Latest / Graymalkin Lane the podcast / the Trial of the Phoenix... Baron Zemo?!? Featuring Num1cosplay, Derek Nichols, Shawn Porett, Robyn Moffat, and Hussein Rashid!

Transcript

the Trial of the Phoenix... Baron Zemo?!? Featuring Num1cosplay, Derek Nichols, Shawn Porett, Robyn Moffat, and Hussein Rashid! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grand Walk in Lane podcast.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: We are queer friends and allies gathered to review and discuss the original X-Men comics and continuity order for those of you that have been following the show.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: You'll know that the theme this month has been fascism in pop culture, which is quite a journey.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: All of my guests here on the show with me today have all joined me for a Red Skull Conversation.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we've had some of these chats about kind of the presence of the Nazi threat in our comics.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is pervasive.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: It runs deep.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: And in November, we are not celebrating it per se, as much as informing you about it and taking a learning journey.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: This has been a wild month for me as your host.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love doing research and I learned all kinds of shit in preparation for this particular trial.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: We are going to jump right in.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is the final episode of the month in November.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're doing the trial of Baron Helmet Zemo today.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I loved the Thunderbolts, taking this character front-to-back was a just crazy journey.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America Comics number one released in December 1940 featured a bold image of Captain America punching an off-it-lear in the face.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is before the war.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: There are swastikas all around, multiple loyal Nazi soldiers are firing
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: On the desk are plans to destroy the United States.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: On the TV screen in the back, a US munitions factory is blowing up, the result of a Nazi plot.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: The message to Americans, Hitler isn't just a European problem, sure you've been hearing reports about him invading countries and killing people, but he's the threat here too.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: For a comparison by the way, watch the film Confessions of a Nazi spy from 1939, it has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's of its time, but it's a really interesting journey.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: And akin to this, as well as the great dictator by Charlie Chaplin.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Months later in the real world Pearl Harbor was bombed.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: News didn't travel at the same speed back then, but Hitler had been in power for some time now.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was an angry, cartoon character of a man with bizarre behavior and speech patterns.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: an angry rhetoric to his speeches that defy imagination.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: The world wanted to avoid a second world more than anything, so they did anything they could to appease this man and his insane followers.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: A sign of treaty, give him power, overlook the war crimes, maybe he will finally go away.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: As they handed things over to him, he slowly began exterminating millions of people,
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: as he took his crazy and spread it over the borders, impacting everyone for generations to come.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'd almost guarantee everyone here in this room, their families were impacted in some sort of way by this time period.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: The year before in 1940, Charlie Chaplin put out the film The Great
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: taketer seeking to show everyone how directly foolish Hitler was, and also how dangerous if you've never seen it do yourself a favor, it's worth viewing.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of the 1940s version of that South Park episode about Donald Trump recently, if you will, but in that generation's time.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: The warnings were mounting, and a man dressed in a flag was punching Hitler right in the face.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: And despite Hitler's glass jaw and Aryan nonsense, superheroes have been fighting his influence ever since, like every Marvel story, even for
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Every X-Men story has been building on this for over 60 years.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: There are all kinds of bad guys in the Marvel universe, but the worst one.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: The most evil ones, the ones, Captain America, strives against unairingly, the Nazis, the fascists, the far right wing crazies, especially when they get their fingers in the American government, which happens over and over.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hitler surrounded himself with sick offense, loyalists, and crazies,
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: as he isolated, imprisoned, exiled, tortured, and killed anyone who questioned him in any way.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: Among his allies were Heinrich Kimler, leader of the Gestapo, who cruelly implemented policy with Germany.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Herman Goring, a military man, obsessed with the organization of the planet, and Joseph Gervels, the propaganda minister who controlled news, art, and public information.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: As well as Joseph Mangle, the death doctor of the concentration camps, the mad man who
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: and sets of twins, another man obsessed with the Aryan goal.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: A sobering place to begin our conversation, but it's important to recognize that many of Marvel's greatest evils are these old Nazis who are still around and their caricatures directly of these horrible people.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, who is the father of the Fenders twins, rules Hydra.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's kind of the template of Germany's Nazi military commander.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have the Red Skull, who we've talked a lot about.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: The hate manga, who is the cloud of hate off Hitler,
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Arnhem Zola, the bio-finatic, who's the one that experiments on everybody all the time, and then finally, Baron Heinrich Zemo.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: At the end of World War II, when the Nazi machine finally shut down many of the worst offenders of war crimes in human history escape, using their stolen riches and eroding privilege to build new lives for themselves.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nazi hunters searched for them for years, decades even, seeking to bring the butchers to justice.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mangala himself fled to South America, where he went on to live in privilege as he lured it over others.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: He lived free of consequence until 1970.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Mangala, the same person I just mentioned, had a son named Ralph, who turned out to be a West German lawyer, who knew only limited amounts of information about his father, but who later wrote a book and completed interviews about his father's life.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mangala seems to be the basis for many Marvel
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: There are influences of him in Mr. Sinister, the Dark Beast, Arnhem Zola, and Baron Heinrich Zemo as well.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: So today's going to be serious, obviously, but we also get to be very, very silly, because it's comic books, because with Baron Zemo, we begin with more crimes, and then we drape in it a pink hood that gets glued to your face for decades.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it isn't even Heinrich Zimo, who's going to be on trial today.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's his complicated and crazy son, Helmut.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: The child of a Nazi war criminal who believes he was, quote, born better.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's the title of his limited series once, who wants to claim his father's ideals and prove he's better, even then his father.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the trial of Barrett Helmid Zemo.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Whether you know him as the frequent leader of the Masters of Evil, the leader of Hydra, or as Citizen V of the Thunderbolts, I guarantee you've read some very fun and some very serious comic books about this man.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm excited to welcome my jury here, but I want to give you one fun fact quickly.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is an X-Men show, yes, I like to take tangential characters, yes, but
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jean Grey, who is the Phoenix on my show right around the time where we're recording this, she wasn't the first Phoenix, how much Zemo was.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was the first guy to use the Phoenix moniker.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's Phoenix 1, she's Phoenix 2.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a crazy fact for you.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me welcome my incredible Jerry.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'll have you each introduce yourselves.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me know your pronouns.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: And let me know some of your preliminary thoughts on Baron Helmet Zemo.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'd love even to hear what were you thinking when I invited you to join this conversation.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hello, thank you for having me.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yes, my name is Robin Muffett, my pronouns are she, her.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: I will be your European correspondent.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: I also speak German, so I've been having the greatest time for the last speaker, imagining every lane of dialogue I have read, and the most over-the-top caricature German accents.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's like I'm back living in Germany.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much, Chad.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_06]: As for Baron Zemo himself, honestly my biggest interaction with Baron Zemo is using him fight a law in the worst type of deck and Marvel snap because I like to make people's lives miserable and he is part of a deck that is not fun for people to play against.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: So I feel like I've really got the spirit of the character and I'm so excited to dive in.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for watching everyone, I hope I'll be back with him.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was worried when I got invited to this because I know Zemo is a menace to society, but I really enjoyed reading about him.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's gotten me to kind of out of my own little comic space of excellent staff.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's very interesting.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did type of like a full bunch of notes.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to apologize in advance if I become long-winded.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just tell me to shut up, but I had a lot of that.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm excited.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was originally going to do the Secret Empire for the trial, but there was just a bend in the research where I'm like, oh, it has to be Zimo, because he's the Phoenix.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then what started?
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Wow, where there's some stories that I had forgotten about.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll look at the head of Matt.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey Chad, hey everyone.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: My name is Sane Rashid.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: He, him, Graham Alconlaine, a regular number 74, president, self-declared president of the union.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So any kind of place directed to me, we will overthrow Chad at some point.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zemo, you know what I'm gonna say when you said let's do a trial of a Nazi.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like how the hell do I'm supposed to defend a Nazi and I got to say no Not gonna do it, but I also have to say I got a lot of sympathy for this character in the arcs that I was responsible for It felt like not a rewriting of this history, but it felt like there's a complexity there And I'm I'm kind of impressed with what I'm trying to do with him and also Captain America punches an Nazi and this is what we should be doing.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there we go
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: with the exception of Robin who's overseas, I formed a group thread with the others, and I sent you guys all like daily, Marin's emo images for a while, and there was a particular point where his saying responded, like, is every photo of him just like muscular, like sitting on a throne with man spreading and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, it's like soft, poor image.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: Speaking of soft porn, let me welcome Sean Perret back to the show.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_07]: Thank you, Chad, for that marvelous introduction.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_07]: I'm Sean Feetay.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_07]: When I got the call to be on Zemo after being on whirlwind, I thought to myself, wow, what did I do to piss off Chad?
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_07]: I don't know a lot about Zemo.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_07]: The most I've interacted with him is him as citizen V in Thunderbolts, which I read a lot of.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_07]: So I was excited to get to know him.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_07]: And I was excited for the random messages from Chad telling me, hey, you know he married his dad and he did this and he did that.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_07]: I was like, all right, I'm full in now.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: Hey everybody, so my name is Derek Nichols, my pronouns are he and they.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_05]: My experience with Barnett Bern's demo has been from the Thunderbolts run, which I love so much and historically, he's this figure that has a lot of gravitas, but then in this section that I was meant to, I was made to read today, it's kind of like the silly in a way.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: So my opinion, I was kind of like shocked.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: at that.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really enjoy Zany Mr. Sinister.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: I enjoy concentration camp Mr. Sinister a little less.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think a lot of these characters, whether it's Struker or you know, Arnold Zola, they're fun in the comics as long as you're telling fun stories.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: But wow, does it get dark sometimes?
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, let's begin with Avengers number four.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's 1964 and Stanley and Jack Kirby are bringing Captain America out of the iceberg.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we never knew he'd been placed in the first place
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: a full 20 years after he disappeared and we're just ignoring this lighting time scale of it all.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: We learn a single page origin story that has been retold a thousand times since.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: And reading it from a social justice lens, let me just tell you in advance, was very different than the dozen times I read the story before.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now that I see things a little bit more clearly,
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: in terms of racial justice, you're just like, oh no, quote, it seems like on the yesterday, but it was more than 20 years ago that my teenage pal Bucky and I work while acting as security guards at an ETO, which stands for European theater of operations, army base, tried to stop and
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain Bucky in army fatigues right a motorcycle toward a plane that's already taking off in a madman rants in the distance Huh, me thus do I triumph of a Captain America and Bucky if they reach the plane they die and if they fail America loses one of its newest weapons
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Bucky leaps on the plane, grabbing it, and Cap can't quite get there, then the plane explodes, and Cap is sent spiraling into the water where the ice forms around him.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Bucky, he's dead, well, at least until the winter soldier ret kind of 40 years later.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just two issues later, that mysterious man is back, the guy that blew up the plane.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's alive, just like Cap.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: all the way here to the modern age.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Meet Baron Heinrich Zimo, so this is not a World War two character.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: He is created in the 60s retroactively.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like many Nazi officers, he escaped justice for his war crimes in Germany and escaped to live in the wilds of South America where he has at him enslaved a group of indigenous people to serve him.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hi!
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: But unlike many Nazi officers, he has a pink mask glued to his face decades of past and every day Zemo gets up and dresses in a purple form fitting costume with a massive gold belt and a gold crown as well as a fur trimmed collar and boots despite the fact that he's in the fucking jungle
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: He puts on his crown and holds his scepter and the men carry him around in a raised chair, and he makes them bow before him, prostate on the ground when he stands.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And when Zemos sees that Captain America is alive because of a newspaper headline, he throws a damn fit.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: He rips the paper into shreds and stomps all over it, and then we get one of the craziest origins in comics.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I remember it as if it were yesterday.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was in my lab in Nazi Germany, I was Hitler's greatest scientist.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I was so hated even by my own people that I found it necessary to wear a hood to conceal my identity.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: If my victims knew who I was, nothing could have saved me from their vengeance.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am the most hated man in Europe, but it was worth it to receive deaf viewers' rich rewards.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Consider the implications of that state that by the way.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I could not remain hidden forever, not from the most powerful, most dreaded enemy of tyranny.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The world would have had ever known, cut to the America.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Zemo has made a brand new deadly weapon, and adhesive, so powerful that nothing can ever dissolve it.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's called Adhesive X, and Captain America throws his shield at it shatters of that, and the adhesive falls all over Zemo's face, so the pink sock has been stuck on his face ever since.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: I can still feel it, still feel the accursed adhesive strike my hood glowing it to my face where it has remained all these years, for nothing can try at loose, and now perhaps reflecting on his own evil alliances from the war's emo introduces his most enduring plot, an alliance between supervillains, their name, the masters of evil.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have the executioner, the enchantress, the Melter, the Black Knight.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is the original one, like the Uncle of Dane Whitman, and the radioactive man.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's like an alliance between countries at a weird way.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Zemo assembles his team and has them attack New York City by dropping adhesive axel over the place, which literally just glues people to the ground and cap soon learns who the villain is.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's you, Zemo.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I prayed for this moment.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought you were dead.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought I had read myself of you forever.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I still live Zemo, and thanks to the Avengers, I still fight.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Avengers devise a cure for adhesive acts and Zemo tries to steal it, but as he flies away, he learns that there was tear gas in his ship, and then he opens it, and he thinks it's the cure, but it's tear gas, and so sad Trump boon sound, wah, wah, wah, so he not see war criminal, he's blasting off again.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: He goes home.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: and he takes it out on his enslaved servants, increasing their taxes and demanding treasures.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: But when Captain America attacks, he fights the natives of as well, having no sympathy for their predicament.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just a few issues later, Zemo wants to create his own masterman.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Once again, this is the Nazi obsession with creating the perfect person.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: We talked about this very extensively in the masterman and warrior woman episode, including its ties to Captain America's very origins.
• 14:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: He pulls American industrialist Simon Williams and bombards him with ionic rays creating the new supervillain Wonderman and sends him to infiltrate the Avengers, but Wonderman betrays him, shock.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: And yes, this is the first use of the ionic ray device that will later power up other characters like Atlas and Count Nefaria.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Avengers 15 Zemo leaves his home to fight super villains once again.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: He fires a gun at Captain America, but he gets blinded by the sun and misfires, and a wall of rocks falls and kills him instantly.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Pethetically, exactly as he deserves.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: But this is how all Nazi war criminals should die.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just think of it aesthetically and just leave them there forever.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America hardly sad notes.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can rest easier now, Bucky, wherever you may be.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Your death has been avenged.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: No man can perpetrate evil without paying the price.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: If Destiny could speak, it would say, by my hand shall always die of villain.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, before we meet Helmet, it's important to note that there have been many stories told about Heinrich during the war retroactively.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Flushing his character out somewhat, a lot's added.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's the time he fought Nick Fury in the war.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The time he murdered the hero's citizen V with his bare hand, choking him to death.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's also been part of the Legion of the Unliving a few times since then.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll talk more about this guy at a minute, including that time he transferred himself into the body of a perfect blonde woman with a pink sock on her face.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll get there.
• 16:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: But really, if we want to understand Zemo's legacy, let's take a short list of his accomplishments, because helmet is going to be obsessed with these things about his father for the rest of his life.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Number one, the creation of adhesive acts and all things end to get acts.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Number two, the deaths of Bucky and Citizen V specifically, and number three, the creation of the masters of evil and wonder bad.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: So that's the early portion of this.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just to talk about Heinrich, Heinrich is not on trial here.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: He gets all fucking fives, he's 100% evil throw him in the hole.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: We don't want this character.
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: How much the vote will have a little bit more discussion about it?
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: No one first, how did you like my German accent?
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to keep it together.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was so hard, but the as soon as you said it, my brain went track the three little pig.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, and he has to be put and he's done an addiction notice.
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, really trying to keep it together, okay?
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm probably going to be muted for a lot of this because we'll be laughing.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I might just have to like lay down.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Your laugh is welcome on this show.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just want you to know.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, but it was really, really funny and I was trying to take it seriously because I know this is like serious stuff going on, but also like that was great and I loved it so much, so thank you, and for your please.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Derek, let me hear your thoughts on the, I think, invention that is adhesivex.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: I, my thoughts are that it's a,
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: super I think about like some of the villains of that time frame like the trapster and like there's weird power sets that I think are really based in that like golden age of comics that really don't have that same um gravestoss today because of just we have very destructive nuclear weapons now I mean they've been in the 60s but I mean nobody want to push that button I guess but
• 17:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, you know, and he's a vex just comes across a silly one day I want to do a trapster trial.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's on my list every panel of that guy prior to like 1975.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: You just have to read it as he's just ejaculating all over everything.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I know that you know it's crass, but it's this white pastry shit that comes out of his gun and every panel is hilarious.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm just going to, I'm going to send you all on that journey on your own.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: God.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would like to note though that when I was going through all of this and reading it kind of especially when it comes to like helmet and stuff like part of it gives like I know that we're strictly marvel over here but like kind of it gives like the joker you know falling into the vat of acid kind of making more believable in my brain other than like thinking like this is a giant thing of superglale yay
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sean, would you enjoy having a pink sock glued to your face for decades and if so how would you eat well?
