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Bonus Patreon Release: Margali Szardos! With Emmett Yonemura and Ben Raab! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Great Malkin Lane Patreon channel where we get to talk about oft overlooked characters that definitely deserve a little bit more love and attention.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Among them, the incredible character, Margolli Shardos, from X-Men fame, tightly connected to the character, Nightcrawler, as well as characters like Amanda Sefton, and weirdly, uh, Blasco, who was a recurring themed character for this character,
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the adopted mother of Nightcrawler, who is a Romani fortune teller slash sorceress.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's a lot to talk about.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was a crazy research.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am thrilled to be joined by two of my very favorite people, the incredible Ben Rad, who has written Margot Lee Shardos.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my dear friend, Emma Yana Mora, who had never heard of her before, I love it too.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me have you with introduce yourselves to our listeners, tell us a little about you and my intro question today, and you've ever had your fortune told.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you believe in this type of thing?
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you get a little woo woo in the way you interact with the world?
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's begin with Ben Rab.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hi Ben, welcome back to your great walk in lane.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Chad.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me back.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's good to be here.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some of you may know me from television.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've written for shows like Quantum Leap, Aero, The Flash, where House 13.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I started in comics.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: As you know, obviously, that's why I'm here.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've worked those, the assistant editor on the X-Men and the mid-90s, and then I eventually went freelance.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wrote X-Calder for a little while, wrote Green Lantern for DC Comics, and Sundry, other comic books, and stuff.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was in New Orleans when I was in college, and
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: in Jackson Square.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was a fortune teller who, you know, for 10 bucks would tell you your fortune.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: He said that I would have a creative and prolific career.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, well, I guess then, I guess I won't go to law school then.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now here I am all these years later.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is amazing.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: His name was Blue and I really shouldn't have listened to him.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, you should have, it was great.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was good advice.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, thanks for having me.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I met your number, a director on X-Men 97.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was very happy to be on the episode that brought Nightcrawler back to the team, which was a lot of fun.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hear they're doing lots of crazy stuff with Nightcrawler, so get ready.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I started in boards.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're done, you know, my favorite Batman for a while.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Got my cut my teeth on Justice League action, which was a really fun kind of comedic version of our beloved superheroes.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Found my way over to Crunchy Roll where I was able to help out with some originals, get that promotion.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always the best way to do it is through a smaller studio.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just realized that I love telling stories, and while I did go to the Cupid School for Comics, realized I'm not a good self-boss.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a good boss with others, like I like working in a team, but if you were to lock me in my room, I'm gonna turn into a cave troll and then just dreaded deadline for the entire times.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I really found my way into animation and have loved it.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I grew up with just being a huge fan of animation, so it kind of made sense to just find myself in that field.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: As far as psychics and fortune tellers go, yes, I was very into it as a child to the point where I actually took courses that I could read taro for others.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: My favorite deck was actually sandman deck with machines art on it.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like the best way because it's so abstract to read people's fortunes.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I sense growing up fell a little bit out of it.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a little bit, you know, more of I guess a scientist now, but I still love the idea of dabbling and the arts, especially when it comes to storytelling.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just love the world so that builds and brings.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm really glad that you brought Marc Gollie to my radar, because I think now she's one of my favorite characters.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's really interesting.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a little sad that she gets sideline so much, because I think that she has a lot to say.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to go back to watching X-Men 97 as it was coming out.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm an early riser and it would get released at midnight the night before the new episodes.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would watch before my kids would even wake up.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, sip in my coffee.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was that episode where night crawler joined the credits.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, and I like that show made me cry a bunch of
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: because it was like my favorite moments of childhood coming back and bringing that character in is joyful and wonderful.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now Margali is a character that informs the character of Nightcrawler quite a lot as established by Claremont, but often she's in the scenes, she's often the manipulator, she is not an easy character to like in those regards, but I think her presence in Nightcrawler's life is felt every day in the way that we experience
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are you both love about Kurt Wagner?
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not probably my third grade Malkin' Lane.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh geez, I think it's always been his personality and what he struggles with.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think because he's born a mutant that looks different, he's had it hard from the start.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even one of the issues you even have me read, it's just theirs as mom throwing him off a waterfall.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I find him fascinating.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I find his faith sometimes it's a little jarring for me as someone who's a little bit more not aligned with that.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's virtuality, I find very fascinating.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's his optimism that it brings to him.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's his heart and soul.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the way I like to treat him on the show, at least was, and I think it's the same in the comics everywhere is just that he's kind of he's the heart of the of the teen besides just his powers being super fucking cool apologies if we can do F bombs.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can swear.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But great, I just think that it's always what his experiences are and what a soul he's bringing to the team that I find the most fascinating, especially considering the odds he had to go against.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what are my favorites?
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was the first character I actually technically saw of the X-Men.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a weird way to put it.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now the first comic book I ever got when it was six years old was uncanny, one of the set.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it was that.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: First, Dave Cochrane's last issue is that splash page where the X-Men are on the blue area, they're on the moon.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, or they're sorry, where the M-Cron crystal is in all that shit.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, and it's that splash page of the team.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And night crawlers basically front and center, like he's just, you know, kind of mill upper right of the splash page and he's crouched on this thing.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's blue, he's got the, you know, the black and red costume.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was just something super cool about his look.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: with, and it was saying about his powers.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I look, teleportation is the one power I wish I had.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: For someone who's like, I got to go from here to there and it's been taking me this amount of time.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like instantaneous transportation would be amazing.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that was the starting point.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was just the, what an interesting looking different character.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, again, credit to Dave Cocker for that, for that design and that look, his friendship with Wolverine was something that I loved growing up as a kid.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fact that, you know, two,
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: completely different people that you'd think would have nothing in common.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're just there were buddies and it was like, you know, kind of one of the original bromance is in comics.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as far as my perspective, one as a kid.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I really like that.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yes, he is like the heart and soul of the team when he, you know, stepped up to be a leader.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the last guy who thinks I should be doing this is now put in that role.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, he just rose to the challenge and rose to the occasion.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, because I always identify with the side characters like, you know,
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Number one on the call sheet hero.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't I don't connect with very often I it's always the supporting players that that intrigued me the most So to watch and go from that two liter was amazing and then to be able to eventually write him in a Calibur was like I mean come on childhood dream come true
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I love to take the perspective of a character that we don't often think from their perspective, and that's what we're going to be doing with Margoli today.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're shifting her into the focus.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is net crawler month on the show.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've celebrated a lot.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: For example, we're ending with the big academic panel around net crawler, in which I talk about the net crawler Wolverine connection, sort of like the Wolverine morph connection from the show.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're the playful parts.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get to love seeing them hang out.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Kurt is happy-go-lucky, and he is a person of faith and determination and self-love.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my argument is that he gets every ounce of that from Margali Shardos.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are different versions of his upbringing.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he is the abused kid.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he is the happy-go-lucky performer.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he was given a home in this place.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, one of the episodes I did on the Patreon this month is Azazil.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: a lot.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I got to have Chuck Austin on for that show with me, the creator of Azale.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We delve a lot into this character and like Nightcrollers' demonic origins.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I want to kind of begin with X-Men Blue Origins, which is the most modern retelling and the ultimate retcon of Nightcrollers' origin.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to go to the very quick synopsis.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is like trying to summarize the summer's family tree in one paragraph, but we're just going to let it happen.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Mystique is able to change into male or female forms.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: The real story is that she fathered a child and destiny is the one that gave birth to Nightcrawler.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now while this was happening, Mystique was married to a men named Christian Wagner and she was having an affair with an ancient demonic mutant named Azazel.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mistique did use some of Azazel's genetic template in the fathering of my crawler.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Sysperia got to weave all of this together in a really beautiful way that told the original story Claremont wanted to tell which was that Mistique's the dad and Destiny's the mom, which queers it up in a way that all of my queer readers really love, of course.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The side spin here is Destiny had predicted a particular kind of future and which Azel was gonna conquer the planet.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the Kurt had to be born in a particular way and also abandoned in a particular way in order to create the future hero that everyone needed him to be.
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then Xavier went in and fucked with everyone's memories.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is like the 2020s version of the original story.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get the Fabianisi as a story from the early 90s where we finally confirm that mystique is the mother of Nightcrawler and this is where she throws him off the waterfall.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, that has been retconned a couple of times as well.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Azazal has some sort of connection to Margali who likes to make deals with demonic presences, right?
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We look at the Blasco of it all.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mistique was also connected to Margali and Destiny and Mistique much more likely arranged for Nightcrawler to be raised by Margali, even though we don't have the specifics of what that looks like.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, there's this set up very quickly.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me hear your thoughts on the complexities before we start breaking down the character.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ethan has batch it crazy.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: the the mystique destiny thing makes a lot of sense.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like I like I love that as that as that's the sort of foundational with these two characters who love each other and we're so close to each other.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes rogue his sister.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes great and creed his step brother.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It gives him a few letters.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fucking freak out about all that.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's even crazed here, but interesting, like, and the fact that it was a, you know, regardless of what the reasons are, this is a child who had to be abandoned for a larger purpose that Margali became, you know, mom for him for his early childhood.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, the purpose of our discussion here, like he was raised in a loving environment.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was raised with someone who, you know, having the one time I got to write her, saw, look down the road at things and said things have to play out a certain way and I have to, I'm responsible for that.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: a little convoluted for me.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But at the very core there is their characters that I think makes sense and it's interesting and give him ties it all together nicely.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's I spurred you to a good job at weaving the complicated continuity altogether.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, Nightcrawler's childhood is sometimes happy, sometimes not.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have mobs chasing him and him running away from home, which is where he's left for Christianity develops later because he's taken in by a priest who gives him kind of refuge.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll get to some of those stories a little bit later.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I do think Margali has the pre-eminent like motherly figure in his life is a really big deal.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, first off, that's comics.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I, so that just makes me laugh every time, where it's like, okay, cool, yeah, we're going to come in with a lot of complicated stuff.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think it gives all of the characters a lot more.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: intention which I really appreciate.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just the mother abandoning a son and leaving it there.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: If there's reason behind it, it gives you more empathy for maybe what even mistake was going through in that moment.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I like I like hearing that I like hearing that it's it's writers and artists being a little bit more thoughtful to the characters and their intentions as opposed to just using them as a typical crux to give a character some trauma.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's nice to add that layer that there's so much more going on here.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, like Ben said, it might be a bit much at times, but I'm here for it.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's let's do it and let's really expand these worlds and open them up.
