Latest / Graymalkin Lane the podcast / Bonus Patreon Release: Friends of Humanity! With Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Mike Duven, and Kevin Kiniry!

Transcript

Bonus Patreon Release: Friends of Humanity! With Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Mike Duven, and Kevin Kiniry! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And everybody, welcome back to the Grey Malkin Lane Patreon channel.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now in the latter half of this conversation, Philip Kennedy Johnson is going to be joining me, and we have some really incredible content ahead, but we're going to be talking all about the friends of humanity in this episode.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is fascism month on Grey Malkin Lane, and this is an opportunity for us to look at what that looks like a little bit in the American perspective.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I remember watching the X-Men animated series cartoon in the early 90s on Fox, and right in the very first episode, and again, brought back in the more recent X-Men 97, we've got these kind of white bulky protesters wearing berets marked with the letters F-O-H, and like an eagle in the logo.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: This stands for the Friends of Humanity, and they are chanting mutant protests in the crowd, and no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're holding up signs that talk about like racial purity and the right to like legislate.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And these groups away from all of that are like patrolling the streets and attacking any mutants they find who are isolated.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's gun butts ready.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are fists ready.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: In X-Men 97 that gets expanded on even more as they like start weaponizing sentunals and creating prime sentunals out of a bigoted humans who want to go fight and kill others by surrendering their will.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Friends of Humanity was a large part of my understanding.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember writing short stories when I was a teen using these characters, even when I wasn't writing X-Men stories.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The idea of the hateful friends of Humanity was a concept that really stuck with me and the name the Friends of Humanity.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: What version of Humanity, right?
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are we Humanity's friends?
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We call it Humanity by legislating and attacking people who aren't representative of Humanity.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, we're going to save a lot of the concepts of this conversation for my conversation with PKJ in a little while, but my friends Kevin, uh, Ken Ari and Mike Doogan are here with me.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me ask you both, uh, quickly, what are some of your memories of the friends of humanity in your own early fandoms?
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just can never unhere great and create yelling a lot.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's about it.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I also had an experience of it in the old animated cartoon, but it always felt like the knock-off group of the right from ex-factor with Cameron Hodg, so I always felt like they were just the next evolution of all of that.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just hate fascists, I'm just going to say I'm sorry I'm going on a public record.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just hate them, so I hate when they show up in the stories too.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm really glad you're not beginning by, you know, I really like the friends of humanity.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can totally identify with what they're saying, no.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now historical context for just a moment, I'm only gonna choose two groups, but the Prince of Humanity to be in 1993, it's the height of the AIDS crisis, it's Reaganism, America, it's launch of new technology,
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the MTV generation, there's a lot all happening kind of at the same time.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we start to see things that are now happening in America 2025.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We start to see these things much more apparent, right?
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our country has a history of the Ku Klux clan, for example.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that was never really widely accepted on a super national presidential law, even if the national figures had ideas.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in this era, we start to see more and more of this kind of thinking show up.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a group called the National Alliance that started in 1975.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: For as one example, this was performed by William Luther Pierce, who is a physics professor.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wrote the famous Neonazi novel, The Turner Diaries.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the group that was like very white separatism, anti-Semitism.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the idea of the creation of a white ethno state.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: They took a lot of public protest energy.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are the guys that influence Timothy McVay into the Oklahoma city bombing.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of history.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's another group that this group will understand even more deep the West Pro Baptist Church after the murder of Matthew Shepard We saw this far right group led by Fred Phelps in the early 90s in particular Start protesting funerals of people who were queer and who had died of AIDS They were really hateful really mean.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of signs This is where the God hates fags moment starts for everybody To look up God hates figs everyone though.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a really fun side tangent into this we won't take time today
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: But using really awful language and the idea of because of freedom of speech these groups have the ability to form that they do really ugly things is something that's been present all along but where are the limits of that because when they get the power they're very much censoring the other sides.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: in the Laramie project where it was the play slash movie slash art project where theatre people went to Laramie after the murder to kind of just talk it out and there was a scene about the Westboro Baptist church showing up.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: The way that they combated that during the kind of messaging was dressing as angels and flipping out their wings to cover them from
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: everybody.
• 4:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we're still allowing them to protest and say what they need to say, but we don't need to see that, especially in a place where people were grieving.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I always find that visual to be a really beautiful way to kind of combat such hate.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I want like angel wings, but I also want some flaming swords these days.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, today?
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, today is a very different day than back then.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I will tell you that.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: even locally at our local Salt Lake Pride.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We saw people show up with big rainbow umbrellas to kind of shade people in the parade from the protestors outside.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we have that currently still being combated, gently, but now flaming swords yet.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: A little less gently is a Comic Con win.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: People dressed as like Thor or other people will go up to them and be like, I'm your god now.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's very, more aggressive kind of dealing, but I do love when Comic Cosplayers get involved.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The real world comparisons for these are really odd in consideration, but when you look at the groups in the comics that existed, we have groups like the marauders that are killing minorities.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have groups like William Striker and his church who are doing things in the names of like far-right Christianity.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's even a group called the right, which represents a right.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the Reagan smiles on the armor as they've gotten people down who believe differently.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this group is different.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a political activism group.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a protest group showing up with signs and pickets in the way that we might see people picketing against fascists.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then very quickly, we learned their backers again, in grade and grade.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: The grade and grade is a handful of secrets.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did write the handbook and appendix profiles on this guy.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to go look it up, this is my chat, man, at the bottom.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Grade and grade almost gives the parallel of like David Duke.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But as an extreme read, which is like the way supremacists guy.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it also just kind of gives like the child of the Kennedy's kind of energy.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the career politician with the big jaw that looks like Bruce Wayne, and he's got a ton of political influence.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But behind the closed doors, he's just a fucking asshole.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a big, uh, hitting his girlfriend and just ranting about power and narcissism.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's authorizing hate crimes.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's just a really terrible person.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that he carries this deep secret that his parents are mutant terrorists.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Saber II and Mystique are his parents.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot to say about this particular guy, but him as the leader or founder is really, really intense.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's all kinds of real world groups that will call themselves something that makes it sound like they are decent, right friends of humanity.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: They'll use words like humanity or Christian or family, and really they're doing really awful things.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of the real world comparisons you can look these up.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the American Family Association.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Concerned women for America, Alliance Defending Freedom.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a ton of ton of ton of these family first, and they're like all very anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, pro-Christianity in school kind of stuff, and these like political activism groups exist locally.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you thought there's the eagle forum, if you want to look them up.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of these really bizarre, kind of, they have the right to exist, but also fuck all of them.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to jump into uncanny X-Men number 299.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a very, very delicious scene.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a 1993 story written by Scott Labdell, which is actually really, really fun.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to focus on one particular story.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Things are not going well for mutants politically.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a few years before Operation Zero Tolerance and a few years after the mutant registration act.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is always part of the stories for the X-Men.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Recent events have made things worse.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Charles Xavier agrees to a public debate on nightline with Senator Robert Kelly, and a brand new figure named Graden Creed, the man behind the so-called Friends of Humanity.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Gene Gray notes, a grassroots hate group that cloaks its message of racial intolerance and respectability by hiding behind the first amendment right to free speech.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: She notes that Creed came out of nowhere and that he's incredibly charismatic.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Xavier notes, that charisma enables the friends to hide and claim sight, allowing him the popular support of the people.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Unfortunately, each terrorist act committed by the MLF of the Akka lights only adds credence to the friend's agenda.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Creed soon joins the debate via satellite.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: The title of this is Mutants, the genetic time bomb, question mark, and the host is the very bigoted Elton Care.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if this is a parody of a real world person, I couldn't find a parallel.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Care.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I'll be reading care.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kevin will be reading Charles.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Doven will be reading.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll also do Robert Kelly.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Care says.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Until recently, people across America had indulged in a false sense of security that the ever growing mutant populace and the resulting tensions between humans and these genetic anomalies were strictly the concerns of those unfortunate enough to live amidst the battlegrounds of the nation's big cities.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: in the small town of Middleboro, New York, 14 corpses have shattered those illusions forever.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: The citizens of this upstate Hamlet were victims of a savage genetic cleansing.