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_07]: Okay first off look at this face.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_07]: No, I don't want something glued on it.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_07]: Hello But I love the idea that like because I feel like a lot of people today who are Nazis like hide behind a mask So I like the fact that he's stuck.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_07]: He like he's gonna hate he has to wear this thing like he has to show it So that's wonderful
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_07]: I don't know.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_07]: I was wondering that too.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_07]: How do you eat?
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like do you have to have it surgically removed from like just your mouth?
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_07]: Do you put the food up your butt?
• 19:02
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like I don't know.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_07]: How do you do this?
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_07]: Do you do a little hole?
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're just injecting.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like an IV, like smoothies in it.
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sean, is that how you're eating currently?
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'm eating right now.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_07]: Full therapy dinner.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: We could always see Sean from the neck out of her neck up every foot.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Talk about stuffing, my goodness.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Over to Robin.
• 19:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: We, okay, the enslavement of the indigenous people, any time that's a plot device in these old comics, it just makes me fucking pissed off.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: But if we lean into the maniacal super realen of it all, we have this guy.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: as responsible for the deaths first of Bucky, which is a jarring story for 1960's Readers, Bucky was the 16-year-old kid that was the war hero, right?
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this gives Cap something really to wrestle with as far as like reckoning with PTSD from the war.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's the opening story.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zima was kind of the maniacal villain behind that.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's crazy, but then we also have him with more retroactively murdering citizen V with his bare hands, right?
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's something that's a 90's story told about the
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: I know we've not moved on to him yet, but the part of that that I've been most interesting is when you cross the exam in the way that that becomes the legacy that Helmer is obsessed with to the point where he starts masquerading a citizen bees grandchild.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: One point, it is, there is a level of insanity to be like, oh yes, is this man that's my father killed with his bare hands?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to dress up as him and pretend to be a superhero.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_06]: What the hell is wrong with of Omega?
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm getting into the helmet far too quickly, but there is serious psychological trauma that needs to be explored with this man is it's something.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then we have the original masters of evil.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me toss one of each of you and let me hear some of your thoughts.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have seen it.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Are you a Wonderman fan?
• 20:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had become a Wonderman fan, mostly because of his recent stories, but I couldn't tell it to straighten him and like these cartoon characters from the 80s when I first started reading Wonderman.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, generic guy with bosses and a W1 is just.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: That night's 1660's costume that looks like it's like a broken Christmas tree though.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a alarmingly fantastic and then it gets a worse later, the trial of Simon Williams will eventually happen on my show as well.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sean, I feel like you're a big executioner fan, specifically.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I mean, especially lately like he's been fun in like the way he's teamed up with Thor and stuff like that So like I'm a fan of him and he's got a big axe.
• 21:30
  [SPEAKER_07]: I like a big axe
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: Robyn thoughts on Amora the enchantress for icon we anytime she shows up in a comic I'm like this is gonna be a good right is not gonna make sense.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's gonna be a good right She is delightful and I attend she's also on my trial list I love her she's been on my list for a long time one of those original 60s Marvel chicks that I love so much I know one Did you like the Melter?
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: kind of ridiculous.
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I like the newer masters of evil more than the original.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love people.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love every version of the masters of evil.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love these characters.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Derek thoughts on black knight.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's like addresses like old-timey armor and he like genetically graphs wings onto a horse and they work.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean that's pretty awesome.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think I'm all about the black night.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's I love a good run fest.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, no notes.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think bring that down back And then I'd say in any thoughts on the radio active man.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have no idea who this is.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's a real master of evil if I have no idea, right?
• 22:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's a Chinese scientist who got radioactive power stuff.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really love every one of these characters.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: They really did not fit that great.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_06]: Well, I will just say the only real radioactive man is the red and yellow guy from the Simpsons and I will not take any other answers.
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: But this guy came first, I'm just saying, like this was the first radioactive man ran so the other one could
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: poison you with radiation.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: So remember in 1975 when Jean Gray came back from space and bonded with the Phoenix Force.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the way, stay tuned for the next episode of my show where it'll be a script read of Xman 100.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a huge epic movie on Phoenix's here friends.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, that new costume, fire and life incarnate, and all that.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: On the old character lists, you'll notice that Jean is Phoenix 2, and Helmet Zemo is Phoenix 1.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, jump back to 1973.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella, who now goes by Jenny, Isabella, and has come out as trans.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Sal Bashama, give us the son of Baron Zemo back to get revenge on Captain America.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's Captain America 168, a man in a dark red with a mask, cape, shorts, and boots that look like fire.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Phoenix carries an energy rifle, know that your treacherous eyes gaze upon the face and form of the Phoenix.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, two of that you are not escape my vengeance.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: When Falcon kicks him, the Phoenix says, so black man, you sneaked up on me from behind.
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Precisely the kind of ant of tactics I should have expected from your kind.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Later, while Captain America is suspended over a boiling bat of Adhesive X, Zemo explains his codename.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: My name's sake, the spirit bird of legend that rises from the ashes of its own destruction to live a new and his father is Heinrich Zemo.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: What do you know of the man you murdered Captain?
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: You hated him for his work on behalf of the Nazis.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: But my mother and I, we loved him.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was a brilliant man, working tirelessly for the cause of the third Reich, and U-Americans condemned him for this, denying his genius because your scientific knowledge was so puny and comparison to his.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: And when he invented a marvelous laser device decades before your people would even understand the principles involved, your papers called it the death ray and started an insidious propaganda campaign against its inventor.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: The campaign worked.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: My father became the most hated man in Germany and had to wear a mask to conceal his face from those who would harm him.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was wearing it the day you attacked him.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: He had just developed adhesive X, the most powerful adhesive editor invented, once applied, nothing could remove it.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: You would determine to rob the right of that discovery.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Your shield crashed through the adhesive tape, spilling its contents, and in destroying the invention, you also destroy the inventor.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: For the cursed mask he was forced to wear, had become permanently fixed to his face, never to be removed, and that drove my father mad as madness changed him than he raged.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Fumed and even took his hatred out on my family.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: His love was forever more lost to us.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: He left my mother and me and disappeared.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Allies were fast approaching Berlin.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: My mother died soon afterwards, and she had not wanted to continue living without him.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I survived thanks to the scientific skill I had inherited from my father, but it was a lackluster life.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was plagued by a burning hatred for a man.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I fought beyond my vengeance.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: You, until one day, when the papers, further reported that you had found my father and murdered him, my path was clear.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: My first step was to return to Castle Zemo, which I had managed to hold on to after the war there, surrounded by my father's greatest achievements, I threw myself into the study of his books and notes.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was determined to recreate his two greatest inventions, and he selects, and the death ray, and use them to destroy Captain America.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the Falcon and the Red Wing are there to save the day, and they start punching the shit out of this guy in her straight scapules.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's up on him, he's not a real villain, just a misguided fool, still fighting for World War II.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nope.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then Zemo grabs Abshield and throws it up the heroes, but ends up hitting himself.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, again, he falls into the adhesive axe with no mask on.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that could have been it.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I think this was supposed to be kind of a one-off character, but there's something about this war criminals kid in the way he's rewritten history and the legacy of what that means that makes him kind of fascinating.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Helmet Zimo goes on living and he tries to be a better version of his dad in the 52 years since.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Although we've never quite seen him show remorse for anything his father did.
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Number one, let me hear your thoughts on this origin story and the selection of the name Phoenix for this character.
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so we all are recognizing one Phoenix in this house and it's going to be the next gene grade.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shout out to my girl, say a star shine.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think for this and whatever done is I think
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was more focused on the interactions with cap in this moment.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, helmet is delusional and has been kind of molded through the trauma and the interactions with his father and this kind of ideology upbringing that he's had.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I thought it was something that cap was very much like, don't beat him up.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's just crazy because like for us,
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, as people of color and, you know, people from, you know, minorities, religious and religious communities, like, no, sorry, we punch Nazis over here, like, punch his life out.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, he swallows his teeth because, like, he's obviously, like, he believes in what he's saying.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that makes him really dangerous.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do think that it's kind of ironic that in trying to, like, idolize his father and like, you know, have his vengeance or whatever he ends up
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: suffering the same fate of his father and balls into the bat, but also like what you ask for, so there's if we take kind of a spectrum of belief systems from far left liberal to far right conservative people in the Nazi party obviously fall on the extreme extreme farthest possible right
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I think there was a lot of people during World War II who felt more in the moderate middle, who kind of told the line and didn't take a stand.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: And without a few conversations on my show this month, like at what point did a person who was passive about what was happening become fully culpable like everyone else?
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so for the child who grew up during this, I can have a certain amount of sympathy, but this character does not go on any kind of redemptive arc except to try to be better than his father at being a father, even though I don't know the Zimo quite things to himself as a Nazi.
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: At least until the cosmic cube takes control of things that will get to that at the end of today's story.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: wild.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: I've rather than let me hear some of your thoughts on the Zemo's Phoenix costume.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: Right, so I was looking at this earlier and I suddenly just had the thought of if Wolverine had been the one to get possessed by the Phoenix, this would be the costume because it's got like the little horn, it's got like fireburst crotch design, it's got the right coloration, and when I saw this as, oh, this is just Wolverine Phoenix love it.
• 29:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: When I consider that there's a Nazi wearing a
• 29:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: The design phenomenal.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me hear your thoughts on Captain America's compassion for Zemo in this story.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's an interesting take.
• 29:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, first of all, just got to say, yes, 100% of that costume.
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is cute.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's no other word for it.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is like, yeah, that's Halloween y'all.
• 30:00
  [UNKNOWN]: Okay.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I look I don't know how Captain America goes from punching Nazis to he's just a misguided fool being a Nazi I'm like isn't a very definition of being a Nazi like you still punch him cap I don't understand this compassion and it's weird knowing who the writers are But it always makes me think about people think about comics as as liberal But they're on the time right they can be equally reactionary as a liberal or or I don't want to say progress But that's not it you know how much of that is just picking up on the zeitgeist
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, the second cap says don't punch a Nazi, you gotta ask, is that really Captain America?
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because that's kind of a shit.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cap knows some people can change, right?
• 30:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think he sees, I don't know, in my view of this, he sees an opportunity to end this without further violence.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know that he's condoning the Naziism of it all.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Rather than saying this man has already been defeated, he's misguided is the word that he uses here.
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I don't love that we have white writers that are always finding compassion for white supervillains, right?
• 30:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like that's that's a stroke that I do not enjoy.
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I do think that plays into Cap's character at a certain point.
• 31:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if this guy was holding a gun on innocent people, that would be a different kind of violent response from Cap.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: But uh, I don't know.
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: The restraint is is interesting, which is part of the wonderband conversation, everybody.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's uh, he's become a pacifist over the years, which is a really interesting
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: I will say like regards to like caps thoughts like sometimes I take a beat and think about like in the US after the 2016 election a lot of people were like, okay, we've got to like we're pair and come together and you know obviously that if we have issues in this country, but we need to like, you know, have empathy and all that and now after the last one's like fuck all that.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: No, it's burning all down.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: So like I think maybe that.
• 31:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: caps coming from a place where he thinks it may be, you know, we could heal some things, granted, you know, first appearance doesn't know a little history there, but I don't know.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think people's minds have shifted a little bit to the last 10 years.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're reading this story from a 2025 perspective in 1970s is different.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: But one of the things we'll notice even with this character that we've been talking about on the show is the way Naziism shows up in our comics and the way that it's viewed is very much changing depending on the time that we are writing and consuming the comics and then the later view of it
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Read it 1939 comic today.
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: It certainly hits differently than it did in 1962.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: The other thing I'll say quickly, I grew up in an abusive home.
• 32:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: My stepfather was quite abusive and he had spun truth in a particular way that when I was a teenager, I saw him as the victim.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: which was the like of certain things, which was like the reason he was violent.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have a certain amount of compassion for Helmet, like his dad was an asshole, and he has been taught to believe a particular way.
• 32:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: But at this point, he's a grown man shouting racist things and using Nazi journals to make super weapons for himself.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this trial, although we're going to have a good time talking about it, he's it's not going to go well.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're just going to say that.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I could admit that's everybody.
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's jump to Thunderbolt's distant rumbling minus one.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is if you guys remember the flashback month that Marvel did where every book got a minus one issue.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: We reviewed all the Xman versions of that on that show already.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: This book is by Kurt Bucyic.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: It teaches us that Baron Zemo kept himself alive over the decades by using compound X.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we have to account for the long live Nazi character.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have the
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Super soldier serum and the infinity formula and all kinds of things.
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now we have compound X.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Also, he really likes to hot tub with his son, but even in the hot tub he has the purple sock over his face.
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And God, I don't know how they longer that thing.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just want to say that out loud.
• 33:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: how it works as an engineer and his mother has just died.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Heinrich is pushing his son.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: You are a Zemo hermit.
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: You are superior.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: One of the fated masters of the world.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: You must acclimate yourself to the power that is your birthright.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: And as Heinrich takes down a rebellion from the locals that he's enslaved.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: The caption tells us, Helmet Zimo hasn't seen his father in years.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Here remembers him, of course, and has studied his career, but to see him like this after so long, to experience a nakedly fascist viewpoint that seems to belong to another era.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: It takes some getting used to.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the way, Eric Joston is working here.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is the guy that becomes power man and then Atlas.
• 34:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's always the loyal career guy, right?
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he gets turned into the Ionic superhero slash supervillain using Nazi technology.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like the Ionic Ray.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to go there another time.
• 34:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: The lush privileged life his family led before and during the war the captions tell us about Zemo.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: The life he'd led, those are memories he'd always suppressed in order to adjust to life as a humble engineer.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: But here in this raw primitive setting he can feel his father's aura of command of power like it's a physical thing and it all comes back to him.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: He finds himself wondering what it would be like to take.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: whatever you want, merely because you have the power to, merely because you're smarter, more driven.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: He wonders what it would be like.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, if you're still doing a good job at setting up the fascism that's brimming just below the DNA of this guy, Heinrich Tartel's helmet that that greatness is inherent to the Zemo line.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's in the blood and Helmet Zemo feels a strange thrill run through him.
• 35:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's just had a taste of power, unchecked, of power, and its rawest, purest form, and it's not a taste till soon for a good.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Years later, FABNBC has also wrote Thunderbolts Baron Zemos, limited series called Born Better.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: After losing himself to the double moonstones, and no, you don't get more of an explanation here.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: No one on a tour of his own family lineage, his mind jumping through the bodies of his ancestors in order.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: There have been 13 Zemo barons, Harbin, Hama, Heller, Herbert, Hamut, with an H at the end.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hackett, Hartfig, Hillard, Hoffman, Holbot.
• 35:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Herman and Heinrich.
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the fact that they all start for age delights me.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And while we want to spend time on this series today, it's a pretty interesting tale about the shifting legacy of the family line, the madness, the price of legacy as Zemo passes his ancestry line, uh, one by one before doing battle with his own father at the end.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now we'll be covering the main beats of Zemo's criminal career in the trial itself, but it gets crazy.
• 36:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's often the joke character before Thunderbolts.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: But certain writers take him very seriously.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you've never read the Masters of Evil season of Avengers Mansion, Goddard's great.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's some really strong stories with this guy along the way as the bad villain.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: And of course this trial is not going to go well, but there is a certain charm to this character.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: He has ego, there's a determination to be relevant and great.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's almost like Dr. Doom like it's just so misguided though.
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the lot he has long sword battles and it's pink and purple and black color schemes as he man spreads in a throne.
• 36:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: looks out over a kingdom with a glass of wine in his head.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the furline collars and the inclusion of the little crown on his head.
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the scope of his stories, the genuine ways to take down the Avengers mansion, to humiliate Captain America, to fool the entire public into believing that a group of wanted supervillains and murderers are your new heroes, everybody.
• 37:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the full conquering of counter-earth, it's his successful rule of the country of
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And most importantly, after part of his mind and history have been reprogrammed by the Cosmic Cube, he launches Hydra to new heights and literally takes over the planet.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's fun despite the crazy Nazi origins.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: He isn't super powered.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: He has prolonged his life with compound X.
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's a genius at strategy and deception.
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he's an expert with a sword or a gun.
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: He is great at measuring all the variables and playing the long game.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: And sure he's powered himself up with a moon stoner too, he even lived as a disembodied consciousness for a little while.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am a Zemo, and a Zemo never surrenders all defeats a merely setbacks, all enemies merely obstacles to be overcome.
• 38:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is my destiny, my birthright, to triumph, to rule, and rule I shall."
