a little bit autistic.
• 41:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we see in a way Ken and Tomas,
• 41:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: helping their friend acclimate to like human understanding and the patients that they show and like how they get a little exasperated but they come back around and really help them out.
• 41:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of lovely stuff there.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: So just can't as one of the guys is another thing subtle but so important.
• 41:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: 100% 100% in that issue I think brain drain smashes their table by mistake by showing off this fabulous metal body.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have no commentary on Ken's sexuality.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't know if he's interested in boys or girls, but there is a shirtless name or on his wall.
• 41:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm kind of thinking maybe his type is fish kings?
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts on Ken's sexuality?
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: In my head is it's fish kings, short kings, talkings, all sorts of kings.
• 41:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But only I mean, I have 58 issues with these guys and even so there's stuff that you don't have room for Yeah, absolutely Right, but him I'm dying of defying is a gay or or even Oh, God, I just lost the word Where you're interested in anyone that pansexual again
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: and sexual character would make total sense to me.
• 42:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: When they fight Mojo 2 in the escape room where everyone's powers end up getting used to different degrees can introduce himself as I love justice and puns in that order.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a moment where he goes, what's this?
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: A puzzle that needs to be solved under water or we all die?
• 42:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to fish for compliments.
• 42:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Tomas says he's really big into puns, so maybe that's another of his powers.
• 42:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Ken says it is a power too.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I'll be right back.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when he comes back from solving the puzzle, he goes,
• 42:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: They were a few red herrings, but I wouldn't take the bait.
• 42:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Craven the hunter who's here says, oof, the ponds, and Dorian says, yeah, you really gotta space them out, Ken.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Make them a sometimes treat, yeah, and he goes, never, and then we get the end of the coat.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get the editors note.
• 42:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd go so far as to say if saying fish for compliments when your fish themed even counts as a pun, it's just an appropriate choice of idiom.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is also the only time we get to see Ken using his grow to the size of any container power in the escape room adventure with Mojo too.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look, it was, I mean, that story is one of my favorites that we ever did because it's such a character focused story.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get to learn about Ken.
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get to learn about Dory.
• 43:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a learn about Craven a lot.
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a story about forgiveness.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's, uh, I think it explicitly at one point, uh, Craven is asked if he thinks he's better than his worst mistakes, trying to say that he is.
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's trying to say that he's worthy of forgiveness and Spider-Man.
• 43:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: The heroes are saying no in Dory and sort of,
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: on the fence and trying to help him and coming along to his side.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Having done the mock trial of Craven the Hunter on my show, you're like the only person to ever write this character redeemable.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a horrible person.
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, during DiscoverSat, where she's like, you killed Spider-Man 20s and he's like, no, I was sitting in the past.
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: But also he hasn't murdered animals and beat up your girlfriend to a bunch.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, part of writing in a shared universe is you choose what to look at.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, okay.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: When that speaking of puns, when the puns, I was most pleased with the class that entire run.
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It didn't end up being in a core voice voice, unfortunately.
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: When they're on trial, Goro Goro is under oath, and she's asked if she thinks Craven is a good guy, and she says, in my book, he's a hero.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was saying, inside Skoro Goro, in the ass.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: even as an irredeclable horrible person.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: In most of his appearances, I'm like, no, this isn't good here.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's get into this.
• 44:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can get some also some really fun kind of educational breakout moments along the run.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 38, when he's wondering if Tipee Toe at Tipee Toe, the squirrel is a squirrel.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: He gestures dramatically very Shakespearean.
• 44:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tipee, or not, Tipee, upon foreign urchins age, and then in parentheses, urchins are exceptionally long-lived sea animals.
• 44:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And some specimens have been found that over
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get a moment in the next issue, 39, where he is informing.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you can trick a scroll into drinking salt water, he'll eventually dehydrate.
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Assuming scrolls have the same weakness to salt water, the humans do, which is not at all guaranteed.
• 45:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's quite interesting, actually, human pee can only get so salty.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And even its max is level slightly less than the salinity of salt water.
• 45:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So no matter how much salt water you drink, you'll always pee out more water than what you took in.
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, this doesn't apply to fish, fish beyond of their gills, and Dorian's like, apparently, I internalize a lot more of his fish lectures
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You just learn these facts and let go work them into your stories, which is a good one.
• 45:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the character liked quite well, who just like he loves to share.
