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Marvel Tarot! With David Sexton and Michael Elliott! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

0:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Graimalk and Lane podcast where queer friends and allies gathered to review and discuss the original X-Men comics and continuity order.
0:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to be releasing this in September on the show where we're going to be having a lot of conversations around Marvel magic and the incredible world that exists there.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I of course, my listeners will recognize was a long-term contributor to the Marvel.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Handbooks.
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I am thrilled to be joined by one of my fellow contributors the incredible David sex and we worked on books together But never met and then my dear friend Michael Elliott has a return to us today as well Let me open by just inviting you both to share a little about yourselves.
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Let us know your name and pronouns And tell us a little bit about your origin in a coming to Marvel and comic books in the first place
0:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's begin with David.
0:53
[SPEAKER_01]: David, welcome to Graham Walken Lane.
0:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, thanks for having me, Chad.
0:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm David, he, him.
0:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been a comic book fan and nerd.
1:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And since I was, could read, I imagine I started reading from comic books.
1:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was always drawn to the magic side of the comic stuff, draw stuff as a kid, started working for Marvel, because I had for a long time looked at magic and how it's sort of like languished in the Marvel universe.
1:17
[SPEAKER_04]: There were all in these really successful long-running
1:22
[SPEAKER_04]: titles, books like Dr. Strange that I loved would make it for like maybe 50-60 issues at the most, and then get canceled and they were trying to reboot it and try to bring it back again.
1:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I ran into David Gabriel, who is the VP of Marketing at
1:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Marvel and I said we had a short conversation about comics as one does and I said that, you know, in my mind, the problem with Marvel's magic universe is there's no rule.
1:47
[SPEAKER_04]: If there's no rules, there's no fun.
1:49
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, most of the magic systems and stuff that's super successful, like you have hard rules, the author sort of cleverly subverts the rules of the system.
1:59
[SPEAKER_04]: but you know where the barriers are and the boundaries are.
2:02
[SPEAKER_04]: It felt like Marvel was just sort of whenever Dr. Strange needed to be strong enough he was strong enough and winning.
2:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Every wasn't strong enough.
2:08
[SPEAKER_04]: He wasn't strong enough.
2:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I said to him, you know, Marvel needs to really like figure out what the system is to put forward a system.
2:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And so he was intrigued by that.
2:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And they greenly, a four part mini series called the Mystic Arcana series.
2:21
[SPEAKER_04]: and it had two handbooks that sort of went along with it.
2:24
[SPEAKER_04]: One was just sort of matte magic-based and looking at the systems for magic.
2:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And then the other was a more traditional handbook where we looked at some really great, totally obscure, Marvel mystic characters that were just hilariously in the fringes, one appearance in the back of a book.
2:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Like anybody with that was had anything to do with magic.
2:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Got a listing in that book, which was so fun to do.
2:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to welcome you to the show.
2:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't wait to get to know you and your story better.
2:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me also welcome Michael Elliott back.
2:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Michael, it's been ages.
2:53
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you?
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a little while.
2:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for having you back, Chad.
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I am Michael Elliott, everybody.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: He, him.
2:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a professor of sociology and director of the Honors College at Towson University in Towson, Maryland.
3:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been reading comic books for as long as I can remember.
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Old enough to remember the old spinner rack and the supermarkets.
3:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I agree with you or we had superhero cartoons, we had movies in the late 70s or the 80s and I think I really got into comic books.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: In the 80s when they started to get a little bit more adults kind of blew my mind a little bit just at the heaviness of the subject matter and there were particular sort of pieces of comic books in the 1980s like Time Travel Days
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: as a young person in the 80s.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been hooked ever since.
3:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to have you on.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And lastly, I'm Chad Anderson.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I see him pronouns as well.
3:50
[SPEAKER_01]: My listeners know my stories.
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't share a lot of that today.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But I will start in the gayest place possible.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in the Missouri Ozarks.
3:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a huge reader.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I would check out books from the library all the time and no one led me to this.
4:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It happened entirely on my own but I started picking up the original Wizard of Oz books from like 1900 which the first three books are bangers even now.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Elfrankebaum was a little bit of a racist.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But I love Wicked and I love the Wizard of Oz in the way that is so closely associated with the queer community, so many people find that story of being stuck in gray Kansas and being able to go to that land of technicolor, where you have a pair of Ruby slippers and some crazy witches, right?
4:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The Wicked Witch of the West is not a character that's used very much in the book, but Margaret Hamilton in the movies was a little bit of a shame, but it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it's a shame that it
4:36
[SPEAKER_01]: amazing and just kind of changed everything.
4:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so fascinating to look into the history of the queer culture and the way that queer people latch on to the idea of magic.
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Just since the wicked film came out, I work as a therapist, I work largely with the trans community.
4:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had 10 or 12 different trans clients bring up wicked and the idea of the alphabet representing their story in such a particular way, defying gravity, fighting the patriarchy.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Here are the only people that can access the magic, but all the other people pretend that
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: there's something so intrinsically special and we're gonna talk a lot about magic this month on the show which is really fun.
5:10
[SPEAKER_04]: The character too, but we're talking magic with the C, not magic with the K. I loved was obsessed with the audiobooks as well and actually I have a published taro deck of the Wizard of Oz that you know uses the major arcana is the wake, the witch is the moon, Dorothy is the fool and I just thought they were fantastic and magic was I guess it's that
5:32
[SPEAKER_04]: The Harry Potter thing, all that stuff, like that sense of specialness, like a hidden ability that you have that the world doesn't necessarily know about.
5:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Like that was the thing that sort of appealed to me because you felt, you know, even in a lovely household that I lived in, you know, Midwestern, I come from Ohio.
5:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Like they didn't know who I was.
5:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a secret.
5:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I had secret abilities.
5:53
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, whatever those were, I saw the world in a different way.
5:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think we immediately see ourselves as magic children in the best of ways and in the worst of ways, um, cursed and blessed, um, from the minute we're able to understand that we're different.
6:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Sounds like the X-Men allegory to me.
6:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up Mormon and I give thought to this a lot.
6:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So I used to teach things like diagnostics at a college or collegiate level and we would talk about the point in class where what differs like a hallucination or a compulsion, what differs with that between that and like a religious belief, right?
6:27
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like magic and mysticism worked into religion, the idea of like
6:32
[SPEAKER_01]: healing abilities and the ability to channel higher powers and the ability to like open ancient texts and draw upon the resources, don't understand things, predict the future, right?
6:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a certain point where most religions will decry what they see as magic or a cultism away from a lot of their texts.
6:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think every culture on earth has its own connections to magic and mysticism.
6:55
[SPEAKER_01]: from astral projection and inner healing, you know, and on and on.
7:00
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all kinds of things that are worked into our everyday culture.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, when we apply this into a superhero world, of course, it gets very intense very quickly.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So David, you talked about proposing these initial handbooks, way back when.
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: The Orissium Mystic Arcana series is really delightful.
7:15
[SPEAKER_01]: One feature is the character magic herself, one feature is the Scarlet Witch.
7:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There's one about Nico Menoru and one about the Black Knight.
7:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And it builds a really lovely world and you choose the focal character of Ian McNeigh to be your cut of a source through all of this, who's a very obscure, deep, early 80's deep dig.
7:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Ian McNeigh, I thought it was a really interesting character because he's, he's a novice, or he wants so much to be a master, but he doesn't know.
7:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And if I was going to do a study of like, to try to figure out what magic was about, I didn't want someone who knew it all.
7:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted someone who was like trying to figure it out.
7:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So he was sort of my, you know, entry point for the readers.
7:56
[SPEAKER_04]: If you, Dr. Stranger's sometimes comes across it's just knowing it all and it wasn't so interesting.
8:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It wouldn't feel so authentic as to have him struggle through it.
8:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Whereas the in-mign need to me felt like this.
8:06
[SPEAKER_04]: As you said, the super obscure character
8:09
[SPEAKER_04]: and a book that was, I don't know who the writer was, but it was Charles Vess that did the art for it.
8:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was just really beautiful, fascinating.
8:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a backstory and one of the issues of Marvel fanfare.
8:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's Marvel fanfare number six from 1883.
8:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And the writer on this book was Roger Stern.
8:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The only character he's only been used there and then in your books.
8:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, again, it's me loving those fringe characters and being obsessed with them, but that was why I decided not to make it a doctor's strange story.
8:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted it to be someone who's an outsider on the magic thing and someone who we don't know everything about.
8:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
8:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you wrote your marble taro book, which I think of all of the books is the most impressive and I know it's the one that you had your hands in the most.
8:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Every page of this book is like you're kind of looking at a page in Ian McNeese journal or like the top of his desk.
9:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There's lots of texts and pictures woven in and out together.
9:04
[SPEAKER_01]: and you propose a lot of really fascinating theories about the way Marvel magic works.
9:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I worked on the handbooks with you again, we never met.
9:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you worked directly with Jeff Christensen, Jeff Sunquist, the Jeff's who were both my bosses at the time.
9:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna open with just reading a little bit of the InMcNeil log book from the first page of Marvel Tarot.
9:23
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a really fun beginning.
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: June 21st, magic is a mess.
9:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The foundations and structures of sorcery are crumbling.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: For proof of the decline, one can compare magic then with magic now.
9:35
[SPEAKER_01]: The decline is clear, intricate and inspiring spells and rituals were first replaced by easier,
9:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And now even that simple system is disappearing.
9:45
[SPEAKER_01]: How do the graceful gestures and the intricate incantations of the ancient one, devolve into a wizard shouting the word bang over their crudely pointed finger?
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: What's next?
9:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll future sorcerers summon the winds of Watthume by hoisting a leg and declare and delivering a mystic.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Magic's steady decline got suddenly sharper this morning as I consulted the first tarot.
10:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I inherited this powerful deck from Dr. Strange who used the car's unique properties to select heroes for his secret defenders.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Linked through inchantments to every living thing on earth, the first tarot chooses from amongst all those possibilities.
10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The single best representative for each car's archetype.
10:21
[SPEAKER_01]: The tarot archetypes existed as living individuals before Atlantis, but this deck was the first instance of those archetypes being recorded, and structured in such a way that the patterns they produced could be observed, as the patterns of the seas or the seasons, to give clues about the future.
10:36
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how it worked, only now it's broken.
10:39
[SPEAKER_01]: really didn't be kidding.
10:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So David, I'm picturing you just laying out with all of these comic books just all over the place as you structure every spell, every entity, every mystical realm.
10:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And I deeped though, I mean, I really did a lot of stuff.
10:53
[SPEAKER_04]: And that reminds me of one of the things that really triggered me was there is a Marvel comic book where the spell that's cast is the the source or just puts his hand like this and goes bang.
11:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's the, that was the magic spell and it was like, it's a laser gun like what's the point there's no beauty there's no there's no nothing to it it's what how do you differentiate this from that a gun essentially was what they had reduced it to and so Ian McNeon this idea that magic is broken.
11:22
[SPEAKER_04]: in his world, really addressed the fact that I felt like Marvel magic was a mess.
11:27
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, as I said, there were no rules.
11:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Every comic book treated a completely different land.
11:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And when it gets to the point where it's just like turned into a gun, like what's the fun of it?
11:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So I really did try to look back and and found some
11:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, Roger Stern, there is the book, it despair is trying to trick Dr. Strange into committing suicide.
11:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Despair is one of the old-time favorite Marvel movies.
11:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I think he's in this guy's, and the incantation, like I'm struggling right under seven rings has ragdoller, and from Indigo to something black, but oh, sure grant me something more.
12:00
[SPEAKER_04]: The crimson bands of Citarac, and that's how he destroys despair.
12:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And I mean, that it's,
12:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I am a pentameter, it has this beautiful, you know, rhyme, it's poetry.
12:11
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we went from that to this, you know, to what was going on in the 80s or in the early 90s when everything was sort of reduced to a gun.
12:19
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, we really can, like this, this stuff's to stop somewhere.
12:23
[SPEAKER_01]: To delve in a little deeper, the one I picked out in advance here, in Fantastic 414, Agatha Hardness gives this spell.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Let Earthly Barriers now be gone.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's flame and sin you be as one, fire burn, power grow, fire set the world aglow, matchless strength now fuel the fire ever further.
12:42
[SPEAKER_01]: higher, higher.
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: In the name of Hexon Shade, let by mortal image fade.
12:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Let all distance turn to dust.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Let my will supply the thrust.
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Let the rock become as air.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Let the here become there.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And then around 2008, Brian Michael Bendis started doing spells with his characters and new Avengers where they were like, who got on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god, on my god
13:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, the, you know, coming from Grey Malkin, right?
13:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Like Grey Malkin, Pat, it calls it on.
13:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Like clearly you're referencing Shakespeare.
13:11
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what that Agatha Harkness spell sounded like.
13:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It sounded like a Shakespearean incantation.
13:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And then so one of the things that I was thinking about is like, why, why incantations?
13:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I tried to explain that, you know, that these, the people are, are appeasing these mystic entities.
13:26
[SPEAKER_04]: They're, the incantation is actually calling out to this piece of other realms.
13:34
[SPEAKER_04]: is just not an effective way to do that in my book.
13:37
[SPEAKER_04]: There's beautiful incantations in some of the early examples and it just sort of degrades.
13:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was trying to get back to that.
13:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I felt like that was important.
13:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And then understanding why and when an incantation might be called for and when maybe astral projection or some of the simpler stuff, like there's certain things that Dr. Strange does that don't really require incantations.
13:56
[SPEAKER_04]: He's not calling on forces from outside of our realm.
13:59
[SPEAKER_04]: They're more like psychic abilities that he has.
14:02
[SPEAKER_01]: beautiful job of organizing.
14:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, before we continue, Michael, I'd love to hear some of your connections to magic, especially Marvel magic.
14:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any favorites?
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love magic for a couple of reasons.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And one is, it can be a learned thing, right?
14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: As an academic, you know, if I were to pick Dr. Strange, so for those of you who listen to the audio, you can't see the whole of that.
14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: My Dr. Strange Bobblehead, I've been told I bear some resemblance.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I see it, I can see it, yeah.
14:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I ain't Comper Batchy.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So, thank you.
14:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that it's, you know, in old dusty books, you know, when old darkened libraries, I love that part of it.
14:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing I love about magic is that it's unpredictable.
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It can often trump physical strength.
14:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And those who have great physical strength just don't know what's going on.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: They can't, you know, they can't counter it.
14:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And it stresses Ironman out so much for joys makes.
14:53
[SPEAKER_04]: as well.
14:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And Superman, not to go into the other thing, but like, always magic, kryptonite and magic versus other things that just to be with, you know, you didn't have enough resistance to order ability to do it, but yeah.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Although Zetana just says things backwards, which makes me happy.
15:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So David, you have one of your major premises or treatises as we will.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like you're proving a theory.
15:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You have four different types of Marvel magic that one can master in.
15:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You cover them all briefly.
15:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The first is we tell us about egocentric magic.
15:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So egocentric magic comes from like the cell.
15:25
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, you're essentially, it's like astro-projection limited to lepathy.
15:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the things that you can do that manipulate the energies that are within someone.
15:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Like a yogi might start to be able to manifest
15:38
[SPEAKER_04]: kind of magic.
15:39
[SPEAKER_04]: That was my premise with that was the first step.
15:42
[SPEAKER_04]: First, you have to master the self before you're able to extend anything out into the world.
15:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's where we can automatically have some fascinating conversations because Dr. Strange is very known for ask for projection by drawing upon egocentric magic.
15:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But characters like silo, kinics, Charles Xavier, has to really project because it's part of their power set.
16:06
[SPEAKER_01]: where the manifestation and the creation of things around you are both present and the ability to combat or see whatever else is present in the astral realms, such as the shadow king.
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Second type is what we call eco-centric magic.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So, eco-centric and then eco-centric.
16:21
[SPEAKER_01]: What's eco-centric magic?
16:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So, eco-centric is, once you've mastered the self, then you can start to control the world around you.
16:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, elemental magic.
16:28
[SPEAKER_04]: This is my great
16:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Ecosentric is controlling the world, Ecosentric is controlling the world around you.
16:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So elemental magic, things that are being used to alter your environment, or to move what's immediately in your vicinity.
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have characters like Storm, who has a family line related to Ashake and others where she can manipulate the winds and the environment around her.
16:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But on a more magic centric level, we see characters like Manfang, who are altering the world and have kind of magic
17:01
[SPEAKER_01]: components to them.
17:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Jennifer Kale seems to be a particularly eco centric magic manipulator and there's of course many others and then we have mutants that attach to specific realms like magic with limbo who has very eco centric magic but only based in limbo right so there's there's a connections that we find in different places then we go to exo centric magic.
17:20
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, this is the thing that we were just talking about.
17:23
[SPEAKER_04]: This idea of incantations that are summoning extra terrestrial, extra realms, you know, siphon, or citerac, or, what to, all of these great things that were named vachanti, ashore.
17:37
[SPEAKER_04]: These beings that are in nearby dimensions that grant their powers to people who are, you know, connected to them in some way.
17:46
[SPEAKER_04]: the incantational magic and this to me is like the really this is the big league magic if you're starting to play outside not you know outside of our universe outside of our dimension and draw powers in from out there that's major stuff.
17:58
[SPEAKER_01]: This will ever touch as this gem shall possess the power of the crimson bands of Sidorac hence you who read these words shall become forever more a human juggernaut.
18:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's the ability to take an artifact and draw upon its power like juggernaut or
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: or sit or act as a character that you make a bargain with.
18:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you channel like the crimson bands from his dimension and form an incantation.
18:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like you're making a little deal with an entity kind of around you, right?
18:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the fourth and final is Necromanic magic.
18:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us about that.
18:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So magic that comes from death is the forbidden magic that you know, the dark whole deals with it.
18:38
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of this negative or evil, what we might consider to be evil magic, comes through necromanic magic.
18:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Scython is one of the main characters that I used as an example of dark magic who the Darkhold is responsible for vampires and zombies and a bunch of these like undead creatures that roam Marvel.
18:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where things get very lovecrafted, right?
19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Where we start drawing upon the entities of other realms.
19:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So son of Satan and Satana with the realms of hell here.
19:07
[SPEAKER_01]: We see characters like Blasco who are channeling deals with like the old ones or the
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And you say siphon, I always say chithon, but this people chaos got at one to gore who's making deals with people, but wants to possess them in return.
19:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's like a cost for the soul.
19:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we have things like zombies that fall in here too, right?
19:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's all kinds of mutants that can access the dead or realms of the dead, dead girls the one that stands out, the most of course.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it difficult for you to classify these areas of magic or did they come from other sources?
19:38
[SPEAKER_04]: So when I started to break it down I was definitely connecting to the idea of four because four is the number that resonates throughout the Marvel universe like the fantastic for the first group there's lots of examples of of four characters as opposed to DC which is more based on a Trinity the modeling ever seems to be sets of four so I used that and the and the four major arcana or the four arcana from from the terror deck minor arcana
20:06
[SPEAKER_04]: earth, water, wind, and fire, sort of looked at those, it's sort of break it down.
20:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And at the time, I had the premise that there were only four elder gods that survived.
20:15
[SPEAKER_04]: That's been changed a little bit, but this idea that it was siphon, set, or store in Gaia, where the only elder gods that survived.
20:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I, so
20:24
[SPEAKER_04]: of how to each of them, each kind of the mat, each kind of magic sort of focused on them.
20:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I was really trying to create a structure that was based on, you know, the history of Marvel made sense, like mythopoic sense, not logical sense, but something that you're like, like the fairy tale threes, like something that felt like, oh yeah, that seems like it's correct.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: What I first read this, and I've referenced this on the show a few times over the years.
20:48
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, I had a conversation with Molly Laser, Marvel editor, Molly Laser about this recently, and it blew her mind.
20:54
[SPEAKER_01]: When you open Mystic Arcana Magic number one, the journal of Ian McNee repeats the numbers one, two, three, four, a bunch of times.
21:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it says, the first step to mastering the arcane arts is recognizing patterns that others don't see.
21:05
[SPEAKER_01]: The first two marbles of the Golden Age were a hero of fire and an underwater emperor.
21:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Next, a captain who stood for this great land and a man who ran faster than the wind.
21:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So referencing human torch, submariner, captain America, and hurricane.
21:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Fire, water, earth, air.
21:22
[SPEAKER_01]: The first heroes of the Silver Age were a man who flows like liquid, a thing made of stone, a woman as transparent as air and a hero made of fire, water, earth, air, fire, 1, 2, 3, 4.
21:32
[SPEAKER_01]: eternity, infinity, oblivion, death, surfer, walker, tamer, lord, one, two, three, four, four kinds of magic, egocentric, egocentric, exocentric, and necromatic.
21:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Four elder gods, four cornerstones of creation, a sword, a crown, a rose, a mirror, one, two, three, four, air, earth, water, fire.
21:52
[SPEAKER_01]: The second step to mastering the arcane arts is recognizing the patterns can change.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: One, two, three, pie, welcome to the world of magic.
22:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And that premise alone is so good because you're building the foundations of the very first Marvel comics ever and tying them together.
22:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can play that game with like every variation of the fantastic fort out there, which is really good from the frightful fort of the Super A. The frightful fort, there are also ones of examples of being an important, you know,
22:21
[SPEAKER_04]: an important basis for Marvel's structure, and I saw it over and over again, and so I decided to make that incorporate that into what I was trying to do in a structure stuff.
22:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me about the moment that you came up with the Earth Air Water Fire and the connection between the Golden Age and Silver Age?
22:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's so smart.
22:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I, I, you know, I don't know which obviously the fantastic for right always to me there is a fantastic for book that Claremont room where there's an incantation that's cast that that addresses that that says earth air water fire earth, you know, and talks about that.
22:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Invisible woman, um, Mr. Fentastic, human torch and the thing.
22:59
[SPEAKER_04]: So, those four characters were obviously based on the, on the four element.
23:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And whether Stanley did that consciously or not, it was interesting some of the things that, you know, like, I was like, wow, I wonder if he knew he was doing that or if he was just, you know, the character of Ushor, I'm going to go on a little tangent tangent.
23:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I, like, started, like, try to understand Ushor because I love that character.
23:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And there was an actual astro, there's an actual Germanic deity called Astara, who is the Don goddess, who, and I was looking at, you know, the four phases of the day, like each of the elder gods was a different thing.
23:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, did he know that he was connecting Astara to Astara when he was creating this character?
23:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, it's
23:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It's in there all of this stuff.
23:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't, I definitely was thinking the fantastic four in the four elements.
23:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And then when I looked back at the history of the very first comic books of Marvel, I noticed that the pattern existed there as well.
23:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And then I was like, oh, wow, that's really cool.
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really fun realization.
23:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, we have to apply it to the, the, the super apes, which is a conversation where it's like,
24:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been thinking about a couple things as you've been talking, David.
24:07
[SPEAKER_00]: First, the idea of implementing some kind of structure over this has got to be so difficult, you know, given everything that's been written.
24:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was also thinking as you were talking about the four different kinds that magic can also be very dangerous and that if you're not good and even if you are, you know, what's beyond the realm of the magician can be much more powerful than you and be wrathful.
24:30
[SPEAKER_00]: seems like a pretty big part of those last two elements of magic.
24:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm absolutely that they're trying to placate and tie these, these beings that, you know, could destroy them most humans.
24:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think have you, have you met Dormemo anyone?
24:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, exactly.
24:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, you know, like an NC of pure fire and destruction, um, so it felt to me like that was something that wanted to happen.
24:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Like there had to be, we needed to emphasize that bargain.
24:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Like why was why was storming and helping anybody?
25:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Or not helping someone?
25:01
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the deal that was going on?
25:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And I wanted to explore that more.
25:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Why?
25:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Why do why does a sure care about the human race?
25:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Why do why would any of these people provide anything for for us?
25:13
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, what's in it for them?
25:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're gonna be talking Marvel Magic in every episode this month.
25:17
[SPEAKER_01]: In the next episode after this, I have a conversation with Al-Uing, all about kind of the Marvel Cosmos.
25:23
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the eighth Cosmos and there's seven more that exist and magic comes into being in one of those.
25:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And Earth becomes a focal point in a very particular way.
25:33
[SPEAKER_01]: David, you seem to have a particular love for Taro.
25:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk about your connection to Taro and how you used Taro through the secret defenders?
25:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is a book no one has read.
25:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Stephanie!
25:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I love it!
25:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I love Secret Amendment.
25:48
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a hottest hot mess, too.
25:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It was really it's difficult to read sometimes, but I loved it and there's some really crazy obscure characters that I ended up incorporating into it.
25:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I started reading Tarot when I was in college as sort of a party trick.
26:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I got really sort of interested in it because I drawn to archetypes and started to see
26:13
[SPEAKER_04]: The moment that I knew I wanted to do a tarot of eyes was, I was obviously the four wishes of the protagonist.
26:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I went home, that's the earth, I want a brain, that's the air, I want courage, that's fire, I want, what's the other one?
26:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I want love, that's water.
26:30
[SPEAKER_04]: So the four elements are also, you know, these archetypal concepts are infused throughout a specially fantastical or magical thing.
26:38
[SPEAKER_04]: They're the building blocks of a lot of our stories.
26:42
[SPEAKER_04]: in taro, and then I actually have two books published, one is the wing spirit deck, and then one is the taro vase.
26:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So I would sort of bring in some of that sensibility of a system to help structure magic in marble.
26:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And there is a tradition of it, right?
26:58
[SPEAKER_04]: There's this taro of marbles that Dr. Strange was using.
27:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, this idea of this system of four that recurs and recurs is part of the structure of the taro.
27:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So that was what connected them into my favorite brain.
27:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have the character taro, of course, who's a little use member of the Hellians who literally draws taro decks and manifests the entity on the other side, right?
27:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you a fan of Morayon or school bear?
27:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I was always fascinated by the eat.
27:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's interesting, like you touched on it earlier.
27:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Marvel, because they really weren't developing the magical side so much, they tried several times, ended up taking magic and turning it into a mutant power a lot of the time.
27:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So the mystical things became, you know, the scarlet witch is a great example of that.
27:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, like, it's hex magic, but what is the magic?
27:45
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a lot of these like semi-mistical mutant characters that sort of you Served magic because it was easier to set parameters on the rules of their abilities if they were mutant ability.
27:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Rather than to let them be let loose into the world of magic, which no one really knew what was going on with that.
28:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
28:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I love the character taro, but again, like I was like, how is this mirror, it's like, well, this feels like a magical ability, but it's being sort of drawn into the into this mutin ability because no one knew what to do with that.
28:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a ton of characters that in charge.
28:18
[SPEAKER_01]: specifically connected with Magic.
28:20
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them obviously being the Scarlet Witch.
28:22
[SPEAKER_01]: After the publication of our Magic Handbooks, the Scarlet Witch casts the no more mutants giant spell that wipes out the mutant genic cross time lines.
28:32
[SPEAKER_01]: A Steve Orlando has been writing Marvel Magic with that character over the last few years to great extent, because one division, and later Agatha all along have really pushed those ideas of Marvel Magic right to the very limit.
28:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you been able to view some of those shows?
28:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to hear from both of you what your thoughts are on, want to vision, and Agatha all along, a bolder which I adored.
28:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll let Michael go for her.
28:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely watched the former, I have not finished Agatha Harkness.
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: One division was great, right?
29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody loved it.
29:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It had this,
29:03
[SPEAKER_00]: This beginning that really drew you in before you realized that she had created a spell such that she could maintain this, you know, perfect almost Brady bunch kind of world and it looks so idyllic.
29:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you realize she's really abusing her powers.
29:17
[SPEAKER_00]: She's really done something probably deeply wrong here and then things go off the rails.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So I certainly enjoyed that quite a bit.
29:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I was going to say, I love both series and I thought that the Agatha all along, which I thought was great.
29:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Showed a lot of these, like, sim, like, they really got the idea of a magical structure of logic that is not the traditional kind of logic, but a fairytale logic.
29:39
[SPEAKER_04]: The, you know, the amount, the number of members of the coven and the different tasks that they did and the different elements that were involved.
29:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, a lot of that structural stuff was was in that.
29:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I love that it was sort of all, you know, well, I'm not in spoiler.
29:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Never mind, I'm going to end that sentence now.
29:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Watch the last few episodes.
29:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're having the trial of Agatha Hardness later this month on my show.
30:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's confined.
30:03
[UNKNOWN]: We're going to talk all the matter.
30:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that character, I think, is super interesting.
30:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of the handbooks, I wrote like an ancient history of Marvel that Jeff Christensen asked me to write.
30:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And I had this, the, like, the older gods had representatives that were there and it was like the last conference.
30:24
[SPEAKER_04]: of the last time that they spoke to each other.
30:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And Agatha Harkness was one of the representatives in Varney.
30:29
[SPEAKER_04]: This was like an ancient Atlantis before it fell.
30:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was trying to use characters that were like, you know, centuries and centuries old.
30:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the, you know, storms, original descendant or ancestor was part of it.
30:42
[SPEAKER_04]: But Agatha Harkness, in some tellings, has been around since the age of Atlantis.
30:46
[SPEAKER_04]: As a young woman, as an apprentice, and has, like, you know, survived all of its time.
30:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to toss a bunch of Marvel concepts at us in a minute, Marvel Magic Concepts.
30:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But Michael, I'd love to pause here in here and update on your survey.
30:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about the documentation of magic.
31:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Phandoms are also their own version of our escapism, our ability to believe in something.
31:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a collective of greens that this realm exists and there are rules to it.
31:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that's what you've been studying.
31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a beautiful time for our episode.
31:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so excited to hear about the results of your survey.
31:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So I talked to everybody about what you've been doing and then I'd love to hear where you're at with it.
31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
31:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a really good segue by the way, Chad.
31:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So almost like I do this for a living.
31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: My research is still ongoing in fits and starts.
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to funding or lack thereof.
31:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: For those who haven't heard me on the program before, I've been conducting a social scientific study of Comic Con culture.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I mean by that are the kinds of interests that gather at Comic Con's, which are now very popular superheroes, comic books, anime, and manga, gaming, sci-fi, those kinds of things.
31:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm gathering systematic information from fans of these interests and testing different hypotheses about van behavior.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I do is I tend to go to Comic Conz, and I distribute a 26-question survey.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I have over 600 respondents right now, and I also conduct in-depth interviews, and I have over 40 of those right now as well.
32:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The central question that I'm exploring is why do people become devoted fans?
32:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are a variety of explanations over the decades that people have used to answer that question.
32:22
[SPEAKER_00]: These things are really trendy.
32:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a form of escapism.
32:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Some early answers were very psychological.
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: This was something dysfunctional.
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something very wrong with these young teenagers who are going, go, go over the Beatles.
32:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There must be something wrong with that.
32:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But the explanation that I find so fascinating Chad, which you referenced, is their religion connection.
32:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a long-standing literature.
32:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I call it the fandom as religion.
32:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Literature, I find it really compelling.
32:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it has its own problems both conceptually and in terms of lack of data.
32:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are the kind of improvements that I've been trying to make.
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So my key argument is that fans become devoted because their interests are sacred to them.
33:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And I define and I delineate different dimensions of the sacred based on the literature.
33:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I systematically explore those dimensions via survey and interview data.
33:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The results are fascinating and I'll get to those in just a second, but I do have some updates on where you can see my research.
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I was lucky enough to be asked to be on the USA today podcast the excerpt.
33:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find that on YouTube that aired on April 24 of this year.
33:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I was asked to write an article for the conversation, which is a pretty cool news outlets.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: These are news stories written by academics, but they're edited by journalists, so they they're able to translate them into everyday language.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: That was published March 12th of this year.
33:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The article is called for Superfans, Comic Con culture is more than fun.
33:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sacred, a sociologist explains.
33:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not my title.
33:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the editor.
33:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm going to have a pretty big layout of my results in September.
33:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So write about when this episode is going to air in a fan studies journal called transformative works and cultures.
34:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find that online.
34:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all access and that is a good year plus of going through the survey data, especially the open-ended questions, which require a thematic analysis and drawing out some of the key themes.
34:18
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm finding is that for many fans, their interests are much more than merely escapism.
34:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They're much more than something trendy and they're much more than a psychological dysfunction.
34:29
[SPEAKER_00]: A majority of respondents on the survey 75% say their interests play an important or very important role in their lives and a significant proportion experience them as sacred.
34:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And this varies by dimension.
34:41
[SPEAKER_00]: 89% say their interests occupy a unique and special place in their lives 63% say their interests give them inspiration and purpose 64% say their interests have taught them important values and moral direction 51% say their interests involve something powerful that deserves their attention and respect and 60% say their interests have inspired them to believe in something larger and more important than themselves.
35:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's interesting is that you can tease out more detail with open-ended questions.
35:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of my open-ended questions is, if you have learned some values or more lessons from your interest, what are they?
35:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What have you learned?
35:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answers are really rich, they're really diverse, but 28% say that they have gained a profound understanding of inclusivity and diversity.
35:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the most common theme.
35:28
[SPEAKER_00]: 18% has said that they've learned a sense of right or wrong.
35:31
[SPEAKER_00]: literally a moral philosophy from their interests.
35:34
[SPEAKER_00]: In 15%, say they've learned the importance of advocacy and active engagement.
35:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That is standing up for beliefs and those who lack representation.
35:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So overall, I'm just compiling what I think is much needed detail and data about fans and really diving deep and testing this idea of fandom as religion and adding important clarity about what it means to be devoted as a fan to these Comic Con interests.
36:01
[SPEAKER_04]: what separates the casual Comic Con visitor or the casual comic book reader.
36:05
[SPEAKER_04]: From the super devoted fans, I know that having conversations with some of the Marvel editors, they would if someone shot Captain America or something happened with one of their characters, they went like the readers would go capty baits misery on the editorial staff, like you killed this person
36:27
[SPEAKER_04]: as this deep meaning, this even there are fictional identity, it's deeper than that, it's there's real devotion to this idea, this concept of who he is, Captain America is, who that person is, and I think that it resonates through a lot of us, we all end up connected to ideas or ideals that we're willing to fight for and die for, and for these people, it's this, it's whatever this character is that personifies something that's meaningful to them.
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited to see the full study and Michael every time I have you on people will always respond like, oh, that's so fascinating.
36:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, and luck's a part of their brain that they're not Access it, you know, because it helps us question like, oh, why do I love the thing that I love.
37:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Marvel magic we've got character
37:08
[SPEAKER_01]: characters all over the Marvel universe that connect with some sort of entity.
37:13
[SPEAKER_01]: There's always a Faustian bargain, there's a drawing of strength, there's a lesson to be learned to price to be paid, right?
37:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Strange of course is a huge focal point for that, and he interfaces with the X-Men quite frequently.
37:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's magic all over our comic books.
37:26
[SPEAKER_01]: We've already referenced Storm and Juggernaut and other characters, so I'm just going to toss a few at you guys.
37:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to hear any of your thoughts and opinions on these characters, and we'll just kind of have a good time with it.
37:35
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the largest realms of Marvel magic is limbo, where we have characters like Velasco and Sim and Nostir, of Magic and Madeline prior.
37:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of rules that exist for limbo.
37:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But David, I'm gonna have you, I'm gonna love this one to you too, because limbo also connects to characters like ROM space night.
37:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us your thoughts about limbo.
37:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, that is a deep dive, wrong space night.
37:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I will tell you that that initial magic mini magic with the K.A.
38:03
[SPEAKER_04]: mini series where Alanya, it's like in the one minute, like he reaches, she gets pulled through something and they pull back and she's 17 years old or something.
38:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, and then it goes in and explores that time that she was in limbo with belongs to.
38:16
[SPEAKER_01]: She's interacting with multiple versions of the same characters from different parallel times.
38:20
[SPEAKER_01]: All it wants is
38:21
[SPEAKER_04]: crazy.
38:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
38:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And that mini series, the Claremont Room, which where she ages and is trained by this alternate reality version of Storm as a mentor, I thought that was all really cool.
38:35
[SPEAKER_04]: He still, he brings her into limbo and sort of kidnapped her for many years where she and she learns magic there under Dress and is finally able to best him and free herself.
38:45
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea of her being then becoming the ruler of limbo and obviously resonates.
38:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I had not connected to Toronto in the space night, but through all those other characters, yes, it's definitely something that magic comes back to again and again in the Marvel
38:58
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a big Greenwald thing in the handbooks.
38:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Mark Ram this face night has a neutralizer.
39:01
[SPEAKER_01]: He's an alien and he points it at dire rates and they will wither away into limbo and scream, no, all right.
39:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So Greenwald tied that limbo into the other limbo, but there's also distinctions.
39:13
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them is like other realm and ones their regular demon limbo.
39:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But inferno, obviously, is just a huge event.
39:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The other limbo, by the way, is also where if you get stuck and stick there long enough, you turn into a space pantom.
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: There's another deep Marvel death, but another one that we have huge in the mythos is other world, which is the Captain Britain, Rome, Merlin, the Seesh Parallist, the Captain Britain core.
39:37
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much interface, Tini Howard played in this world in the Cricone era of comics, where other worlds became like a major part of the playing field with its own governmental structure and realms and borders and lands.
39:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I'm working with a, yeah, there's a little bit of a, yeah, Mr. Garcana, other world is connected with this like it's like a fairy realm right like the guy is deeply connected to I gave each of the the elder gods sort of around because they were forbidden to be in the earth.
40:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So usher was the astral realm, siphon was this the demon Nagari dimension and then other world or or this fairy realm with guy is extra realm and I think that, you know, there's a lot of the black
40:18
[SPEAKER_04]: nine plays in the space, Morgan Lafe, and then all of those wonderful stories that you know about Captain Britain and this avalan.
40:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It's sort of the thing that I come back to and think about other world as.
40:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It's sort of become that like if Arthurian legend had maintained some sort of space in the world and this fairy tale world continued to exist, that's what other world is sort of to me.
40:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Michael, I love these other realms, you know, because it gives you a different playground to sort of create and explore, but I'm also always thinking about the symbolism.
40:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So if the other realm is fantasy, it's our theory.
40:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we were talking about limbo, what is limbo?
40:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it, is it a place where chaos takes place?
41:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a place where you can find different multiverse pockets?
41:04
[SPEAKER_00]: What exactly is limbo?
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's purgatory, but we make it common books.
41:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we got hell on one side and there's like 10 rooms of hell, but then also the house of ideas on the other, like the heaven that we can't ever quite access.
41:20
[SPEAKER_01]: One above all that he's actually Jack Kirby sitting at a desk drawing comic book to elevate yourself up there.
41:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like it's not a hell, it's like a holding pattern area.
41:32
[SPEAKER_04]: It's that space in between other spaces.
41:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Limbo is nowhere, and it's filled with whatever falls into it sort of.
41:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also like a metal underneath it all.
41:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you have a weapon made of that metal, then you rule the place.
41:44
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all these kinds of funny rules about these different realms which fix it really fun as well.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted to introduce very quickly.
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's do one more character.
41:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Margale Chardos is of course a beloved favorite in the X-Men realms and her connection to the winding way, a man decept in her daughter and whose daytriper is also a huge part of this.
42:04
[SPEAKER_04]: annual, I think it was an X-Men annual where she's introduced and brings them the X-Men through Dante's Inferno.
42:10
[SPEAKER_04]: That was my first encounter with her.
42:11
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, I was obsessed of the X-Men plus Dr. Strange and all this Dante references is great.
42:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And when I was doing, I did like a cosmology of all these different planes.
42:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It's one of the pages in the marble.
42:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I was going to go there next.
42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's pause here for a moment.
42:28
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this great page in Marvel Tarot, and I'm going to read it top to bottom, and then So it's a map of the realms going from outward to inward.
42:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We have the well beyond the world.
42:40
[SPEAKER_01]: The sacred sons of synobus, the many moons of moon apore, a monopore.
42:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Excuse me.
42:45
[SPEAKER_01]: The realm of dreams.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: All of those fall into cosmic concordance.
42:49
[SPEAKER_01]: then we go into the anguish, excuse me, the archipelago of anguish, including the realms of nightmare, the splinter realms, other place, the veils of veil tour, a dizzac, the sevenfold cittils of Sephiroth, the winding road, the winding road, then we go to Ragador, the purple dimension, the crimson cosmos, the flickering realms, the serpents sea, avalan, the astroplane, the crossroads,
43:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, the prosecution of colors.
43:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's a little sticky note at the bottom of this that says, my in many, this says, found this poster at a head shop in Omaha, other than a piece of spelling errors appears to be shockingly accurate representation of the transversible planes and it glows in black lights.
43:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So please, continue to.
43:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I, you know, having, like, heard tell of all these places and even, you know, Jeff Creep, Christian Sin has a great marvel guy in that's on there.
43:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, he has a great list of all these things.
43:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted sort of a visual representation of what what that might look like.
43:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, all of those realms are accessible at any time, you know, you can transfer to all of them.
43:56
[SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, there's an expanding way that you can access them in each
44:00
[SPEAKER_04]: realm becomes less and less connected to the earth or sort of our earthly understanding.
44:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So you start with variations on earth and then you get into this more abstractions, like realms that are based on colors and then realms that are based on darkness and light and so as you get out it becomes less and less earthly, less and less real or you know,
44:23
[SPEAKER_04]: tangible, and that was my sort of way of dealing with it.