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: So let me just kind of pull each of you, what does it that you love about this character?
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: If we're letting ourselves ignore the Nazi as a mid just make him a crazy comic book character.
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think what I appreciate most is the real dedication to this, the then data he has against cat.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that there's something to be said about this kind of resolve to, you know, I'm gonna have my vengeance this is the last thing I do.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like this holding of a garage, I'm a cancer.
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we hold grudges real well for me.
• 38:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, if you're going to hold a grudge, like hold the grudge forever.
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like that.
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that car to be extinguished.
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like if we go have beef, we go have beef forever.
• 38:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like that, him, like all the time.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_07]: So I'll give more examples in my section, but to keep it kind of brief, he's kind of bitchy.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like he's a bitchy old school, like double a seven villain, where he's like a bully in his own right, but when he goes against another villain, like he sucks.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: He always looks really regal in a way because he's in purple and pink and then he Yes, sometimes you have the crown around his head and the loincloth every once in a while And then some animal print like it's very I like his style a lot I think he also this thing I appreciate about him a lot is he's like emotionally not regulated at all And he goes all in on what he's trying to do with like some chaos and how he feels
• 39:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: He wants a glass of wine and a throne and an easy job, but he also just wants to be crushing something, right?
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: He thinks like a billionaire in a way that's kind of uncomfortable, actually, is what I'm thinking about.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: I need something to have conquest over and like an endless supply of like wine.
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's he wants comfort and power.
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: So, picking up on the costume, which is that was going to say the costume.
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: And I will expand that slightly to just his general routineist.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: and I'm going to get into that more layer.
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: I think if he had not grown up with the father that he had grown up with, he would have had a great time at the bathhouses in Berlin in like the seven season eight.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: He's he'd have been having a great time and unfortunately he has instead repressed all into a head soap which is concerning.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: He really loves a pink mask, friends.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a comedy journey for him.
• 40:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: The facial scarring for the Zemo line and the red skull line, like the daughter of the red skull.
• 40:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a, if you guys read Avengers Academy by Anthony Olavara, at the end, Cynthia Schmidt gets her face burnt off again, and it's like a red skull in her reaction to this.
• 40:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just like, not again, which is,
• 40:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's very easy though, in a really odd way.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he honestly genuinely believes he's part of a master race and knows he can't kid shit done by himself.
• 40:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like he's always building these teams that are really interesting.
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I actually think these teams are more interesting than he is, but that's the separate conversation I think.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, reading him is a super villain's strategist with like a big plot who's not afraid of being very cruel.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like he is much more worried about keeping Moonstone in her place than he is about Jarvis getting beat to death, right?
• 41:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like this guy,
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's some fun, bonville and energy, as Sean said.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: What's everybody's favorite thunderbolt songbird for sure.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, songbird.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: What are we talking about songbird?
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: Her outfit.
• 41:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love her power nurse.
• 41:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: And she was redeemed.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's the one.
• 41:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yep.
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Are we fans of a beetle or a muck one?
• 41:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Abner Jenkins.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: I like this character.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's a tri-hard, but one time, Fabianisi has a road of story where he came out black for a little while.
• 41:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, do we, uh, do we like moonstone?
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: Absolutely.
• 41:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: 100%.
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_06]: She is, she is a queen.
• 41:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Go see the trial of Carlos so fun on my show.
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, do we have Atlas fans in the room?
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Sure.
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: Any guy that can grow would be very big.
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's me, this is like a better.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: So I'm locking right now, but I'm, I'm all about it.
• 41:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And do we have any fixer fans?
• 41:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: People are very ambivalent about beatle and fixer at this room, but we have very big things to do with others.
• 41:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: I like fixer too.
• 42:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think fixer is a lot of fun.
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well with that, let us commence with the trial of Baron, how moved Zemo.
• 42:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've asked each of my jury members to review a specific section of his history.
• 42:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And to prepare a prosecution and a defense and I want to be clear, I am a judge in a mock trial, but we draw the line at Nazi.
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: There are no defenses allowed about Hitler being right or hate crimes being okay.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: They will not be permitted.
• 42:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: So don't if you wrote some of those down, you don't you don't have to speak those words.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't want anyone using that sound clip against any of you in your perspective futures because note we're not going there.
• 42:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're drawing the line and giving ourselves a permission to have fun otherwise.
• 42:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Only arguments that are fun are allowed because the world is crazy enough as it is, but this is a trial for a bad guy Like this is like the only guy that we've done that's like real bad like this is like mesmero I mean whirlwind the high evolutionary.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is one of the bad
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: bad guys and we get to do those on the show too.
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, I'm not going to go well for this guy.
• 42:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fine.
• 42:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Trap point one we are called calling rising like a phoenix.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The assigned jury member here is my friend.
• 42:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Number one, Kishus here are Captain America 168 Captain America 275 through 278 and Avengers 273 through 277.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Numb was this your first time reading all three of these stories?
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: He adventures one in particular is a bagger though.
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: God, it's good.
• 43:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's so good.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was like, I want to see this like brought to like some sort of like animation or film or something because like this is good.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is all that life.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's season when you're managing an excellent.
• 43:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: For those of you that haven't done it.
• 43:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's high stakes.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's excellent.
• 43:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 43:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Designing a red and yellow fire themed costume and calling himself the Phoenix.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Helmet Zemo attacked Captain America and the Falcon in the street with an energy rifle, spouting racist sentiments, and hatred for Captain America.
• 43:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: But he fled when his rifle ran out of juice.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Later, the Phoenix pretended to be a civilian, luring Captain America into punching a phoenix shaped robot, and then captured him with knockout gas.
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Cap woke up and suspended over a boiling bat of a piece of X as Zemo
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America tried showing compassion to Zemo, but the Phoenix threw Cap Shield at the hero, and it bounced back, knocking him into the adhesive X-Vat wall.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: The hero's left assuming Zemo was dead.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: His face ended up horribly disfigured by the burning paste.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Zima adopted a more streamlined version of his father's costume, bright pink from head to toe, yellow fur trimmed boots, more fur on the shoulders, yellow gloves, golden belt, and a cute little tiara headset.
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zima teamed up with Arna and his clones, and they went after Captain America.
• 44:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this is his dad's old leg Nazi friend who has now got a face on his tummy.
• 44:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's he's a
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: They kidnapped Captain America's queer Jewish friend Arnie Roth, famous from Anthony Oliver's recent Avengers Academy run, in order to lure Cap into a trap.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: The uniform is new to you, Captain, but the name, now that should wrench a nerve of memory, it's a name you have besmirched for over 40 years, the noble and glorious name of Zemo.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: While assuring Captain America that he is as ruthless as his father was, he walked his captive down a hall of photos of the Zemo family.
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: My childhood was idyllic, my mother was this kind of woman as ever lived in my father.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: My father was a god to me.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemo strikes Captain America, revealing his own melted face beneath his mask.
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: I had no grandiose plans, Captain ruling the world, reviving the third right.
• 45:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: These things hold no appeal for me.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: My concerns are more personal.
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: I want to destroy Steve Rogers.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I want to deny him the happiness, the love, the norm of sea that has been denied me.
• 45:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemo and Zola had the being priceless take the form of Steve Rogers so that they could mess with his life like Kineelian despite her man's style.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: But they transferred the minds of Arne Roth and his life partner Michael into the forms.
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: of bizarre purple-brained mutates.
• 45:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Captain America didn't realize this soon enough.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And when the being vermin slashed through one of the creature's brains, Michael cried out in pain and died.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: We meet Arty Roth as his partner passes away.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anthony again, and Avengers Academy recently showed these two falling in love in their flashback stories.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love it very much.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: as Arne Roth cried Zemo, rejoiced.
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: In Fury, Captain America called out Zemo, and he replied, yes, Captain shout that name, let it ring so loudly that even in death my mother and father can hear it, let the know they did not suffer in vain.
• 46:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: That child has avenged them.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: More mutates attack, but Arne helped Cap realized that they all had human minds inside.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Captain America, instead inspired the entire group,
• 46:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: to turn on Zemo.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemo tried escaping in a ship that Verman was there and attacked, causing the ship to crash.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemo comes back months later, ready to up his game as a supervillain and take down an entire team of Avengers.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Following his father's legacy, he assembled a bigger better version of the Masters of Evil, including members Moonstone, Fixer, all of the wrecking crew,
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: The female yellow jacket read it tomorrow, absorbing man, Titania, and blackout.
• 47:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: After giving his team a rousing speech and successfully overcoming moonstones attempt to take over the team, Zemo led the masters in taking over Avengers Mansion while the Avengers were gone.
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Edwin Jarvis was tied up.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Black Knight was beaten.
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Dark first dome was put over the entire mansion to keep everyone out.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: The wrecking crew beat Hercules into a coma that has consequences for this character.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like this was a consequential story even in the life of Hercules who is here on the journey with us by the way.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Not Hercules!
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then they threw Hercules out into the street, wasp has escaped.
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Ximoton's captain America, he's destroying some of his priceless memorabilia, ripping up old photos, doing harmful things to a whole hurt captain America emotionally.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then he slaps the bound Jarvis, before he lets Mr. Hyde badly beat the Butler.
• 48:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's so, it's like these off-panel images of him crying out in pain, as you hear the blows lead over and over again.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the end, the Avengers retaliate and take out the Masters of Evil 1 by 1 until Zemos the last one standing.
• 48:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: While ranting at Captain America, he plunged over the edge of his roof and fell to his seaming death.
• 48:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so we're going to start with the prosecution here, esteemed members of the jury.
• 48:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hemal Thema has proven himself a cruel violent and relentless evil man.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: His determination to uphold his father's vow and horrific beliefs makes him guilty of every crime that he is being charged with today.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a reminder, these charges are follows, kidnapping, attempted murder, their degree murder are solved with the deadly weapons first to grace salt and much more.
• 48:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution stands to believe that Mr. Thema not only threatened to others and is
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: but also due to the trauma and disfigurement that he has faced as the reals of his own actions is mentally unstable in a serious danger to any around him.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this way, we are suggesting a permanent sentence to the rack prison without parole.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We do not foresee the defendant capable of rehabilitation and suggest that there'd be minimal if any restorative justice practices apply for his consideration.
• 49:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Given a sister, a premeditated hack, not only on heroes like Captain America and the Falcon, and later the Avengers and the resident about their Mr. Edvin Jarvis, but also threats to average citizens, violations against the basic laws of humanity and breaking multiple human rights laws, with the creation of these so-called mutate, and the force creation of other villains, both coercion of other villains, we believe that the defendant is extremely dangerous and should have the book thrown at him, if you catch my meaning.
• 49:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: We would also like to bring into question those actions of Mr. Hammond Simo as we find his acquaintances are also being brought up in further charges.
• 49:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: aligning himself with these with the likes of Arnhem Zola and forming this masters of evil proves that only that the defendant has poor judgment skills and question models at least.
• 50:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But also proves that his affinity for evil and harm goes far beyond his own endeavors and aims to put the greater world in danger.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking as one of his quote unquote friends, the prosecution would like to bring you to evidence the testimony of one witness such as Dr. Carlos as she witnessed his crimes against another accomplice, Marcus Daniels aka Blackout.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: confessing her complicity in the crimes that the defendant committed, explained that Blackout was manipulated by the defendant and forced to obey and attack the Avengers using some sort of device.
• 50:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is our stance as the prosecution that Helmond Zemo is a delusional, dangerous, and mentally unwell, manipulative criminal.
• 50:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we ask that the jury keep this in mind as to how he not only poses a threat to our beloved heroes, but also to each and every one of us in this court for my defense, very short.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the defense, we bring to the table honesty, we recognize the crimes in which Mr. Zimo has been accused, and we would like to push for a severe rehabilitation.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: We urge the jury to see within themselves a to offer our client restorative justice in every way possible.
• 50:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution would have you believe that this man is beyond redemption.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: that he is only a villain, but we offer that each of us is a victim of the world that we live in, and especially that of his Nazi father, Heinrich.
• 51:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our client is just as much a victim, as this evil rhetoric, and as his despicament became more unstable.
• 51:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The abuse that he faced with the hands of his father, and watching his loving mother endure until
• 51:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: and eventually literally fall into and repeat the process of his disfigurement as our previous client has done is harmed and has made him unwell and he deserves rehabilitation.
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our argument is not one that would see him as innocent.
• 51:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, my client has entered a guilty place, but we would ask that mental health services be provided to him so that he may overcome some of these delusions and unlearn the racism that has been taught him at a young age and possibly give
• 51:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: What was that mic for you jumping into these stories, my friend?
• 51:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's some crazy old content here.
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the first appearance of him as scenics, I was like, what is this nonsense?
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then when he fell into the dad, I was like, well, let's just get, yeah, so then when he came back, I was like, okay, so you haven't learned anything here, clearly, and you're still a psycho.
• 52:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is just gonna get worse for you, which it did.
• 52:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then his attack on the Avengers mansion, I was like, oh, so we're full, super villain mode now.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, cool.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did live the interactions between him and Moonstone.
• 52:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was that it was very interesting because they're both very manipulative characters and him kind of like putting her in her place a little bit and then her immediately when things are going her way when she's defeated immediately snitching to run it, monitoring her and bow and basically
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is the story where Moonstone was chasing Monica and crashed into a cliff.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they crashed really broke our neck.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's literally broke my neck.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the ground can't move.
• 52:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's such an interesting story.
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love that an amazement between the Avengers and how they're all kind of working together.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, a highlight, like, you know, Infinity Warma, but Thor shows up and everyone's like, yes.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, well, it's over for you guys now, but it's really like a, it's a really great kind of interesting story dynamic where he brings in all of these villains and he's like, okay, I'm in charge has to still wrangle being in charge and still has to like kind of manage the undermining villainy things that go on behind the scenes.
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was very interesting.
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was a very fun read.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad that he got.
• 53:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: his justice.
• 53:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: I could talk primus and German with you.
• 53:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: We could talk about the fate of Jarvis and Hercules.
• 53:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's so many moments.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: These are good stories.
• 53:29
  [SPEAKER_07]: I would recommend everyone seeking them out.
• 53:31
  [SPEAKER_07]: But I think it's messed up that he beat up on Jarvis.
• 53:34
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like Jarvis, like it's one thing to attack Hercules.
• 53:37
  [SPEAKER_07]: He is super strength, but Jarvis is just an old man.
• 53:39
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like this guy's an asshole.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it should be like protocol underlying current like you never hit the Butler you may like send him out or like you know chain them up but you can ever hit the Butler that's just mean and cruel and unnecessary.
• 53:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: I do not have sympathy for this character but for me I don't think he thinks about Jarvis at all which is a problem obviously but it's not about letting Jarvis get hurt.
• 54:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's about watching Captain America helpless to help him.
• 54:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's something again like Bonville in level of hatred.
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's like tearing up pictures of Captain Mom in front of him like from his storage locker.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: He wants the right kind of attention.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's also something interesting about like, he's not really an Aryan thinker.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't care about the world being better for other white blonde people.
• 54:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: He just thinks he is superior in every way.
• 54:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is this kind of born better, high concept, which is Bonville.
• 54:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Fun quality and a character is super brilliant, right?
• 54:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: But like, this is not a person I want to know.
• 54:39
  [SPEAKER_06]: No.
• 54:42
  [SPEAKER_06]: Less so, uh, commentary on his moral standing.
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: I think we can all agree.
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's not looking great.
• 54:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: But I will say he debb Regmondstone along for a mission in any time that Minestone gets paid space.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm happy about it.
• 54:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: So we has at least a little bit of a redeeming quality year.
• 54:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a, it's a five for me, the, the, the particularly cruel thing outside of the racism is the joy he takes in seeing Arnie's partner died.
• 55:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's again, I don't think it's about them.
• 55:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's about calf, but it's, it's achiyaki five being the worst five.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no redemption.
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I completely agree.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: No question about it.
• 55:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's a five.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, for what I said and for, you know, killing our names partner just for the fact like this guy has no care about human life.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_07]: So yeah, five easy.
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, definitely a five.
• 55:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's a district single.
• 55:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think for me too, it's like, it's not just like, okay, so he's doing these harmful things to like the heroes or to Captain America like he's hurting other people who like aren't involved in any of this kind of ruin caps life and in doing so like he's ruining the lives of others around cap like these basic people that are just trying to go about their day.
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, that's 30 other 30 and I think that's how it's going to go for it.
• 55:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to jump to trial point two, which we are calling Daddy Issues.
• 55:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Ascendrium member here is the same Rashid.
• 56:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: The key issues here are Captain America, 290, 293, 295, 299 through 301.
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now all of these are, by the way, sections out of that long Form JMDamitayah story that we took time to cover during the Red School Conversations for those of you that have been listening to the show.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: We also were jumping to Captain America 357 through 362.