• 45:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He loves to tell the cool facts he's learned.
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
• 45:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the issue where we also get to see him diving in speaking to a school of fish called the Atlantic Manhattan.
• 45:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: uh there's a whole bunch of facts given about like estuaries and the men hadn't but he's hanging out with some fish like name wiggums and eggs Benny and like they're very caught up in all this drama but they help him find a missing scroll the series ends up were you expecting squirrel girl to end when it did like was that your choice was an tutorials tool yeah we got to bring it in for landing so we got to actually it's rare to get to actually wrap something up properly and we got to do a full boar issue conclusion to the story
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, there's a moment of 47 where Canon Tomas get to call themselves the fish and chips combo, which is delightful as they are fighting the leader and Melissa Moreback.
• 46:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then we finally kind of see him, excuse me, there's there's a couple of issues of like Marvel rising where they're doing like some Ms. Marvel's squirrel girl team ups that he shows up.
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's only two times we've ever seen him since the conclusion of no.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: The unbeatable spark.
• 46:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: One is in the amazing Spider-Man daily bugle where Spider-Man goes to Coiboy and is like, look, there's this like pond full of like radio-active waste over there, and I think there's some mutated fish in there, and I really need you to dive in to get some information.
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Coiboy's like, yeah, buddy, I'm not going in there.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like you can go, but that's toxic.
• 46:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we get the infamous Luciano Veccio, like Marvel Voices,
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: panel where all of Marvel's queer characters are in one giant image that you just want to put in a poster on your wall where Koi Boy is involved there.
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts on the legacy of Koi Boy and this kind of world of trans heroes?
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's not a lot of trans characters.
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a bunch of like little one-off ones more recently.
• 47:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a bunch of characters that are non-binary and trans.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Koi Boy is one of the maybe the most outside of Escapade
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I'd love to see more from him.
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm always trying to see if there's a way can work the squirrel girl cast into fantastic work, as I love them.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was going to be in the one world that are doomed with it, but the note I got from editorial was, Ryan, you can have all of squirrel girls cast here.
• 47:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: You got to pick some, you got to have them on a fine dancing brain drain.
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: God, um,
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I feel like there's obviously always room for plenty more characters like Ken or trans characters or anything in the Marble Universe And my hope is that we'll get see more stories with him.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think he's a lot of fun I think he is a great guy to have in the team.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's got a terrific set of powers And you know 70% of your surface is water There's stuff going on down there.
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's your man
• 48:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a whole civilization and he's got a crush on name where we already know, so, you know, who knows what could happen there is a there is a there's a resonance here and to get really serious before we close You know, these comics were coming out in an era of kind of queer celebration.
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think when Obama and Biden were president queer people were taking up a little more room at the table for the first time kind of in history.
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: gay marriage passed, trans people started noticing a little bit more visibility, but we're living in a world where not only is it not only as like violence against trans people like very normalized, we kind of go, we shrug and go, well, that person should have not, not out in public if they didn't want to get attacked, which is a horrible horrible thing, but we're seeing right stripped away and people who have a lot of pride who are really having to like wrestle with themselves.
• 48:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anthony Oliver is doing beautiful work with Escapade as a trans character
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: doing with the complexity of being trans in this world.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But that's kind of all we're getting at Marvel.
• 49:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's not a lot of other trans support.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So unless you like really looking between the lines, a quibboite I would love to see that kind of narrative.
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not necessarily like what his dead name is or even where his family goes.
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like what's it like for him as a trans superhero in this kind of sea of people?
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's important this visibility is more important than ever and I would love to see
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I agree on a percent.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's sort of why I felt like the failing I haven't initial run was not explicitly describing his transness because you could overlook it.
• 49:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yes, there's a reading that this is naturalized and unremarkable, just a normal part of life, but I think in a time when people would prefer some people would prefer this.
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why can't they just go away?
• 49:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why can't this problem not exist being visible and being crescent saying, yeah, this is this is who I am, who we are and this is not going to change.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: more of that from characters like Cory Boy.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, happy pride everybody.
• 50:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, so right with another interview sometime about the fantastic for your work in this title is wonderful.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a huge cast of characters.
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I adore adore adore your work with Alicia in particular.
• 50:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you're doing this huge event with Dr. Doom.
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's it like to wrap your brain around Dr. Doom in a time of like Trump conservative craziness that's like enveloping this awful world?