44:26
[SPEAKER_04]: But I just wanted like all those cool names, the flickering realms and the moons of Moon Apports, one of the incantations that was used, the sons of Sinobar, I wanted to sort of create this cool thing that glows in the dark in my mind.
44:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we also have the idea of the comparison between magic and science.
44:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where we see characters like Reed Richards and Tony Stark really wrestling with these kinds of things.
44:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Magic being a science that is not quite understood, right, is the way they think about it.
44:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we start to work with characters like the Phoenix Force, who is both like an archetype of creation, death and rebirth, and the white hot room through which you can kind of create reality,
45:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a certain mystical component, but it's also very science-based.
45:09
[SPEAKER_01]: David, did you read the comics in recent years with the cracola and the fall of cracola?
45:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I read a lot about the X-Men revitalization and stuff.
45:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So cracola, at the end, ends up getting transposed into the white-hot room.
45:23
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a civilization of mutants living in this place of creation now, which is crazy.
45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts on the connection between science and magic and the way those play together?
45:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Another great example here is like the idea of the beyonders and the cosmic cubes, they're both magic and science at the same time.
45:39
[SPEAKER_04]: As you said, like when you when science reaches a certain level, it's tapping into primal, powerful cosmic things which makes it magical.
45:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like,
45:50
[SPEAKER_04]: really you look at someone like the in between her or you look at the living tribunal and they they feel or eternity, they feel mystic, they feel magical, but also they definitely have a sort of a scientific sign to them.
46:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think at some point you transcend those, the, the yin and the yang of it all and it's just like it's overriding and overarching and overpowering.
46:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's not even useful to think about this as being science or magic, it just is.
46:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's a huge list of Marvel magic artifacts.
46:19
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the most beloved in the X-Men, of course, is the soul sword, the crimson gem.
46:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Michael, do you have any beloved artifacts that exist within Marvel comics?
46:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, gosh.
46:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't prepared for that one.
46:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking about the connection between science and religion.
46:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I would love to hear your thoughts about that.
46:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, gosh.
46:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to agree with David, actually.
46:36
[SPEAKER_00]: In a way, magic, magic stands above science.
46:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Science is earthly.
46:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It can give you some insight into how the universe works.
46:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But beyond that is something that sometimes cannot be explained.
46:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That we describe as magic, but is something beyond human understanding.
46:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of the way I think about the relationship between the two.
46:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
46:57
[SPEAKER_01]: David, do you have any favorite Marvel artifacts?
47:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, so I, I, in the, in these books, I introduced the cornerstones of creation, which were, you know, I brought them from different things, the Darkhold.
47:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I loved the introduction, my introduction to Darkhold was with Wanda and that Avengers run where she's possessed on one to go mountain.
47:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was sort of my first connection to Scython.
47:20
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think the Dark Oldest Fascinating, and I love connecting it, and the opposite of that is the book is of Shanty, which collects all the good stuff and all the good spells.
47:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I did a deep dive into the three eyes of Agamodo, that I had, you know, there's like the Squaresh one that he gets when he's in a apprentice, and then there's the round one, and then there's the Orba Bagamodo.
47:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So I did a bunch of that.
47:43
[SPEAKER_04]: I love the eyes of Agamodo,
47:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Agamoto lived inside of it the eye for a while um those are Jason Aaron did a more recent book where he did like the Avengers of one million B.C And there's a whole bunch of characters the Phoenix forces on the team with Odin and Agamoto is one of them as well right so like these become fully playable characters
48:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, agamada super cool.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of artifacts that are connected to realms and other artifacts that are connected to individuals.
48:10
[SPEAKER_01]: We've talked about some of those already, but when we have something like the soul sword, their specific rules about how it works.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we have things that are kind of more ethereal.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And David, I didn't give you these questions in advance, but if we take something like Shaman's pouch or the Devil Slayer's cloak, tell us how Marvel magic works in something like that.
48:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, so I mean, both of those are working with this idea of, you know, the doctor who did idea that something's bigger on the inside than the outside, like the shaman's pouch, you can pull from different realms and different things and the same thing is sort of true of the devil's layers close.
48:46
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a dimensional fold.
48:48
[SPEAKER_04]: So that those magical things are connected like it would be cool to have a story where
48:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Shame and readers in and somehow pulls the cloak or pulls something through the cloak like this is where I think it gets really interesting because you have resonances between these two things so then you could have a chance to explore how would they connect together in a comic book like what if devil slayer and shame and met up and and figured out that they could like throw things through here and come out his cloak or something like that like whatever that would work out
49:14
[SPEAKER_01]: or Elizabeth's talisman, which can't be removed, right?
49:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's all these different kinds of things.
49:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a lot of different stuff used in the X-Men and other places that are very tightly connected to mysticism as specific artifacts.
49:27
[SPEAKER_01]: During cracoa, there's that like helm of annihilation that when someone puts it on, they become the recipients of this elderly, or this elder god that kind of takes their form.
49:37
[SPEAKER_01]: where we have something more simple like the Moramosa Blade, which is like a sword that has a mystic energy of a sorcerer imbued in it.
49:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And it can cut through anything including adamantia, right?
49:46
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all these kinds of things.
49:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And Marvel magic really delves into a lot.
49:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Where we're going to start going to wind on our conversation here in a moment, but I want to talk briefly about the M-Cron crystal, which is another huge thing in the X-Men mythos that's kind of that balance between science and magic.
50:01
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the M-Cron crystal, David?
50:03
[SPEAKER_04]: So the MCOM crystal is the crystal that was it's part of the Shia Empire that like sort of connects to everything together, right?
50:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I'm just trying to remember this I can sort of picture the image of the MCOM crystal with the the Phoenix Force was connected to it in those burn clear on expens
50:20
[SPEAKER_01]: picture on slot.
50:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Legion goes back in time and the age of apocalypse is coming.
50:25
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I'm talking about.
50:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like the last day on Earth for all the X-Men and they all turn to crystal at the end, right?
50:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the M-Cron crystal has like crystallized them in reality, has reset itself.
50:34
[SPEAKER_01]: The M-Cron crystal is kind of tied to like the fundamental parts of creation.
50:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you get a share of this crystal, you can alter a reality.
50:42
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all types of these things out there, which is a crazy thing.
50:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Or artifacts like the Siege Parallis, of course, which we see in X-Men, I use quite prominently.
50:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There's about a thousand things I haven't brought up at all, but we're trying to get the little comprehensive, but a little loose at the same time.
50:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the part of the conversation where we start to get a little overwhelmed, because when you stack up the quantum bands next to the power cosmic, you're like, wait, which does what, and how did they work?
51:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It gets in.
51:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, like, this is one of the reasons why I feel like it still needs to happen with Marvel.
51:11
[SPEAKER_04]: There needs to be some way to connect these things together to help them make sense within their relationship to each other.
51:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I will say that after we did release the Mr. Garcana, like probably three months later, what...
51:24
[SPEAKER_04]: is one day more where, you know, the infamous ending where Mifisto steals Peter Parker's memories of being married to Mary Jane and the editor-in-chief at the time, the guy who was writing it was like, you know, I don't wanna do this, it doesn't make sense and the editor-in-chief said, it's magic, it doesn't have to make sense.
51:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, oh my god, yeah, this is exactly the problem with what's going on.
51:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So it goes on and the more complicated and undisconnected all of these different things are, the harder it is to really make a cohesive story.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're landing in the place I wanted to kind of wrap up with was, what frustrates us about magic?
52:05
[SPEAKER_01]: One of them is it can do anything, right?
52:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's very easy to give anybody magic.
52:10
[SPEAKER_01]: You teach this character the word and then they can do the thing, right?
52:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of a cop out for any story and it's way easy to like make a character way overpowered.
52:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What frustrates the two of you about the use of magic in stories?
52:23
[SPEAKER_01]: When it's used irresponsibly in particular,
52:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think as you mentioned earlier when it's not well thought out either, you know, if it's so easy to conjure and it's so overpowered all you need to do with speak backwards or or speak babble and there you go you've got it it's it's almost you know it's it's almost an easy cop out it's it's too easy it's not well thought through on punted over to David.
52:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's just what we've started the conversation with right like.
52:47
[SPEAKER_04]: The magic is interesting when we understand how it works and then a great writer will cleverly subvert those systems, these rules that they've given to you.
52:57
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what's exciting about good magic stories, you know, you're given the rules and then you've, oh, they figured out how to get round those rules or twist those rules, not to break those rules.
53:06
[SPEAKER_04]: because then that becomes boring.
53:08
[SPEAKER_04]: If the rules up no meaning, then there's no limitations.
53:10
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing to, nothing to challenge the hero.
53:13
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no way for them to succeed without it being dull.
53:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's what frustrates me most about magic.
53:20
[SPEAKER_04]: In the Marvel universe, at this point, is that it still is undefined how it works.
53:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And so every time it's brought up, there's a different rule set and sometimes those rules sets aren't even actually defined.
53:33
[SPEAKER_04]: and it's really, it is why I think that over and over again, Dr. Strange series end up not succeeding for very long.
53:40
[SPEAKER_04]: They're interesting stories and entertaining, but to have them go on for very long is challenging.
53:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I will say, I think that Steve Orlando writing the Scarlet Witch things, it's very successful, very fascinating, but they're big allegorical stories more than they are actually exploring, like,
53:58
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not fight, shit, you know, it's not like a contest of magic or battle of wheels.
54:03
[SPEAKER_04]: They're ideal oriented stories, which I think can be very successful, but in terms of like the kind of adventure side of things, it's harder to explore when there are no rules, there are no boundaries, there are no true obstacles then.
54:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's almost a conversation of if this is character that can do anything, how does she place limitations on herself and what do those limitations look like and for what reasons are they put in place.
54:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to play a little game really quickly.
54:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm challenging your improv and creativity skills here.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Captain America dies at the end of a comic book, but in the next month it turns out he's not actually dead.
54:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to go in a circle here.
54:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me the reason cap is still alive.
54:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's one of those ways to kind of nerf death if you will.
54:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll start.
54:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll go David in the Michael.
54:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't cap.
54:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an LMD.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my first reason.
54:48
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't actually die a David.
54:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So cap didn't actually die because the story said he's dead, but in the next issue he's alive.
54:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so he appeared to die, but actually he was projected into the star and it was on the shield like he's actually trapped in the star now and then that's where he is and eventually he gets released from that star Michael you guys are so creative.
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: First and then came to mind was he was resurrected.
55:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody had a resurrection stone or the power to resurrect someone from the dead.
55:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'll cover a bunch of ones.
55:20
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a scroll.
55:22
[SPEAKER_01]: He got pulled out of time at the last second and put into a different time period.
55:27
[SPEAKER_01]: He got teleported away at the last instance.
55:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just a pile of dust, but he's not actually there.
55:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, all of those are great examples of how we've evaded dead.
55:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes it goes huge.
55:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he's dead, but he just gets resurrected by Wanda Maximoff one day.
55:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like eternity puts him back on the earth.
55:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Or like, oh, it's been a spell in his blood.
55:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, I'll say, like, this is one of the things that the people point to as a problem with Marvel at this point.
55:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But like death has no meaning.
55:57
[SPEAKER_04]: When the rules of death don't apply, like then where's the, where's the stakes?
56:03
[SPEAKER_04]: What's going on?
56:03
[SPEAKER_04]: How are we as readers supposed to feel anything?
56:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Within one maybe two issues they'll will one of those 11 different reasons for why he's not dead will be revealed Which is why a critical was so fun because the mutants nerfed death, but they had to do it in the most complicated way There were multiple power sets of weaving together, you know, etc
56:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're gonna close before we wrap up here with the final page of Marvel Taro.
56:29
[SPEAKER_01]: This is David concluding his thoughts on magic through the character of Ian McNey.
56:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I only meant to make notes on the bizarre things happening with the first Taro to map the anarchy of the archetypes.
56:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But as I look back on my notes, I didn't do a very good job sticking to the prescribed path.
56:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Something in me wanted to wander off onto every magical tangent I could find, and I think that's because the problem is not with the first terror.
56:51
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem exists within magic itself.
56:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Just as Oster told me when she saved me, magic is broken.
56:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The deck is just a mirror reflecting the flaws.
56:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So yes, there is a problem and I've been chosen to fix things or at least start the healing process, but that idea seems kind of broken to me too.
57:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if I'm able to gather the four cornerstones of creation, the sort of bone, the ebb and rose, the serpent crown and the dark mirror.
57:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Do I have the skill to use them correctly?
57:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I restore the spirit of the lost magician, HECK a nude?
57:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a talented sorcerer and I want some day to be the best, but at this moment there are definitely those who are better.
57:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I would swallow my pride and go to Dr. Strange for help, but the quest was given to me.
57:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to think that I was chosen for a reason.
57:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess that is what I'm wondering about me, Ian McNee, the chosen hero, right?
57:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I keep thinking that me being chosen is just another example of the brokenness.
57:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Is the universe so screwed up that it can't even ask the right wizard for help?
57:48
[SPEAKER_01]: More than ever, I'm the magician of the crossroads trying to pick the right path, even though I absolutely feel like the fool about to walk off the cliff.
57:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I have no idea what the future will bring.
57:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And now, even the first terror can't help me.
57:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And he is logged.
58:01
[SPEAKER_01]: This feels like David just writing a journal and I'm the completion of massive Marvel magic work.
58:06
[SPEAKER_01]: What's it like for you to revisit this?
58:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would love David to hear what it was like to hear the fandom react to this line of books when that came out.
58:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I have not read it in a long time.
58:16
[SPEAKER_04]: You're reading it to me as the first time.
58:18
[SPEAKER_04]: What has been interesting is to see that it's a lot of what I Roan has sort of stuck in some ways people still reference it to this day.
58:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll you know, someone Mentioned it and and in the history of the world that was recently done a marble the history of the modeling universe that this idea of the four gods for Elder Gods being the sort of cornerstones of Earth after after the Elder Gods were all killed those before Manning ones was part of it
58:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I love that it still is an existence and it still is out there in the world.
58:46
[SPEAKER_04]: It consumed my every waking moment, my entire life for a good year, the research of it and the doing of it, so it's great that it's still out there.
58:54
[SPEAKER_04]: The found reaction was really positive and a lot of people responded to it.
58:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that a lot of people understand that Marvel magic needs structure needs a system to help it thrive.
59:05
[SPEAKER_04]: And it continues to sort of look for that to this day.
59:08
[SPEAKER_04]: The question goes on, Ian McNees probably still out there searching as the fool, like at the crossroads, just the magician trying to figure out what's going wrong with Marvel magic.
59:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And let's seek out the serpent crown too long and then he just turned into a ghost.
59:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I am the realm of set somewhere, I don't know, a hundred percent of all those things are possible.
59:25
[SPEAKER_01]: David, these are top quality books, they're super dense, they're well worth the price of admission.
59:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really fun rereading them, it's been a long time since I worked on these books with you, but also it's such a delight to meet you and hear your voice.
59:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Just top quality work, you did a great job.
59:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Bravo, David, this was a pleasure, and I've got to say, Chad, hearing you read.
59:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, I almost felt like I should curl up on my bed and I would just off to sleep, I would go.
59:50
[SPEAKER_00]: for radio as they say.
59:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I loved it.
59:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
59:55
[SPEAKER_01]: We do a lot of script readings on the show.
59:56
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to come here more, we have a lot of fun with doing character voices.
1:00:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a delightful time with you both today.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned a lot, but also I got to center all my thoughts in one place.
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd love to hear any final thoughts from either of you, and is there anything you would like to plug?
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to put this out in early September.
1:00:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, where can people find you
1:00:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you as always, Chad, for having me.
1:00:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always a huge pleasure to be here.
1:00:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You're very kind to have me.
1:00:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find me on email.
1:00:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always happy to go back and forth with people who have read my work.
1:00:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I have a personal website, which has all of my research and it has the survey.
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really wish that more people would fill out the survey online.
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I need a control sample of people outside of the Comic Con environment to fill out the survey.
1:00:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can find my personal website easily, just Google it, Google, Michael Elliott, Towson University, and you will find it great to see you, my friend.
1:00:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for coming back on.
1:00:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a joy.
1:00:50
[SPEAKER_04]: raving here today a lot it's a subject that I really love not just Marvel magic but this idea of iconic connections that that resonate for us through fairy tales or through terror or through whatever I think it's really cool you can find me on Instagram at David Lee Sexton and chat um it's so great to have physically connected or you know virtually connected with you those were fun times writing those books.
1:01:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to have you back on again my friend it's fun comic books with friends and you know I'll close my my on social media I keep private because I got kiddos the two of you of course are welcome to add me But follow the show at Graham often underscore lane on Instagram You know 25-25 is a crazy place It is a time when we particularly as queer or diverse people are asking are being forced to kind of keep our light small in order to be safe
1:01:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is the mutant metaphor, the magic metaphor, the idea of letting your light shine and not letting anything hold you back from being who you are.
1:01:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But make sure you're doing it wisely.
1:01:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't make any deals with evil entities along the way.
1:01:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like your light shine in safe, productive, powerful ways.
1:01:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a reason that we connect with these comics.
1:01:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So the intersection of the idea of fandoms and Michael's work and magic and David's work.
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this was a really fun intersection for me.
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright everybody, thank you so much for listening.
1:02:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll be back next week.
1:02:04
[SPEAKER_01]: My interview with Al-Yuying is present and we'll be doing a script reading of a Captain Britain number five and six with an all British queer cast that's going to be a great time.
1:02:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you all back here next time.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
1:02:24
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1871, paragraph 175 was added to the German penal code, criminalizing, quote, unnatural indecency between men specifically.
1:02:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Female homosexuality was not actually criminalized, but things like the public displays of affection, cross-dressing, and particularly things like Sodomy were very much criminalized.
1:02:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Men caught performing these unnatural acts were generally imprisoned and suffered some sort of
1:02:54
[SPEAKER_01]: As in many large cities, however, it became pretty customary for queer communities to gather and form, and Berlin was known across the world as a particularly vibrant and safe space for queer people.
1:03:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It was often called the El Dorado of Europe, which is ironic because there were a series of clubs across Berlin called the El Dorado, many of them specified for specifically queer audiences.
1:03:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Now after the government of Germany fell in World War I and they had all the sanctions placed on them, the Vymar Republic came into power and Germany went through a pretty active cultural liberalization.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_01]: There were dozens and dozens of gay bars, lesbian clubs, drag performance venues, drag balls, cross-dressing contests, and cabaretes across the city.
1:03:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Police departments operating under, quote, tolerance orders would lead these clubs largely alone, creating safety zones for queer people in the major cities.
1:03:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people started moving to Berlin and the other large cities in Germany as a result seeking queer space that was safe, something very rare for queer people.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, Magnus Hushfeld, who's super famous, looking up a Jewish sexologist and physician who was also gay, found that the scientific humanitarian committee in 1891, the world's first major organization that fought for queer rights.
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And later in 1919, under the rule of the Vimeur Republic, Hushfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Science,
1:04:12
[SPEAKER_01]: which offered hormone treatments and gender-affirming surgeries for as they were called at the time transvest sites.
1:04:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Decades, before most other countries, would start doing the same thing.
1:04:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So imagine queer-safe spaces right for transvest sites and transgender individuals in safe pockets across the city.
1:04:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So people started flocking to Germany.
1:04:31
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a budding and large queer community, including Americans living there, Transmen and Women, could attain what they call transvestite certificates, but allow them to dress as their quote unquote chosen gender in public without any fear of arrest.
1:04:45
[SPEAKER_01]: legal protections, medical care availability in the 1910s and 20s.
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_01]: There were also queer publications coming out at this time.
1:04:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Dare is Jean, which was a magazine for gay men, the translates basically to my own, and a defendant or female friend, a lesbian publication for women.
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_01]: queer people from around the world started building this community larger and larger and the conservatives, of course, saw this as a side of moral decline and grew increasingly outraged.
1:05:13
[SPEAKER_01]: For about 16 years things went great and then Adolf Hitler became the chancellor in 1933 killed Ernst Rom, his top aide who was gay, who was killed for his
1:05:25
[SPEAKER_01]: not surrendering powered Hitler, and the Nazis immediately began dismantling queer freedoms.
1:05:31
[SPEAKER_01]: They would subtly and slowly and consistently turn against the Jews, but for the homosexuals it was a very quick turn.
1:05:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Hirschfeld Institute was stormed and destroyed, the files and books and research were publicly burned, and all trans-healthcare and queer advocacy was immediately revoked.
1:05:47
[SPEAKER_01]: All gay bars were shut down, all tolerance orders were revoked, no more safe spaces, gone, literally, just in a couple of weeks.