• 56:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: The telepathic mother superior, who is the artificially aged up daughter of the Red Skulls in the Ashmit.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Seeks out Zerberin Zemo at the order of the Red Skull, who is this elderly frail old Nazi guy at this point.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the two of them begin invading the nightmares of Arne Roth, promising his death is going to be near.
• 56:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mother Superior guides Zemo through a panoramic view of the violence of human history, while training him to be a better fighter all the while than now elderly Red Skull is determining Zemo's fitness for taking on his personal Red Skull legacy.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Redskull strikes Zemil on the head with a staff, demanding he be better.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemil and Mother Superior then take Dave Cox who is a war veteran, a pacifist, an amputee and a new father, and they brainwash him into becoming the costume slayer in an attempt to tear now in Captain America, though the hero won.
• 57:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Red Skull's plots expand as he weaponizes the Sisters of Sin, who the Red Skull wanted his daughter to have some friends, so he got some orphans and turned them into sexy nun, ladies that he aged up.
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Sisters of Sin is a whole thing.
• 57:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, he weaponizes them in combat, and he has mother superior begin brainwashing, no mad, who is the bucky from the 1950s, the comedy smasher one.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he soon begins capturing Captain America's friends and allies,
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Overcome with hatred, Zemo calls Arne Roth Steve's Jewish pig friend, and it wants to snap his neck.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nope, Red Skull begins treating Helmet like his heir and has him dressed like the original Baron Zemo, and then they re-enact the day that Cap was lost in the iceberg with no mad in the place of Bucky in order to further torture Cap.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: But none had properly prepared for the full insanity of the Red Skull.
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mother Superior soon awakens feelings of deep doubt and guilt within Zemo, who realizes he has killed Innocence to try to please a man, his father, who is dead.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemo soon falls over seemingly dead, him's health, turns out he broke his net.
• 58:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Much like Moonstop.
• 58:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: While, uh, the most back now, I need you to understand as we review this story that this man has a broken neck and it's still healing and he's in a neck brace in the story and this is what he decides to do next.
• 58:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: He jumps around the world in a story that involves a series of increasingly problematic racial stereotypes in a very odd Indiana Jones style adventure.
• 58:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's working with a medium named Tristrum McCawber, and he's working with Batroc Brigade.
• 58:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: He had the gain access to the skeletal remains of Ulysses bloodstone, and they're using him to track down the shattered remnants of the bloodstone itself.
• 59:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, which now that I'm thinking about is getting real Oregon bloodline energy, I guess, gross.
• 59:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, in their weird adventures around the world, Zemo and the Brigade get strapped to the wheel of death by seemingly ancient Aztecs and Captain America and Diamondback have to save them, then they're bested and disarmed by Diamondback on a speedboat in the middle of the ocean while the Brigade are punching sharks, but Diamondback ends up stabbed and then dumped overboard.
• 59:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then Zemo threatens to blow up a city block in Tokyo.
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Finally, the gems are gathered.
• 59:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: We learn Zemo's big plot is to resurrect his father.
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he's been carrying the around his dad's corpse with him through this entire adventure with the broken neck.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Trying to find something to reanimate his dad.
• 59:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: So they do it.
• 59:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: The corpse of Heinrich Zemo animates out of the ship, but then it becomes the host of the sentient mine that resides inside the bloodstones.
• 59:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hellfire Helix, the corpse ends up falling in a hole and Helmet jumps in after it.
• 1:00:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Daddy!
• 1:00:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: At the end of that story.
• 1:00:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wow.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me turn it over to his saying received.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're on her.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I need to begin by motioning to separate the trial of Helmet Zimo, because there are two Helmets in these stories.
• 1:00:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is the fucking Nazi Helmet, and then there's the...
• 1:00:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I need therapy Helmet.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think they need to be discussed separately.
• 1:00:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in the first instance, I will start with the defense, where Zemo is working with Mother Superior and the Red Skull.
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I have to begin your honor by saying, and members of the jury, I have to begin by saying, how can you hold anybody culpable for cognition, who chooses to work with a man who raises his own daughter, whom he calls mother to train his sisters.
• 1:00:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: This sounds like a modern member of the GOP, members of the jury.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: How can you be responsible for any of these people and taking them seriously?
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zemo is clearly being groomed by the sick, non-member of the pedophile.
• 1:01:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that is one- not a member of the Epstein files, which is one redeeming value in this entire story.
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zemo is under his control to be groomed to be part of this, not pun intended, to be part of this order.
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: We can
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: cannot hold Zimo responsible when he is under the sway of this evil being of the red skull and his daughter mother sister mother superior.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the prosecution, the dude is hanging out with Anazi and is doing Nazi shit and is calling Arnie a Jewish pig-friend Bernie, a U.S., and Falcon and Negro.
• 1:01:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the year of our Lord past civil rights.
• 1:01:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's let's not do this.
• 1:01:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a willing choice on his part to hang out with the baddies so long Farewell off we just say goodbye.
• 1:01:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that was a German reference from the so that was I I had to get it in now the second helmet Zima that we have on trial and as a quick aside Is it true that this was an a plot for over a year in Captain America?
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's ridiculous.
• 1:01:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was actually back in one, we read the issues you did not sound because I was like, this actually kind of interesting.
• 1:02:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's, but it's this one on.
• 1:02:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fucking fantastic though.
• 1:02:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Long forms.
• 1:02:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: My James, I'm gonna tell you, I said, yeah.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so, sorry, second, second trial or second helmet, Zimo, uh, with this, this is bloodstone.
• 1:02:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a guy, I'm starting again with the defense.
• 1:02:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a dude who really just needs therapy to deal with his daddy issues.
• 1:02:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I want to be my daddy.
• 1:02:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to be my daddy.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to bring my dad daddy back and like, dude, it's cheaper and easier to do therapy.
• 1:02:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, please, just consider it.
• 1:02:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just think about it.
• 1:02:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: You don't need to run for office in America.
• 1:02:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, just go seek therapy.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dark podcasts, I don't make you happier.
• 1:02:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: But like, don't do this.
• 1:02:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's, he's traveling the world.
• 1:02:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's looking for these five stones to bring his dad back to life.
• 1:02:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a white guy from South Africa who grew up in post Nazi Germany, who's denying his Nazi heritage in apartheid South Africa, who's denying his related to the mosques.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like, let's understand that we're viewing the screwed up world through his viewpoint, and we get all these stereotypes, fine.
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Captain America should know better, but look, he just wants his daddy back.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The prosecution is, you're looking at the world this way, where you're saying all these stereotypes you're going around, you're abusing diamond back.
• 1:03:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: and you're working with fucking backdrops of Leaper and his brigade like just bad decisions dude and leave poor diamond back alone.
• 1:03:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's a sweet innocent want to be do good or in all of this and does not deserve to be side and drowned and whatever else you're doing door.
• 1:03:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Diamondback is my favorite tri-harts.
• 1:03:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: That really, I like, I loved her so much in this.
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So with that, I'll present to you the trial and the prosecution and defense of Hamlet Zimo.
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: One and Hamlet Zimo too.
• 1:03:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you enjoy reading these old comics?
• 1:03:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I got to say there were elements like in that first art as vializema with is there's some really interesting stuff going on like And it's red school dius patheticly.
• 1:03:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: He just like has a heart and what right right like he just dies in the most worth the sweat But like birdie and and Captain America are talking about PTSD and like how heroes have to take all this stuff on with them And then Captain America has this conversation with no mad around the same lines like you can't turn it off in the nightmares they're having
• 1:04:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's this whole thing about the spirit of America, so there's just character Black Crow, who comes in and sort of helps revive Captain America as he's dying as well.
• 1:04:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he talks about the spirit of America, which felt weird like the spirit of America is great and noble.
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like dude, we genocide into people.
• 1:04:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like you don't need to like say, there's a brave and noble spirit here.
• 1:04:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the symbols that they have.
• 1:04:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: for speaking about the spirit of America and what America could be is a burning right so the Jewish woman, Arne, a queer Jewish man, and Falcon, a black man, is in addition to no man.
• 1:04:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's actually really interesting this whole thing about what America is and what it could be and like, which has always been a theme in Captain America, but like see it this early and so visually represented is like really great in that way.
• 1:04:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so Skullhouse is you know,
• 1:04:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Notary and Mother Superior identifies herself as the daughter of the devil.
• 1:04:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's all sorts of really interesting religious stuff that keeps popping up through this.
• 1:05:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And very Catholic religious stuff that I'm fascinated by.
• 1:05:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was so want to do a sister's of sin Patreon episode, but I have about seven people I want to be on it.
• 1:05:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like Anthony Olivera has to be, of course, like there's so many thoughts about the red skull calling his daughter, Mother.
• 1:05:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's that there's a lot on juicyness in these stories.
• 1:05:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: Chad, you had me read this when we had our little mini chat that some of the the red skull plot line and it was and when I read that it was very I thought it was I don't know say this without being like something down my words it was aggressive in a way that like every like marginalized person was kind of represented in getting a like getting a attack.
• 1:05:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, or either some sort that is represented, this is where I want to go.
• 1:05:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's representation for everybody, like, to kind of like get angry at.
• 1:05:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't, I don't, I couldn't recall a story that was kind of like that, especially back at that time.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: So as marginalized person, it was, um, I don't know, cathartic in a way, the way that ended.
• 1:05:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, this is the infamous story where the red skull has built like a Berlin gate club.
• 1:06:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is basement and they like paint Arnie Roth and have him perform and like shame himself on stage.
• 1:06:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can read it from a queer lens.
• 1:06:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can read it as the children of the great Nazis, you know, like being forced to reenact their fathers who can't let go of anything because these old awful waitmen will never die like Honestly, I'm going to have to just give it a five because I really appreciate all the work to see this to make this story make sense, but having not read it myself.
• 1:06:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: I am like, what did I just hear this is a sanity
• 1:06:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: I love it, but it's the five, it's the five.
• 1:06:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think when I was reading, I was watching your face.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: We got to the super powered children nuns, but then once we got to the hellfire, he looks possessing the corpse of his dad, like you were like broken, I think.
• 1:06:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: Like, this is why I love comics, but also not the fuck.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_07]: Um, so I'm going to continue the five just because we continue to see helmet not care about the people that he's harming on the way and continually going after the minority.
• 1:07:08
  [SPEAKER_07]: So this guy's an asshole.
• 1:07:09
  [SPEAKER_07]: I hit him.
• 1:07:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, people with a five here.
• 1:07:11
  [SPEAKER_07]: He's still cycle path.
• 1:07:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So definitely a five.
• 1:07:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I get hyper fixated on the fact like.
• 1:07:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to bring back your father.
• 1:07:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: He knew was a bad dude.
• 1:07:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like who you also admitted was bad to you and your mother.
• 1:07:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I think that this is not going to end well for anyone involved.
• 1:07:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, so no, five.
• 1:07:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your 10th person.
• 1:07:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Excellent stories, but it's a five for me.
• 1:07:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hussein.
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Separating the trials, trial one.
• 1:07:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to give him a seven, trial two.
• 1:07:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to give him a five for an average of six.
• 1:07:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is pretty, 30.
• 1:07:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's sleeping.
• 1:07:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: The same clearly one of those people, you're like, how you feeling on a scale of one to 10.
• 1:07:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, oh, my 12, but no, spinal tap was formative, man.
• 1:07:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I was talking about.
• 1:07:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: But, okay, and triathletes where we are calling grasping at legacy.
• 1:07:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Asangeur, remember here is Derek Nichols, who I guarantee thought at least 10 times what the fuck is Chad having me read right now.
• 1:08:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: We are in the key issues of spectacular Spider-Man, 194 through 196.
• 1:08:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America 431 through 432 which is a truly insane story.
• 1:08:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fucking crazy and then I give Derek this bizarre 90s crossover that's technically not canon but we're counting it.
• 1:08:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the Exo Man Award Iron Man crossover called Heavy Metal.
• 1:08:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's two issues and yeah we're just gonna jump it.
• 1:08:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Zima has resurfaced.
• 1:08:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: His neck is healed and he's gone after another of his father's former experiments.
• 1:08:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Verman, remember that guy from the Spidey comics.
• 1:08:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Controlling some of Arnhem's soul is most pathetic mutate experiments.
• 1:08:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: He has Edward Wheelin or Verman.
• 1:08:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: kidnapped from Ravencroft, the mental hospital, and also they've captured Dr. Ashley Kafka.
• 1:08:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemo rips off his father's mask, showing his badly mutated face, and unleashes his face was burned in the adhesive if you recall, and unleashes Verman and the mutates against Spider-Man and a long fight during which Zemo briefly wears Spidey's mask.
• 1:09:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the end, Verman turns on him,
• 1:09:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, Zemo gets married to Hikka, H-E-I-K-A.
• 1:09:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: A woman who's dressed just like him, and we're calling her the Baroness, which is very sound of music, but also she was his father cloned into the body of a woman.
• 1:09:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not joking.
• 1:09:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Timerik Zemo has had Arnhem Zola making him a new body.
• 1:09:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: That of a hot blonde woman, and she wears a pink mask and a bikini and a little crown, and now she's married to Helmet.
• 1:09:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's married to the clone of his father in a woman's body.
• 1:09:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is nuts!
• 1:09:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's Mark Greenwald.
• 1:09:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of slightly mentioned.
• 1:09:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: But God damn, what the hell?
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, Zimo has glued a fresh face on top of his scarred face.
• 1:09:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: And now he's wearing a mask over his face.
• 1:09:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: And now he's dressing with his wife in matching Zimo clothes.
• 1:10:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they move into a little castle where they are tended to by
• 1:10:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Plastoyed robot servants, and then they find these 25 children that were kidnapped from their homes by Damon Dran and a different story, but they've adopted all 25 of these children and some of them are black kids, and they've all started like dressing like little Zemos that are in this little Nazi castle school with DZmo and his wife, who's also his dad.
• 1:10:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Robin's face is breaking news.
• 1:10:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America is now in battle armor because he's dying.
• 1:10:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a whole thing and Diamondback is here and they've intervened and the children turn their guns on the heroes And then superior the feminist superwoman who wants to like sterilize all men on the planet shows up
• 1:10:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, aren't you that lady who said she had Heinrich Zimo's mind?
• 1:10:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so helmet hears Heika and Superior plotting against him and he immediately just starts weeping and all of the tears loosen the glue that's binding his flesh mask to his scarred face.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it starts to come loose.
• 1:11:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like breaking off in pieces.
• 1:11:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: So now he's heartbroken and he asks the captured Captain America about
• 1:11:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, is your own love life as difficult as mine?
• 1:11:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: But now he's planning to in Tomb, Captain America, in Adhesive X. jealous, helmet, gases, heica, and then strings her up and makes her promise that she'll never betray him again.
• 1:11:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then he tries dropping Captain America into Adhesive X in front of the children, but his face is falling off.
• 1:11:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So all the kids are horrified and they're running away and he's
• 1:11:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: like, no, not my children to, in the end, both Hikana and Helmut fall into the adhesive X together.
• 1:11:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's the end forever.
• 1:11:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, love.
• 1:11:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: Whoa, whoa.
• 1:11:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: You guys.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And before everything changed with the Thunderbolts, which has not happened yet, Baron Zimo has one last crazy adventure in a valiant Marvel crossover called Iron Man XO Metal War.
• 1:11:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you don't have
• 1:12:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Maranzima has teamed up with the villain, Mr. Scrishendo, while searching for the shattered pieces of both a cosmic cube and a rock of reality.
• 1:12:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he puts together a new master's of evil, which this time is Arna Mazzola absorbing man and Titania.
• 1:12:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: And okay.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: and they set up a base at the Nazi Isle of Exiles, go back and see my early red school conversations for that place.
• 1:12:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: When Zimo tried using the artifacts to alter reality, he ended up ripping a whole in reality, and only Iron Man and Exle Metal War could save the day.
• 1:12:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: You guys, as I was reading this summary, members of the jury were breaking and Derek kept giving this like, yeah, you guys, I had to read this.
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because exactly before it presented my case, I enjoyed watching your faces so much because I felt validated in all of my thoughts.
• 1:12:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, I'm gonna turn it over to Derek Nichols.
• 1:12:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Alright, I think I'm gonna start with the prosecution first.
• 1:12:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: It is obvious that helmet is a very unstable man whose crimes include kidnapping, attempted murder, my control brainwashing, and an attempted multiversus side.
• 1:13:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: He psychologically tortured Edward Whalen during a time when he was trying to get rid get better from his affliction of the vermin, and when that wasn't enough sick fun for him, he set his sights on Dr. Ashley Kafka, snapping her, and having her relived the trauma of raising and mentally and physically disabled younger sister.
• 1:13:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: He married his father.
• 1:13:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: He brainwashed 25 vulnerable children into thinking that he and their mother grandfather loved them.