• 50:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like a crazy story and even your story recently, like about the vampire kids and like people trying to like exist in society when they're different, really beautiful layered storytelling, but doom himself, like what's it been like for you to write this crazy character?
• 50:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean the thing that the joy of doom
• 50:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: is that he is this impossible character where anything you put in his mouth come out of any other characters mouth would sound ridiculous like it was sound it would sound heightened it would sound camp but Dr. Doom is a man who has never said in his life like everything he says it sounds like you wrote a speech for it and so you can have him say stuff that you have absolutely written the best you can do it sounds natural coming out of his mouth
• 51:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it makes some of very charismatic bad guys.
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of fun to write and set up a lot of big problems for the heroes to fix.
• 51:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really hard to get this reaction for me.
• 51:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've read a bajillion comic books, but that issue of Mr.
• 51:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fantastic's skin all stretched out with the vampires.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then it's against Mr. Terror.
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nope.
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I felt a new emotion when I saw those paints.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The cover has Alex Ross Art was his lip.
• 51:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been pulled and you can see like the dumb stretching.
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's horrible.
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: My character is a hoard of fun.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I looked at that image and I was like, I'm feeling a new emotion now.
• 51:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it is, but I feel I want to look at this picture.
• 51:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've interviewed, I've befriended like a field Kennedy Johnson and Clay McClunch app, and who are known for their horror, Erica Schultz, who does a lot of horror stuff.
• 51:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's stuff.
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's entertaining, but it doesn't freak me out.
• 51:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Mr.
• 51:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fantastic, Skimgitton torn, nope, you got me.
• 51:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, my friend, this has been a true delight.
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for your time, so you're so busy.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I super appreciate you coming to celebrate this character with me today.
• 52:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I know our listening audience will really appreciate it as well.
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: As we're wrapping up, is there anything you want to plug?
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to put this out in mid June on the Patreon channel.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And where can people find you online if you would like to be found and followed?
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's June everyone.
• 52:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's new issue of doom out and there's the final issue of fantastic for until we relaunch the next month with a new number one tying into the new movie so there's playing comics I've written you get read and if you want to find me I'm at Ryan North.ca
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: What a true delight to meet you.
• 52:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
• 52:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everybody for listening.
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Stay tuned for next week.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I get to have another just pure treat.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Our bisexual character for Pride Month is going to be the really awful and hilarious character Shinobi Shaw and the incredible Alyssa Wong is joining me for that.
• 52:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So everybody please stay tuned.
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to have a delightful time.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening.
• 52:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much to Ryan.
• 52:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will see you all back here next week on the very multimillion patreon channel.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism, as a special guest and I talk about a red skull story and its modern application.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: During the Nazi occupation of France in World War II, thousands of lives were shattered by the regime's brutal policies, including those aimed at persecuting homosexual men.
• 53:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Among the voices that would emerge decades later to reveal this hidden history, Pierre-Ciel, S.E.E.L.
• 53:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Born in 1923, Pierre grew up in a conservative Catholic family and came of age in a society that treated homosexuality as a crime and a sin.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: As the teenager Pierre began quitely exploring his identity, visiting a local park known to be a meeting place for gay men, the secret part of his life however would soon draw the attention of authorities.
• 53:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 1939, just before the France invasion,
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Local police recorded his name on a list of suspected homosexuals in act that would have devastating consequences once the Nazis arrived and keep in mind Pierre was only 16 turning 17 at the time.
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: When German forces occupied all Sache in 1940, all Sace, I think is probably how you say this city.
• 54:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nazi policies were quickly imposed, including the enforcement of paragraph 175, which criminalized homosexuality, which we talked about on the show before.
• 54:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Nazis gained access to the police records and used them to identify and target individuals for persecution.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, when Pierre was 17 in 1941, he was arrested without warning by the Gestapo.
• 54:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was taken to the police headquarters, stripped, humiliated, brutally interrogated about his sexuality.
• 54:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: The experience was dehumanizing and terrifying, but worse terrors awaited him.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was deported to Shermek Vorbrook, a lesser known Nazi concentration camp in Alseys.
• 54:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Unlike larger camps like Doca or Auschwitz, Schirmek was specifically used for political prisoners, resistance members, and individuals deemed socially undesirable, including gay men.