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, I didn't even know Margoli was a part of it until we pointed her out.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a bad fan, but the dimensionality that she adds, especially to his character, I think you're 100% right of seeing that side to jump a little ahead.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The issues that you gave me to read, you see very different sides of her as a part of that relationship.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I like all three of those sides, so she's very complex too.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: which I'm always here for giving those complex characters who we don't get to see often.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we love a witch.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: We love a powerful woman.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We love the wicked witch of the West.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: We love these characters that represent things.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Go back to the Wizard of Oz.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you a good witch or a bad witch, right?
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got one in a pink bubble with a big dress on a wand and the other who's green with smoke and like armies of soldiers storming around.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: idea of good and evil.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's some really strong tropes for this character, particularly go back to some of the conversations I've had like on the Scarlet Witch or Agatha the Harkness focus episodes, we have the idea of maiden mother Cron.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Agatha Harkness is a character that reverses that in the comic.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: She starts as the Cron goes to the mother and then becomes the maiden in the storytelling that we see.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: A Margale seems to be all three.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Margali's connected widely to a dimensional and like space called the winding way where she's kind of consistently bartering for power.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Go back to the recent Agatha all along series down, down, down the road, ad nausea, and that song drives me crazy, but
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: but it's the idea of trading power and developing space as you are connecting with your abilities.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Margali, I don't know, my early idea for her.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: This has never been quite set in the comics.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: She made some sort of deal in her youth.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there are periods of her life where she is a very strong, motherly character.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are periods in her life where she is the maiden, where she's good and beautiful and virtuous, and then there are parts where she is the evil, kind of green wicked witch of the West, with like the Cron, and she's painted green as though she were Elfaba, right?
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Going back to the 1930s or more like Margaret Hamilton, I suppose.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now the witch piece balanced by the Romani piece and go to see my interview with Sean and McGuire out on the main show at the beginning of this year where we talk all about Romani tropes the idea of fortune tellers and like these women to be corrupted and in the cultural trends of an enslaved people is a little bit uncomfortable to reckon with and we definitely need Margale to exist.
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: in a way that the Scarlet Witch does, where she's much more than just being the fortune-teller character.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But let me ask you both quickly, think of Disney movies, who does Margali remind you of?
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's about 14 characters that fit the bill, which is a crazy thing to realize.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Maleficent is definitely one.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Evil Witch, horned helmet, green casting spells, as much as the hunchback of Notre Dame.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's true.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: The light is strange, shaking her skirts.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, sorting the stone, we have Madame Mim, who is the more prone entity version of this, where she's casting all the crazy spells, Esma with her potions from the Emperor, like Ursula, the secret witch casting the soul magic.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's so many characters the mother from Tangled is another,
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: really strong version of this.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The witch from the original snowlight in the seven dwarves, it goes on and on and there's this idea of the woman and her power and her magic doing the corrupt thing.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is she the maiden or is she the crown?
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is she Maleficent or is she the three fairies who are changing things blue pink and green or whatever their colors are, you know?
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm not as well-versed in the Disney witches.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm aware of most of them, it's not all.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: that, which is a road thing when they didn't nageth all on, I was like, oh, that's, isn't that the winding way?
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I always equated it with that.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was wondering why did they just call it that?
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They could, I mean, unless because it's an X-Men property and legal reasons in general like that.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the one time I wrote, I wrote a one-time stuff.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: To me, she was a mother who had a mantle that she had to uphold, who had to pass it on to a daughter that was trying to walk away from it.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was one of those things where she was like, I can't have that.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have to have this thing happen.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, and,
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even though we didn't really get into her internally in that story, there was this element of, you know, my son's leaving, my stepson is leaving.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: My daughter's going to go with him and I'm blown.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about Excalibur minus one here.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sorry.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the flashback issue.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, which we have reviewed on my show.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Excellent.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope you had everybody like that.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We did.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I wasn't taking however in the context of made mother grown like any of that stuff.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was it was all about just mother trying to do right by her role as as a source or as and as a mother and with the responsibility you know to be like so it's like again I I didn't have kids at that point so in retrospect I I see that a little bit more clearly now than when I was writing it you know, but it's
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting too, because Metcrawler's actual birth mother is Destiny, who is the often portrayed as the fortune teller.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's wearing the sunglasses with the crystal ball and like, oh, I see the future, right?
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like we see that a lot, so she passes him onto another one.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where Mystique is more of the changeling, the woman who is evil in changing shape and taking what she wants.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's jump in with the first introduction of this character.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Chris Claremont creates the character Margali Shardos.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margali, by the way, is a French name, which means Pearl.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the word Shardos, as a Roma surname, which is specifically associated with fortune telling and magic.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ooh, ooh, we got to pause really quickly.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give us one blanket permission statement here.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to be fine with the Nightcrawler Amanda Sapton relationship.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to let it be okay.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: for this episode.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: That crawler was like a foster child placed in a home who fell in love with his non-blood foster sister.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we can be upset about it all we want, but it exists and I like them together.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we're just gonna let it be five for today's conversation.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: It makes people uncomfortable in the way that Colossus flirting with 13-year-old kitty pride makes people uncomfortable, but I think it's fine.
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what?
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: You get away with a quote unquote.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But because we didn't live with them in the context of it, right?
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We saw them as adults.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: We saw them as distinct people.
• 17:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Someone from his past who came back into his life.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, she was drawn very attractively, and so we thought she was cute.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and so we kind of
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a tale that this was his adopted family.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I technically thought he was a step sister.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're not blood related.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You cannot think of it in any context of he's fucking a sister.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can't do it.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to do is he grew up in the same home as a future love.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what you got to go with his face.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, it did shock me a little bit in one of the issues when he's just suddenly they're kissing and I was a little bit like, wait and then I was like, oh no, this is fine.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're right.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think I 100% agree with Ben if we were there for their childhood and watching them act like siblings together and might feel different.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we also don't see that aspect.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It could be that it wasn't like that.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: They just grew up as friends because it's kind of, it's a, it's a community as well that they grew up in a little travel into the show.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's like you're saying, same roof, maybe same caretakers, but not same genetically.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it totally works because actually this is somebody who probably shares a very intimate part of his life with him.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we'll have kind of a different relationship and perspective and maybe also a feeling of comfort and nostalgia for him that I actually do really like it.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I think it does at you.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've got it first.
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like stranger things, but L ends up going to the
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: feelings for each other growing up, right?
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it doesn't have to be more than that.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just childhood best friend.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean really that's what she was.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe there's a certain story that's never been told about.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are of age and develop feelings rather than they've been in love since they were two.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a different version.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, X-Men annual number four, 1980.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Knight Crowler's been around for five years at this point, and he's been kind of just the supporting member of the team.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has not been widely explored at this point.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is an early issue where Mystique and Knight Crowler are like, we look like each other.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's like, go talk to your mother, and there's just kind of that reference, but we don't really get answers for a long time.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go ask your mother, Margot.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 19:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This annual is great, it's very of its time, it's very much a Doctor Strange magic story, and it's Chris Claremont doing Dante's Inferno in comic book form.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'll do a quick review here.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: On that color's birthday, he receives a crystalline statue of himself, but when he touches it, he falls over seemingly dead.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The X-Men summon Doctor Strange, who determines that Kurt's soul has been stolen.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now remember, this for later, Margoli really likes to take shit away from Kurt.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And something will see when she goes evil every time.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr.
• 20:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange into it's that there's a presence in the room and it manifests as a small iron colored horned woman's face Almost like an old canyote necklace behind the X-Men if this isn't a tack I will deal with it.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who are you spirit form?
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why are you here?
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Speak woman if true if woman you truly be Dr.
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange commands it Margale says none commands Margale of the winding road you are known to be mage Do you make the X-Men's cause your own I do release nitrolycerous or suffer the consequences
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: proud challenge, a challenge accepted.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if any ought to suffer in this dual doctor strange, it will not be me.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sneaky thorns wrap around the heroes very Maleficid, dragging them down toward a mystic realm as Margali's witchy cackle fills the room.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange Wolverine, Colossus and Storm, lay on a rocky slope in front of a mystic door that poetically warns them that none should enter unless they abandon hope.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is another thing for Margali.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: She trades in soul and hope magic.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Net crawler's body lies prone with them, but soon wakes up with the others, and they enter literal Dante's inferno, the classic book that explores the realms of hell.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: As they pass through the various levels in their descent, Minos appears in the form of the MC from Cabaret, he's flirting with Storm, he's flirting with Kurt, there are world pools, there are harpies, there is a three-headed Cerberus, there are armies of demons, flaming gates,
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: pits of the damned.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Storm is briefly turned into a demon monster.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Finally they confront a monstrous three-headed Satan.
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yes, I just summed all of that up in one paragraph.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The vagna spec is mine to be punished as ordained by the laws of man and God says the Satan figure, but strange exposes it's an illusion by Margalee.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: She stands exposed.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Marble brain skin, curb horns, flowing hair, deep cut yellow dress.
• 22:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is gorgeous in her full maiden form, looming in the sky hundreds of feet tall.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am Margali, she walks the winding road, how came you here and why?
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And outsteps, Germaine Shardos, who's the daughter of Margali, looking like a woman from the cover of a Princess of Mars book in like the B-Camp 1970s horror movies,
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: One piece swimsuit with long sleeves, knee-high boots, pink metallic, crazy head-species, and the best updo you've ever seen in comics.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Her hair is strawberry blonde, her costume is hot pink.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: We love her.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Germaine says, I deceived them into thinking you were responsible.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I hope they could stop you from committing a terrible wrong.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: From destroying a man I love.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So be it!