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: At the hand of a mutant terrorist group known as the accolades.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, in the previous issue, the accolades did commit a hate crime, so we have to be clear about that.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great and clean pipes in.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, same man will argue that mutants, by their nature are, in some cases, infinitely more powerful than human beings.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: All my organization, the Friends of Humanity, is advocating is an organization that looks out for the rights of us humans.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Robert Kelly, who has an infamous history with mutants himself, his wife's been killed in a mutant attack, uh, uh, with Helfer Cleber Brotherhood of People Mutants.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mm.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, he met his wife who was a hellfire club waitress married her as a politician and then she died It but also this is the guy that if they killed him it would have caused days of future past right So this character has a lot of history Kelly says the United States government is aware of its responsibilities to all its citizens Mr. Creed.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is one reason I'm proud I serve as the chairman on the committee of mutant affairs It's why the mutant group at
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: X-Factor operates under federal auspices.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are the mutants agreeing to work for a Valerie Cooper in the conservative government.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Xavier says, They concern I share with Senator Kelly regarding Mr. Creed's organization is the friends of humanity's willingness in some cases eagerly to violate the civil rights of anyone who does not fit their rather limited definition of human.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Pair says, couldn't be professor that the admittedly questionable actions are adjustifiable response to the ever-growing number of anti-human factions among the homo-superior population.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: These accolades, the brotherhood of evil mutants, the mutant liberation front, are about a few.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Not but a few of the high-profile mutants who regrettably get the lion's share of media attention.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Perhaps, if the press were more inclined to focus on the exploits of other mutants, such as the X-Men, who have served the world on more than one occasion, or, remember, there are many, many mutants who live quiet, peaceful lives, who go to work every day, who care for the families, and yet live in fear that people like Mr. Creed's associates will rip every inalienable right from them simply because of who they are.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Creed interjects.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The professor of being disingenuous.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is in keeping with his reputation as an apology for mutants.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we'd be curious to hear the Senator Kelly's feelings about the X-Men, the outlaws responsible for the death of his wife.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Creed says Robert Kelly, I must say I present that you've used my personal tragedy for a clever sensational sound bite.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, my wife was killed in the midst of a mutant incident that included among others, several X-Men.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there is no conclusive evidence that any X-Men were in particular were responsible.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It would be easy, comfortable to paint.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is a bitter, revenge-crazed man bent on punishing all vegans for the actions of a handful.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have not and never will advocate the blanket extermination of any race, mutant, or otherwise.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Genocide as a political agenda is, as wrong today in countries like Bosnia and Somalia,
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I am all for finding a way to control the more scurrelist genetically challenged, and I believe in that without a equivocation, without hesitation, it is vital we do so without trampling on their rights as American citizens.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, spoken senator, the fact that the leaders of the country declined to implement the Mutant Registration Act.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Only illustrates the need for the friends of humanity professor, special interest groups are destroying this nation, threatening humanity, and we're putting our elected officials
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're a part of the problem when you should be part of the solution.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Elton Care interjects, and this is very Fox News.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was the scene last month in Central Park.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Less than a week prior, a young mutant was nearly beaten to death on the very spot that would attract 700,000 fans to a one-world unity concert.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: During an impromptu plea for genetic harmony and non-violence, Charles in the day of year was shot down by an unidentified assailant.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was the executioner song intro everybody.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: While the mayor has been reluctant to label this a bias crime, allegedly because authorities could not confirm or deny the suspect was immutant.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: This much is clear.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: The professor was shot for taking a politically incorrect public stance that mutants are humans too.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure I echo the sentiments of civilized people everywhere professor when I say we're grateful you've made a full recovery.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you must be aware there are others who are asking, hasn't he learned his lesson?
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've done your part.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You said what you felt had to be said and it almost cost you your life.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you not going to be satisfied until you become a martyr for a cause that isn't even yours?
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Xavier, of course, being a closeted mutant, everyone?
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: The only thing more frightening than dying out in his living in a world where one man is too frightened to help another.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I must also object to your attention that this cause is not my own.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: A person does not need to be black to understand apartheid is wrong.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: People of all religions are rightfully horrified and repulsed by the crimes perpetrated against the Jews during the Holocaust.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Similarly, one need not be a victim of the AIDS in order to have a compassion for the hundreds of thousands of people, those who have suffered and those who have died from this disease.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: When the time comes, the people are restricted to helping their own is the day, I believe, there will be no hope for any of us.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, I says Senator Kelly, find myself agreeing with much of what Professor Xavier has said, and I think you're both hopelessly misguided dreamers who believe in a world that does not and cannot exist.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Elton Care interjects, when we return, we'll introduce the Asadolide, one of the world's most high profile and at least marginally socially acceptable mutants, a former, at least marginally socially acceptable.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: a former full-time avenger and the world renowned biochemist and we're back.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: When most people hear the word, someone's up fearful images of bug-eyed freaks and megalomaniacs determine to rule the world, it's rare then when the occasional homo superior happens along who manages to ingratiate himself to the entire nation.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Henry McCoy, known through the world as a former avenger called the Beast, is just such a mutant.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kevin, we'd be forced.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Elton, Senator, Professor, greetings at a hearty, sigile to you, Mr. Creed.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, but if you like, Dr. McCoy, I'm a racist.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it would take a more ignorant man than me to argue such a point, though I confess I didn't recognize you sends your hood and robes.
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Might it suggest a logo, a burning DNA symbol may happen?
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, Dr. McCoy, would you say your acceptance into the Avengers a few years ago was, and not indicative that the general public is catching up to the 20th century?
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, my stars and gardeners, I hope so.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But good, gully, good gosh, Mr. and Mrs. America, take no big deal.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why, statistically speaking, I bet if you looked close enough, some of your best friends are mutants.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly my point.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mutants are trying to hide among the rest of humanity.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: doing who knows what amount of damage to our gene pool.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Wow, I never thought of it that way.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Heaven, for bid, we all keep using the same water fountains.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here's an idea, why don't all of us mutants start wearing scarlet ms on our clothes?
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Wait, I've got it, tattoos.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: You can stencil tattoos at our forearms.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: and refuse to sit here and be insulted by this free.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, if you're leaving anyway, forgive me for fast-forwarding to my final reputal, as I say, they have some mutants everywhere.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we get it from like, it's like a tongue sound.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Anomot Pia is a PT-H-H-H-P-T-H. Elton Kair says that, thank you, beast.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is the splagered disregard to pie.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're just size-un.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kair says, well, conclude after these messages.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then as soon as the camera stop rolling,
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Someone get me that very blue muti on the phone.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: We got the hate word here, muti.
• 16:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I suppose I should be gratefully wanted to, he waited to moon create until we were away at commercial.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, just, this might be my favorite beast story of all time, this particular one.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's take time to dissect what's going on here.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have a Fox News program pretending to give objective kind of ideals to a closeted mutant Xavier.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: The closeted child of mutants, creating creed.
• 17:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've got one on the far left,
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: far right.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then kind of a pro mutant senator who airs kind of in the moderate space.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we have a biased reporter and then when Beast joins, we go full liberal.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's so now right now, this is this is scary how now this conversation feels and I will say there is that whole school of thought of the people most focused on trying to take away people's rights are sometimes involved in that said, you know, kind of community and so all of the very Republican anti LGBTQIA plus stuff that gets put together and you have things revealed about their actual queer, you know, like kind of past or queer future.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I feel like it's a very real thing that the people having these conversations are sometimes very much involved whether they are publicly or privately talking about it into that community and I just wish people would stop this this ridiculousness I mean why are we focusing on such small populations and trying to make them out to be ridiculous villains because somebody needs to go to therapy like that's really what this says and I love the beast energy the beast energy is the energy I bring into 2025 2026
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, everyone in a zig-hyle to you, Mr. Creed.