1:05:55
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1935, paragraph 175 was legally redefined to include punishments for subtle acts like flirtations,
1:06:03
[SPEAKER_01]: or suggestive glads is between men and enforcement was rigid, arrests, executions, public beatings, humiliations, and ultimately over 100,000 gay men, specifically and trans people, were suspected, either suspected or confirmed of being gay or trans, were marked with pink triangles and put to death in the concentration camps.
1:06:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The only people who survived were the ones that successfully hid or who fled the country.
1:06:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's step back just a moment into
1:06:31
[SPEAKER_01]: El Dorado was one of the most famous queer clubs in the world.
1:06:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Picture a smoky supper club with dim lights, a place where everyone's accepted, and everyone has dressed up.
1:06:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Tailored suits, sequen gowns, sparkles, and shimmers, and long cigarettes.
1:06:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Straight people were welcome too, as long as they dressed up and were tolerance of others.
1:06:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Gender I did it, and identity didn't matter.
1:06:49
[SPEAKER_01]: There was cross-dressing and drag, and boy-less,
1:06:52
[SPEAKER_01]: and butch women and same-sex couples, and that included the performers, the waiters, the patrons, the people working the place.
1:07:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Among the frequent guests in the club, Ernst Rome, who later turned against queer people at the right hand of Hitler.
1:07:06
[SPEAKER_01]: When Rome put Hitler in power, all the clubs were closed, Rome was publicly humiliated and executed.
1:07:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Magnus Hirschfeld, who I mentioned earlier by the way, was out of the country when the Nazis took over in 1930, and suddenly unable to return home.
1:07:19
[SPEAKER_01]: He referred to himself in his writing in the subsequent years as the most persecuted man in Germany.
1:07:23
[SPEAKER_01]: He ended up relocating where he continued writing to niece France, and three years later in the early 1930s he died of a heart attack, and was survived by his life partner Lee Shutong.
1:07:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, now we're going to jump to Captain America 296-297, continuing our conversation from last time.
1:07:41
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an epic red skull story by Jam Jam and TAS.
1:07:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Paul Neary is the artist on this couple of issues, and this is the middle part of a long form story that's quite incredible.
1:07:50
[SPEAKER_01]: The red skull continues his massive long-term plot against his archfocap.
1:07:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We visit the eerie sisters of sin who are capturing the Falcon for Mother Superior, the daughter of the red skull.
1:08:01
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll learn her origins in the next episode.
1:08:04
[SPEAKER_01]: The Avengers find a red skull burned into a wall and begin looking for clues.
1:08:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, Captain America, who has been aged up because the red skulls do in some crazy shit with his blood,
1:08:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And no mad, the 1950s, Jack Monroe, who's slowly being brainwashed by Mother Superior, are guided into Skullhouse.
1:08:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And they meet Baron Helmet Zemo is back and the daughter of the Red Skull.
1:08:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the next generation of Nazi kids being pulled into this crazy plot.
1:08:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Captain America and Nomad find the corpse of Horsed, who was a man who worked for the Red Skull, who was insumended animation with him.
1:08:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is another guy that had survived the war and the skull leaves his body on display.
1:08:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they are led and I'm skipping over a few things into a cabaret like scene, very much like the club El Dorado that I just described, where they find Arny Roth dressed up in a tailored suit with a painted face forced by mental coercion
1:08:59
[SPEAKER_01]: perform on the stage as the MC in this place.
1:09:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Mother Superior shows up here and pulls no mad away.
1:09:05
[SPEAKER_01]: She's got a long-term plot with what she's doing with him, but we're gonna focus on Arne and Captain America for a few minutes.
1:09:11
[SPEAKER_01]: There are also robots of Arne all over the rest of the club, and the issue opens by the way with Cap and Momad finding Arne dressed like Baron Zemo, but it turns out to be a robot as well that explodes in caps arms.
1:09:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So everyone is dressed and painted.
1:09:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a butch woman on the stage for just a minute, but the rest of the time the place is occupied by Arne on the stage.
1:09:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Being forced to sing things like the night is dark, the world is bleak, the souls corrupt, the flesh is weak, hate and desire are all we possess and your only salvation lies in my caress.
1:09:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Cruely, a little bit later as they reintroduce him as a quote, lovable pansy,
1:09:48
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Arnold Roth, I am a fat little sloth.
1:09:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I prance and pout, I scream and shout and my name is Arnold Roth.
1:09:55
[SPEAKER_01]: My taste is not quite right, my flab is pasty white.
1:09:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a fat little sloth, my name is Arnold Roth.
1:10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: As we continue into the next issue, it descends much more into the madness of Baron Zemo and everything that is happening there.
1:10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And Arnie is kind of cast off to the side with all of Captain America's other captured allies, Bernadette Rosenfall, the Falcon, and Nomad, while Cap is forced to fight the replicas of the original Baron Zemo to re-experience the loss of Bucky.
1:10:23
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just kind of a lot of crazy madness going on as the Red Skull's pulling him deeper and deeper.
1:10:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And the story ends in the red skull pulling off his mask and showing us that he's basically this kind of decrepit crypt keeper.
1:10:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they're more in the next issue about what happened, but the suspended animation stuff wore off.
1:10:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And now he is an ancient man who's trying to find his last semblance of mattering before he kind of withers away.
1:10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a crazy couple of issues and I didn't even cover everything.
1:10:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me welcome my dear friend Joe Jones to the show with me to talk about this heartbreaking story about Arnie Roth.
1:10:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So are you a red skull fan?
1:10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh boy, thank you for having me on for this very cheerful, happy, celebratory issue of all things that we love or hate about the red skull.
1:11:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So I am not a huge big Captain America fan, so my exposure to the red skull is a little limited.
1:11:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I did, however, just finished reading the Stable Heart Run.
1:11:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a story at the very end that has red skull in it and he's saying a bunch of horrible derogatory things about black people about women, but it's a pretty fun issue because he gets spit on twice so like I did enjoy that so that's probably my favorite of the very limited red skull series and I read, but I mean he is a great.
1:11:37
[SPEAKER_03]: villain, right?
1:11:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a character that you just despise and you load, you know, sometimes we want villains that are not redeemable that we don't want to look for Well, you know, why do they do the things they do?
1:11:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe we can find some understanding, nope, with Red Skull there is none of that.
1:11:50
[SPEAKER_03]: He's just an evil fascist That's all he'll ever be and I think that what's so great about the story is like you said he's trying to hold on to some you know some semblance Significance, but his ideology is outdated.
1:12:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I wish that story is like this
1:12:04
[SPEAKER_03]: weren't relevant, but honestly, they felt a little more relevant now, reading them than maybe they ever did in 1974, or what a, in 1984.
1:12:11
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a nice coming out.
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, 84, right?
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So part of the build up to the story is Captain America has friends that are Jews and homosecond rules and queer people.
1:12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: He has this kind of smattering and the red skulls horrified and is torturing Cap's friends to get at him.
1:12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Arnie is not allowed to quite come out on the page.
1:12:29
[SPEAKER_01]: That's part of the office of the story, yes, they he's gay.
1:12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: But he has experienced the loss of his life partner and Steve is openly accepted him in the story up until now.
1:12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But now this man who is a veteran who's a brave war hero is being forced to kind of prance and make up up on the stage in this replica of a queer club.
1:12:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the most heartbreaking part of this story.
1:12:49
[SPEAKER_01]: These words that are forced in his mouth.
1:12:51
[SPEAKER_01]: as he suffers an anguish sweating and crying out, please make them stop.
1:12:54
[SPEAKER_01]: He's fighting against it so hard, as he is being forced to puppet words like, and I didn't read these out loud.
1:13:01
[SPEAKER_01]: A funny little man, a pop belly bald headed wretch who doesn't know a thing about real human love.
1:13:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a striding freak.
1:13:08
[SPEAKER_01]: No wonder the Nazis wanted my kind, the weak, the misfits.
1:13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: locked away in the concentration camps with the other pariahs.
1:13:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a menace to society, a disease, and you start spangled in it.
1:13:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You call me friend, what does that say about you?
1:13:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people simply hate men like me.
1:13:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet you always treated me with respect, compassion, why?
1:13:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it because you're one of us?
1:13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it because deep inside under all that macho bravado?
1:13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: You're really a sorry excuse for a man like me.
1:13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: What kind of man are you hiding underneath that chain mail?
1:13:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You stupid silly.
1:13:37
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no more.
1:13:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't.
1:13:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't.
1:13:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Steve, it hurts.
1:13:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Help me.
1:13:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Make them stop.
1:13:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Make them stop.
1:13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Fucking heartbreaking.
1:13:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I've heard of about this story, but I've never actually read it.
1:13:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It is really uncomfortable to read.
1:13:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, you see like the psychological torture this happening, like not only degrading
1:13:58
[SPEAKER_03]: if you associate with this person, you must be just as bad, if not worse.
1:14:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's, you know, red skulls kind of punishing Steve for hanging out with like the wrong type of people, right?
1:14:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's very apparent in this issue.
1:14:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is really distressing to read at a time where queer people are being victimized, brutalized, and depressing, so many ways.
1:14:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And really trying to be a race because like you said before, Arnie is a veteran, you know,
1:14:25
[SPEAKER_03]: gave his service to the country.
1:14:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And instead of, you know, being honored in some kind of way, he's been put down and he's been torn down.
1:14:33
[SPEAKER_03]: It reminded me of the recent Avengers Academy issue where there's a controversy about an Arne Roth statue that has been erected in his memory.
1:14:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was very affected by this particular, yes, or yeah, you can tell and you know in that there's you know a group of fascists that are coming in our basically saying well Why would we want to celebrate this person this person is an abomination this person's a freak this person's a monster and we want to read that as Fiction say will that would never happen in real life, but it does I mean they just announced not that long ago that they were going to rename this ship that was you know named in honor of Harvey milk who was also veteran
1:15:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're basically saying, well, he's not deserving of that honor anymore.
1:15:14
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just going to get rid of it.
1:15:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's always about erasing queer history.
1:15:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's what it always comes down to.
1:15:20
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why the Nazis burned all those books.
1:15:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It's why they destroyed all those institutes instead.
1:15:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Because again, they're trying to make it sound seem like queer people never were here.
1:15:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But we are here and we always will be here.
1:15:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a forgotten part of history often, and I know we talk about it a little more in the queer community these days with the pink triangle, but we talk about Jewish people and even Roma people being put to death, but we don't talk about the queer people, the trans people disabled people, the children, like they're so much that is packed into this.