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You defied me, now pay the price, and Margoli turns her daughter into a statue of ice with a blast of eldritch energy from her eyes, and strange realizes to himself that Margoli isn't evil at all.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Regardless, her power is awesome, and I'll need all my wits and skill to beat her.
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a great mystic battle, but Margoli agrees to let everyone go if hurt surrenders, and I
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you see Justice Magali or Vengeance Strange asks?
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Justice Mage.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: She summons the ISI of Agamado right off of Dr.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange's chest and uses it to determine Nightcrawlers' innocence or guilt.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let the truth pierce the veil of time and space.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let shadows walk and memories speak.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I know I'm covering a lot here, but we get to jump back into the first major flashback into Nightcrawlers' origins.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: quote, the infant card Wagner barely an hour old found beside his dying mother taken in by the and we're not going to use the G word today.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to replace it with Romani, taken in by the Romani witch queen Margali Shardos and raised as one of her own.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: He never did three children love each other as much as Kurt, Germaine, and Margalli's firstborn Stefan, Kurt warshiped his older brother.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He would have willingly died for him.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was asked to do much worse.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stefan at seams was worried about a dark side to his own soul, and he made Kurt a promise that he'd kill Stefan if he ever turned evil, so Kurt swore an oath on his immortal soul.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it came to past years later outside the Bavarian Village of Vincel Dorf that Stefan killed Kruly, Wantonly, and Kurt fought to stop him from killing again.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kurt did not wish his brother's death, but Stefan fought it with all the considerable weapons, physical and arcane at his command.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: As Kurt struggled with him, Stefan's next snap.
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kurt hadn't meant to kill him, but he'd slain his brother nonetheless.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He kept his vow and it had broken his heart.
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was returning to camp to Tom Margalli, what he'd done when the villagers found him.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: They assumed him to be the demon who'd slaughtered their children.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Professor Xavier saved him from the summary execution.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Giant size X-Men number one and invited him to join the X-Men.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kurt accepted and many times since,
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: He has now tried to find Margalee to explain things to her but has failed.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: The same night, she disappeared as well, never to be seen or heard from again until now.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we jump back to the present, Margalee has determined that Kurt was actually innocent and Stefan's death.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: She kisses his head, touches his chin,
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Stefan, my son, my poor, proud, foolish boy, why didn't you confide in me?
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could have helped you, saved you, curt my son, I hated you with all my heart.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was wrong.
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am sorry to punish you to make you suffer as I had suffered.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I created a facimily of Dante's hell to be your eternal prison.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: What a waste.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I cannot forget that you slew your brother, but now that I understand why I can and do forgive.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Farewell, my son.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: We will meet again soon, for we have much catching up to do.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And while Margali is amazing in this issue, Germaine says, by mom and then calls Necralis Sexy, and then mystically transforms into his girlfriend.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been a man to Seth and the flight attendant, the whole time.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's been fucking a sister for years.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know where he about it.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's like she got close to him as Amanda to learn if he'd really been Stefan or not.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But even after I became convinced I couldn't sway mother.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Boy, she can be stubborn sometimes.
• 26:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was desperate.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so when she made her move, I made mine.
• 26:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr.
• 26:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange thinks incredible.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: A family of Romani sorcerers, the son evil, the daughter good, the mother, and a nigma, whose power and ability rival my own.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I must learn more of this.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's later in Uncanny X-Men 142, when Mistique notes the resemblance between she and Kurt and says, go talk to your mother.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: In 145, Kurt mentions how Margali respect Dr. Doom, who is a Romani character, who has turned to evil.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in 177, Kurt realizes he's never asked Margali about Mistique.
• 26:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Amanda mentions that Margali is in Groffburg.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: In 178, Amanda uses magic, saying that her mother has taught Jamaan how to protect herself against fire elementals.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: but never taught her death spells.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is everything for Margaley, under Claremont, kind of all in one space.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot to talk about with this origin.
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The family drama.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is classic experiment.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love it that the extent that people will go when they believe something, and so they're just talking to each other.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, having tried to have a normal conversation.
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It cracks me up, but it's also, it's, I don't, I love,
• 27:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love the messages of forgiveness at the end of just coming to understand and she forgive some for killing her father's son and but it's just that's just so complex does it does it have to be that complex?
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is that comics?
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, though, right?
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it gets even more complex and it should have been read.
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which, you know, it's funny because as a reading issues was a 7 through 11 of the Nightcrollers series written by Repertoa.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Repertoa against the Kassa.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Kassa, yeah.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: If this is the step-on story, as I was reading, I was like, what?
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I remember that story and I realized it's because of the annual right, which I you know read a million times is a little as a kid The world of John and me of juniors early X men work.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was great stuff like and again It was a night call a center got a little bit book But it's like as you were as you were going through it.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh, yeah I remember all of this I remember the whole thing with stuff on a breaking his neck and then because then I've read I read it here.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was like it's also familiar.
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: What like why do I know this?
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's possessed by a demon That's why he had to break his neck and the dean sort of broke his neck really, but I follow
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But by making Michael, it was very weird, very convoluted.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it gave, I, now I see what he was doing.
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was trying to sort of take that story and give it a different context and give it an understanding for why didn't I call or do that.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how was he, how was he have been living with that action and that story beyond the, you know, tormented and sent to the Dante's in front of your, or without the mother story that, that there was still something inside Kurt that put me literally in the case of the story
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, there seems to be almost something three musketeers to this origin in a way where we involve magic as well.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have the brother who promised the other brother.
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you ever go evil, I will be the one to take your life because of honor.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then it's the brother who's the murderer but nightcrawler accidentally kills him.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why the mob was chasing him.
• 29:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: but there's some specific components to the Stefan story that feel very confusing.
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: How did he get possessed?
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Was he born evil?
• 29:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my head cannon, there's a story waiting to be told where Margali made some sort of bad deal and Stefan's her first born.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we know how magic in the first born go.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like the soul has been lost and she's reckoning with all of that.
• 29:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when she is like trading all this power to create the massive hellscape that is Dante's inferno, she made some big mistakes.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was bartering and soul magic.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: But this is something we're going to notice with Margolli quickly.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's often manipulative.
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: She'll go to this place of like, oh, Kurt, I love you.
• 29:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I forgive you, I'm your mother.
• 29:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then she'll do something terrible right around the bed.
• 29:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a certain level to her that Ivy gives very devious.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's something untold about this to pawn story that would make it sing, I think, a little bit better.
• 29:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I liked that promise that he made to his brother almost sensing it coming to, I think it gives a night crawler kind of a prescience in that realm as well of suspecting something darker and lingering, of his own kind of magic that he can detect.
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it would, it tracks, it tracks to me what you're saying if Margoli was the cause of it.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if she couldn't even accept that she was the cause and that's why she had that anger towards night crawler for so long for killing her son is because she couldn't accept responsibility.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that that would be an interesting aspect to it.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But like when I read the just forgetting that the annual got explained in the context of the annual The idea that this guy ended up becoming a homicidal maniac, you know, that he sense that there that this was inside me I didn't at the time it just it just made Nikron look like more that much more of a hero right now It's like of course.
• 30:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna do you know whatever it takes to help you, but if I can't I know what I have to do and it's a difficult thing and then having to live at that go
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: reading the, you know, Roberto's story where it gave this sort of supernatural context for what to me was, but it was satisfying enough as a, there's something wrong about me inherently within me and I have impulse, a lack of impulse control and that perhaps I made bad choices and as a human being with no demonic possession whatsoever, then I call it then have to murder his, you know, his adopted brother, it's incredibly powerful and pointy, you know.
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: This gives it the comic bookification of it and it makes a lot of sense within the context of what you're saying of like in Marigalli strike a deal that this is this was the the repercussions of and and now you know everyone's living with a guilt of that bad choice of hers I can totally see her trading her eldest son's soul for some sort of power on the winding way.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would love it if we got some sort of good reason for that.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, she's saving someone's life.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's doing something heroic.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then the cost is that this evil's now entered the world.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's trapped in the cycle on the winding way, constantly reaching for power.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a power to that for me.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, in the flashbacks tonight, Crowler's origins, we get a couple versions of Margale, that don't quite stack up.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And do you want to tell us about uncanny origins number eight with a focus on Margale's presence in this issue?
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I actually really found her presence in this one interesting.
• 32:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of my favorite lines is after he's been crawling through the mud, I think being bullied, she comes to him and says, instead of being a supportive mother, she says, and I actually would argue that this is supportive in a different way, and she says, I'm disappointed in you, Kurt.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did not raise you like a raise you to crawl like a worm.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it first you think that these words are harsh, but she's actually trying to lift him up in a different way.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's trying to say, you are better than this.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And my disappointment isn't that, isn't that what happened to you.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the fact that you're now cowering.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need to be stronger than this.
• 32:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a bit, I saw it actually as more of the mother who gives tough love because it's a tough world and considering the balance between light and dark that she is constantly
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I'm wondering, I kind of liked this just very straightforward answer that she gave him that you need to rise up now.
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she says, we are proud people.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: We deal with our problems.
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: We do not run from them.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of actually really respected her in this moment because it's not, you know, it's not the maiden version.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not the softer version that we see in other issues.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not like the darker version and other ones where she's swapping souls.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I, I really kind of respected her position here.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think she's really trying to knock some real sense into him, just her words.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I, for one, like to this aspect of her, I found it intriguing that she kind of just comes in with the tough motherly love this whole time.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of want to see more of that from her, honestly, because I think that that's the, the, the balance.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's always kind of on the line of.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the happy version of his childhood.
• 33:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, she says, I don't want you to crawl like a worm and the alligator, the illusion in this story is that he takes the name night crawler to turn a worm, right?
• 33:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like night crawler named for a worm.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: She gets some really fun fashion moments here.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's also a moment where she tells him like when you go out on stage, you should cover your face and he refuses, which then she says, I'm super proud of you.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ben tell us about Excalibur minus one, which might be a story you wrote.