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: At Schirmek, Pierre witnessed acts of unimaginable cruelty.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the most haunting moments of his life occurred when a young man he had once loved was publicly executed.
• 54:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Nazis forced Pierre and other prisoners to watch as this man accused of being gay, was strip naked, had a metal bucket placed over his head, and was mulled to death by trained German shepherds.
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jale, check your pulse on this after, but I can leave some of these details out if we feel this is too much.
• 55:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: This gruesome act was meant to terrorize the prisoners and break their spirits.
• 55:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Peter later described this event as a defining trauma when that haunted him before the rest of his life.
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: There were beatings, starvation forced labor, and his survival depended on silence and obedience.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Any act of defiance would have met certain death.
• 55:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: When the war ended, and Alsace was liberated, Pierre was released, but freedom brought little relief.
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: In post-war France, homosexuality remained deeply stigmatized and survivors of Nazi persecution were expected to stay silent.
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pierre returned to his family, but found no understanding or support, even worse, unlike other victims of Nazi atrocities, gay men were not recognized as legitimate victims of persecution by the French government.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pierre hit his experiences for decades, he married a woman and lived a quiet life while carrying immense private pain.
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: His decision to come forward was later, in the 1980s, more than 40 years later.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: This decision was sparked by comments from a local bishop who had claimed that AIDS was a divine punishment for homosexuality.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Outraged Pierre Broke his silence and revealed his story to the world.
• 56:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pierre Seals testimony became a cornerstone of queer Holocaust history.
• 56:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 1994, he published his memoir, I, Pierre Seal, deported homosexual, which shed light on a largely ignored chapter of the Holocaust.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Through his courage to give voice to countless others,
• 56:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know that was a sobering beginning, but we're going to jump to a really silly 90's story in Fury.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Number one, by Barry Dutter and MC Wyman, MC Wyman has the craziest big giant mussely art.
• 56:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is, uh, we begin in France in 1944, where Nick Fury fights a both-gagged one striker who has a swastika animal in the burning town of Shubo France.
• 56:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fury wins his solo combat fight, but his commanding officer later gets pissed.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you got lucky this time, your recklessness could have gotten a lot of innocent people killed.
• 56:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've been keeping an eye on you, Fury.
• 56:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a maverick, a loose cannon.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have a flaker and pistoling on our progurules.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: A disrespect for authority.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have no discipline.
• 57:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would never trust you with anything of real importance that goes for your howling commandos, too.
• 57:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're just a pathetic collection of misfits and losers who infuri punches the guy in the jaw and then ends up in the stockade.
• 57:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, Hitler himself has gathered the Red Skull and Arnhem Zola, who is experimenting on weird creatures like two-headed dogs.
• 57:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zola says, take this potion headscore.
• 57:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Should you have a need to keep you on a state of suspended animation for decades?
• 57:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: You were not age, and when you were alive, you would be young and strong.
• 57:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Red Skull says, donkishen Ersola.
• 57:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: with the way the war is going, I may be needing it soon, and eight of Hitler says, not too soon, I hope my friends.
• 57:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Erlensolus is highly Hitler and Red Scorses, my employer or the potion is merely a precautionary measure, of course.
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, and in my recent events, says Hitler, quite understandable.
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm taking
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: similar precautions with my own.
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zola, how ghostly experiment.
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zola says perfectly, I've created a genetic duplicate of you, minefielder, and the event of your death, your mind, will be transferred into that of your clone.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: In this way, we assure you glorious immortality, but then Von Strucker enters with dire warnings that the Nazi war machine is collapsing swiftly.
• 58:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Von Strucker plans to take over the fledgling hydro group, forming in Japan, planning to make it into a massive fascist army, and the red skull says I'll join you.
• 58:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Together, we shall shape hydro into a force
• 58:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We were gonna accomplish what Hitler could not.
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Someday we would rule the world, says Strucker.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Decades pass, hydroforms, so does Sheila Ironman shows up.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then there's a little guy named Wolverine in this book for a minute.
• 58:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And fascism never quite dies.
• 58:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It just takes on a new form.
• 58:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: One time Nick Fury's brother came back his Scorpio.
• 58:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a whole thing.
• 58:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, in the Marvel Universe,
• 58:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: all the old comic supervillains survive to create like silly templates of work criminals in the present.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now we jump to my conversation with my dear friend, Justin, who I just threw into the deep end of this crazy pool, I take husband grade to see you.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you going to see you as well?