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, that's how we should be like talking to these fucking fascists.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Big beast energy, let's coin it now.
• 18:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The comics of my childhood were never woke.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: What, what did comics get woke?
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's amazing how relevant this is for today.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's almost could've been written today and would've been equally as poignant.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: In doing my research for this episode, it was surprising to me how little the friends of humanity actually show up in the comics.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're so prominent in the cartoon.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of things where we see like anti-button protesters standing in various places, but they're not always attributed to being the friends of humanity.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: We next see them as kind of a more paramilitary group.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: ignoring any of what's happening in X-Factor with Valerie Cooper and any of what's happening politically in other books with great and Creed and other things.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot happening in the books at these times, but focusing specifically just on this grassroots paramilitary kind of terror group.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: We jumped to X-Force 24.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is one of the first comics I ever bought.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: My first comic book ever was X-Force 27.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So just a few issues and then I went to get back issues.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is one of the first books I've ever read as an X-Men fan.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is Fabianisi as an engraved couple-o on Route 206 in New Jersey at 1123 PM, a woman in a shredded dress fain's helplessness in the middle of the road and convinces a government vault security team full of armed guards to pull over.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hiding off-road are a group of men dressed in black and wielding electoral magnetic scrambleers.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: The men attack a prison vehicle with people who have been through a trial who happened to be mutants.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: They disabled the guards, rip open the print of the prison transport, and inside,
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Rusty was a draft dodger basically, if you will, he ran away from the military for being a mutant, he later refused to register in the Newton Registration Act.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a long journey for these two that ends up with them becoming accolades and Rusty getting killed by the Holocaust on Avalon.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's save all of our thoughts on that for another time.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've stood by our claims and proven that our world is, is in fact dead.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We simply could not stand by and allow this travesty of justice to go unpunished by the law abiding normal citizens of this land.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: For criminal acts against mutant terrorism with the express purpose of placing human beings in jeopardy.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in the name of the Friends of Humanity, you will pay for your crimes against mankind, so they're going to have a stage of public execution, which is really fucking scary.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a goddamn ice story, is what I'm realizing now, as we're reading this.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Valerie Cooper has a mole inside the Friends of Humanity,
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: but she couldn't send in a government team of mutants against a human thread.
• 20:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: That would send the wrong message.
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So she drops a clue over to X-Force, the pellet paramilitary version of this.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they end up storming a remote house, Rusty and Skids have been captured at strong up, and they are underarm to guard.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: When the X-Force attacks, they yell, muti attack, sirens us, such harsh words to be slander and tossing about.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And boom, boom, goes, Plasma in y'all face, I think they hurt us.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: A yup, yes, sir.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: literal dialogue.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Warp has soon exit with a pile of black-clad friends of humanity, members on his shoulders, they were easily defeated, but they find a flyer with a smiling photo of Graydon Creed on it.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The flyer reads, If you are human, then you are one of us, the friends of humanity.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome all beings of like genetic descent, regardless of race, Creed or color, while out yourselves to be made obsolete by the ever-increasing threat of mutants, fight back.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: The friends want you.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Call 555 life.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's an excellent unlimited issue around here where Rogue is undercover and the neighbor calls to suspect she might be in Newton and suddenly a whole team is descending on the house to a restaurant.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very nice, uh, is, is deeply uncomfortable.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: In New Warriors 43, Vance Astrovic, who is a mutant who got jailed for killing an abuse of parent when his power is manifested.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he is a murderer.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gets let free and the friends of humanity are there to protest.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is also NECAza.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nightthrusher knows that great and creed has been on Oprah, Donahue, and Haraldo in the last three days.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So people are giving a lot of airtime to this fucker.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Signs read, keep muties locked up, and free humans, not muties.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the protesters throws a jar containing a dead mutant fetus in it.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: While yelling mutant pig, this is what should have been done with you.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vance lashes out in a fury, scatters them with his powers, right there in front of the cameras, later they protest outside of his mother's home.
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is Norma Astrovic.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Beauty, mother, they're screaming outside.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Norma Astrovic, your genetic tree is poisons to the root.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've given birth to a human killer.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We can't accept that any longer.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: The friends of humanity stand for the rights of our entire race.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Their signs read Muti, Mom, Mother of the Mutant Killer, Die Muti, Mom, and then someone throws a fire bomb, sets the house on fire, and vans response in his new costume, identifying this is the literal issue where he chooses the name Justice instead.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: A protester yells, mutants are genetic Nazis, born and bred to believe they are superior to human beings.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Justice has to wish so, nope.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The new warriors intervene, they stop one man from hitting Norma with a bat.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: They break it all up.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jumping to the rest of the history quickly, X-Men and limited number four is where Grayton Creed gets turned into just an absolute monster.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we learn the truth about his parentage.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The friends of humanity have given him a ton of political power, but he truly doesn't care much for the organization at the end of the day.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: In X-Force 40, when Thorne was arrested for an unsolved murder that feral did, the Friends of Humanity picket the station with science, kill all mutants, muties, leave earth, mutants are the children of Satan.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Later they blackmail a few guards to kill Thorne, but X-Force intervenes.
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see a wild child in Shardfights in Friends of Humanity, an
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stop the friends of humanity from bashing a helpless mutant's head in in the streets in X-Factor 127 members of the human friends of humanity were sent by grade and creed to hate crime a kid named Trevor Chase who happens to be the grandson of destiny in a story that's never really been explored and that straws must seek out because destiny is dead at the time.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: She says, the Friends of Humanity, a thinly veiled organization which operates under the pretext of community service, which specializes in genetic bigotry and acts of terror against mutants.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: The educated members are yelling things like, I'm itching to kick some more muty, but and the local storefront is literally just pictures of creed and signs that say muty.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Misty kills the bigots and starts planning on creed assassination, which she later completes.
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we see the friends of humanity in Spider-Man 77 beat up by Peter Parker when they're being bigoted.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in 78, after Creed has been assassinated, there's a group of friends of humanity members that nearly assault Mary Jane Watson, and they accuse Spider-Man and Morbius of being mutants.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also meet a guy named Donovan Zane, who leads like the college chapter of the Friends of Humanity Empire State University's campus.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: In X-Men and Limited 15, this is where we go full Westboro Baptist Church.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Friends of Humanity have protested the treatment of AIDS.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's like doctors that are prescribing treatment for the legacy virus, basically.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: This group is descending yelling things like mutants or the devil's children.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: The legacy virus is God's own judgment.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are super dumb dumb, like B-Bop and Rock City from the Ninja Turtles, kinds of characters.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have names like Weasel and Jumbo, but they also have fucking rocket launchers.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they get really, really violent.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a Chris Bradley story, go see my bolt episode.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: These characters carry over into Maverick number four, where it's a similar kind of story.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: He rogue beat up the friends of humanity and expend unlimited 30.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of where we pause this for just a moment.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of the whole comics history of the early friends of humanity.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some jarring stories, but they didn't show up as much as I thought they did.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's so much that world of like, I'm not very good at what I'm doing.
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it'd be better if everybody else loses more so I can win.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that is like just the spirit of these like friends of humanity and current, you know, ridiculousness of like, I'm losing.
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, if the mutants are going to come, they're going to replace me.
• 26:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's like just, you know, because you don't believe in yourself that you can compete or even be collaborative in harm, you know, harmonious in a culture.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Somebody has to lose for you to win.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I hate that energy so much and it's sad that it's not just a fictional story in a comic.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do they any thoughts?