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was really an excuse to tell a story about Jemaine Slashman.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to, you know, this was post-Soul Sword coming into her possession in the Warren Hellessorn of Excalibur.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like, where she literally becomes magic of limbo instead of Iliana for a while.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so like, so I, you know, I wanted to tell a story about Amanda in
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, before he left their Yarmard circus, how to give a context for a little bit more for why she ended up with she of all people ended up with this whole sort.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And tying it to Margali and her relationship with Blasco and the winding way and the idea that, you know, there's this object that people use, you know, to sort of as a weapon to carve their way through the winding way.
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, that story was always about giving a
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: A more supernatural context for Amanda and understanding that she had a destiny and that Margaoli was passing it all into her.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was like as a mother, I'm not going to be doing, you know, I'll do this for now.
• 34:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not doing this forever.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some day I will be going and you will have to take over and just as I had a responsibility.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: you are going to have a responsibility.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we see her casting dark magic.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's hovering on levitating over a pentagram by the Holy Hosts and the ragged rings make plain to my side to most sacred, mystical thing.
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's trading in soul magic.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's exactly how I said it when I wrote it.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's making deals with Blasco, who trades in Soul Magic.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blasco is like the Labyrinth guy who brings the young girl to his realm and bit by bit takes out pieces of her soul and then barters it into creating a powerful weapon that she later gets to use as an external space.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So remember that.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: because we're going to see some tropes.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here's another really interesting thing and we don't have a time to dive here.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the character Blasco shows up first in a series called Kazar the Savage, where Kazar is marrying Shanna.
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there is a man in a realm that looks like Dante's Inferno, who brings a young girl named Leanne there and starts taking her soul magic out to cast magic with.
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a, there's a, there's a prequel to the alienist stuff.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Claremont and brought this character into magic from that.
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we have the soul magic, the creation of the swords and a weird Dante's inferno connection between it all, which is a very odd thing to realize.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So in Emmett's story, we get to see the mother and in Ben's story, we get to see the crown, if you will.
• 36:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's gone evil.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: The third version is X-Men Origins Nightcrawler, which we've also reviewed on the show.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: in which net crawlers early origins are quite tragic.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's being drugged by the owner of the traveling show.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's being abused.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's kept in a cage where people are allowed to pay money to come up and ridicule him.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Margali in this is painted as a battered woman.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: She visits, she's crying.
• 36:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's begging to be put out of his misery and she refuses.
• 36:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's kind of a victim of violence from this kind of young, awful man who owns this circus.
• 36:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is where Kurt has to run away and find refuge in the Christian church.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So here we have the maiden in a very odd way, but in this case, the victim of abuse.
• 36:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So three very different versions of Margalee unintentionally stacked together that bring a very complex character to the forefront.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: having an opportunity in the words you even just read, stealing from Dr.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Strange a little bit, trying to put it in the mouth of a character who doesn't play on his level necessarily, but to suggest that could be on that level.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, I was never going to have the opportunity to dig into her and expand her character.
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's just not when for me.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it was fun to just sort of just tighten those connections a little bit more partly because their first meeting in the annual, it's like, I have no idea who you are.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but yet, yet, if you look at, you know, my story, she knew who he was.
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: She, she, she, she spoke the same language that he spoke and referenced the same, you know, mystical items that he is always talking referencing every five seconds.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, it was a way to try and elevate her beyond just this weird woman in, in a, in a, in a caravan trailer who at this part of my college path.
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean, like, just trying to give her a little bit more.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: potency.
• 37:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the other piece we can stack on very quickly with just a fast mention, Azazul, go see my episode on Azazul, is a centuries old demon mutant who has made deals and barters in magic.
• 38:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's trapped in a hell realm.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's trapped in the brimstone dimension, which is where Kurt teleports through.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's having sex with different women and fathering multiple children.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in the future, this is the drako story line that everybody dislikes at the X-Men comics.
• 38:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Azazul's progeny, who are night crawler and all of
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: are being there to be sacrificed their soul, so that his asyl can return to earth.
• 38:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Margali has also had dealings with his asyl, that's not quite on the page.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's some really interesting pieces.
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Manning number 11, we see Margali and Germaine appear in a panoramic of sorcerers in a Chris Claremont fever dream.
• 38:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Dr.
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange 5758 in 1982, so a couple years after Margali first appears, Roger Stern and Kevin Nolan bring her into a really cool Dr.
• 38:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange story, the most ex-men fans have not read.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: The cover shows Margali firing yellow blasts at Dr.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange in an aerial battle.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: We open on the sanctum saying Torum, where Germain and her pink dress manifests, using the magic of Strange's candles to help her teleport.
• 39:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Greetings, oh honored mage.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Germain saw Shardos.
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Firstborn woman child, an heir of Margali of the winding way, bids you well, she says.
• 39:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr.
• 39:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange is looking for a new disciple.
• 39:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, look, just you have to come to the audition like everybody else.
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: The later he changes his mind, Germaine attacks him, wants to prove herself.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he very easily takes her magic abilities, which are kind of meager and puts her in restraints, which then inspires Margali to show up.
• 39:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: You dare to humble the child of the sorcerer's supreme?
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He had made Dr.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange, I did send my daughter unto you to further her growth in the sorcerer's arts, but you have denied her, and in doing so, you must face the wrath of she who is you are better.
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange takes the challenge, and the fight moves to the astral plane.
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr.
• 39:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange first realizes a returns Margali to normal size because she showed up as a giant.
• 39:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: She lashes out.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: By the road ever winding, or which I hold sway, let my power keep growing my foam into slay, you could not disorient me in such a manner made, the power of Magale is second to none, and she nearly defeats him.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: He grabs her magic wand, which is the source of her power in this story, and snaps it, and Magale changes back into human form, which is that of an aging old woman, or you're noticing a trend.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: You take her power inside and then she's like,
• 40:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm so helpless.
• 40:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has thick black hair, a red-headed scarf, a chunky bracelet on her wrists, multiple rings on her fingers.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's lovely, but very elderly and immediately starved's crying.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: The pal has left me my true form.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: My aged body has returned.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've brought this about, Steven Strange.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: By all that is holy bless you I have lost count of how many years that a curse it warned has used me and my family it warped the mind at my son's death and turning him into a murdering maniac.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You saw what it did to my daughter.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the horrible things it made me do.
• 40:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: All would be well mother-shadows.
• 41:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Your ordeal is over at last.
• 41:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we heard that you had lost your disciple, the wand compelled us to seek you out.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: They did my game sway over you as well.
• 41:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had suspected some outfired outside force to be hired be behind your power.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I heard your incantation, I knew you were drawing your energies from a source nearby.
• 41:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It did not take me long to isolate the source.
• 41:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It took such a chance in challenging me that won't, I mean.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, okay.
• 41:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does it happen?
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: The next issue Dr. Stranger's visited by Jameen, who doubles down on the story.
• 41:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mother and I owe you so much.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The past few years have been a nightmare for our family.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were just poor Romani when Mother became...
• 41:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, possessed!
• 41:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: The possession worked its way through our bloodline and the power controlling mother had begun to control me as well.
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mother's curse was that a magic force controlled her.
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was a mind-slave to an enchanted wand of power.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It transformed her from a simple Romani woman into Margale of the winding way.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Had you not rested that a cursed wand from her, she might never have returned to her true form.
• 41:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: and how far is your mother now, is she well?
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, if the flesh, if not of the soul, she sits in the room you gave us seeking to reconcile her past transgressions with her faith.
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see Margale and a chair praying hands in her lap.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Strange walks in, holding mother forgive me in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Ghost, amen.
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: May your prayers be answered, my mother shardles.
• 42:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And bless you, Doctor, where it not for you.
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did that only that which is my duty.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now come at this time, we saw you on your way home.
• 42:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have an apartment uptown and mother can rest, excuse me, she made says I have an apartment uptown and mother can rest there for a few days before we head back to the old country.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, is that a magic wand is Margalee fucking with things?
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's happening here?
• 42:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: God, I hope she's fucking with them because I hate the tropes so much of like a woman only want power so that they can be for every young and beautiful and this victimness that she just kind of turns into at the end and also now her immediate conversion to Christianity.
• 42:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just it's all a lot like and it just feels like
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels like you're doing her character wrong with all of this.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels like we're not representing her right now.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly all the self-power empowerment is now like, oh, it was really just because of this cursive item over here.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now look at her.
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's fine.
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry about her.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's just in a chair crying for the rest of her life now.
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like, I don't know.
• 43:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just, that gives me all the wrong feelings and would immediately make a character that I'm just not interested in investing time in.
• 43:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so all I can hope for is please let her be.
• 43:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: fooling them in some way because I hate this.
• 43:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hate this very much.
• 43:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to end me and my son, you, you, you.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just, I can't.
• 43:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just, it feels like it's more than tropey.
• 43:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also just, I don't know if it's to the creators, but an imaginative is just like, really, that's all we can do with what a woman's power is, because that's always what it represents, is a woman's power.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you read it as her fucking with everybody, I don't even feel like it happened because I'm so helpless.
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
• 43:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ben, it's amazing that it's like, oh, go get them bitch, like, do it, but yeah, if it's, if it's meant to be serious, it just seems like it's a, it's a huge detriment to, to the character and and also just kind of feminism in a weird way of just reducing it to, oh, just outside influence and evil.
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: How dare you?
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: How dare you be an individual with evil intentions?
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know regarding the gender bias of it all, but like it was written at a time where heroes have to win the day and like that's a character that could have been played so much more like to your point like yes we see the amp potential ambiguity because we believe this character has more layers than that to it but it was not necessary for the telling of a story on a monthly basis and you know the comic book that maybe a small percentage of the audience was actually even reading like I had no idea that these two characters had ever crossed paths
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: separately post the annual.
• 44:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So shame on me for not doing my homework in research when I was writing her.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And wanting to make a connection between her and Dr.
• 44:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Strange, but like I feel like yeah, it would have been nicer to and different to see a story where that character could have been acknowledged as a formidable, not faux, but a formidable player on the magic stage of the world of
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like this story.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's of its time for sure, but it's a fun follow up.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she's a powerhouse.
• 45:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're gonna jump all the way to 1994.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the Warren Ellis Excalibur run.
• 45:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll cover this quickly, but it's a complicated one.