• 1:13:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: Taught them how to become killers and had them commit attempted murder on Captain America.
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: When that didn't work, he was going to kill Captain himself right in front of them.
• 1:13:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: For his final criminal act, he tried to merge two universes into one that he himself would recreate in his own image.
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: Brand Zemo is the worst kind of villain because his cloths are unpredictable and full of ego.
• 1:13:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so the defense.
• 1:13:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: The only crime here is the crime of having too big of a heart full of love.
• 1:13:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: Helmet is looking for a family.
• 1:13:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: Dealing with his physical deformities he suffered, he adopted all of what he could of what you could call his brothers and sisters the mutates his father created like Furman.
• 1:14:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: They all had to deal with their appearances and they developed a sort of support system like a family.
• 1:14:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Helmet gave them the chance to express who they were on the inside physically on the outside.
• 1:14:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: After marrying the beautiful Hikka, the obvious next step for them was to have children.
• 1:14:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: Genetically, that probably wouldn't have been the best thing, so they had to adopt.
• 1:14:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: He saved the children that were kidnapped from households that originally abused them, and then taught them gun safety.
• 1:14:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: His heart is so huge, he reached out to an entire universe, and all he wanted to do was make them both blunder, I mean better for everyone.
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: How could this man be guilty of evilness?
• 1:14:38
  [SPEAKER_05]: He is a Sentinel for the outcasts and the abuse and those that did not fit our world's beauty standards.
• 1:14:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: I asked you this, Jerry.
• 1:14:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: If this man was sitting here before us and looked like the handsome Daniel Brune and did all these same things, would he even be on top trial?
• 1:14:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: In my case.
• 1:14:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do you want to just talk to us about reading these stories?
• 1:14:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think this move back to how like when you asked me what like our opening thoughts on her brand demo was and how I thought he was like this horrible like Dr. Doom style villain and then I read these weird ass stories like I felt very beneath somebody like a Dr. Doom character so my opinion shifted on him a lot.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: So it was just quite a trip.
• 1:15:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then also the introduction of so many other characters, like I'm not familiar, a story with a whole other comic universe involved with characters I had to know.
• 1:15:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know what I was going on with.
• 1:15:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: And they're like merging together and switching origin stories.
• 1:15:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: I hurt a lot, hurt my brain a lot, so I tried to figure out what was going on here.
• 1:15:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: So thanks for the exercise and mental grit.
• 1:15:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, then we jump into the Zemo family castle, sound of music.
• 1:15:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're like the Vaughn trap, Zemo's with the 25 children.
• 1:15:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're all dressing the same.
• 1:15:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's married his father who's also in a clone body, but she's like having secret conversations with the feminist supervillain and he's jealous and strings are up like this whole, his face is falling off because he cried, like, rather than how you do it.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: Right, trying to compose myself, so I don't just, it's great, I'm, but the part where his dad is his wife,
• 1:16:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: and they have children.
• 1:16:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: What?
• 1:16:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: I can't.
• 1:16:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Look, I'm on this.
• 1:16:10
  [SPEAKER_06]: Who among us is not?
• 1:16:12
  [SPEAKER_06]: The first thing I'm doing when this recording ends is going to be the story.
• 1:16:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: This sounds like exactly what I want to finish off my Sunday evening.
• 1:16:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is wow.
• 1:16:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
• 1:16:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much.
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And don't like it.
• 1:16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, where?
• 1:16:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is he like this?
• 1:16:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The entire time even when I was even I was like this is just okay.
• 1:16:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're crossing so many lines here like this is weird I don't know why we're doing this.
• 1:16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why are we here?
• 1:16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like sitting in a room full of like people You're like I want to leave.
• 1:16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to leave
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there are three versions of the story.
• 1:16:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Number one, he married HICA knowing it was Heinrich.
• 1:16:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Number two, he married HICA not knowing it's Heinrich, but HICA knows like the dad knows.
• 1:16:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Four number three, neither of them knew.
• 1:16:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not sure which of those versions is the most concerning to me.
• 1:17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't like any of it, and then the poor children, like just traumatized by his face sliding off because he cried, why don't you use some more adhesive eggs keep your face on.
• 1:17:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you got to check out that panel because that was hilarious.
• 1:17:19
  [SPEAKER_05]: The kids reactions like look terrifying.
• 1:17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So traumatized the children you're supposed to be raising.
• 1:17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That sounds like a fun idea.
• 1:17:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: We've never seen the Zemotryle turn again.
• 1:17:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're off performing somewhere.
• 1:17:30
  [SPEAKER_07]: Well, I love the idea that had Heinrich just cried.
• 1:17:33
  [SPEAKER_07]: He would have melted his mask off earlier.
• 1:17:36
  [SPEAKER_07]: But this story, like, helmet, this is some, like, edging shit.
• 1:17:41
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like, he resurrects his dad and Mary's hand.
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_07]: He wears, like, skin over his face.
• 1:17:45
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like, this is edging level stuff.
• 1:17:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: Okay, uh, Chad, I think this is totally right of story with the Baron, the Zemo children.
• 1:17:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because I'm curious of where they ended up to.
• 1:17:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: They're taking away.
• 1:17:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: But like the plot was that they came from households that were not great to them.
• 1:18:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: So like where were they relocate?
• 1:18:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like there's a whole like they could be like the next generation of superheroes are villains right now.
• 1:18:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: I think it's a great story.
• 1:18:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Or there's a I don't know like Artem Zola took them home and turned them all into a little monster.
• 1:18:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I think that's where I had to go.
• 1:18:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right, let's go ahead and vote here.
• 1:18:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: A five.
• 1:18:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's five.
• 1:18:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's going to be fights from everybody.
• 1:18:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm just going to put fives, but I'd love to hear your comments if you have any.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a fight for me.
• 1:18:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: That grew in one story, y'all.
• 1:18:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the Zemo family.
• 1:18:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's crazy.
• 1:18:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Go read it.
• 1:18:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's so funny.
• 1:18:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, you should have learned from Red Skull.
• 1:18:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, mother daughter sister relationship is like, don't do the fall.
• 1:18:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel bad for those kids who like, you know, we have to do the family tree and first grade.
• 1:18:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, and my mother is my grandfather.
• 1:18:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, say what?
• 1:18:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can we not?
• 1:18:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was going to bring up this next eight of a moment.
• 1:18:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the red skull causes daughter mother and the barren's email causes father wife.
• 1:18:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: Um, I will say that I think when you look at this in the perspective of writers, deconstructing like Nazi ideas of like the white nuclear family, it's really interesting, but at the same time, we are also reading stories where a man cries his flesh face off and traumatizes 25 children.
• 1:19:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: So yeah.
• 1:19:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's a five for him, but it is out 100% love the concept here.
• 1:19:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love that his like Aryan dad.
• 1:19:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is new woman body.
• 1:19:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was like a little less Nazi and a little bit more like, ooh, maybe I'm a feminist now.
• 1:19:31
  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, he gets worse here because now he's like brutalizing children.
• 1:19:36
  [SPEAKER_07]: So I think this is the worst of all like the Zemo so far.
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_07]: Three is the magic number.
• 1:19:41
  [SPEAKER_07]: I mean, I'm writing it a five but this part three is the worst.
• 1:19:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Dawn votes three.
• 1:19:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
• 1:19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's all just so weird like you're crying, but like you had to know this was not gonna work out like at a certain point Also 20 plus children that's no things.
• 1:19:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been a teacher and having that many kids all day But like forever You just sent yourself up.
• 1:20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was never gonna end well for you.
• 1:20:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: I do have one like caveat though.
• 1:20:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: Nobody died
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: in my stories.
• 1:20:14
  [SPEAKER_05]: So if we're like ranking him compared to other like chapters like this is Zany like paper weird family drama territory.
• 1:20:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like no, he was killed.
• 1:20:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Robin, let me hear your reaction on a Hikazeemo's first costume after the resurrection.
• 1:20:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this is the dad in the clone
• 1:20:31
  [SPEAKER_06]: I can't do this.
• 1:20:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is what am I looking at?
• 1:20:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to describe this costume for us.
• 1:20:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: So it looks like Dominatrix, who is perfinger into an electrical socket and her hair is exploded, but she's also carrying what looks like a block of cheese and a spear.
• 1:20:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: What?
• 1:20:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sean, let me get your thoughts on Hikazeemo's second costume.
• 1:20:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Here we go.
• 1:20:57
  [SPEAKER_07]: Okay.
• 1:20:59
  [SPEAKER_07]: So it looks like um she's got like a heart shaped like shield over her breasts and she's wearing her Zimo helmet.
• 1:21:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a it's not terrible It's kind of sexy like and maybe keep the mask on Now your brain looks like it hurts, but let me get your thoughts on uh the Zimo family portrait Here we go.
• 1:21:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so this is more reasonable I guess we're all wearing the same outfit at least and our bodies are covered up It's definitely more child appropriate But um but that's his glue on face
• 1:21:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still weird, don't know why we're doing this.
• 1:21:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right, we're going to come to Trial Point for which we are calling justice.
• 1:21:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like lightning, the assigned jury member here is Robin Moth at the key issues.
• 1:21:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And these are just certain parts of a long version of the story.
• 1:21:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thunderbolts 10 for 12, citizen V in the V battalion annual 1998, Thunderbolts 39, Thunderbolts 62, Captain America 608 through 610.
• 1:21:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: When the heroes of Earth went missing and were believed dead, Zemo relaunched the masters of evil, creating a cover identity for each one so they could pretend to be the new public heroes the Thunderbolts.
• 1:22:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zemo himself dressed as the World War II heroes, citizen V, a man his own father had killed, and this is a canon 40s character, everybody.
• 1:22:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: After months of working to win the public's trust, while keeping his lackeys in line, Zima finally got access to the private files of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four just before his criminal identity was exposed, well, he leaked it himself, and just before the heroes returned from this other dimension.
• 1:22:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then putting on his classic costume again, he revealed to his team that he was the one who exposed their identities.
• 1:22:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: When with Jolt abandoned from the team, Zemo blew up the Thunderbolt's base and the backster building and then he retreated to his private satellite and began taking over the world's computers.
• 1:22:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: He launched armies of soldiers who were loyal to his cause and put out a public broad cast on earth that stated he was doing a full takeover.
• 1:22:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have now launched ourselves into world domination.
• 1:23:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: He detonated missiles and countries who resisted his control, then turned on the rebellious Thunderbolts, just as the return heroes arrived.
• 1:23:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Zemo is controlling the Avengers, the FF, and others, through a biomodem.
• 1:23:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: After Zemo ranted to the captive Captain America, about finally trying to take his rightful places as Zemo, he planned to kill his old enemy, but the Thunderbolts turned on him, defeating him.
• 1:23:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: He narrowly escaped vowing vengeance.
• 1:23:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the way, it turns out the original Citizen V had an actual grandson who was using the title, Citizen V, and this Citizen V has sought out Baron Zemo and attacked him.
• 1:23:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the way, he's working with something called the V Battalion, which is like a legacy superheroes from World War II all working together to manipulate events around the world.
• 1:23:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of old juicy goldnage stuff here.
• 1:23:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Still working with techno, Zemo returned to the Amazon where his father had once enslaved the locals, and Zemo followed in his father's footsteps again, you are on a dogs, even though you don't know it, for you serve one of the rightful masters of the world, and work toward his greater glory, now dig dig or feel the lash.
• 1:24:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's Fives all around for slavery.
• 1:24:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're just going to say that out loud.
• 1:24:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was a rebellion and Zemo ordered many of the slaves killed.
• 1:24:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Soon they unearthed one of Heinrich's buried inventions called Particle X, which basically acts like a bit of like an EMP and formula X, a variation on the super soldier serum.
• 1:24:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: He planned to launch a satellite and drive the world to war so that he could come in and take the remains.
• 1:24:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America, and citizen V, this one is Dallas Reordon, by the way, attacked and destabilized the missile and Zemo escaped.
• 1:24:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Soon, scourge.
• 1:24:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so this is Jack Monroe, the 50's Bucky slash Nomad from earlier, that he's using supervillain weapons in a costume identity, but is also being controlled by nanites through
• 1:24:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: who has maybe turned, maybe in turn being controlled by Baron Strucker and it's just this crazy long form story involving the Scourge, but Scourge just sent to Kill Zemo.
• 1:25:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the way, Scourge has already shot Jolt in the head at this point.
• 1:25:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is NECA as a writing crazy 90s comics that I loved buying off the shelf.
• 1:25:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a big supervillain crazy battle in Zemo's castle, and Zemo is using his superior swordsmanship to fight back.
• 1:25:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really the first time we've seen him kind of hold his own in any kind of fight.
• 1:25:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: In Zemo's private study, we see costume cases containing the original Phoenix suit, as well as his dad's uniform, his citizen V suit, and one of the red skulls.
• 1:25:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, okay, there's also a huge portrait of his parents, mannequins of his father fighting Captain America,
• 1:25:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: and a case of Hitler's personal China.
• 1:25:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, okay, so Scourge 1 seemingly beheading Zemo.
• 1:25:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Zemo's mind actually ended up displaced into the body of citizen V for a while, but then it ended up in techno's techno pack.
• 1:25:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the team went to counter Earth where he like uploaded his body into a machine and then got himself put into that world's version of him who was a superhero.
• 1:26:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: But now he has an alternate universe body.
• 1:26:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so on the other planet, the counter Heinrich Zemo is thriving as a member of that world's Thunderbolts, which is just a team of shit people, including Solar, Lloyd Block as the Phantom Eagle, and the counter Helmet Zemo who is Iron Cross.
• 1:26:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: So with Technos, how helmet transfers his mind into this other version of him, meaning now his face is healed, and he's got this like hot hero body, and then the very first thing he does is murder the other world's version of his father.
• 1:26:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, Faripi's working question mark.
• 1:26:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: The next thing he does after that, he suggests that the Thunderbolts conquered the entire counter-earth planet, so that he can prove himself a real master of the world.
• 1:26:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: He starts putting the Z-mail mask back on, and a lot happens in this era on counter-earth, including Hawkeye and Songbird taking over another group of masters of evil and like plant man, crazy tapping into the bio-energy of the earth.
• 1:27:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Go see my plant man episode.
• 1:27:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, a huge portal opens between the worlds, but we're just going to focus on this problem at Zemo.
• 1:27:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: After getting a second moonstone, which is a space rock that has crazy powers that powers up Carlisce often, Zemo began rehabilitating villains by robbing them of their free will while calling it redemption.
• 1:27:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: forced certain actions and in some cases sex psychologically experimented on others.
• 1:27:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: He lied to the Thunderbolts, manipulating them into certain actions that increased his own power and kept them loyal to him, and he began using data to mate monitor major movements across the planet while influencing international politics.
• 1:27:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Zima pushed crises to boiling points so that he could come in and rescue people and then win more loyalty.
• 1:27:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: He became increasingly authoritarian until Songberg turned against him.
• 1:27:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Finally, and yes, I'm skipping over a bunch of shit.
• 1:27:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Including the time that Zemo conquered Begalia, the like super nation, like the villain of super criminals in Europe, he'd also tried to form another child army, by the way.
• 1:28:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Baron Zimo learned that Bucky had survived in World War II and had become the deadliest ass in the Winter Soldier, but now Bucky was Captain America, and Zimo is fucking pissed.
• 1:28:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he employed the new Beetle, Janus Lincoln, who we love, and launched them into a media smear campaign and some psychological torture against the Winter Soldier before exposing his true identity to the world, which that part of the story I understood.
• 1:28:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: He didn't kidnap Bucky back to the channel islands where the boy had, quote, died, and he strapped him back into a plane, letting him choose between death or facing the public consequences of his real identity.
• 1:28:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Bucky chose to live and thus have the consequences.
• 1:28:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I know I took you all over the world there.
• 1:28:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: How you doing my friend?
• 1:28:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me turn it over to you.
• 1:28:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, so before I get into prosecution and defense, I just want to say I just jumped in.
• 1:28:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: So I hadn't read any of this before and I jumped him.
• 1:29:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: I was like, I'll just read the stories that Chad is the same.
• 1:29:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'm sure things will make sense.
• 1:29:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: They did not make sense.
• 1:29:06
  [SPEAKER_06]: I was like, what the fuck?
• 1:29:07
  [SPEAKER_06]: Fuck cause Chad decide to be here.
• 1:29:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: I read this and I was like, ah, right now makes about 50% sense.
• 1:29:12
  [SPEAKER_06]: Okay, great.
• 1:29:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: Wonderful.
• 1:29:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're going with it.
• 1:29:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: So it was a journey.
• 1:29:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: I honestly, I will say really excited to go back and pick up the Thunderbolts run.
• 1:29:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: It's always been one I wanted to go to and this was a really interesting little sneak peek at it.
• 1:29:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: My steam colleagues today.