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: These characters are influential in this character journeys of some of the characters that we love, but they're always the thing you can fucking punch.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: You do not have to reason with this group.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this group is gone for ages and ages and ages, and then we get that story in the early 2000s in X-Force Volume 3.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: where a bastion is bringing back the worst hate criminals against mutants with the tech-nark virus.
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Graden Creed, Stephen Lang, Ebola, or Trask, like the Lepper Queen, all these characters have been brought back and they're out to commit hate crimes, basically.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Graden Creed's back from the dead kind of, and there's a group rallying for the friends of humanity around him once again in Ames, Iowa.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you kind of believe that group just kind of
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: like faded into nothingness while Creed was gone, but when he comes back, it forms around him once again.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is where they lure a beautiful dreamer in and explode her in kill thousands of people.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they're killing their own believers in order to send a particular message.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see them in X-Factor Volume 3, 246, we're picked the troll of all people, fight some friends of humanity guys.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then in X-Men's second coming, there's a note that their membership has now swelled into the thousands.
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is around the 2015 era.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: In astonishing X-Men annual one, the friends of the Hammond Humanity amp up and globally put a hit on a human family of the human families of several certain mutants and they've become kind of around the world.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're targeting like armor, family, and Tokyo, Indra's family, and Mumbai, primals, family, and Moscow.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: They all end up getting defeated in the end, but let's go murder the families of the mutants as a really frightening plot.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then finally, in Captain America, volume 10, 27 by Tonnet, Tonnet, he's he coats.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a massive extremist rally where the fans of humanity are standing by similar groups, the watchdogs, the red skulls, and you guys, the sons of a sleen.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a terrorist group forming in the name of Sleen, the black queen.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love throwing shit like that, and for the expedience, we have no idea.
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's noted that the forensic humanity have switched their hatred from mutants to other more popular targets in this age of percolab, because mutants were trending, so they're turning their hate toward other things, and the red skull basically manipulates some fights at this big rally.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think there's something really interesting what you just said though too about like, well, they're popular right now.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: So let's go for the other weaker group.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's also like 101 textbook kind of behavior of like, well, we're not really strong enough to go after somebody who might have good PR and so are only way to kind of get this is to go after the smaller minority.
• 28:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: The smaller section of this thing that we can kind of bully.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: because it is, it's a bully behavior, a totally, but even the idea that like, oh, we should go after the people related to the people we hate because again, they're weaker.
• 29:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're not ready for this.
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's such, such petty behavior.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, reminds me of when marriage quality passed.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I immediately thought I'm like, okay, well, you know, we have a win here.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're going to go after the next group, which is trans people in here regard today.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: They did exactly that.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They moved on and like, okay.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: the gaze one.
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's pick on someone else who's a little bit more vulnerable right now.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But still brown people too.
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which is always, uh, Ikiki.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so now we come to the eight part extreme carnage series from just a few years ago written by Philip Kennedy Johnson.
• 29:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: The friends of humanity have literally turned their hateful energy now toward aliens.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the most vulnerable group among those aliens that they find are symbiots.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a really weird friends of humanity versus symbiote's arc.
• 29:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a corrupt politician named Peter Crane, who very similar to Graden Creed has a lot of charisma, but it's just a shithead.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has a shit kid as well.
• 29:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are birthright acts.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're trying to legislate.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no aliens born on earth.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are four humanity rallies.
• 30:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's fights with symbiote's.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: All that PKJ talking more about that in just a moment, but it's a fascinating turn.
• 30:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: We most recently see the group during cracoa by a few isolated stories.
• 30:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: They attack Lilacini concert in X-Men unlimited infinity comic 28.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Lilac just tell reports them all to like a refuge in space.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, go have a vacation, guys.
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll come back for you later.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then Jason Locke gives us a story in that same unlimited arc in 41, where they attack Jubilee's escape room adventure.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: He also brings them back in Dazzler Volume 3, number 1 and 3, where they're protesting Dazzler concerts, which ultimately culminate in her getting arrested during that recent Iquacoa Hellfire visuals story that we got.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: The last thing I'll mention in House of Acts, if you've read that series, there's a data page that lists hate crimes against mutants, and like you know ball of her trash is responsible for the death of 16 million.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It lists there at this point at least that great and create in the friends of humanity are known to have killed 147 mutants.
• 31:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's a sad number, but not 16 million.
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to jump to my interview with Philip Kennedy Johnson next, but let me hear from Kevin Erdoven, any final thoughts you have on the Friends of Humanity, a conversation you were not prepared for this morning, I know.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, and the hell dare you wake me up to like have this kind of conversation.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: But weirdly
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: it's important.
• 31:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's important that comics and fiction tell these stories.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's important that these characters never really get just defeated and gone away because it's not that easy.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there is a part of me that's like as much as I hate seeing these characters because they bring up such, you know, bile in my stomach.
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's their necessary reflection of society for us to constantly evaluate as to how or why.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: We used to say back in the day like I can't understand how like these people would do these such a ridiculous story nobody would ever and then we're literally being slapped in the face with it in reality So I do think these stories are important and you can curse me for inviting you, but you can curse yourself for saying yes You know what recording with me is like I can't say no to your child
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's just interesting that just like in real life, these groups may go quiet for a while, but it doesn't take much to spur them back up and get them riled up again.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're always lurking in the in the shadows ready to get mad at something already.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Kevin.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Duvin, for voice acting with me this morning.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 32:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, everyone.
• 32:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so thrilled to have the incredible Philip Kennedy Johnson with me here.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Philip is writing the incredible Hulk, but you also know Philip is the writer of so many incredible modern books.
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Philip is also just a decent fucking human being.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, PKJ, it's amazing to have you back on the show.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And last week in our episode, when we were talking about the man in the high castle, I kept using PKD, described the Philip K Dick.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now it's PKJ with you.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which is really fun.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the show.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: How you doing my friend?
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm great man.
• 32:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Good to see you again.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's good to see you too.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to send a personal thank you.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Although I know you don't even want this attention at all.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You put out a message earlier this year in support of trans people.
• 33:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: As a cisgendered white heterosexual male, like to see your support for the trans community, which is a group of people that I love so much.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they're just getting shit on right and left for you to use your platform to share that kind of love and support was amazing.
• 33:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, thanks for saying that.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it seems like that ought to be the baseline, you know, like it's seeing a lot of Superman fans kind of being okay with how things were just kind of, you know, it's just frustrating.
• 33:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I wanted to say something like if you if these are stories you believe in, you know, you should read more closely and remember what we're supposed to do here.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and some of the early signs of what's happening with the trans community these days was started earlier this year with, well, and in the last several years with the way people transit trans people have been treated in the military specifically.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know you are a long-term server in the military.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't really recommend to use you've given a lot of service to the military and I'm sure that that's been particularly jarring for you.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I have known some really excellent.
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: service members who are trans.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's like a shockingly high number of American trans people have history of military service.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it's some crazy number, like 85 or 90 percent or something.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: I get just a ton of them have served and to to dehumanize them and act like their service is somehow less valuable.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is just bafflingly stupid.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just don't anyway, whatever.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, and that when I recorded that video, I was just having a
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: kind of having a moment and like shaking my fist at the gods because we, you know, we lost a young veteran for no goddamn reason.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we, and we knew this kind of thing would happen.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I don't know if it was a rough day.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to be silly and serious today because that's about the country as these days.