• 45:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: This soul sword has passed from Eliana over to Kitty because Eliana died of the legacy virus.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of what you need as a setup.
• 45:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are riots over fascism taking place in Germany, and in the mountains above, two people are watching.
• 45:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of them is one of my top five X-Men favorite villains, ever the demon despair.
• 45:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's so much, I love him very much.
• 45:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a fear demon that has a face that has had way too many face lifts.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's wearing skin type black.
• 45:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's in a frayed withery and cape.
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Margale is here.
• 45:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Her skin is green, slightly lighter in hue, her hair is green.
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has on a gold skull cap with ornate horns.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Look on my face and despair, I've been around for many a year, played with heroes until they've cried, suck hope out of children's dreams, scorned your prayers while your martyrs died from the Holocaust.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: To Stalin's purges from the killing fields of India's midnight despair, it feeds fear, it feeds off me.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now this, in a country after country, neighbor against neighbor, praised cleansing the promises to be a rich repost.
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margarli says, gloop while you can demon.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The magic of the winding way may have left Margarli weak and helpless, but I am not without friends of influence.
• 46:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it's been a while since we've seen Margarli, Amanda's gone from flight attendant to superhero, to day trip or to the counterpartent night crawler, which is also a Beatles song.
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And night crawler,
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: has intervened in this riot.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: As people are attacking a Romani kid, the priority of the father, land is maintained by this foreign filth.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Only that blood can purge the stain.
• 47:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't want your kind, lynch the Romani.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, we're not using the G word.
• 47:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Beat him, you steal, you beg, you murder us in our beds.
• 47:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: They turn on Kurt as well, because now we're after the mutants.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's the fascism thing, they come for one group, and then the next despair laughs from afar
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But getting back to you, my supposed sorceress supreme, your death will feed my essence until the whole world knows despair!
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not just this tiny playground I've carved for myself, and Margali thinks.
• 47:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kurt, my son.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's my last hope.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The path has left me helpless, but I must reach out to him.
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: A mother's love could help and gather strength.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: She sends out a warning to Nightcrawler that he has to stop the riots before dawn.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then she draws hope.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: out of him to use against despair because hope and despair, right?
• 47:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Despair stops her from taking more though.
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the next issue, we see a flashback to Kurt's childhood.
• 47:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: We learn that his only friend is not allowed to play with anyone anymore because he's blue and crying Kurt promises to God that he'll give up being a devil if he can just have his friend back.
• 48:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Margali is there to comfort him, but a silly promise coming from Margali Shardos' little angel, well I love you Kurt Wagner, every blue inch, and you know what love always lasts longer than hate.
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Despair soon reveals that the winding way has left Margali completely defenseless, and he's overtaking her on it, he's enslaving her.
• 48:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margali has found enough freedom to cast a cloaking spell on Kurt, which allows him to defeat Germain, and in the end he gets his chance to make peace with Margali, as he has just learned that Mistique was his mother and tossed him over a waterfall.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what to say.
• 48:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feared you wouldn't come that you hated me too much for concealing the truth about your mother Your real mother, I mean he says I'll admit I was furious, but hate you.
• 48:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: How could I hate someone who even when she's wrong has only ever acted out of love for me?
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Besides once in a forest I met this nice old Romani woman who taught me a thing or two about love and hate and her old words reverberate love always lasts longer than hate Hate makes a big noise, but love is an echo
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you send out a little of it, it bounces around for a long time.
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of people can hear it.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes when you least expect it, it bounces back home and surprises you.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what are your thoughts on despair?
• 49:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the elevator beat in this hope, really.
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: You got one thing, one weakness, and it is, it is hope.
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like, despair, like, remember, yeah, first time I saw him, was an X-Men, it was like, can't even 140.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was, right?
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: When he murders the father of Lee Forester and like burns down her family estate,
• 49:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's tough being in the X-Men's orbit, like if you're an NPC in the X-Men's world, you're fucked.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because your collateral damage, because we don't care about you and we're not going to see you or your relatives anymore.
• 49:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was a Cyclops issue.
• 49:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, that was Cyclops and Lee.
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, where he first started stating Lee for a story up.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right, right, right.
• 49:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 49:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the things a lesser nightmare my thoughts on despair really like I feel like these really They're very evocative of one another, you know the white face and then the tattered cloakedy looking shit You won't be surprised to learn I also live nightmare I go sit yeah got the right nightmare to he was in the one that you had me read as well So nice to see him again despair.
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a really wolf me too much as a character like it's Again, it's like the bleakest of bleak carrots
• 50:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we're parallel because we're watching the Nazis go after the immigrants in this story, uh, the hope, yeah, the bartering price.
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me jump to 83 in Cairo, Jimaine's on a layover when she walks by an old beggar woman in dirty robes.
• 50:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: The woman's holding a pot.
• 50:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Greetings, daughter.
• 50:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mother indeed, the winding way as a system of mystic empowerment, much to recommend it, save for that with each increase in ability, there follows a time of loneliness and weakness.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have no idea how irritating it is.
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's supposed to teach us humility, but I have yet to find poverty character building.
• 50:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like this is maybe the first time we've seen the Eyeful of Margale.
• 50:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Germaine says, oh, shut up mother, it's just good, so good to see you again.
• 50:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: What a ridiculous coincidence.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Coincidence is the fabric of magic, darling.
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: You 90s sorceresses forget that too easily.
• 51:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now I want to read Margaleas Endora from the Witched.
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Always in my parade, actually.
• 51:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's what I'm realizing.
• 51:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Germaine says, I'm sure this winding way stuff is just an excuse for laziness.
• 51:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: As she says, she's used magic to dispel an armed man who's been coming at them.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Coincidence and magic, a mother, maybe this isn't a coincidence.
• 51:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I was supposed to find you here, eh?
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you want?
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margaleas says very well.
• 51:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a magician named Brave Moss, who stands ahead of me on the winding way.
• 51:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is a deviant of unbelievable sickness, and he is in a time of empowerment.
• 51:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's warping the way, resisting the next turn on the path.
• 51:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Long enough to steal a weapon that will allow him to kill all who are ahead of him.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: He will progress through the path to power faster than any magician in history.
• 51:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: The weapon is named the soul sword, and its holder could never stop a creature like Grave Moss.
• 51:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: The sword itself is a threat to the holder.
• 51:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You, daughter, must protect the holder from bull for I, M, useless.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The mystic, another witch woman named Schrill wakes up.
• 52:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Necromancer Grave Moss possesses Knight Crawler.
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kitty uses magic, soul sword, but she draws out of her own abdomen.
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are threats from Excalibur, Ed, the Schrill and Grave Moss end up defeated.
• 52:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Amanda gets the soul sword in the end and then returns with Margali to their old caravan and leaves the soul sword with Margali.
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The place opened ahead of her Margali then moves up the winding way with the soul sword to power her.
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this was all a Margali set up to defeat the sorcerer that was ahead of her on the winding way in order to get more soul magic.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, how are we feeling about Margali at this point?
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, she's manipulative.
• 52:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cool, when's it in my ass?
• 52:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: She totally meant to be there.
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's playing her child, which we've seen her do.
• 52:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's interesting.
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's, I like seeing this cunning side of her.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I find her more interesting on this side.
• 52:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Very devious and nasty.
• 52:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she's definitely nasty.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, all she really cares about is getting ahead on the winding way, which just makes me think of a board game.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like she's just trying to get one step ahead, but it doesn't matter if it's going to be like, oh, this coincidence will meeting with my daughter.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, go do this for me.
• 53:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I can't do anything.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, you just want her to be your pawn.
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then we get another major Margolis story as we are building up to Excalibur 100.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margolis becomes the red queen of the London Hellfire Club.
• 53:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has a guy she's manipulating in Allen Wilson as the red king.
• 53:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a swordsman under her control Emma Steed is here who's a telepath based off of Emma Peel and John Steed from the Avengers television show She's the black queen and Quentin Templeton is the black king and there's a character named scribe here Jane Hamster Who can phase intangible?
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's the red rook, but she's being possessed by a mountain joy Who is a guy from Bishop's future?
• 53:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry about it.
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love this character, too
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, our shenanigans, Margale is fucking the red king and his casting spells and making him pledge loyalty and she ends up with the head of Doug Lock, who, guys, we're just not going to take the time, but it's Doug Ramsay merged with the tech, Narky and now it's, it's own being.
• 54:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So she has this head.
• 54:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: She says, hello little dead boy.
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny.
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it is.
• 54:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was never a pretty girl.
• 54:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Circus folk rarely ate well in by day and it showed on me.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I took the soul sword and used it to kill every magician who stood ahead of me on the winding way, the path to magical power.
• 54:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then when I learned what was under London, the promise of even greater power than what I already had.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: As I activate this link, I become great.
• 54:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what they'll say little boy?
• 54:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who cares what Margali Shardos looks like?
• 54:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what they'll say, but then she realizes the entity that she's planning to drain is taking its old to old turn on her and feeding on her in return.
• 54:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: There ends up being a giant demon underneath London, who is now away.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in issue 100, we get the flashback to Margali killing all the sorcerers, red cape, bathing suit, heel boots, and the biggest wedgie.
• 54:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the demon is defeated, and Margali loses and fades away screaming.
• 55:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: She made the big play for power.
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's demons again, and it's very no, I'm melting.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm melting, what a world, what a world.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: In one of three, however, she learns that she, we learn that she has ended up in a cage and is being kept by Blasco.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So something is going on for this woman behind the scenes with the winding way.
• 55:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me hear from Ben, what are your thoughts on this one?
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's funny, like, I keep thinking, like, what is the end game?
• 55:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, power in and of itself is nice.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there's a limit, right?
• 55:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's at some point you go, this is the one that why you always got to end.
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every road comes to some sort of end.
• 55:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what is at the end of this road?
• 55:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know quite what it is.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've got a cute Cheryl Crow every day.
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: When did it end row?
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: She just Cheryl Crow's at the end.
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: No wonder she wants the power.
• 55:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is she going to can she defeat the final boss?
• 55:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: At the end, there's just a cat named Easter for those that know the rest.