• 1:29:26
  [SPEAKER_06]: I do not stand here trying to compel you all of my clients innocence.
• 1:29:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: Instead, I hope to convince you of Herod Simo's capacity for growth.
• 1:29:34
  [SPEAKER_06]: I asked the distinguished members of the jury to consider that during his time on the Thunderbolts, Simo did, in fact, out the rest of the master's of evil.
• 1:29:43
  [SPEAKER_06]: Let that sink in, the masters of evil.
• 1:29:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: He made sure the public knew their full history and can make informed decisions on whether or not to support them.
• 1:29:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: Sure, he may have been the one to get them into this precarious situation.
• 1:29:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: but he still works subconsciously to mitigate some of the damage they could have caused.
• 1:29:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: And when he had finally captured Captain America using the biomoderm, not worth getting into, my client even noted that it was oddly unsatisfying to have captured him in this way.
• 1:30:09
  [SPEAKER_06]: Is this because deep down he is a man of more substantive moral fiber?
• 1:30:13
  [SPEAKER_06]: I would say so.
• 1:30:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: I would go one step further and use my client's own words during his fight with Scardu.
• 1:30:19
  [SPEAKER_06]: I lacked their parent, friends of conviction, or am I merely a product of my time.
• 1:30:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: And ironic, but perhaps being setting them be was the best thing I have ever done.
• 1:30:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: Certainly, it was my most successful gambit until my own grief destroyed it.
• 1:30:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is a man deeply troubled by his childhood under Heinrich Zimo, who craves to do the right
• 1:30:43
  [SPEAKER_06]: when given the chance to kill his own father on counter-earth, he took the opportunity.
• 1:30:47
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is great character growth, removed from his current situation, and given a chance at rehabilitation, I believe my client could reach new heights of moral composure.
• 1:30:55
  [SPEAKER_06]: He may even make it all the way to morally questionable, which, I think we could all agree, would be a significant improvement.
• 1:31:02
  [SPEAKER_06]: also totally off the record here, but here's just two other quotes that maybe give you a bit of context for all the things going on with them.
• 1:31:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: Women are a weakness, Eric.
• 1:31:10
  [SPEAKER_06]: A good soldier knows that.
• 1:31:12
  [SPEAKER_06]: And when he has Captain America enslaved body and soul to him, he says, you would do anything for me.
• 1:31:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: Would you not?
• 1:31:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: I would do anything for you.
• 1:31:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: This is a man so deep in the closet that he has made everyone else's problem.
• 1:31:27
  [SPEAKER_06]: I think if you rehabilitate him and take him to a gay bar,
• 1:31:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: And that is my lofty defense of Helmet Zero.
• 1:31:35
  [SPEAKER_06]: Now the prosecution distinguish members of the jury.
• 1:31:37
  [SPEAKER_06]: I feel my job here today is somewhat superfluous, judge Anderson, and his friends have already laid out the fact, and I feel little more is needed to prosecute Helmet Zero.
• 1:31:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: However, in the interest of clarity, I wish to point out that this man forcibly outed a group of supervillains who wear attempting to attend further sins, stripping them of their right to free choice.
• 1:31:56
  [SPEAKER_06]: He even blew up four freedoms plaza.
• 1:31:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: He invented and used a biomodem to reprogram people, all wild-stick acknowledging, yes, but where is the satisfaction and willing a planet of automaton?
• 1:32:08
  [SPEAKER_06]: Better to break their spirits than enslave their mind, better if they know they have been conquered.
• 1:32:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: He even threatened to shoot a teenager in the face to still her irritatingly cheerful tongue.
• 1:32:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: This man is a monster.
• 1:32:22
  [SPEAKER_06]: And after attempting to enslave the entirety of the Avengers
• 1:32:26
  [SPEAKER_06]: He traveled to the Amazon rainforest and saved indigenous people, called them dogs, all while threatening to lash them, he also chastised his colleague techno, for partaking a manual labor, worrying that it sends the wrong message to the laboring class.
• 1:32:41
  [SPEAKER_06]: This man has no moral fiber, he's nothing short of evil, and is desire to subjugate people and watch him suffer is cruelty of the highest order.
• 1:32:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: I say that we should throw the book, the shelf, and the whole goddamn library at home.
• 1:32:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: If he ever walks for you again, this justice system is nothing but the sham.
• 1:32:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: And I thank you all for your time.
• 1:32:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jumping into the world of Thunderbolts is deep, like steeped continuity.
• 1:33:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know it's a...
• 1:33:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: fun to reckon with.
• 1:33:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I hope you got to just enjoy a particular character perspective.
• 1:33:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Robin, let me tell you, you would love this entire run front to back.
• 1:33:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's it's excellent all the way through.
• 1:33:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: Look, getting just a little snippet.
• 1:33:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: I didn't even get to include in there at the moment where Carlos so Finn talks, Helmut Zimo in the face and the caption explains that three of his
• 1:33:29
  [SPEAKER_06]: Wonderful, 10 out of 10, great.
• 1:33:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's also fucking songbird for a little while in one of the eras like there's there's there's a lot going on with this guy.
• 1:33:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: But during the sizzle war when they're like everyone's at war he's like oh let me go work for the government and build a super villain army with mine control like it'll it'll turn out fine.
• 1:33:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: like it's super villain crazy at the like highest degree.
• 1:33:49
  [SPEAKER_07]: I'm assuming once again it's five's from everyone.
• 1:33:52
  [SPEAKER_07]: So as we're looking through this person the one thing he hasn't really done yet is enslaved indigenous people and now he's done that so he just keeps doing
• 1:34:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, he's getting like, um, compared to what mine just was getting much more deeper into the whole like fascism and, uh, you know, not the ideology.
• 1:34:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, it's getting bad was bad getting worse.
• 1:34:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
• 1:34:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, cool.
• 1:34:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so if you're going to be like the baddest bad guy.
• 1:34:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean checking off your bingo cards or continue.
• 1:34:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gets worse again.
• 1:34:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I get worse again and and but look how bad you have to be that you were moving free willing consent from the bad guys.
• 1:34:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's how bad you are.
• 1:34:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, uh, and so it's going to be a 30 in this section as well.
• 1:34:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyone not voting five.
• 1:34:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I hope you had fun jumping into this world ramen.
• 1:34:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: And thank you always for taking your ride with me.
• 1:34:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're like full.
• 1:34:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, brings us to trial point five, which we are calling a whole new hydra.
• 1:34:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The assigned jury member here is Sean Perrett.
• 1:34:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: I got to give Sean the Punisher series, which is actually really fucking great.
• 1:35:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's great.
• 1:35:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's some good Punisher stuff out there, and this is one of the ones that's delicious.
• 1:35:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we have Punisher number 226.
• 1:35:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: when they were doing the original numbering again.
• 1:35:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the 2018 volume of Punisher all 16 issues.
• 1:35:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's great.
• 1:35:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot, there's like 12 Punisher volume.
• 1:35:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: So look up the one specifically from 2018.
• 1:35:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, we're, this is by the way what we're overlooking quickly.
• 1:35:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's the
• 1:35:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: A pleasant hill story where she'll does using this sentient cosmic cube in the form of the little girl, Cobic, in order to rewrite the brains of supervillains and keep them in this like sedated state.
• 1:35:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: But it turns out, the little girl, oh, it's Cobic.
• 1:35:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: Cobic has been turned evil by Nazi, it's like a Nazi cosmic cube given sentience, basically.
• 1:35:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And she's rewritten reality, creating a new evil Steve Rogers.
• 1:35:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is Steve Rogers, who's like flag smasher now.
• 1:35:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: And this is a one that Helmet Zima was suddenly loyal to.
• 1:35:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: So like the cosmic cube is rewritten his brain to think that like evil Aryan Nazi Steve Rogers was his best friend growing up.
• 1:36:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's like this is a new character.
• 1:36:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Steve Rogers originally existed, but the cosmic cube like retroactively created this also other version, Steve Rogers, who's like Baron Zima's best friend.
• 1:36:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: So
• 1:36:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: These are like fake memories, but like they also really happened.
• 1:36:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so now he grew up in Hydra and has been fully turned evil ear and deemably and they've never done it.
• 1:36:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think this is this character's permanent state from now on.
• 1:36:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Zemo joined the high council of Hydra and they took over the entire United States in the secret empire event.
• 1:36:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: But we're going to focus specifically on his actions in Punisher.
• 1:36:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: So after being fooled into working for Hydra during the secret empire, because of the fake Captain America, Punisher is now pissed.
• 1:36:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: There was a time he put like Captain America on his shirt.
• 1:36:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he's like, I'm a hydra agent, because I work for Captain America.
• 1:36:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Punisher decides to hunt down Hydra agents in war machine armor.
• 1:36:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: So he's murdering Zemos men.
• 1:37:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's fighting Zemos flunky's task master ghost cross bones.
• 1:37:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: The all-school faced Kirk.
• 1:37:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm realizing, before he was captured and taunted, but then even more heroes like mockingbird, Hawkeye, Winter Soldier, and Black Widow intervenes Zemo escapes, but that run of Punisher and War Machine armor is also really rad if you want to read the volume before that's it's great.
• 1:37:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: While running the nation of Vigalia, Zemo continues to command Hydra using terrorism, murder, threats, and blackmail to get political contracts
• 1:37:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: When Zemo's ally, the Mandarin is killed by the Punisher, Zemo sends dozens of super villains after the Punisher, but Punisher just tears through the villains, slaughtering them.
• 1:37:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Meanwhile, Zemo speaks remotely at a hydra recruitment ceremony.
• 1:37:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hello everyone, welcome to Hydra!
• 1:37:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: You have just become the Vanguard and the fight for a better world.
• 1:37:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the years to come cowardly people, we'll often ask, why would you join Hydra, but you all know the answer, the world we see around us, is not one we recognize anymore.
• 1:38:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Decent people like you, and I find ourselves caught in a war between deranged freaks, and the self-appointed obiters of justice, who, but his speech gets interrupted, he doesn't get a chance to say the word manga ever, as Punisher attacks slaughtering everyone there.
• 1:38:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: In response, Zemo makes a deal with Nick Fury 2, who captures Punisher and then hand delivers him to the Gallia for Zemo to handle.
• 1:38:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, now remember Punisher's like a super bad war criminal, so this is the equivalent of the United States capturing a serial killer and then turning him over to another government for Punishment.
• 1:38:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right.
• 1:38:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: weary with the minutia and constancy of running a country, like why are eggs so expensive?
• 1:38:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: I thought we have running lots of Zimo orders, and who displease him killed.
• 1:38:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: He has Jigsaw.
• 1:38:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Jigsaw is a really insane Batman villain who got his face all hacked up by the Punisher one time.
• 1:38:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's terrible character.
• 1:38:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: He has Jigsaw dressed up as the Punisher and commit murderers that they can report news about.
• 1:39:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, Zimo keeps Punisher, meanwhile, bound in a room while watching endless videos of animal torture.
• 1:39:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he walks in one day and carbs the skull into Frank's chest with a knife and then stabs him in the chest, but then orders the doctors to keep Punisher alive.
• 1:39:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Punisher's put in prison, where he kills some guards, Ximao allows Punisher to be beaten but not killed.
• 1:39:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he sends in the task master as a prisoner to make sure Punisher stays alive.
• 1:39:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: After holding a mock criminal trial for the Punisher, which is really unlook alike, Ximao has that man killed, and then he shoots a buttler for telling him that the Punisher has broken out of prison.
• 1:39:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: And soon, Ximao has to flee the Gallia because the Punisher is declared war in the streets.
• 1:39:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: And this poor guy with his cosmic cube evil brain, it just gets kind of breaking.
• 1:39:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: He goes back to New York City and he makes an alliance with Mayor Wilson Fisk the Kingpin, who creates a task force called Vigil VIGIL to handle the Punisher and Zemo is like hiding and playing site trying to go after the Punisher by disguising himself as citizen V1 more time and redoing the Thunderbolts.
• 1:40:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, Fixer, Ghost, Moonstone, radio-active man, and Jigsaw's now dressing up as Paladin, because he really likes having this crazy mother fucker around.
• 1:40:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Gathering the forces of Hydra around him, Zemo marches down the streets, declaring war on the Punisher, and battles the vigilante directly ridicules him, but then later begs for Mercy when the Punisher has a chance to kill him.
• 1:40:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the end, Kingpin and the Ghost save Zemo's life, teleporting him away, as the war with the Punisher has concluded.
• 1:40:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the way, modern continuity, unless it was like an LMD or something, Ryan North just had Dr. Doom kill Baron Zemo in the one world under Doom crossover.
• 1:40:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: So Zemo's canonically dead, at least for now.
• 1:40:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let me turn it over to Sean Perett, who I hope had a blast with this series.
• 1:40:51
  [SPEAKER_07]: This was a lot of fun, usually I don't get as into Punisher because he's very just shoot him up kill him like kind of flat, but this like having Zemo be kind of the business man.
• 1:41:00
  [SPEAKER_07]: It was, it was interesting, but I'll get into defense, then I'll continue.
• 1:41:05
  [SPEAKER_07]: All right, jury members, you would all be idiots if you didn't see this man as a hero.
• 1:41:11
  [SPEAKER_07]: Can we all agree?
• 1:41:12
  [SPEAKER_07]: The Punisher is a vigilante.
• 1:41:15
  [SPEAKER_07]: The Punisher is going out and killing in the streets.
• 1:41:19
  [SPEAKER_07]: Baron Zemo, he is doing something about this.
• 1:41:23
  [SPEAKER_07]: He took over a country and reformed them and he continues his battle legally with the mayor of New York City, New York City.
• 1:41:32
  [SPEAKER_07]: So I don't see how you can say this man is evil.
• 1:41:36
  [SPEAKER_07]: He is a great man, and if we're gonna knock him down for being a Nazi, you're gonna have to knock down a third of the United States.
• 1:41:44
  [SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
• 1:41:45
  [SPEAKER_07]: What is this accent?
• 1:41:46
  [SPEAKER_07]: I don't know.
• 1:41:47
  [SPEAKER_07]: I just gonna do it in my own place.
• 1:41:51
  [SPEAKER_07]: I just went with anything.
• 1:41:55
  [SPEAKER_07]: Alright, and, uh, prosecution.
• 1:41:57
  [SPEAKER_07]: Um, this is a very evil man.
• 1:41:59
  [SPEAKER_07]: We've seen him use the law, and we've seen him work with business to murder.
• 1:42:04
  [SPEAKER_07]: He's targeting people in the streets.
• 1:42:06
  [SPEAKER_07]: It's not fair to defend the punishery either, because he's also a vigilante killing people.
• 1:42:10
  [SPEAKER_07]: But, prosecution keeps them both.
• 1:42:12
  [SPEAKER_07]: But, uh, we see Zemo hiding behind a mask, making people feel like he's a hero when he's actually carrying out evil deeds.
• 1:42:20
  [SPEAKER_07]: not to mention all the murdering of his own people.
• 1:42:24
  [SPEAKER_07]: He shot another butler.
• 1:42:26
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like, why does he hate butlers?
• 1:42:28
  [SPEAKER_07]: So I think this man needs to be prosecuted in full.
• 1:42:31
  [SPEAKER_07]: He's very evil.
• 1:42:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: But do you want to talk about this big alias story and see most journey through it?
• 1:42:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like,
• 1:42:36
  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
• 1:42:37
  [SPEAKER_07]: So, okay, this is what I was saving.
• 1:42:38
  [SPEAKER_07]: This is my favorite part.
• 1:42:39
  [SPEAKER_07]: So the Punisher, like, bust into the most office.
• 1:42:43
  [SPEAKER_07]: And she was sitting there drinking tea and he's like, what do you like some tea Punisher?
• 1:42:48
  [SPEAKER_07]: And then the Punisher's like, what are you doing?
• 1:42:49
  [SPEAKER_07]: You're just sitting here.
• 1:42:51
  [SPEAKER_07]: And this is the doctor.
• 1:42:51
  [SPEAKER_07]: He will.
• 1:42:52
  [SPEAKER_07]: He's like, you think I don't have other plans with some plans.
• 1:42:55
  [SPEAKER_07]: And he has like a full
• 1:42:56
  [SPEAKER_07]: or it's filled like this guy's ridiculous.
• 1:42:58
  [SPEAKER_07]: We see the Punisher is basically like running through the streets of the Gallia and just like Chadden over at like Zemo is sending everything he has to try to kill Punisher.
• 1:43:08
  [SPEAKER_07]: But in the very end when like it looks like the Punisher might get his due like the heroes come in and save him.
• 1:43:14
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like this was a really cool story.
• 1:43:16
  [SPEAKER_07]: I read it once before when it came out but I kind of forgot some of the higher points of it.
• 1:43:21
  [SPEAKER_07]: I really enjoyed it.