• 34:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We, we are combating the seriousness with the silly along the way of a fill of where were you in 1993, which is the year that the friends community debuted in comic books.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Um, I would have been in high school in Kentucky, and like the middle of nowhere can tuck you like an hour from the nearest comic shop, um, I may presume a conservative kind of Christian leaning community.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I was, uh, I was a little kid in Iowa, and then I, uh, at some point I, um, my mom and her husband moved to Kentucky, and I was there for a good bit through through high school and undergrad.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: In fact,
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the offensive humanity were, uh, run TV.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: That was back when X-Men, uh, see the show was, the show was out then, right?
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, in 1983, no more mutants like the, the correct.
• 35:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Great, it's changing.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Man, if you were not an X-Men fan back then, you just didn't even know what to fuck was happening.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that was just like the X-Men research and big deal back then.
• 35:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think you would hire a similar age.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was I was 14 in 1993 and it was one of the first convicts I ever picked up was was friends of humanity in an exports book where they're committing an act of terror against mutant groups and then the cartoon of course was indelible and you know I always knew at the time that that shit was wrong like these are the people that are it's freedom of speech obviously but these are people that should not be supported or listen to these are the people you punch.
• 36:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: even as I was unaware of systems of privilege, racism, homophobia, transphobia in the world around me.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know how to identify all of that yet.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that message of like, these are the fascists was always very clear from the beginning.
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember some of your early memories about the forensic humanity?
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just remember how intensely, even as, I mean, I was like, you know, like you, I was not like a little kid then.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was like, you know, 14 and 15.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: But even then, I just remember how passionately I hated grading, creed.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: and all those guys and like how like seeing parallels between things I heard people say at school sometimes and just like being confused how anyone could not recognize that they're the bad guy in this conversation or whatever.
• 36:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, they were just super fun to hate, you know.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the fact that they had like a kind of a good guy name just made it worse somehow.
• 36:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know like they were like they were holding themselves up as the good guys while being so clearly the bad guys.
• 36:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I will record real world examples of this in the earlier part of the show, where we talk about groups that they represent by this, right?
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the Westboro Baptist Church is channeled here.
• 37:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Any of these modern groups that call themselves things like humanity first or make America this or, you know, family now.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like we throw these words into make them sound decent, but they have kind of hate agenda is a very common thing in the last.
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Out of years of American history.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, they've kind of cut on, they do it for legislation too, right?
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like Patriot actor, whatever.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: We slap the word on it and paint it the right color.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, I did a similar thing in my Superman run.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know this is a Marvel-leading podcast, but in my, Oh, you're super-man rising.
• 37:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I had a group called Blue Earth, and that was very clearly.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was pretty pre-obviously it was meant to be.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so we see the Xman fighting this kind of thing a lot, but we see this group first introduced by Scott LeBdell in, uh, uncanny Xman 299 in this incredible issue where we have kind of a Fox news host representing different sides Xavier is a closet in mutant on the far left, great and creeds on the far right, the closet and child of mutants who is bigoted.
• 37:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of ways for me to read, create in this issue in particular, like is he giving a little bit of like, oh,
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: RFK vibes, or is he a little bit more like Warren Beatty?
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's different ways to read this character's voice that make him fascinating, but he's kind of part David Duke and part, I suppose, like Kennedy.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's there's a there's a square jawedness about this guy, right?
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they're debating back and forth with Robert Kelly as the kind of moderate politician in the middle who's trying not to really take a strong side and then they bring Beast on.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, fuck you, fascist and like, moonshine.
• 38:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, this book is pretty good, man.
• 38:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fun.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it's sometimes we go and we read a comment from yesterday and it's like,
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: it's hard to get through it and not like kind of laugh the whole time because it's so unbelievably dated and it's not like this is not dated in some ways like mostly visually but it's and it's very wordy compared to this the way that comments are done now but you know I don't know like the conversation there's some stuff in it that's actually not bad it's pretty solid story telly again
• 38:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just remember a lot of quotes from the debate that stuck out.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's being pretty, like, you know, I mean, not necessarily like, headdy or anything, but still pretty, pretty solid and things that still apply.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like, I could, I could give this, this comic to my son to read and he would still find things to the anchorman in particular asking questions like, no, most decent human beings would agree that a mutant's a terrible awful thing, right?
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, right, yeah, exactly awful.
• 39:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like the beginnings of the era of spin already and yeah, it was pretty good.
• 39:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, the debate was by far the most interesting part it was interesting to see him and Jean and there like seeing seeing the other mutants all kind of like in, you know, either backstage or in the mansion or whatever's kind of edge of their seat watching and kind of like seeing how it's going, you know, I thought I don't know it's good.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's intense.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and in this world, Xavier could just fucking shut off their minds if he chose to, right?
• 39:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the restraint that it takes for people focusing on the you're run with them.
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: In more recent years, the Friends of Humanity kind of fallen out of favor.
• 39:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Shortly before extreme carnage, Tana Hasey Coats gives us a story where the Friends of Humanity are at a rally with a bunch of other groups, like the Red Skulls and the Watch Dogs.
• 39:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the Friends of Humanity note there, oh, now that mutants are kind of trending on
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're channeling our energy toward other things that people hate.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: To kind of unite them, their numbers start exploding into the thousands as they go back to anti-mute and roots shortly after this.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Greg and Cree at this point is not around.
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's another dimension, turns out, we'll do that story another time.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you give us the characters Peter and Arthur Crayn as kind of the focal point for this group that becomes anti-Alian with a very specific focus on anti-symbiodes.
• 40:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk to us about using the friends of humanity in your extreme car?
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so this is after the events of the King and Black story that had been such a big deal and Marvel.
• 40:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, one of the last, one of the like the last 30 times in the last decade where like Earth gets blanket and darkness is an elder to you.
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thanks it over.
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, exactly.
• 40:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yet another time when we come cocooned in Blackness King Black come out of the venom story and the whole world is super terrified of aliens now.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, I can make the most of this to, you know, springboard myself into a place of real prominence.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: The last time we had seen carnage come out of that story, he was just a little glob of goo in the ocean.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: They asked, they approached me about doing a carnage story, and we had just seen so many stabby, just at random kind of random violent books about carnage like, here's where carnage kills everything, and I wanted to do something a little different.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I asked like, how do you feel about me taking
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: like doing like a spy versus spy kind of symbiot universe meets the mentoring candidate kind of story where we tell a story that involves current my present day American politics and they went for it.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we started with that glob in the ocean and it gets a hold of a fish and then the fish kind of flies into a shark like an arrow and then takes over the shark and then the shark takes a symbolic pirate.
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: The pirate takes a warlord the warlord takes a CIA agent there and then he comes back to the states and eventually his carnage has got a hold of the guy running for president.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we get this really fun story where there's symbiote's trying to take over the planet.
• 42:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: and there are other symbiodes trying to stop them.
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: So like anti-bentem is trying to take carnage or like figure out who carnage is and all that.
• 42:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the friends of humanity just seemed like a really likely organization for that guy to hold onto.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like back in the day, we knew, you know, we knew the friends of humanity in the 90s as primarily a racist group, a group that's like anti-ethnicity, anti-specific ethnic group.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's kind of how we know the friends of humanity.
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought, you know,
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now let's make it an anti-immigrant kind of anti-alien, you know, kind of a thing because there's we all know like in that Marvel universe everyone knows There's a ton of aliens on earth.
• 42:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: So what if we make what if we demonize all of them along with the symbiots, you know?
• 42:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It looks like the agenda to latch on to something popular opinion-wise.
• 42:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's unite everybody's hatred behind this so that we can gather all the money against the political power and then turn back to our true agenda, which feels like the anti-trans thing all over again and in today's number
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, totally.
• 42:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was a big fan of, I mean, obviously the watchman, graphic novel back in the day, but also the HBO show that came more recently.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I was really impressed how they took a story that had been like a cold war kind of story.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it was a very different kind of story in the 80s.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was relevant in such a crucial way that was very much of its time.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: But they made it more like a xenophobic kind of a thing more recently.