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I keep thinking about having just watched P.C.
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: blinders, which is about a Romani family, you know, Tommy Shelby, Philly and Murphy's character, and it's his, there is this, I'm not saying this is something that's indemic to the Romani as people, it's indemic to people as people.
• 56:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just interesting to hear that story from a, you know, the perspective of a culture that has sort of been kind of kept down and, and, and, and a press and suppressed wanting to rise above their station.
• 56:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody wants to rise above their station doesn't matter where you're from, where you are, what, what it is.
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, Margale is just another example of that that she just happens to be, you know, Romani and,
• 56:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are our corrupts and absolute power corrupts?
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
• 56:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 56:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I love how we work poverty supposed to teach me humility, but then the moment I get power, I'm killing people and summoning demons, right?
• 56:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's never enough power.
• 56:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And nobody wants to stay in poverty, right?
• 56:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you don't want to stay in humility, there is always this aspiration for greater to have more to be more than you are.
• 56:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, it's her story just seems to be this lesson in Be careful what you wish for.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Emmett, do you want to tell us about X-Men and limited number 19, which is where the story takes us next?
• 57:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we find out that Belasco has been keeping Margolli in a cage, or is he actually find out through through Discovery that, um, because I call her get super involved and he's he's shocked to see his, his mother in a cage and that's like the deal that Belasco is trying to manipulate, you know, getting, I call her to work for him to free his mother, but later to just find out that
• 57:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: with Amanda that it's actually his sister in his mom's body in the cage.
• 57:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And his mother, Margali, is actually in his sister's body with which apparently has more power.
• 57:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not sure I guess if they were trying to equate that maybe with the youthfulness.
• 57:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But if you just want to be young and hard again.
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I wish I was just like, well, that's funny because here you are naked in the cage and there's your daughter But it's interesting how how much once night collar finds that out and once he's able to kind of free his sister and swap them back of how angry he is with his mother for doing that Although me personally, I kind of thought that wouldn't ingenious way to get yourself out of being captured and your daughter's still fine and your son is still fine Like everybody's still fine at the end So why are you mad at her because it kind of was actually a really smart
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, man, but very manipulative, but at this point, I'm always shocked when it's like, but how are you surprised that she's not a manipulator?
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what she does.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so he, Belasco's looking to take command of the winding way.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you get the idea that maybe Margolli's ahead of him in the way that Grave Moss was ahead for her.
• 58:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've got the limbo, we've got the sole sword, and in the end, we've got, you know, everybody learning a valuable lesson.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Once again,
• 58:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Margali disappears at the end of this story.
• 58:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I'm recalling correctly, and this is crazy X-Men stuff too, right?
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Getting into limbo and soul swords and magic.
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Takes us on a different kind of journey.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know who the hack is that wrote that one.
• 58:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that maybe a Ben Rhapsody story?
• 58:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I, maybe.
• 58:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Margali more than once.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Totally fucking forgot.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I liked this one though.
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I liked this one though.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so well done.
• 59:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're gonna jump to Chris Claremont's Fantastic Four.
• 59:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic Four volume three has a lot of really crazy X-Men shit in it.
• 59:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, he's using the Captain Britain core and all kinds of stuff here.
• 59:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margali in number 20 of volume three gets roped in by a weird group called The Rulind.
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry about it.
• 59:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they want to kill her and a supermodel named Arlys, who wants fuck Johnny Storm.
• 59:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But now she's turning into a Rulind member named Katar.
• 59:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the FF Save Margali at the end.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is wordy, wordy, wordy, clamont.
• 59:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margale isn't her busty real housewives era.
• 59:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The caption tells us that she spent time in Paris as a kid.
• 59:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: She knows Paris is only a Romani can.
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: She ends up arrested by the French authorities.
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's back in fantastic for annual number 1999.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's in red and purple and almost an insect-like
• 59:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: armor, she's fully blonde and has I make up daggers under her eyes and a headband with horns and she's been locked up in France and the FF need her to help break to they need her help and they break her out of prison with the help of a someone named mechamej who is a science slash magic character because black heart the son of Mifisto has formed a deal with Selena of the Hellfire club to rule the world and we get the weirdest Margolly fact here.
• 1:00:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has a basin limbo, and she has Daryon marked living there with her caravan.
• 1:00:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of people in the armarkt that are super powered.
• 1:00:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are characters that we're usually weirdly used in Chris Claremont stories.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: She flirts with the thing, there's Elemental Magic, the son of Satan shows up, they thwart Celine and Black Hearts plans.
• 1:00:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also see Margot Lee very briefly in another group of mystics and maximum security.
• 1:00:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... then take us to nightcrawler volume three numbers eight through eleven this is a brilliant nightcrawler solo series by reburgring at reburdo a gary caccia so i mean it's starts with that crawler in some sort of again i don't know what happened in the issue beforehand but he seems to not know where he is what's going on seems like really disoriented any there's an internal narrative
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: where anytime he's saying something out loud or thinking something, there's this other voice other caption that's sort of like presenting a counterpoint.
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't clear as to, is that somebody manipulating him is that something, you know, like just his conscience, like what is it?
• 1:01:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because when you've got two sets of captains, one in blue, one in green, I don't know who the green one is, and I assume that.
• 1:01:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: the blue ones, but he's, you know, he's why that's off of the church he's praying.
• 1:01:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: He wants he's looking for forgiveness for something, not sure what it is.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's priests who basically, you know, says to him like, you know, if it's easier to review, you know, we, you know, start my son, you know, when have you felt furthest from your God?
• 1:01:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It feels like this is the tee up to get into these this beaver psychological thing that he's got going on, which is the guilt he's carrying over what happened to, what he did to his brother's staff on all those years ago.
• 1:01:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: but along the way, other supernatural shit starts happening where like you see visions of dead kids, the dergiarmarch, where people are murdered, like he has this weird, some real encounter with Jimaine and you know, remember him, his past, he's also being pursued.
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: As a quick set up here earlier in this series, he's reckoning with children that got possessed by demons and murdered.
• 1:02:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
• 1:02:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for a little bit, it felt like, you know, a lot of this is happening internally in his own head, a lot of it's happening at the real world.
• 1:02:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then he ends up going on this journey with Logan and Christine Palmer.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Christine Palmer, the night nurse.
• 1:02:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, oh, Marvel character.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was seven days, yeah.
• 1:02:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:02:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they go on this journey and to him to try and figure out what's going on because like, they're Yarmart.
• 1:02:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then some, I don't know, he went to some circus in Florida.
• 1:02:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was news to me.
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some really cute flashbacks to Kurt's childhood here as well, where like Margali is like really doting on him and Stefan is watching jealously.
• 1:02:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We also get an image of her in the caravan, where that crawler says during the day Margali was the circus's resident fortune teller for a dollar.
• 1:02:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: She would tell you that your future was bright and full of joy at night.
• 1:03:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: She practiced other darker arts.
• 1:03:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So kind of this balance where she's the mother and the maiden and the crowed all at once as we focus on the childhood between Stephen and Kurt, which I think is really necessary because it's such an unresolved piece of Kurt's story up to this point.
• 1:03:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: If they've got the other things going on, like Verman shows up and other sort of seed-d-level marvel villains kind of populate the story, like Karen.
• 1:03:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, it's all fur just like demonic adjacent, very like organic monster kind of things,
• 1:03:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, obviously, you know, man thing makes a great appearance later.
• 1:03:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he goes on the start to try and figure out what's going on.
• 1:03:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: But as who is responsible for these attacks on his former circuses and how is it connected to him?
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it turns out it's high.
• 1:03:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: This demon that as we now know possessed his brother, which is the reason why his brother was like, if I turn evil, you got to kill me.
• 1:03:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's now, this sort of provides the context for the explanation from for what happened to him all the years ago.
• 1:03:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margot Lee's revealed in limbo and this gorgeous like alphabas suit black hair flowing horned helmet like white robes green skin.
• 1:04:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's gorgeous eyes glowing yellow.
• 1:04:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is where Jemaine has been stationed where she has a couple snakes that guard that are gay.
• 1:04:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's there's a gay snakes conversation to be had for another time.
• 1:04:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we had and Roger.
• 1:04:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah,
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: We hit the caption telling us that through the years, through various incarnations, Margali has had a tempestuous relationship with her children.
• 1:04:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: As her journey along the winding way progressed, as her knowledge of magic, deepened, Margali has been both good and evil, but throughout it all, she has always been a mother.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then Nightmare shows up.
• 1:04:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of dealing with things, Ben, what are your thoughts on the character as we reach this kind of point in her journey?
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, again, this is the, for me, this is, I completely forgot half the things that are in the past.
• 1:04:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So to sort of see catch up with her, I actually kind of expected more of her in the story.
• 1:04:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, she, she sort of shows up, is not you know.
• 1:04:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're meeting her in the middle of the strategy that she's looking for her daughter and the encounter's nightmare.
• 1:05:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like, they just, I mean, literally, it's one point of the referer.
• 1:05:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: They show up to save current, everybody.
• 1:05:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: As a, he calls her dayusex mark.
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's, I mean, we, you know, we get a little bit more of her through Kurt, but this is very much a Kurt centric story.
• 1:05:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she's just sort of there to sort of provide the, that saving grace moment.
• 1:05:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jeanine gets beat up in her realm in limbo by nightmare and Margale kicks nightmares ass and then hangs in from the ceiling by a chain and like is like never fuck with my family again motherfucker she's like giving a lot of like threats and like pointed claws in his face moments and this is largely about night crawler like are you a demon are you a hero where is your soul where is your hope look at the origin you come from and we have this correlation with demons once again.
• 1:05:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: We talk about this in the night crawler episode, but when we have suspension of disbelief in our comics, when it's the X-Men fighting for the days of future past, and even though innocent characters are dying, we rally around it.
• 1:06:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Night crawler has just come through a series of comics where he like can't save human trafficking victims and like children are dying in demonic possession.
• 1:06:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a really uncomfortable version of how all of this.
• 1:06:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is also post genosa and post all of the kids getting nailed to the crosses on the front line of the Xavier mansion.