• 1:43:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have a chat going on everyone.
• 1:43:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: I proposed that Sean's accent today was Hercules in a street car named Desire.
• 1:43:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hasn't replied with a touch of foghorn leghorn.
• 1:43:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have now replied that foghorn leghorn is perhaps the name of the turkey that Sean was eating during overcrowded since it's... Yeah, you're welcome.
• 1:43:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm assuming all five's again, we could use the cosmic cube defense, but fuck this guy already, right?
• 1:43:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, he's just a worse version of who he already was.
• 1:43:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also, like, you're not just doing like another version of like the Thunderbolt scene.
• 1:43:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're bringing back in people who obviously like, you've worked with before, sure.
• 1:43:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like, Moonstone has to try to undermine you multiple times.
• 1:43:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, have we not learned like maybe pick like trust more trustworthy people?
• 1:44:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
• 1:44:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, then you get your basically your teeth punched in.
• 1:44:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does there?
• 1:44:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's so bad at governing in this story.
• 1:44:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's just, he's terrible at it.
• 1:44:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, this country is not going to last.
• 1:44:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just in front of an old West wasteland.
• 1:44:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no.
• 1:44:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was just going to say, how bad do you have to be that I'm actually feeling sympathetic to Frank Castle?
• 1:44:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: At least he's going after Nazis.
• 1:44:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, well, right, exactly.
• 1:44:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, same, like, again, still, uh, since you laughed behavior.
• 1:44:32
  [SPEAKER_06]: So, uh, Robin.
• 1:44:33
  [SPEAKER_06]: Honestly, I've come to the conclusion over the last two hours that Baron Zimo has a fetish for getting his teeth on time because the amount of times it happens and it's because of people that he invited and he knows that they do this to him.
• 1:44:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: There's a thing here.
• 1:44:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: He has a king, and I'm concerned about it, but at least it's better than fucking his wife that.
• 1:44:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: So you know what, we'll take it.
• 1:44:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're not even commenting on the fact that he ended up best friends, but also like the lesser to evil Captain America, right?
• 1:45:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like he's like the second fiddle to Nazi cap, who's like the Aryan super weapon, it's crazy.
• 1:45:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: That whole secret Empire event makes me deeply uncomfortable, but there's some really solid story telling through all of it.
• 1:45:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Before we change topics, we're gonna start wrapping up here.
• 1:45:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Do we have any final thoughts on Helmet Zemo?
• 1:45:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: This guy is 100% on the asshole scale.
• 1:45:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's no talent, but there's some zany, crazy, super villain shit.
• 1:45:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: All we need to do is throw in a time travel story where he like, fathers his own self with his dad in the 40s.
• 1:45:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.
• 1:45:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm not at this point.
• 1:45:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: No, I mean, it would make sense in this storyline.
• 1:45:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if we created a scale of like Nazi themed villains, and we have like the far right is like the characters we hate, but the far left are the characters that were kind of fond of even though they're all terrible, where does Zemo fall on this like ability scale for you?
• 1:45:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Far left, do we enjoy his crazy?
• 1:45:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: not for foreigners like he's the worst because he's not the red skull right like he's terrible but he's not the red skull.
• 1:46:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah honestly I would probably put closer to the left because a fabulous dress seems happy to see him visually but second of all I do think that there is such a cartoonish ridiculousness to him and it's kind of similar to Mr. Sinister that I enjoy how he's been really ridiculous is and
• 1:46:24
  [SPEAKER_06]: My only moral hang-up, but that is the very direct house in Nazism, and I think that if we learn Poon and market too much, it kind of takes a little bit of the bait out of what is a really deeply unsettling ideology.
• 1:46:38
  [SPEAKER_06]: So I think ultimately boils down to the fact that comic narrative storytelling is really obsessed with having a villain a figurehead, and the biggest demon of Nazism is the way that it recruits masses of people.
• 1:46:50
  [SPEAKER_06]: and that's just not something that a lot of narrative storytelling is really equipped to dive into especially a short form like comics where you only have so much panel space.
• 1:46:58
  [SPEAKER_06]: So I think ultimately I still have a little bit of a hang up with the moral side of it but from a truly just fabulous
• 1:47:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: ridiculous side love the guy we're thinking of this scale again we hate all these characters but who are the other characters that fall on this kind of far left side of like characters that are awful but we kind of enjoy let me toss a few at you uh Derek are you a fan of the Fenris twins oh god oh that's a yep yes no because when they struggle on the like ability side right
• 1:47:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: Right, there's like a very cringy like they all every appearance always very cringy, but in the same way it's like I don't want to say I'm intrigued by it But it's like what's going to happen?
• 1:47:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like what's what's happening?
• 1:47:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like so I'm I'm not fans of the fenders twins, but when they show up and makes things interesting Yeah, and they always need to be punched a numb would do you like Mr. Settister who follows into this kind of like geneticist eugenicist even is in the the Nazi camps, but like also what are you but
• 1:47:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was so glad you asked me this question because my brain is always like, on site if I'm in the room sister, I'm just knocking his teeth in.
• 1:48:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just don't care why he's here.
• 1:48:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't care why I'm here.
• 1:48:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: He just gets punched immediately.
• 1:48:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like in reading him in like other stories like aliens versus Avengers or you know the House of Ex powers of Ex, you know the cocoon age, I'm always to the mindset of like never trust sinister.
• 1:48:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Zero stars for him across the board.
• 1:48:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: We don't like him.
• 1:48:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: He should not be in the room.
• 1:48:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's like, I don't remember what it should is for there's a panel where it's like they bring in all the villains and red skulls in the scene where most vagnes don't make meals like, nah, we're not homies, I'm question is like so, and I've let me back that's my mentality when it comes to that kind of step.
• 1:48:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like in the like ability, it's like, I'm always like there's like that middle, it's like I'm always leaning more towards the right way to.
• 1:48:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And like, you can never like pass that middle for me because you've done stuff that I'm like, no, just get punched every time I see you it's a And those that have been listening to the Patreon's we have a scale over there too, although we haven't quite put it this way, right, like like the red skull falls very far on the right masterman on the right, but warrior woman kind of falls on the left.
• 1:49:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's awful.
• 1:49:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's bouncing.
• 1:49:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's kind of fun, you know.
• 1:49:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sean, do you have thoughts on Dr.
• 1:49:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nemesis?
• 1:49:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: You guys, it's like science, and he's like white lamb, though, in the X-Men?
• 1:49:15
  [SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, you know, he's, I don't have very, like, strong thoughts on him.
• 1:49:19
  [SPEAKER_07]: He's kind of just there for me.
• 1:49:21
  [SPEAKER_07]: Like, he's not a very exciting.
• 1:49:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Not the origins, and he's a character people love.
• 1:49:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Robin, your new favorite characters, the Sisters of Sin.
• 1:49:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Also not, he's.
• 1:49:30
  [SPEAKER_06]: Honestly, like, as soon as you band together and call yourself the sisters of sin, I want your heavy metal debut album, and yeah, love them.
• 1:49:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Hesanne, uh, Arnhem Zola, the biophonatic?
• 1:49:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, hell no.
• 1:49:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, all the way, like on the far end, and if I never see him again, it'll be too soon.
• 1:49:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love him.
• 1:49:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's terrible, but I love him.
• 1:49:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: So so we have a we have a lot of thoughts and feelings that are going to show up as we're wrapping up, which is where we end this in a slightly more serious space.
• 1:50:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: In 2025, this hits different, right?
• 1:50:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of the reasons we're having these conversations, it's been really crazy and impactful for me to recognize how much
• 1:50:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: the ideas of fascism relate to my own upbringing.
• 1:50:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: In Mormonism, in capitalism, in modern America, but it is tipped all the way over recently, right?
• 1:50:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're viewing history from a very different place.
• 1:50:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this journey for me has been really healing because it's been amazing for me to speak truth and also to give myself permission to still have fun reading comics, right?
• 1:50:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Orchus is a really awful version of this, but then you get Motoc, push in the button, you know,
• 1:50:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's the ability to have fun, but that conversation is shifting.
• 1:50:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's been rough to read a lot of stories where violence is done against people.
• 1:50:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: When we look at any of the stories we just read from the perspective of indigenous people, from queer people and Jewish people and black people and anyone who falls into any kind of minority, these stories are not funny and they're not comfortable.
• 1:51:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we have to let that carry the
• 1:51:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this has been a crazy journey for me on the show that this month, I hope it's been educational in lightning, healing and fun along the way.
• 1:51:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: So that's the kind of balance I try to create.
• 1:51:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Helmet Zemos a good time, but also a fact that guy, right?
• 1:51:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like I think that's where we can kind of close the month out.
• 1:51:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'd love to hear any final thoughts and anything anyone would like to plug, we're gonna put this out in late November.
• 1:51:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right or no Thanksgiving time.
• 1:51:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: In fact, this will come out on November 24th, which is my 47th.
• 1:51:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: birthday, everybody, but I don't look, I don't look a day over 48, so where we're doing just right over here.
• 1:51:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I always announce my next three trials at the end of this episode.
• 1:51:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: In December, please watch for an academic panel all about the watcher.
• 1:51:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: A lot to the watcher, the theme on the show that month is going to be eyeballs, so watch for that.
• 1:51:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to open the Patreon and December with Eyeboy and go from there.
• 1:52:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Genuary is the trial of
• 1:52:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: That month, and in February, we're going to do the trial of Brother Voodoo, Jericho drum, and we get to do a Voodoo theme on the show in February.
• 1:52:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: I promise we will treat it in the best possible, like most culturally sensitive way.
• 1:52:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's only going into this conversation.
• 1:52:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: Final thoughts on Baron Zimo ever since someone mentioned his boots was for earlier I've just been thinking about how that flow rate a song is actually about him and I can't get out of my head to contain me I really just use blue sky these days I do have Instagram, but I don't use that much blue sky is red rest of Robin with a why you can come and see me talk a lot of smack And see my awful Halloween costume that no one is gonna know across the pond because she is a very celebrity
• 1:52:48
  [SPEAKER_07]: My name is Shawnee, you can find me on Instagram or TikTok as Shawnee Havick.
• 1:52:53
  [SPEAKER_07]: I'll see you can find my podcast solving for X and XMintass podcast.
• 1:52:56
  [SPEAKER_07]: Easy as a place to find us is solvingforXman.com.
• 1:53:00
  [SPEAKER_07]: This week we're putting out our finale for one division in two weeks, we're starting Agatha all along.
• 1:53:05
  [SPEAKER_07]: And you can also hear my voice, none and chat on a nightmare on Grey Malkin Lane, which just came out at the end of October, where M plate sounds a lot like helmet Zemo.
• 1:53:14
  [SPEAKER_07]: I've realized chat.
• 1:53:18
  [SPEAKER_07]: I have a couple.
• 1:53:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have like four accents, guys.
• 1:53:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone, it's now, you can find me on Instagram at no-one, X-Men cosplay.
• 1:53:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm already my name's Susanne Rashid.
• 1:53:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can find me at Hussein Rashid.com on BlueSky.
• 1:53:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, Hussein Rashid.com.
• 1:53:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Massive Dawn is Somal Yankee at Massive Dawn.
• 1:53:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Social.
• 1:53:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: My final thoughts about Baron Zemar.
• 1:53:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: I want to see you with happiness kids.
• 1:53:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: We talked about, I think that's a great story.
• 1:53:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I kind of want to take his wardrobe, but I don't want to be associated with this guy at all.
• 1:53:46
  [SPEAKER_05]: So you can follow me as we'll meet at Derek Jane Nichols on Instagram and Luis Guy and then TikTok same, but then I plan to your Derek, I see your Derek dot Derek for my Captain Planet Reviews, which I'm going to do for an episode soon.
• 1:53:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, thanks for wanting to see all of you my talented wonderful friends.
• 1:54:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm so grateful for all of you.
• 1:54:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like
• 1:54:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Alright everybody, so I just want to give two messages and conclusion where we give ourselves permission to have fun.
• 1:54:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Watch for my upcoming book, Zemo is running an X-Men team.
• 1:54:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's called Adhesive X-Men.
• 1:54:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Bob Hermann is for sure on the team though.
• 1:54:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just have to see him.
• 1:54:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyone sticky is welcome and hey, whatever you find love as long as you're consenting.
• 1:54:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: We don't kink shame even if that means your dad wife We're here for you.
• 1:54:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Don't age up orphans.
• 1:54:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: However that part is less consensual.
• 1:54:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can not age up an orphan and call her sister pleasure.
• 1:54:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's not gonna work for me
• 1:54:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: And don't call your daughter mother.
• 1:54:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's also very weird.
• 1:54:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: All right, everyone.
• 1:54:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
• 1:54:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: I had a blast.
• 1:54:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's wonderful to see you all.
• 1:54:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back here next week for X-Men 100.
• 1:54:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hurray.
• 1:54:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
• 1:54:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the final days of World War II, as Allied forces closed in on Berlin, it off Hitler retreated to his underground bunker.
• 1:55:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: When Soviet troops eventually stormed the city in May 1945, they found a strange mix of the ordinary and the deeply personal scattered through his private quarters after Hitler was dead.
• 1:55:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: well-worn military uniforms, partially eaten meals, and a few carefully chosen objects they hit overhead surrounded himself with.
• 1:55:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Many of these items were deeply symbolic to him, reminders of the world he had tried to shape and control.
• 1:55:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Among them were stolen treasures, taken from families who had been targeted and destroyed by the very regime that he led.
• 1:55:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: One of the most prized possessions was a painting called the Madonna and Child by the Italian master Andrea Dostarto.
• 1:55:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: He
• 1:55:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: kept this work closely, reportedly hanging at a prominent spot where he could see it daily.
• 1:55:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: The painting, delicate and serene, symbolized a kind of cultural refinement that Hitler idolized.
• 1:55:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: But like so much of the world he built, its origins were rooted in violence and theft.
• 1:55:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: The painting, the Madonna and Child, had belonged to Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild, a member of the legendary Rothschild banking dynasty.
• 1:56:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Rothschild's were one of the wealthiest and most influential Jewish families in Europe, with
• 1:56:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: They were renowned not only for their financial empire, but also for their extraordinary art collection.
• 1:56:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the 1930s, Lewis' family home, the Polite Nathaniel Ross Child, contained masterpieces by the likes of Raphael, Vermeer Rembrandt, and numerous old masters.
• 1:56:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Ross Child Collection was not just wealthy, it was a symbol of centuries of cultural achievement and patronage.
• 1:56:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: So when Germany annexed Austria in the launch loss of 1938, the Rothschild family became immediate targets.
• 1:56:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Louis himself was arrested by the Gestapo and held hostage for over a year, during which time the Nazis looted his family's best collection.
• 1:56:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Paintings, sculptures, jewelry, furniture, everything was catalogued and stripped away much of a destined for Hitler's dream product, the Führer Museum, which he hoped to build in Linn's Austria, to plan to fill with the world's greatest art.
• 1:56:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Louis was eventually allowed to leave Austria, but only after surrendering nearly everything he owned.
• 1:56:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: He escaped with his life but not his family's heritage.
• 1:57:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hitler, going back to the beginning, took a personal interest in certain pieces, liked the Madonna and child.
• 1:57:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: For him, it was more than art.
• 1:57:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was a symbol of domination.
• 1:57:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: He possessed something that had once belonged to Europe's most prominent Jewish family.
• 1:57:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: He was demonstrating at least to himself that he had conquered not only their wealth, but their legacy.
• 1:57:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was an act of cruelty, desire disguised as cultural ambition.
• 1:57:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: So when the Third Reich fell, the Allied troops discovers Hitler's personal effects scattered across various locations.
• 1:57:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Madonna and Child was found, like many other looted works, and was eventually returned to rightful owners after a long and complex restitution process.
• 1:57:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the Rothschild's story is emblematic of a much larger pattern, because across Nazi occupied Europe, millions of cultural objects were stolen from Jewish
• 1:57:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: families often as a part of the same machinery that sent their owners to get those camps and death.
• 1:57:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: In many cases, the items were never recovered, disappearing into private hands or lingering in music and vaults, with disputed ownership even to this day.
• 1:57:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And there's even been films and books written about this process.
• 1:57:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's drop two Captain America annual number 13 from 1994.
• 1:58:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a Roy Thomas and Arvelle Jones story called Heritage of Hayttrid, dressed in a blue suit and flanked by mercenaries with weapons and armor systems.
• 1:58:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Red Skull breaks into the house of a dead Russian politician, where Captain America finds him.
• 1:58:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: The body I now wear is a perfect duplicate of Captain America's.
• 1:58:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know I could at least hold my own against him, yet my instinct is still to have others to do my fighting for me.
• 1:58:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, why not?
• 1:58:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Was there fear or expected to drive a Panzer into Paris?