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: in a way that was relevant again, but very, very differently.
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I kind of wanted to do that with friends of humanity.
• 43:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, let's take this hate group and make it relevant again with topics that are more relevant.
• 43:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, right now.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk about the journey of Peter and Arthur Crate in the story at all?
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: We can.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's, well, it's kind of a spoiler for the story.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
• 43:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because I wanted to, I wanted to have it be a little bit of a surprise who Carnage actually was.
• 43:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: So that was that was a really fun element.
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I wanted it to make there was a guy that was obviously the villain and I wanted to have this this little head fake in the story towards the end I got one of the element of mystery of misdirection and all that that kind of reveals is off the very end, but I'll tell you this
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: The big climax scene towards the end was supposed to be happening like in for like basically in front of the The Washington Monument.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was supposed to be like on the national mall and like when it was about to go to print They're like, oh, we got notes.
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: It says we can't do it in front of the mall.
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it's it's too.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's too on its face political I'm like that's the whole fucking point of this book.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's what we've been doing this whole time I mean, I was got to be there bizarre to be where they choose to draw their lines sometimes
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, so yeah, we couldn't do it.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then we had to have an art patch in the last second, so we put it in a stadium or whatever.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we'll let people read the book.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the message is very clear.
• 44:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have the charismatic, good-looking, strong-jod leader who ultimately is not a great person behind the scenes.
• 44:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you certainly cannot expect them to be reasonable.
• 44:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then you get the crazy leaders, right?
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like Hitler and Trump are a weird, different category of all of this that I find very well.
• 44:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Also, I'll say this.
• 44:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there was the charismatic guy out front.
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: What was the name of the former governor of Texas that was run for president back then?
• 44:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't remember right now.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but he's kind of like the square judo that talk like cowboy and he's just another.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's another corporate, you know, puppet dude But is it Rick?
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Not Rick Scott.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: What the hell is his name?
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, it doesn't matter.
• 45:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was kind of that guy.
• 45:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know
• 45:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: like he's like kind of holds himself up as the football star, but really he's the other thing.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we've got that character.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: But then a lot of the a lot of the book is spent like with the with the AIDS and the staff and all that kind of behind you seem like in the trailer kind of you know framing us campaign the way they wanted it to be.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what the wormwoods the wormwoods whispering in their ears with their found.
• 45:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: All those guys kind of arguing behind the scenes about what they want their message to be and all that.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought I found that really interesting and fun to do that.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: While we're also seeing the carnage stuff happening and like then he'll, you know, the symbiote will murder one of them or take their body or whatever.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was just really fun to have those two things kind of playing together in that book.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been so fun to watch you write monsters in the last few years and focus your creating these kind of monsters based in mythology.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: focusing for just a moment and I'll just do one question about this.
• 45:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You gave us this kind of veteran ghost writer from a previous era which is a really fun version but then you got to do the story Hellhunter's which delves back into kind of World War II stuff.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I know you can take a deep dive into history at any point.
• 46:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was really fun to watch you explore horror there.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to hear your thoughts on writing the World War II kind of era through this perspective of
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a crazy journey.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it is.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: So they approached me about writing a ghost writer book a long time ago.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I was hideously underwater.
• 46:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: I didn't really have the time to do it.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: But rather than just saying no outright, I was like, you know, kind of got this Nazi hang up.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like if you would let me do a war word to book.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you let me do like Marvel's Inglorious Bastards, like meets the Crow, kind of like we see this guy get this American G.I.
• 46:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: get killed by these like supernatural Nazis and then see him kind of rise in the grave.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: to avenge his own death.
• 46:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he kind of seemed alongside these other cool Marvel characters back then.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like a steam queen kind of, you know, who are moving with the old bike and all that, that would, I write that.
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there may be some, there may be some X-Men tangential content in this series for those that they want to look.
• 46:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 46:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Exactly, so they ultimately they said no on that so I was like, oh, I can't if it's just another Johnny Blades book I can't I'm awfully busy.
• 47:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I can't do it, but I kept thinking about that book and I I really wanted to do that marbles and glorious bastards thing and just make it like a thing about fighting Nazis back when you know That was obviously the thing to do you know it is it always is, but yeah, there was just really rewarding so my way to get that book done was to introduce him in the pages of Hulk
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: and then show his origin back and reward to Man, it was fun.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love that book.
• 47:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's delicious for the eyes as well.
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really fun.
• 47:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: There were lots of elements to it that are dated that are really fun.
• 47:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like I really, somebody couldn't get over the plate.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like I wanted to, I wanted to show Bucky smoking.
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to show all of them smoking.
• 47:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Marvel's got this note to back all rule.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the way they talk is kind of dated and fun.
• 47:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just being unapologetically abusive towards racists.
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Excuse me, towards Tours Nazis, what I'm in sick, what else?
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, just trying like doing a lot of old research into those day, like reading old war stories and just kind of reminding myself what certain camps were called, what old uniforms look like.
• 47:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really wanted it to, I mean, so we're telling stories about like, you know, demons and I'm building mythology and all this stuff and so much of it has made up, but I really wanted it to be set on a framework of historical accuracy.
• 48:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Including the way they talk and including unpleasant things that they did back then like taken human trophies and shit like that Yeah, I wanted to take a take things like bucky being a kid like being, you know, Robin to Batman's Captain America The Captain America's Batman rather seeing a kid in war being shaped by that like seeing a kid going through the kind of emotions that kids that age would be going through It's kind of sniffling and sulking and cutting their teeth on their dads or whatever.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, also going through these really dehumanizing experiences and war like I don't think we really dealt with what that would be like
• 48:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I wanted to see that.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to see Bucky as a kid, kind of, sulk in the dumb dumb took away his, his chain of Nazi years and, you know, stuff like that.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't, as just, uh, you're so different though, the stuff I get to get to do with Marvel usually.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it was, it was funny.
• 48:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I got to push some boundaries.
• 48:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't usually get to.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know you well, man, but I really enjoy, I, I interview a lot of writers.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You seem to get kind of the concept of something that just feels right for you.
• 48:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you're exploring the idea of something and then just like,
• 49:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Figuring out what that looks like in the terms of a character, right?
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoy incredible Hulk's full of that kind of stuff.
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: What happens when the girl's soul's trapped in the doll?
• 49:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I like you get this kind of ethereal energy that you write in your monsters.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really, thank you, man.
• 49:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, I very much prepared.
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: of a big fan.
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: The last question I'll ask you, we recently had the Superman film.
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a conflict that maybe, I don't know, reflect a real world, about a country committing acts of oppression against a lesser group.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone kind of tying their hands and going, look, there's not much I can do, excuse me, the real villain behind the scenes is the evil billionaire pulling the strings with the people.
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Superman is capable of anything, but they're finding ways to distract him to try to steal his power before he finally makes a decision on what he can do in order to act.
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's such a heroic, kind of simple person.
• 49:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's that interview with Lois at the start of the film where he's like, I just was trying to do the right thing, and she's telling him why that's so complicated.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're having written
• 49:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Superman, we're living in this era where we're looking at the friends of humanity.
• 50:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Back in the 90s, there was kind of this like, well, we have to have freedom of speech thing, right?
• 50:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But which groups getting the freedom of speech?
• 50:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: The mutants were not being presented in that story.
• 50:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just the bigots.
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does freedom of speech mean?
• 50:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, when is it okay to act?
• 50:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: When is it okay to let it not be complicated?
• 50:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we just have to use our power and even if that means violence.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of things that are kind of tossed into these
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: shifting realities from the 90s into 2025.
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think Superman's an interesting focus for that.
• 50:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, um, I thought that Superman's actions at the beginning.
• 50:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we didn't even really seal that we didn't see much of it on on screen, right?
• 50:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of that happened off screen.