• 1:06:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: is a really crucial.
• 1:06:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margali's connection to the soul sword seems very related specifically to power.
• 1:06:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's using it as a tool not as something that she respects the power of, but I do love that line where we get like she's a mother first and foremost, whether she's good or evil, she's always a mother.
• 1:06:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she's a mother, but she uses her children as focal points for her magic so many times.
• 1:06:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still, I still feel like it's baited in her own self-advancement on the winding way of nobody gets to use my children but me, it almost feels like.
• 1:06:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I do like that motherly aspect of her because she has, and all her issues still kind of been there and been that presence for good or for bad.
• 1:07:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I guess I'm here for the really dark drama and my God, they like the torture night crawler, don't they?
• 1:07:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: we do love to torture a character with a lot of hope.
• 1:07:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: She also gives a speech Margale about the soul sword here.
• 1:07:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are two kinds of beings who covet the sword, steps on.
• 1:07:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Magicals, like me, and demons, like hive, and before him, Belasco, who has come after the soul sword many many times, the sorcerer named Grave Moss possessed you in his efforts to rest the sword from Kitty Pride, because he wanted to use it to kill anyone who stood before him among the winding way, the path magicals to follow, but the
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what she did, Margotta, and we saw it on the page.
• 1:07:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: She murdered a bunch of people with the souls ordered.
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's like, I'm not like those demons, even though she joined the Hellfire Club and tried to release a demon.
• 1:07:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's something if you live with this, my favorite thing about her.
• 1:07:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, she literally hit, she hit the sword in her.
• 1:07:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly, maybe that's why nobody can use her children by her.
• 1:07:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So remember that for later.
• 1:07:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: My friend David Sexton got to put together a really cool event called Marvel Tarot.
• 1:07:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margalee in this is, it's all about tarot cards.
• 1:08:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margalee in this is the wheel of fortune card, not the game show.
• 1:08:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Wheel of Fortune is built around the idea of a trio, past present future, the more I, the norms, the weird sisters, maiden mother, Crohn.
• 1:08:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now welcome to the mix, the mother, Margoli Shardos, the maiden, her daughter Amanda Scepton, and the Crohn, who I believe I'm picking up to be the ghost of a deceased mutant pre-cog named Irene.
• 1:08:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't believe Margoli is a bad person.
• 1:08:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also am not so sure that the description of good really fits either.
• 1:08:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's a strong woman, who's always certain she knows what's best, not only is she strong, but she's powerful, much of the power comes from the highly unpredictable, extra-dimensional conduit known as the winding way, and we get context for what that is.
• 1:08:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: The windingways are roller coaster ride of mystic power and are rarely used detour off the third path.
• 1:08:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Usually, exogenic magics involve the spellcasters following certain prescribed procedures for invoking and petitioning of extra dimensional entities.
• 1:08:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the case of the winding way, the dimension is the entity, and the entity seems to be making up the rules as you go along.
• 1:09:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The way once made Margali so powerful she was able to create a fully functioning replica of Dante's Inferno, and then a short time later left her barely able to read the signs from a couple of T-Leaves.
• 1:09:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: The winding road, the winding way, is a little like the wheel of fortune.
• 1:09:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: One minute you're riding a wave's success and you're king of the world.
• 1:09:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: The next minute you're begging for cash to buy a sandwich at Burger King.
• 1:09:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: but then someone inadvertently tosses an Indian head nickel into your hat and you're on your way up again.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you never really reach the top.
• 1:09:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The entity then and two it's that Margali might use this power that destiny is generating in unrest as a power source.
• 1:09:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So destiny's coming back to life, everyone.
• 1:09:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And much later, there's the revelation that destiny's in that crawler's mother.
• 1:09:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a brilliant summary of this character.
• 1:09:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: David, I love you, it's so fucking good.
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that you have thoughts here I could tell.
• 1:09:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm just really into it.
• 1:09:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I like this new approach.
• 1:09:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I like the way he's framing her character and the characters around her.
• 1:09:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, I'm just, I'm just really enjoying your storytelling and what he's set up.
• 1:10:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: So during the same event, we also have the Mystic Arcana One shots.
• 1:10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to tell us about Mystic Arcana Scarlet which number one would focus on Margale?
• 1:10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, so this was actually the first issue that I read of my homework assignments, and I really after after reading your Nopsies, I wasn't sure what to expect from Margali, but in this, she appears she's working with two other women, Lilia and is it Maria?
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I, it's a comment.
• 1:10:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the, I get the Harkness Coven.
• 1:10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: it is but she's so she's drawn so appealingly and her lines are always so it feels so soft that here she's very gentle she's very much just like the mother figure and love her regalia in this I mean her her crown with the horns but also like the way she's drawn with her
• 1:10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: her green dress, the way it slits.
• 1:10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she's just, she's gorgeous.
• 1:10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and she comes off very soft and almost feels like the one even over the other two women who isn't being hounded by a curse, you know, one of them has a relationship with a wearable.
• 1:10:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the other one has this evil crown of snakes that she's wearing, but my godly feels like she's actually the woman in the most control.
• 1:11:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: of the cover.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So she feels the most balanced and I kind of kept looking to her in this issue of, oh, you were the one I want to listen to and I do think that Scarlet Witch is in the best hands with you and your sisters.
• 1:11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was just a really interesting perspective and I think I an interesting introduction to who her character is because then reading her other issues and seeing the starker side of her, but this one seems it's very nurturing and loving, which was a
• 1:11:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the idea of seeing Margolis youth and she also comes across Wanda and Pietro who are also Romani characters with their parents in their own clan.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is fun.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It also works in a ton of Marvel lore.
• 1:11:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: The serpent crown is here, the Book of Cagliostro, the Werewolf curse from the Jack the Russell Jack Russell Werewolf by night line is a lot a lot of this is like wound together.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dombala is here.
• 1:11:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: The demon taboo is here.
• 1:11:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nightcrawler volume four is when Claremont's back.
• 1:11:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have a new nightcrawler series after Nightcrawler died and was resurrected and his body is made up of stacked up bumps like they're like the raccoons and a trench coat.
• 1:12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a bunch of little damp demons who make up his new human form.
• 1:12:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's a surprise to see my bed.
• 1:12:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: What?
• 1:12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: What?
• 1:12:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to take the time, but it's okay.
• 1:12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: My Lily is back with the care of Anne and Daryah Mark, and she has the green skin white dress look.
• 1:12:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a being called Tri Mega, who's a weird guy going, or something with tech guy going after magic, and don't worry about it.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's after Nick Crawler and Amanda.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: They battled the superpowered members of Derriar Mark and cute, including Fiora, Gumi, and House, and Margali's acting all innocent, but she swims gets an invitation back to the X mansion where she steals the memories of Storm and Beast with some really cool visual effects.
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a paper spell.
• 1:12:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she tries to get that, use that to get into the afterlife where Nightcrawler had been kept so that she can get more power.
• 1:12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this afterlife is also connected to Azazel.
• 1:12:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: My neck color is alive because Azal made some deals with demons.
• 1:12:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some shit going on here that's not quite explained.
• 1:13:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, in the end, she needs to get knocked unconscious and Amanda sefthin passes through a portal to sacrifice herself to save everyone else.
• 1:13:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it closes behind her and she's been dead for 11 years.
• 1:13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have never seen Amanda sefthin since this story, a little known X-Men fact.
• 1:13:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been a long time.
• 1:13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Amanda was sacrificed as Margali tried using her.
• 1:13:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: to get power.
• 1:13:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We see her very briefly at another group of sorcerers and doctors-trained sorcerers supreme, then we go to cracocoa.
• 1:13:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're finally on Legion of X, and this is Sysperia writing its brilliant.
• 1:13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: During cracocoa, mutants around the world begin to change into monstrous forms, including Nightcrawler who's grown horns, people are being killed, and they soon trace all of this back to Margali.
• 1:13:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: who initially shows up in her maiden form, but there's a glamour she gets taken away and she looks like an old woman who's asking for help.
• 1:13:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kurt sees through it, pixie is there.
• 1:13:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's like Margali's brimming with power, but then other people start mutating around us.
• 1:13:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're not gonna get into all the details.
• 1:13:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: A text page tells us, quote, and I do wanna take a moment on this, even though it's a little dense.
• 1:14:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your patience.
• 1:14:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The winding way, an exosentric field of magic in which practitioners receive an employee vomotergic magic power from an as yet unidentified source of emanation.
• 1:14:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like all magical systems, mastery relies upon the tacit transaction of cost and benefit.
• 1:14:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or if one prefers, the trappings of theology, offering and blessing.
• 1:14:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unlike other modes of sorcery, practitioners of the winding way fulfill the necessity of sacrifice through acceptance of personal disempowerment.
• 1:14:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The price they pay to enjoy periods of extreme magical vigor is to suffer the equal and exact opposite phases of infublement and powerless to this.
• 1:14:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you guys, this is Dr. Dooms every story when it comes to magic and power.
• 1:14:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever the eponymous way is notional or real, in some sense or sphere is debatable.
• 1:14:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Practitioner certainly think of it as if it were a tangible pathway meandering through outer realms.
• 1:14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I recently discovered translation, C1790, of a lost impendix to the famed Cytor Esrarr on Nujum, gives us a more abstract explication.
• 1:15:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know what feels like I'm reading it's like graffiti.
• 1:15:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your patience.
• 1:15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: In visor g, a mountain that exists in no true place, to the far side, the abyssal gulf dark, cold, it radiates, not it absorbs all to the near side, the source, emanating perfection, and factor.
• 1:15:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: The conjurer who basks in its radiance is strengthened, elevated, raised unto the stars, the mountain turns, ponderous, unstoppable.
• 1:15:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It spins eternal about its core axis,
• 1:15:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: any point upon the surface thus passes into the sorceress rays and then emerges there from by rather downing and by by regular dawning and dusking.
• 1:15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hence does a walker upon the mountainside perceive a waxing and waning of pussons.
• 1:15:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love this word.
• 1:15:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Only an
• 1:15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: utter most peak receives constant radiance.