• 1:58:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Or to pilot a dive bomber when we blitz creaked Poland?
• 1:58:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Still, that is one thing I've always envied.
• 1:58:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: The so-called sentence of liberty, he depends not upon weak-minded vessels for what he achieves, but upon his not-inconsiderable skills as a human-fighting machine.
• 1:58:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America is subdued, the Red Skull breaks into an old safe initiative to retrieve a secret Nazi tongue-gun dare-tag or the day.
• 1:58:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: The phrase used to mean the ultimate day of Nazi triumph.
• 1:58:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Skull blows the dust off of the book into Captain America's face and then orders an executed cap of course rallies and the Red Skull has to run while escaping on a helicopter while his men are sacrificed.
• 1:59:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: We then jumped in the story to a flashback to 1945, the last month of the war, the Red Skull's in purple with a massive swastika crosses torso, it all hitlers here, yelling at
• 1:59:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: They have let me down, Skull, goring, girls, himla, yes, even the Ingrid, German people, all but you, the Americans and British march upon us from the west where the accursed Russians have taken much of Berlin itself.
• 1:59:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hitler gives Red Skull a secret lockbox that doesn't tell him what's inside.
• 1:59:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Captain America, the spirit of 76, the Patriot, and the Red Guardian attack, and caps shield hits a hand grenade, which seemingly kills the Red Skull, so this is
• 1:59:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: He'll be back again someday, just like frosty this no man.
• 1:59:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: As if in slow motion, I watched it strike the hand that held the grenade.
• 1:59:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I saw the grenade fall to the floor as a man might watch fall the last leaf of summer, and then the world was torn to thunder.
• 1:59:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the British bombs fall just as the red skull promises that the third Reich will rise again.
• 1:59:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: We go back to the present.
• 1:59:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the box, the red skull has found the journals of Albert Malik.
• 1:59:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Remember the 1950s red skull, we've talked about it a few times.
• 2:00:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: We learn about Malik's dealings with Joseph Stalin, his battles with the Tommy Smasher Captain America and Bucky of the 1950s, and the box got passed on.
• 2:00:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, the Red Skulls now trying to find a different hitler lockbox.
• 2:00:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's another fight between him and Captain America.
• 2:00:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Skull tries to escape when a jet that captain's clinging to.
• 2:00:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Before I do the required loops and rolls to turn you into a star-spangled Pancake, however, I want to see the world's future as decreed by Adolf Hitler.
• 2:00:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, at 50 years ago, he finally opens the strong box, expecting there to be some weapon of mass destruction inside, but instead it only contains some of Hitler's prized possessions.
• 2:00:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Water-color miniatures, Hitler painted as a young man, even one of his mother, his iron cross for World War I, architectural drawings he made before his failed entrance examination, anti-Semitic traits that had influenced him, the manuscript of his book Mind Com.
• 2:00:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Red Skull screams about how worthless it all is before he falls from the plane to his
• 2:00:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm scurting over a lot of crazy Captain America cotton doity as I do this very brief summary.
• 2:01:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: But let me welcome Captain America expert, the incredible Richard Hall to the show.
• 2:01:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Richard, hi, how are you first of all?
• 2:01:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And second are you a red skull fan, my friend?
• 2:01:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for having me back, I always love coming on the show.
• 2:01:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: To me, the red skull is the most terrifying of all the marble villas.
• 2:01:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Among the X-Men, I always say the sentinels are the most terrifying.
• 2:01:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: But overall, because there's just nothing redeeming about, you know, Magneto, Dr. Doom, they all have this, they each have their own pathos, some, you can sympathize with them, something.
• 2:01:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: There is nothing to sympathize with the Red Skull.
• 2:01:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's just pure evil.
• 2:01:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: So this story from Cap Annual 13, I'm assuming it's one you'd read before, but it's probably been a little while.
• 2:01:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: What was it like for you to revisit this?
• 2:01:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a deep continuity dive into the crazy Captain America retcons.
• 2:01:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, yeah, it was.
• 2:01:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: That to me, that whole retcon of the 50s cap is just one of the most brilliant retcons ever.
• 2:01:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anglehard just knocked it out of the park with repairing that continuity air.
• 2:01:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: It had been a long time since I read those 50s issues, so all the stuff with electro and stuff like, all the effort
• 2:02:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: at that guy and cap you know stopping the clock.
• 2:02:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah it was a nice refresher on the old 50s uh young men issues.
• 2:02:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah and we don't have to dive deep into Capcom knew it here.
• 2:02:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not a cap you know but the very brief version cap had a bunch of adventures through the 40s and 50s and then when Stanley and Jack Kirby brought him back in Avengers number four there was the cannon that Cap had like gone into the iceberg at a certain point.
• 2:02:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then writers were like, wait, what about all the caps that appeared after that?
• 2:02:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a number of them mixed in here.
• 2:02:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Patriot in the spirit of 76, these royal characters that have kind of their own mythology.
• 2:02:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then of course, the commie smasher cap from the 1950s.
• 2:02:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of retroactive God do it.
• 2:02:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Red Skull's journey here as a character in his cloned Captain America body as he's trying to seize on to the dreams of the past, the vision of the future of Third Reich.
• 2:02:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, since the, I think it was at the end of the John Walker cap storyline that we discovered that the red skull had this cloned body of Steve Rogers and of course, then he's going to use that to bring Steve Rogers back to life when Steve Rogers body gives way to cancer from the super soldier serum.
• 2:03:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: which I think was actually going on.
• 2:03:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: That storyline of him dying from that was going on at the same time with the Samuel came in.
• 2:03:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:03:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm doing these red still stories I wanted to do.
• 2:03:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the ones, the episodes before and after this, they're all about like, cap in the bed.
• 2:03:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like the super serial, the serial soldier serum's giving out and caps in his body armor and the red skull learns he's dying.
• 2:03:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's a whole thing.
• 2:03:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that whole thing of red skull coming back in my clone Steve Rogers body, I thought, was
• 2:03:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And test because I mean Steve's Steve is the epitome of what Hitler considered the ubermage, you know, the six foot four perfectly built blonde hair blue eyed guy and so of course the red skulls didn't want that the clone of that body.
• 2:03:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's always in genius to me the way they're the way they find ways it's like the Joker, the way they the Joker just reappears and you never get an explanation is to why he's come back from the dead this time.
• 2:03:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the red skull, you know, is always explained exactly how he's still around.
• 2:04:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the Red School's journey here as we see this past version of him, like the bombs are falling and he's clutching onto Hitler's legacy as Hitler's dying or at the same time, right?
• 2:04:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: And now he's like lost it in the future.
• 2:04:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's desperately searching for something to connect with.
• 2:04:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And of course it just ends up being kind of Hitler's pathetic dreams in a box.
• 2:04:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: there's severely bizarre stories or I don't know you you love to see the red skull get humiliated but he just comes back and back you know it's crazy crazy.
• 2:04:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well I mean I thought it was was brilliant that Hitler would see his greatest achievement as just being him.
• 2:04:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: He himself was his greatest achievement.
• 2:04:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So of course that's going to be what he's going to have locked away all of these testimonials to himself.
• 2:04:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's a very little man with very little deals at the end of the day.
• 2:04:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hitler at this point, it's an odd comparison to Elvis.
• 2:04:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Elvis at the end of his life was like on these drug cocktails that were kind of keeping him alive.
• 2:05:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hitler was like go crazy.
• 2:05:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was like it was really nuts as he's like doing and I opened up with this anecdote of like Hitler clutching on to his stolen wealth.
• 2:05:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, the only reason Rothschild's day alive is because he had enough money to barter for his freedom, but the people all around him are dying.
• 2:05:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I've never really looked into it all that much.
• 2:05:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, I'd heard the stories of his quest for the, for the more, um, paranormal artifacts.
• 2:05:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's another version of the spear of Longeonists and things like that.
• 2:05:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, uh, yeah, I've never really looked into the, I mean, of course, I knew that he was accumulating all the wealth from all these European Jews, but, um, yeah, I've never really looked into that part of it.
• 2:05:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and then Richard has published a book about Captain America and like deep analysis, what are your thoughts on the Cap Comics in the last few years, Richard?
• 2:05:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have it had a chance to talk about that recently.
• 2:05:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: As we're watching kind of America, tip a certain direction, Captain America's story is continued to come out, right?
• 2:05:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: What are you the recent runs of Cap?
• 2:05:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's been hard keeping up with them.
• 2:05:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: For a long time, I was able to pride myself.
• 2:06:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like one of the few people on the planet that hit red every issue of Captain America.
• 2:06:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, like, five, five or 10 years.
• 2:06:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: But there's not been like one Captain America title, the other throwout, like five different Captain America titles at once.
• 2:06:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you have to try to keep it, which one is the main one?
• 2:06:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this Sam was cap for a while.
• 2:06:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then he wasn't, then they were both cap.
• 2:06:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now they're both cap.
• 2:06:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's been hard keeping up with them in recent years.
• 2:06:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, there's also the Aaron Fisher, the Captain America of the Railways, that's part of the Ventures Academy.
• 2:06:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: I haven't gotten around to the United States of Captain America.
• 2:06:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I remember when they were announcing it was coming out and then poof I don't know what happened.
• 2:06:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was over with and I hadn't got to it.
• 2:06:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So on my Marvel app I've got like a like 20 different comics that I'm currently following and I'm behind on every single one of them To me the the post Civil War when cap died and he was dead.
• 2:06:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean that was the whole basis of my that's how I got my dissertation approved Yeah, yeah, well this was right when Captain America died at the end of civil war my professor was like that's interesting
• 2:06:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Once Bush was caught in a problem who was preceded and we have a hopeful America again We bring Steve Rogers back from the dead again, and then the the Hydra cap They just done some really great stuff with Captain like this.
• 2:07:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Captain America's such a great backdrop to do Social commentary Ex men and cap are the two best books for doing social common and they really done a good job with and I'm glad that they've kept both caps
• 2:07:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: because you really do get to look at two different America's.
• 2:07:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: The Rogers is Captain America is a very different kind of story.
• 2:07:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Just like John Walker has captives.
• 2:07:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
• 2:07:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So here we have all these different versions of Cap.
• 2:07:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: Mixed with the Red Guardian and then this kind of couple of different versions of the Red Skull and Hitler's legacy.
• 2:07:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Crazy, crazy story.
• 2:07:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: How are you doing in 2025?
• 2:07:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: My first question is,
• 2:07:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we're watching fascism happen all around us on a daily basis.
• 2:07:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're recording this everyone in mid to late September.
• 2:07:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: About 10 days after the Charlie Kirk killing as we're watching Jimmy Kimmel's contract has just been canceled.
• 2:07:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's conversations about labeling trends, people as terrorists, and the tariffs are expanding.
• 2:08:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't even know what will happen between now and the time we release this, but how are you doing?
• 2:08:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: What are your thoughts on kind of the 2025 comparisons to the stories we're reading?
• 2:08:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm definitely not doing good.
• 2:08:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: uh uh on the one end my you know everybody's saying stay away from the news but I'm a historian I can't stay away from the news but being a historian seeing all of this just repeat itself from several times in history we just keep redoing the same stuff and this this is I saw podcast the other day some young girl in Germany saying America this is Germany 1933 why are you guys gonna see this oh
• 2:08:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it is, but also, we're at 8 billion people with global warming and anti-science and social media and AI.
• 2:08:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, it is the same history, but it's completely different, because the ability to weaponize the information's moving so fast now.
• 2:08:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I hate the premise that I keep hearing this, I'm a sociologist, I'm a trauma responder.
• 2:09:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: People keep saying, I have to avoid the news in order to survive.
• 2:09:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: look up, don't look around.
• 2:09:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the only way to get by.
• 2:09:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's going to get worse.
• 2:09:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: If we have bad sunshine, it's going to get so much worse.
• 2:09:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 2:09:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And last year, I have so many friends from my back in my army days and stuff.
• 2:09:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they were huge supporters of Trump.
• 2:09:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And my question was always why?
• 2:09:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And would discover that they knew absolutely nothing about anything that had come out about Trump in the last four years.
• 2:09:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nothing.
• 2:09:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: They weren't aware of any of the trials.
• 2:09:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: How is it possible you're not aware of that?
• 2:09:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm really trying to frame it clearly for myself to let them be where they are.
• 2:09:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And if we compare far left to far right, this is where my brain lands.
• 2:09:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: The far right wants to keep giving messages of like, why can't we just get along?
• 2:09:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, as they're saying, I'm being so discriminated against, but that's not.
• 2:09:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: the truth.
• 2:09:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you are a person who has a lot of privilege and power and you are looking for political permission to practice your entrenched kind of belief systems on a political systemic level, that's what's happening while the far left are people who are actively having their civil rights taken away.
• 2:10:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: at like greater and more concerning levels.
• 2:10:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not about getting along anymore.
• 2:10:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can't say the Nazi party and the Jews should be able to sit at the table together and get along.
• 2:10:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's not, I don't think that's what we can expect any longer.
• 2:10:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: No.
• 2:10:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, I know I'm a teenager from the 80s, you know.
• 2:10:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was always like,
• 2:10:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why don't you just everybody mind their own business?
• 2:10:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why do I care if some woman I don't know is having abortion?
• 2:10:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why do I care if two men I don't even know want to get married?
• 2:10:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: How does that in any way require any kind of response for me?
• 2:10:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know if social media just started giving everybody this license to think that the world deserve to know their opinions.
• 2:10:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But if this whole idea of everybody thinking their way is right and everybody else has to adhere to that.
• 2:10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: is just going to kill us, you know, it's going to kill us.
• 2:11:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And my mission statement for creating this show in the first place has been to, you know, it's a place for all parts of my identity to intersect, but I want to create safe spaces for queer people and enjoy as we talk comic books like that's kind of the MO and these conversations have become quite seriously as I still try to kind of expand that mission statement.
• 2:11:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: But
• 2:11:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we get to still have fun.
• 2:11:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: We get to still be joyful people.
• 2:11:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: We still get to create community and safety for the people around us.
• 2:11:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think the fear is if that I make any room that I'm going to despair in collapse.
• 2:11:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I don't know.
• 2:11:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think we have the luxury of not making room.
• 2:11:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: We have to live in protests on a daily basis with whatever that looks like for people.
• 2:11:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the most vulnerable among us will always be our trans and disabled civilians, right?
• 2:11:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Immigrants as well.
• 2:11:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But those people were seeing targeted and that's the part where my outrage is at the extreme.
• 2:11:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: You cannot discriminate and call it Christianity.
• 2:11:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, you and I were doing our best, my friend.
• 2:11:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're getting via the crazy world.
• 2:11:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: But do you have any kind of concluding thoughts on the red skull in Der Tog?
• 2:12:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: just, you know, it's, it's me, like I said, I can pair to my other tube, the Joker.
• 2:12:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just always fun to see the red skull pop up again, just to see what his latest evil scheme is.
• 2:12:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you're doing this chronologically, then you're going to come to a point just before 9-11.
• 2:12:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, maybe days before 9-11.
• 2:12:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: where the red skull is supposed to be the final issue of Captain America before they would reboot it.
• 2:12:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in that issue, skull just goes off on this speech of how America will be destroyed.
• 2:12:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's here.
• 2:12:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's here now.
• 2:12:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: In the most modern comics, the red skull has kind of become a living embodiment of hate, almost like a myth.
• 2:12:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's no level of malevolence, it's very odd, but in this story we see a desperate man trying to cling to the dreams of the past, but they're just as much dust and anti-anti-symmidic racist or horrible kind of tropes stacked in a bunch.
• 2:13:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: From a lonely man who died in a bunker, it's crazy times.
• 2:13:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: So as always, everybody keep taking care of yourselves.
• 2:13:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know these conversations have become quite serious, but we still continue to create joy and laughter and safety.
• 2:13:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: You're always welcome here to say hi any time.
• 2:13:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: And Richard, I look forward to hanging out again.
• 2:13:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think you're a phenomenal human.
• 2:13:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: I appreciate your time today.
• 2:13:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anytime.
• 2:13:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Alright everybody, thank you.
• 2:13:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Take care of yourselves.
• 2:13:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to do what we can.
• 2:13:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Go read some, go read some adventures about the comedy smash for Captain America from the 1950s or like the spirit of 76.
• 2:13:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's deep cut beauty dives.
• 2:13:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: You'll have a fun time as you open your eyes wide.
• 2:13:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's crazy to say.
• 2:13:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, thanks Richard.
• 2:13:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks everyone.
• 2:13:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back here next week.
• 2:13:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.
• 2:13:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.
• 2:13:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.
• 2:13:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Look for us on Patreon, where we are releasing weekly episodes about obscure characters and facts.
• 2:14:01
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• 2:14:07
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• 2:14:09
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• 2:14:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back your next time on Grimmulkin Lane.