1:15:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Captain America speaking for jammed amethase, who is of course a huge supporter of queer rights, even though he is a straight man himself.
1:15:53
[SPEAKER_01]: As Arnie is suffering, cat bashes through the force field with his shield.
1:15:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Arnie, listen to me, no matter what words they force out of your mouth, you know the truth.
1:16:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You are not a freak.
1:16:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You're as good as decent a man as I've ever known.
1:16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: They can't corrupt your love for Michael with their lies anymore than they can corrupt my love for Bernie.
1:16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you hear me Arnie?
1:16:12
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the pariahs.
1:16:13
[SPEAKER_01]: They're the disease.
1:16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: The fuck it just breaks my heart.
1:16:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:16:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Red Skull, fuck that guy, man, right?
1:16:20
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts?
1:16:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of magical in its way, too.
1:16:24
[SPEAKER_01]: This like smoky club that the Red Skull has created this replica of and Arnie and his makeup and his little purple bow tie and green jacket.
1:16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of great until you realize how cruel it is, because it's showing a time of queer safety and how sweet the Nazis wipe that out.
1:16:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and the juxtaposition between that, like you said, of queer safety versus Arnie B. made a victim, but in a way, this story kind of redeems Arnie, or maybe just sets him up as a sympathetic character, you know, I think the line where Steve says, you know, that you, uh, your love for Michael is just as valid as my love for Bernie.
1:16:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That's really like the only thing that we get in this issue that hints at that, at his identity, and understanding that this is like the 80s where it's a time where you can't just explicitly say, you know,
1:17:09
[SPEAKER_03]: They have to kind of dance around it and I think that's what makes that so right the gym does push the limit.
1:17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they come handsy on the page.
1:17:16
[SPEAKER_01]: They call it, you know, there's there's the word fap used.
1:17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there words that are very clearly slurs for queer people.
1:17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But um, and he was a word that a lot of queer people used in the early 1900s and that's a word to identify themselves.
1:17:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So like there was pansy communities, there was pansy clubs, pansy movements.
1:17:34
[SPEAKER_01]: so that word became kind of a hate word later.
1:17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But like it's pretty clear on the page here in a way that it was a little more subtle in Arnie's earlier stories.
1:17:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the club itself again, I think a lot of modern people don't really realize this kind of queer liberation movement that was happening in Germany.
1:17:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a crazy need to consider right before World War II, like how huge the communities were growing there and how much the public acceptance was increasing and how swiftly it was wiped out.
1:17:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's devastating for sure and I do like that Steve comes to his rescue because it just affirms the type of character in hero that Captain America is Captain America will never tolerate hate or bigotry or fascism at all and that's why still we enjoy this character and that's why I think he's still is relevant because I think unfortunately with a lot of these type of
1:18:19
[SPEAKER_03]: flag suit characters that become almost symbols of their nation in a very nationalistic way.
1:18:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Steve is always the one who pushes back against it.
1:18:26
[SPEAKER_03]: He says, you know, fight for the people.
1:18:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't fight for the government.
1:18:30
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I still believe in the American dream, but this American dream, and, you know, we see that at the end of the secret empire story is he's about to
1:18:37
[SPEAKER_03]: he's ready to give the whole thing up because he's lost, you know, belief and he's lost faith and because if this is what really is happening and he doesn't know about it, you know, this is the country that he's been fighting for, it's the government that he's been fighting for and it's everything that he fights against and it's really heartbreaking for him.
1:18:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And the early origins of Arnie as introduced by Jam as well.
1:18:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Arnie stood up for Steve when he was that skinny kid on the scene.
1:19:00
[SPEAKER_01]: He got the super soldier serum.
1:19:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Arnie was the tough kid, right?
1:19:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it makes it special.
1:19:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also kind of an unrequited love that Arnie has perceived.
1:19:08
[SPEAKER_03]: That's yeah, and I think Steve knows, you know, there's a lot of mutual admiration.
1:19:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And especially he read those Avengers Academy issues, which I highly recommend.
1:19:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyone hasn't read them to go read them.
1:19:19
[SPEAKER_03]: You see that very much so in those issues as well.
1:19:22
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also what we got to talk about and I discussed this in the previous episode as well, but the sisters of sin Mother's hearing in her like a little country non have it with her like Tees and hers heels like stomping cap shield and then those creepy sisters of sin There's the there's the one with like the dead eyes and like the one that has like chicken limbs and like yeah So scary.
1:19:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I love them a lot.
1:19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: What did you think of the sisters of sin?
1:19:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I love the names.
1:19:46
[SPEAKER_03]: We got sister death, sister pleasure, sister dream, sister agony.
1:19:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Like sister pleasure in the future.
1:19:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And they've changed their name, sister pleasure.
1:19:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Changes her name to sister ranch in the future, but also their children who've been aged up to adulthood by the red school.
1:20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's the next issue.
1:20:02
[SPEAKER_03]: That's something that's interesting.
1:20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But I thought her to have friends.
1:20:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So he is more created more evil Nazi girls for her to play with.
1:20:10
[SPEAKER_03]: That's so nice.
1:20:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess.
1:20:13
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not as fun as Fenris, but you know, I think they're work on them Fenris.
1:20:17
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just like guns.
1:20:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we also have to be the Marin Zemos going on here.
1:20:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Now everyone, by this time it will have been announced, but in November in the show we're doing the trial of Helmet Zemo on my show.
1:20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So, all of these fascist conversations are building to a particular space and we'll have a lot to say about Zemo, who is the child of a war criminal trying to live up to the expectations of his Nazi father.
1:20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a crazy story.
1:20:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I would not want to be his therapist.
1:20:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of these issues that we didn't cover.
1:20:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They're densely packed.
1:20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there any moments that you wanted to highlight?
1:20:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, honestly, really, I think the big stuff was to aren't these stuff.
1:20:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the Sisters of Sand, they really threw me off because it was the non-costumes.
1:20:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, of course, when I first turned the page, I was like, who is this?
1:20:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, who are these people?
1:21:00
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like, they look like wrestlers.
1:21:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, what is going on?
1:21:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I was realizing, oh, no, they're in non-habits.
1:21:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just, they're very cemented to look at it.
1:21:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted the sponsors of Sand Patreon.
1:21:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, I think a lot actually they're crazy characters.
1:21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, I'm going to put my therapy hat on for just a second, but also just my experience as a gay man in America who cares about people and who has a gay child.
1:21:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The stuff we're fighting for, the rights that we have earned are so easily lost.
1:21:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes a lot, a snap of a finger is the wrong person in power.
1:21:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're watching this happen for the trans community, the disabled community, the immigrant community.
1:21:35
[SPEAKER_01]: He's widely.
1:21:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We're recording this in mid July before this comes out.
1:21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what's going to happen next.
1:21:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I tell these stories about like old Germany, it's really heartbreaking.
1:21:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It was rough for me when I first came out to learn this history.
1:21:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Magnus Hirschfeld alone.
1:21:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But everything that was happening in those clubs and the queerness, you can find a bunch of photos online.
1:21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Go watch a cabaret if you haven't seen it in the long time.
1:21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of captures the energy of this kind of environment that existed and what was trending at the time.
1:22:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Just yeah, it's just heartbreaking to consider the loss a hundred thousand people, not the millions of Jews.
1:22:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that that's a huge part of this history.
1:22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And we will grieve every moment for that too.
1:22:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm telling all kinds of stories on the show.
1:22:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also have to grieve for the homosexual community, the transvestite
1:22:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We just want to feel safe friends.
1:22:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't want, we're not trying to take anything away from you.
1:22:27
[SPEAKER_01]: We just want to belong, just breaks my heart.
1:22:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, what a great fucking story.
1:22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Good job, Jam, David.
1:22:32
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, yeah, this was really, yeah, like it's a story that I think it sits with you like you will be thinking about this way after you read it.
1:22:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And you'll probably revisit it and you'll still be equally disturbed.
1:22:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also like 15 issues long.
1:22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So everybody go give it a read.
1:22:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Our next three conversations about the Red School are still going to focus on this story.
1:22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of exposition.
1:22:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And it ends, and I'm just going to fast forward here, Joe, if you haven't finished with Captain America 300.
1:22:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The Reds goal has a giant plot, and he wants so badly to be relevant.
1:23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: He gets in a big fist fight with Cap as an old man.
1:23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the end, Cap's like, you know what?
1:23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to kill you.
1:23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Reds goes like, you're lost.
1:23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he has a heart attack and dies.
1:23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, just pathetic Nazi who tried to have so much power, just withers away.
1:23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, he comes back.
1:23:14
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he comes back in the future in Captain America's clone body, which is uncomfortable too.
1:23:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it seems like he wants so desperately to have this moment of glory, you know, that to have his life mean something, to have it go out, to be remembered in some way.
1:23:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think, honestly, that's the biggest victory that we can have over someone like RedSchool is just like, you will be forgotten.
1:23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: We won't forget the millions of people that were killed in the Holocaust.
1:23:40
[SPEAKER_03]: We won't forget all the gay people, the Roma people that were killed during the Holocaust.
1:23:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But you, you pathetic little, like, slug you will be forgotten.
1:23:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're a story of Ernst Strom, a gay man who helped put his power and then immediately got murdered for doing it, you know?
1:23:56
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of like a right cone, it's like it's just sometimes it's like you see those people who it's like they've actively work against their community and then in the end they're kind of abandoned.
1:24:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'd like to be a true in the world.
1:24:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like to be a true in the world.
1:24:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
1:24:08
[SPEAKER_01]: very poetic but also painful because we don't wish suffering on people but he did he did he did right all right Jojo we got to hang out with the uncanny experience i'm so glad we're friends uh both on the show and in real life uh just lovely just been time to your partner any final thoughts before we wrap up my friend
1:24:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Not too much, just again, just keep fighting and keep staying alive and keep being hopeful and reaching out to community and being there for each other.
1:24:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I think one of the biggest things especially in times during this is building solidarity and being there for each other because it's a tough time and it's not going to get any easier.
1:24:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the only really the real thing we can do is just be there for each other.
1:24:47
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my life monsters right now that I'm desperately clinging to is living joyfully as an act of defiance.
1:24:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they want us to be isolated.
1:24:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't do it.
1:24:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for being my friend Jojo's.
1:24:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.
1:24:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, we'll see you back here next time and take care of yourselves.
1:25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.
1:25:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.
1:25:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.
1:25:15
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1:25:22
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1:25:28
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1:25:30
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1:25:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you back here next time on Grimmulkin Lane.