• 50:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I think if it was, if it was as simple as what Superman said was happening with them just going in and trying to take this place, it didn't seem that complicated to me at all and he did, you did the right thing.
• 50:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that everyone else kind of
• 50:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you can say, like, well, it's not your, this is not your debate to have.
• 50:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, this is a thing between two warring groups and it's complicated.
• 50:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they both have one, they both have a leg to stand on.
• 51:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they both have grievances and all that.
• 51:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's one thing.
• 51:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: But it doesn't sound like that's what was happening.
• 51:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: As the movie goes on to show, even the quote unquote war.
• 51:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was just, even that was also the manipulation of a billionaire who just wanted to become a trillionaire.
• 51:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, so it was still just bad actors kind of manipulating people into doing what they want at the cost of thousands of lives.
• 51:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it was a pretty, pretty obvious right choice to get in there and stop it.
• 51:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I would say that generally the take on Superman and this movie is not my take, but this one I can get.
• 51:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: James gun and corn sweat, obviously one of the give us a decent well-meaning guy.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the George Reeves super bad, but in 2020, you know.
• 51:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's doing his best.
• 51:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's a guy just doing his best.
• 51:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he happens to have, he's like a really well-meaning college kid trying to pass his classes, or, you know, guy trying to get his feet under him on his new job and just doing his best and he just happens to have these insane powers.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, the Superman that I write is more
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Superman that just shows us the way and all things that knows what to do, that like my little kid is perspective of Christopher Reeve when I first saw him like that, the guy that always knows what to do and always saves the day and makes you feel safe when everything's around and this guy was more flawed and some more like us he's more relatable in a way, but but extremely well meaning and kind.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's still like that's what they went for, you know, at the time.
• 52:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I can totally get behind that take and I do think that his decision to go in there and save lives was one of instinct rather than like figuring out all the ins and outs and all that, but it was still the right call and I wish we'd gotten that beat at the end where the kid raises the flag and he hugs it and he's like,
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, save us Superman.
• 52:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: I wish we'd gotten that crispy moment like that, that, you know, electric moment of, you know, Superman coming to save the day at the end.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they did with Green Lantern.
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was instead it was like just the, they're really fun, funny beat.
• 52:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I wish we'd gotten that crispy moment kind of, you know, that would have been, that would have been the one where we actually see him on, you know, in panel on screen, you know,
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: answering the column saving the day that would have been nice to have.
• 52:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: But anyway, in in short, he for sure did the right thing.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: And even the situation that people were was telling people were telling him was complicated.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was not that complicated at all.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Philip, it's excellent to see you.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think you're a phenomenal talent.
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm such an enormous fan.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh man, you too, it's great to see you.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for representing community and doing incredible storytelling.
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an honor to have you on the show.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you have any concluding thoughts, I'd love to hear them.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And working people to find shine on the land, anything you want to plug for mid November 2025.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, I'm incredible Hulk or by now infernal Hulk is coming up monthly.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Batman and Robin, Avengers a Superman book of Elle all coming out monthly.
• 53:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can find me At my website Philip Kennedy Johnson dot com two wells in Philip.
• 53:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm also On Facebook and Instagram and all the all the Twitter descendants You can find me all over the place at Philip K Johnson or my full name, so Chad always a pleasure sir Excellent to see you my friend.
• 53:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you everybody for listening.
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please take care yourselves.
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are crazy and divisive times Creating joy is an active to finance these days.
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So find your community and stay safe out there
• 53:57
  [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.
• 54:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the early morning hours of June 23, 1940, just days after France had formally surrendered to Germany.
• 54:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It all Hitler arrived in Paris for a tightly controlled visit.
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: The city was quiet, subdued under occupation, and the trip itself
• 54:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hitler had long admired Paris, both as a cultural capital and as a symbol of European power, and he wanted to see it firsthand at the moment of his greatest military success.
• 54:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: A company by his small entourage that included architect Albert Speer and sculptor Arno Brecker, he moved through the city before most residents were awake.
• 54:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hitler stopped at the opira stood before the Eiffel Tower and visited sites associated with Napoleon, whom he regarded as a historical parallel.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fuck both of us guys.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Photographs were taken at a key at key landmarks, capturing him as both conqueror and admirer.
• 54:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was no large public spectacle, no speech or gathered crowds instead, his images, which you can still find, become the message.
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The leader of Nazi Germany, walking calmly through one of Europe's most iconic cities, unchallenged and in control.
• 55:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Despite earlier rhetoric about his destroying enemy cities, Paris was left largely intact.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hitler reportedly viewed it as two valuable, culturally and symbolically, two reduced it to ruins, so preserving the city allowed the regime to present its dominance in a different way.
• 55:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not through destruction, but through possession.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: The implication was clear, Berlin would rise up to rival or surpass Paris, but Paris itself would remain a
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: The visit lasted only a few hours before Hitler returned to Germany, never to see Paris again.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yet the images and symbolism endured the moment captures a particular kind of power, one that relies as much on spectacle and narrative as on military force.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Paris was not erased, instead it became part of the story that the regime wanted to tell about itself.
• 55:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're now gonna jump over to the world of Captain America White.
• 56:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this was a very brief Marvel used to do this limited series by Bruce Tim and Tim Sale.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're excellent, Spider-Man, Blue, Daredevil Yellow, and one of them is Captain America White.
• 56:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's classic cartoony art, it's really fun.
• 56:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Captain America and Bucky are in the war front in 1941 alongside the American troops in Paris, and we're gonna jump right to where the red skull shows up because he's given another fucking speech.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: People of France, it is somewhat say your destiny to believe ruled by the Third Reich, I prefer to think of it as your good fortune.
• 56:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have come from Berlin and spoken with Hitler himself.
• 56:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He talks of this city with the hint of envy, Paris is so beautiful he admits.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wrestles with whether or not we must burn it to the ground.
• 56:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: However, I argue that Berlin must be made more so.
• 56:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: For if we restore Berlin to its righteous glory, then Paris will be nothing more than a shadow.
• 56:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So why should we destroy it?
• 56:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You see, be grateful for I am now your savior.
• 56:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the American and rebellious forces are there to try and sabotage.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Excuse me, there's no longer his speech.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: The American and Allied forces are there to disrupt their power and there's a big fight with the Nazis and soon Bucky gets caught and tied up and barbed wire which just seems unnecessarily harsh.
• 57:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Red Skull is holding a gun to Bucky's head in the Eiffel Tower which has been by the way filled with Nazi bombs.
• 57:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You must decide which is more important he says to Captain America.
• 57:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some country halfway around the globe that has already fallen under my boot, or the life of someone who means the world to you.
• 57:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: With multiple bundles of dynamite around his neck, while hanging from another rope ladder under another zeppelin, this happens for this character repeatedly.
• 57:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the rocketeer, everybody.
• 57:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Red Skull takes bus, bucky hostage, so Captain America rides his motorcycle up the Eiffel Tower as the Red Skull is ranting.
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You Americans think you can come into any country as the world is if it were your own.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Captain America attacks and literally knocks the Red Skull's fucking teeth out, but the Red Skull then lands in the dynamite.
• 57:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: He lights it.
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The American Dream always thinking you can run and save the day as Paris falls so far as the world, but Cap stops him and the Red Skull falls from his zeppelin seemingly to his death, which of course it was not.
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me welcome my good friend Joshua Kuton to the show to talk to me about this crazy fucking story.
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Joshua, hello, are you a Red Skull fan, my friend?
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey Chad, always gonna talk to you.
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I was never, I was never a Captain America guy or an adventure guy.
• 58:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I know all these guys through Osmosis have just been in the Marvel Universe.
• 58:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I know he's sick, but his stick doesn't seem to change a whole lot.