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you a red skull fan by friend?
• 58:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think he's a good villain, but to say I'm a fan.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a fan of what he does, per se, but he's one of those villains where it's just he's pure evil, you know?
• 58:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's definitely the barometer by which we measure other evil.
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you Nick Fury fan?
• 59:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm mixed on Nick Fury because especially this comic he's kind of that macho like action hero type character which really doesn't resonate with me.
• 59:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am definitely more about the strong women.
• 59:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, you know, there's a couple panels with him where he's in the Harry four arms and she's like, oh, okay.
• 59:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: He loves to shirtless wrestle with Baron Vaughn Strucker.
• 59:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of his favorite pastimes.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Harry Chess, the Harry Arms, it's like, well, this should be manly, but, you know.
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, if you're like that, then like, really masculine part of Wolverine, you know, but that's kind of all he is.
• 59:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's only about jumping into fury number one from the mid 90s.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I got to hear your thoughts on the art first.
• 59:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: MC Wyman draws some, who's draw some comics, my friend.
• 59:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So my first thought was actually the cover, the cover definitely says a lot.
• 59:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: We got this woman in a bikini with these proportions, and again, granted we don't see said woman in bikini.
• 1:00:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We got Nick Fury looking like Chuck Norris up in here, and then we got Tom Von Strucker and Scorpion in the corner, granted we don't actually see Scorpio in a Scorpio look really, but hey, we got the hell at carrier.
• 1:00:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So all in all it's a good like,
• 1:00:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this is one of those issues from the mid-90s.
• 1:00:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know, Greenwald probably had something to do with this, where it's kind of tying in a bunch of the continuity.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's taking the red cons and like the stuff and putting it all in one place, right?
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, Hitler's cloned body, red skulls, like potion that keeps him alive.
• 1:00:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's kind of, it's just mixing all the continuity together.
• 1:00:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's really focused on the division between shield and a hydra and how they're ancient kind of, well, I don't know if you've read the more modern series, where we take like shield and a hydra and we put them all the way back
• 1:00:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: prehistory before Christ, like these these groups have been like in combat forever and ever.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow Nick Fury and Recon's groundbreaking.
• 1:00:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Were there moments in this issue that I'm used to you or that we're very entertaining for you?
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: So my overall consensus of this story was I thought it was an interesting way of tying so many aspects of the Marvel Universe together.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was a little confused by the time scale just because we did have like the fantastic for already existing while shield was forming.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did like that we even got some aspects of the X-Men involved, like we saw a forge, like raid Richards, that's a given, that's expected, but to see four judalized in the building of the hairlicaria was actually pretty cool, and I'm not sure if it's referenced elsewhere, but I just thought that was neat, and then of course we'll bring with this ties to World War II.
• 1:01:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a given he appeared, and
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Forges of veteran, but also he used to build weapons for the government, remember?
• 1:01:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: One thing that actually amused me relating to Wolverine story was when they're at the border and they make them sound so absurdly like stereotypical Canadian, like, I don't actually know any Canadians that talk like that, where it's like, good day, how's it going?
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: A, and I'm reading it in that accent too, where it's like, they're doing a, they're doing strange brew, have you ever seen strange brew?
• 1:02:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have not known.
• 1:02:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an American comedy about Canadians.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the Canadians, it's like Rick Moranis and they're like, hey, hey, whoser, what's up, yeah?
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like they're, they're just doing that film because that's mid-90s for sure.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I mean, to be fair, coming from Saskatchewan, people like, I used to live there and then I moved to Alberta.
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know getting a little off topic.
• 1:02:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Going back to Saskatchewan, I hear that accent.
• 1:02:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the sure thing, how is it going in?
• 1:02:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I hear it in family too.
• 1:02:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: like that.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, be equivalent for Americans.
• 1:02:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's sort of like you know, like the assumption that everyone you know speaks with like a Minnesota and like oh, I'm from Minnesota, you know, it's a lot of things.
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: We went to Minnesota for like uncanny.
• 1:02:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't hear any of that.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I heard more of it in Saskatchewan.
• 1:02:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's more I think that's more rural for sure.
• 1:02:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now I opened with the story and you know I try to tie stories in so this is a story that takes place in France at least at the beginning We see Nick Fury, Sock and Baron von Strucker then getting in trouble and Sock and his commander in the jaw too, right?
• 1:03:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's part of me that's like fuck yeah, I kind of just want to punch some people in the face a little bit But we opened with the story of a gay man one of the few gay men who has shared his experience of having been in the camps He was not in one of the direct death camps, but obviously still a lot of people died really horrible
• 1:03:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: A PR seal you can look him up.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the many heroes he's passed away.
• 1:03:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: A very distinguished looking person.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've never seen anyone that looks like this guy.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: What was it like for you to hear that opening story of PR seal?
• 1:03:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was honestly pretty chilling and I think you kind of resonated with me, especially with a lot of the stuff going on in the world.
• 1:03:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like
• 1:03:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: hearing about people deemed socially undesirable, and you compare that to how the trans community is treated.
• 1:03:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the immigrant community here in the United States.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the immigrant community, it even like autism coming up as something like it's supposed to be bad thing when really, it's something that's to be understood if anything.
• 1:04:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a normal, it's a normal deviation from humanity, and so many of my loved ones have autism, including my sister.
• 1:04:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's amazing.
• 1:04:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and someone who, you know, was recently diagnosed with it too, it's like, I kind of like the idea of not, you know, kind of having the same brain or thinking like everyone else, you know, it's kind of like a different way of seeing things if anything.
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just makes you great.
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you're fantastic.
• 1:04:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: How you doing in 2025, my friend, these are crazy times.
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's stressful, it's that balance of trying to stay informed, but also not letting it get to you too much because there's that feeling of powerlessness where like you want to do something but you're just one person, but when enough people speak up, it really does make a difference.
• 1:04:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a matter of not letting yourself get brought down.
• 1:04:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I know that's such an easy thing to say, but you know, just finding that balance, right?
• 1:04:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think you're incorrect though, right?
• 1:04:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think the something I'm really really pushing myself and others on is I can't change a lot of things, but I can certainly change me, right?
• 1:04:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't change the law, but I can make sure people know they are safe in my home.
• 1:05:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can spread love.
• 1:05:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can raise incredible kids.
• 1:05:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, just being around me, being out there as yourself is enough.
• 1:05:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I look at where I live.
• 1:05:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alberta being a bit more conservative, having marched in the pride parade, me being out there as an open and, you know, proud gay man, that says to somebody who's too young to be scared like, hey, this is this person's out here living their best life as themselves, you know, and that can be said for like, you know, lesbian, trans.
• 1:05:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I had a I had a recent experience after the Charlie Kirk shooting working as a crisis respond to here locally and I sat with all the people that needed me which included about 75% of the people sitting with me more maga kids.
• 1:05:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I sat and I listened and I cared and I showed love.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know that I'll expect the same in return, you know, that's a rough thing to consider a little bit.
• 1:05:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also really hard to kind of fall, not fall into the mindset of, I wouldn't say being the bigger person, but, you know, letting that negativity affect you and fall into that negativity yourself.
• 1:05:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I look at somebody like my sister who, you know, seeing Nick Fury and Scorpio, I feel like we kind of have that relationship where like Scorpio, you know, being on the side of fascism.
• 1:06:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, having a sibling who kind of has that mindset, you know, it's like, I have, I have those negative thoughts of, you know, just, I try not to let the negative thoughts get to me and not, you know, like, trying to figure out the best words for that, you know?
• 1:06:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and not get overwhelmed.
• 1:06:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think I think you said it beautifully earlier.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, I always love you.
• 1:06:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you're a phenomenal person.
• 1:06:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love hanging out every time.
• 1:06:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've missed you this year.
• 1:06:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know feel coming to the States doesn't feel as good as it once did, but I hopefully get to see each other again very soon, my friend.
• 1:06:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Please send Brian my love.
• 1:06:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wonderful to see you, my friend.
• 1:06:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely, same here, and I guess I'd love to come to the States, it's just a matter of, you know, the border.
• 1:06:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't understand that coming to Canada is just as bad too.
• 1:06:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I can't really, you know, I get it.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not just as bad.
• 1:06:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't even feel safe.
• 1:06:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I'll come your direction.
• 1:06:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll say hi up there sometime.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, definitely.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, everybody.
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening.
• 1:07:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Take care of yourselves out there, live boldly, live joyfully, and stay safe.
• 1:07:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks Justin.
• 1:07:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you all next time, all right?