• 58:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you mean he's sick, uh, he's sick.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He once had Charles Xavier's brain grafted to his own house.
• 58:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, red red onslaught.
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do remember that.
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's tough to forget.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And had you read Captain America
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I hadn't, but I knew of these, of these series, the Daredevil Yellow and Spider-Man Blue.
• 58:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think there was a Hulk 1, too, maybe Grey.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Hulk Grey?
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, but I love, I love Tim Sail Art.
• 59:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just the neat sort of throwback series.
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that sort of like early World War II Captain America where the whole sort of thesis of the series is that like things are black and white, right?
• 59:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where the good guys there, the bad guys, but oops, maybe things get a little muddled as like does and things are actually more complicated.
• 59:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I love it made me nostalgic for the times where there was like the good guy Captain America and the bad guy Nazis, right?
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're suddenly now things get muddled.
• 59:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's really nice.
• 59:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the old Indian Jones movies, right?
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's great to just like watch a good guy punch some Nazis in the face.
• 59:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: So many movies from our childhood had Nazis as the, yeah, I just referenced the rocketeer of old men to go, which was great.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 59:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: The like slightly queer relationship between Captain America and Bucky, but also between Captain America and the Red Skull.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So then the Red Skull's capturing Captain America's boyfriend because he wants to be his boyfriend like this.
• 59:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's exactly that trope.
• 59:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like even at the end of like this issue zero, which is a setup.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's an interview with the creators and they're talking about how like, oh, all these other series like the the yellow and blue and whatever.
• 1:00:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: focus on like the girlfriends of these heroes and now we get to Captain America white and it's just Bucky.
• 1:00:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's the same sort of trope, right?
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, he feels like he should have protected Bucky more.
• 1:00:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's definitely like queer moments between him and Bucky, but there is the set up that it's more of sort of a big brother thing than a father's son thing like Batman and Robin, but it's the same dynamic.
• 1:00:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bucky is like tied to the train tracks with a mustache trolling villain,
• 1:00:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, it's cute, the relationship between him and Bucky, which is the center of the story itself, is probably one of my favorite parts.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you see the first Captain American movie?
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did, I watched it again recently when I, again, needed to just see an American hero.
• 1:00:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, with America's ass right there.
• 1:01:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: This feels like the part of the film, where they've kind of hyperproduced his career to sell to the American public, and they're doing the dances on the stage with the dance,
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: a good epic Captain America show is gonna have like fucking writing a motorcycle up the Eiffel Tower and a Zeppelin exploding in the distance, right?
• 1:01:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's how it's gonna be every time Yeah, you can kind of see it happen in slow motion and you can also like they keep pairing him up with the Count how a commandos who are just like this fucking guy, you know like he's very clearly sort of like the the showboat American propaganda and they don't want him there, but he keeps saving their ass, right?
• 1:01:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because that's the story
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember, uh, arguing putting out the first issue of the Immortal Thor a couple years ago, and in the first issue, there's this glorious splash page of Thor smiling.
• 1:01:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Al talks about in the narration, like, how long has it been since we've seen this God smile?
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how Cap Comics have felt lately.
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's so many heavy Cap Comics in the last few years.
• 1:01:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's nice to read something that's like, oh, look how happy they are.
• 1:02:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's easy.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have you been to Paris?
• 1:02:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have not, but I, I am actually going in a couple weeks.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've never been.
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would love to go, but that would not be this year.
• 1:02:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: We decided to go all in on some travel this year because it's 2026 and why not?
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, we'll make sure you spend a little time visiting all the places that he lives in.
• 1:02:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly exactly to the whole, the whole third right door.
• 1:02:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: But actually it's funny.
• 1:02:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know.
• 1:02:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know that story of Hitler coming to Paris and deciding like, Oh, this is, I actually really like the city for every, for every one of these red skull chats I've done it I've done dozens I will try to find the right historical anecdote and then research it and then write these little summaries and it's such an indication God I've learned so much about this.
• 1:02:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: and we have to take it to the parallel now of like America attacking Venezuela and Iran and like he's not places that Trump's going to walk up and down the streets and be like, look how beautiful it is.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like we own you now.
• 1:02:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are going to be a places like we'll destroy you unless you do as we say, which is also what Germany was doing in other places, right?
• 1:03:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The parallels become uncomfortable.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: How you doing in 2026 Josh?
• 1:03:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh man, we're all hanging on.
• 1:03:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're hanging on.
• 1:03:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's, I mean, in some ways it's just it's so much more unreal than then I could have ever thought and yet of course it's it's always been going here, right?
• 1:03:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's always mescalating.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I always talk about when we talk about this kind of stuff is that you know like authoritarianism doesn't moderate, you know, there's no point in which in which it runs up against an election or a poll and says, you know what, maybe let's pull back like it consumes and consumes and consumes until it hits a wall.
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But looking back on the historical context of this stuff with us unfortunately framed as the bad guys you do assume that like that wall feels closer than it once did so I do feel like we are coming sort of into a home stretch god help us whatever that looks like so I hope so
• 1:03:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I hope a better world is on the other side of it as, as many people have said, you know, none of this is new stuff.
• 1:03:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just stuff that's now happening in the light.
• 1:04:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you have, and it's, it's, it's wild to read some of this world where two stuff and realize that like, oh, no, we're kind of, we're kind of the bad guys.
• 1:04:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, one of the stories that really just won't leave me alone, and I'm going to get the name drunk as it's been a while, but like Hitler, when he ran for office, he had opposing people who ran against him, right?
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You think of like the Biden obsession?
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: The guy that ran at the biggest ticket opposed to Hitler was on the communist ticket, and when Hitler got his power, he had that man arrested and put in solitary confinement for years, and then executed before Hitler killed himself.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, those are the stories that I'm just like, what, like, they won't be alone, you know?
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the stories of like, defiance and like crazy cruelty.
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those are the ones that feel so easily parallel.
• 1:04:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are these easy times.
• 1:04:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it speaks to this need for a hero, right?
• 1:04:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And why we recomb books in the first place, because if you're a certain degree, it's a joy to boil the stuff down to something more black and white.
• 1:05:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, so we get to root for the heroes and we get to see the heroes win and we get to see the bad guys lose and it gives us hope and and the best stories are about heroes who are also one of us who are just like us who are there's a big there's a big mention here of capture america just being for af you know when he was when he was being checked out for enlistment and he's and he was for af before the super soldier serum
• 1:05:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he's just one of us and there's a lot of hope in that.
• 1:05:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think the stories I have mentioned before about what I studied and for my undergrad and this idea of these stories that just sort of repeat and the stories that we tell ourselves and how they change and stay relevant or they disappear and become obsolete.
• 1:05:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so these, just the stories of these good guys that are necessary as a culture for us to tell each other to get through times like this, it's nice to have the stuff to hold onto.
• 1:05:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I suppose my final question is, Captain America, why I gotta be white?
• 1:05:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why gotta be white?
• 1:05:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why can't I be white, Captain America?
• 1:06:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Josh has some excellent looks out there, everybody.
• 1:06:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you check out his Instagram as Aaron Fisher cosplay that those are excellent, I'm looking forward to you and your little Bucky suit this next year.
• 1:06:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vuggie does have a great little suit in this series, too, and has little like classic eye mask.
• 1:06:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a little dog- And he's so, he's like so tiny and Twinkie, it's very cute.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're like, I have so much in common with him.
• 1:06:24
  [UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
• 1:06:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, my friend, it's great to see you.
• 1:06:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for hanging out.
• 1:06:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's lovely to smile on these crazy days.
• 1:06:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And everybody to carry yourselves, living joyfully remains an act of defiance in this crazy world.
• 1:06:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you back here next time on Great Malkin' Lane.
• 1:06:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bye Josh.
• 1:06:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bye, Chad.
• 1:06:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.