• 1:15:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is but one path up a mountain, a winding way.
• 1:15:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: A helical, spear-espiral ascent.
• 1:15:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is walked not by action of foot nor physique, but the attainment of wisdom, mastery of lore, performance of great magical works.
• 1:16:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: The path is not sufficiently wide for two sorcerers to pass.
• 1:16:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Only by domination, treachery or murder, may the lower most pass or pass the upper most.
• 1:16:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: All who walk the winding way, though they cannot confess it,
• 1:16:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, but in this story, Margale is working with Orcas, the fascists who are trying to kill mutants.
• 1:16:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Kurt's allies are wounded badly, and he submits to Margale, which is what she was looking for the whole time.
• 1:16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she turns him fully into a monster against his will, and then he attacks and kills Orcas agents while under this control.
• 1:16:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: The cost of her spell has been his very humanity.
• 1:16:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is a terrible betrayal.
• 1:16:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when Kurt is at his weakest, he begs for death.
• 1:16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margale then says,
• 1:16:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You hosted the Soltzord once, and such things leave gaps in my boy, like a blacksmith's casting mold.
• 1:16:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, Death, you flirted with it plenty, even before this silly new fad for resurrection.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Went to some topry paradise, even less impressive than your curricula.
• 1:17:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I saw it.
• 1:17:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Towers and rainbows, pah.
• 1:17:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the reference to the afterlife he was in.
• 1:17:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So much for anethable, so much for unimaginable.
• 1:17:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder,
• 1:17:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: where we all tricked by some mischievous power or has heaven truly so mediocre.
• 1:17:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now you rub shoulders with gods.
• 1:17:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You romance aliens and shrug it magic, and it hurts, doesn't it?
• 1:17:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It hurts a man of faith, deep down to see so many mysteries reduced to common experience.
• 1:17:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The inexplicable rendered ordinary, it hurts to suspect there is no more wonder in your imagination.
• 1:17:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Excuse me, there is more wonder in your imagination than the hidden depths of the hidden truths of the world.
• 1:17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: My beautiful, devilish boy, you have spent your life stubbornly clinging to joy, refusing to be crushed by the disappointment, the fear, the deep knowledge that you cannot save everyone, only now in this savage state is it loosen up to shake free.
• 1:17:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've turned the voice within you into a spark to light the world, and that in the right hands is the strongest magic there is.
• 1:18:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not a soul blade, not some dreary, weapon-offent fanaticism or faith, the hope
• 1:18:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: sword.
• 1:18:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as Kurt cries out in pain, she pulls his hope out of his body and it emerges as a sort of light.
• 1:18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then she just leaves his body there.
• 1:18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: He ends up getting mind-controlled by Orcas and used as a weapon kill world leaders before he shakes the spell off.
• 1:18:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we jump then to X-Men before the fall, sons of X, number one, also by Spurrier.
• 1:18:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That crawler's life is in danger by Orchus, Margali returns right in the time to fight them off.
• 1:18:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then mother righteous is here.
• 1:18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is the magic red lady version of Mr. Sinister.
• 1:18:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I remember telling you on the show once there's four playing card versions of Cittister.
• 1:18:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is the Queen of Hearts version.
• 1:18:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 1:18:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Garli has made a deal with this store source as well who also trades in souls.
• 1:18:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's Orkis, there's evil lady, Citister, and Margali has now, she thought she had freed herself from the winding way, but she has lost all of her power once again.
• 1:18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's where we wind up with this character.
• 1:18:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was a lot to throw at you, brilliant fucking story.
• 1:19:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So her whole thing, she wants the power of the winding way.
• 1:19:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: She just, if I listen to that correctly, she just distilled it into its whole hopeless and most powerful thing.
• 1:19:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's using it to try to free herself from the curse, but it cost her night crawlers humanity to do so.
• 1:19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a fucking story.
• 1:19:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Telling it's good.
• 1:19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is good and what's interesting is it's like everything she's saying to nightcrawler she could really just apply to herself.
• 1:19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly it's like are you not listening to your own words?
• 1:19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like if hope is the strongest magic.
• 1:19:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why I mean yeah, okay now you've pulled it out of them as a weapon, but it's actually just nightcrawler is the one who's actually probably the most ahead on this path without even realizing it because he doesn't want to get to this summit.
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just it's interesting if her own hubris and her own words like it's going to be her own curse right this is it I think the winding way I don't think there is a summit I think it just it's a circle and I think that that's the problem is she's trapped on this circle and everybody is and this might be her liberating herself from that and by the way, and that crawler's nature after this is when he's dresses a spider man the uncanny spider man series and in it he's carrying the hope sword he has a sword made of light it says it's his own hope manifested in the way that the soul sword wants to live
• 1:20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's really cool.
• 1:20:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love characters like her because there's always going to be a tragedy there.
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in a weird way, I keep thinking, I keep, I may be a spasm all over the ring span, too.
• 1:20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I just keep thinking of the one ring and everybody chasing this power.
• 1:20:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But she's gallum.
• 1:20:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she just keeps chasing this obsession.
• 1:20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she's her own worst enemy and in a weird way, also a hero.
• 1:20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But she just can never get past this.
• 1:20:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, but it feels like,
• 1:20:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: the truth and the winning move is right.
• 1:20:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's there in her children.
• 1:20:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: As like you could say for all all mothers, it's just that her children are the winning pieces.
• 1:20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not for her to use, but simply by existing, they can't conquer because they don't want any of that power.
• 1:20:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just find she's such a tragic character and I would love to see her character expanded on more in the sense of can we get can we get her out of this?
• 1:20:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can we pull her beyond this
• 1:20:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: fake life that she's kind of forced herself into.
• 1:20:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It feels like this really beautiful image of the David Sexton created in the taro book of Margali is mother destiny is crown and germane is maiden and what that means for night crawler and the winding way connections is fascinating to me is their mutant potential.
• 1:21:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like there's a story we've missed somewhere.
• 1:21:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Margali made some deal early on and then keeps making deals, but this is the story where she finally breaks the curse is the hope at least, but Jamane's still missing and Stefan is dead.
• 1:21:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's traded the lives of her children, Stefan died as a result of her story as it did Jamane, and that crawler is able to be resurrected, but the others not so much.
• 1:21:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think the feeling here generally, if I am able to capture it is how really good X-Men stories often leave us feeling, with like, wow that was amazing, also my head hurts,
• 1:21:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: What did I get with was was that the last story she was in.
• 1:21:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's her last opinion.
• 1:21:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's just a couple years.
• 1:21:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's just a few years ago.
• 1:21:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so nobody's done anything with her since college accepted right.
• 1:21:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Come on Ben.
• 1:21:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because you know what, like to me, exactly what you were saying before is the answer is that you want that moment of revelation where she realizes it isn't a summit, it is a circle and I'm trapped in a loop and the only way for me to break this loop is to stop wanting it.
• 1:22:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or to reveal that again, whatever deal Chad, you are hinting that she may have made early on which there was one line in the Nikolai, you know, issues you have where she references like some secret state berry, you know, again that could be reference to the fact that she
• 1:22:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we don't know where she in her journey, she's referring to with that little bit of wisdom, but to see that if it is is the end of her story to be able to stop to get off the road to to no longer crave the power to no longer want any of this because
• 1:22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: either she's learned the lesson that it's cost me too much or to give her what she wanted all along which was to get off that road.
• 1:22:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: That has been our goal this whole time.
• 1:22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the idea of her being one character, the loving mother, two children.
• 1:22:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know anything about her kid's mother, by the way, a Stefan and James father, I mean, excuse me,
• 1:23:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Seeing something about her early origins, the deal she's making, she's part of a oven, she brings night crawler into her home.
• 1:23:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: At some point, there's a decision made.
• 1:23:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has to save her children somehow, and her soul gets traded.
• 1:23:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: This demonic connection Azazal and Blasco and Mother Right just said, there's all these versions of this character stuck in this kind of time loop on the winding way that she's now freed herself from.
• 1:23:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: This character written by Steve Orlando in the current Scarlet Witch series would be interesting, but more than anything I would love to see Sean and McGuire tackle this character.
• 1:23:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: As a woman who has an understanding of this culture in particular, watching her interact with Dr. Doom and Scarlet Witch would be fascinating.
• 1:23:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think there's some interesting potential.
• 1:23:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love her and I love Nightcrawler even more.
• 1:23:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also love the two of you.
• 1:23:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know this was a longer recording.
• 1:23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate you both.
• 1:23:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just can't believe I forgot that I wrote an experiment in 19.
• 1:23:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, it was a good read.
• 1:23:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I liked that one, you know, I love complex characters and I just thank you for introducing me to her in my My novice experience of either the actual X-Men universe.
• 1:24:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so huge and complex, but I I mean complex characters are truly the best and I think she's got a very complex story that if she could just listen to her own words She'd probably find her own solution again coming back to gaining more wisdom and yet it's like well the wisdom is there.
• 1:24:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're just not it's not sticking
• 1:24:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: for some reason.
• 1:24:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I love that.
• 1:24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's tragedy and I think that there's a lot that can be that can be done and Dr.
• 1:24:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Strange comics are often about the the power that we trade, right?
• 1:24:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's calling on these entities in making bargains and giving up life energy hope to get power in return.
• 1:24:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So when you put this character on a playing field with characters like Blasco, who
• 1:24:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: who seems to be doing the same kind of things Margali's doing without any hint of goodness at all.
• 1:24:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: You then put Germain on the other side of that.
• 1:24:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: You surround her with characters like despair and nightmare and Azaze, a little mother righteous who are all kind of doing the same thing.
• 1:24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's an odd place she exists in in this kind of world of trading magic.
• 1:24:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Wanda is the master of magic and literally the sorceress supreme right now.
• 1:25:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some really interesting story potential there.
• 1:25:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want Nightcrawler to just be really fucking pissed at her for a while.
• 1:25:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like you fucked up my life, like fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
• 1:25:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still love you, Bob.
• 1:25:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I want one of those stories a little bit and we need to main back, of course.
• 1:25:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Someone to gotta tell us that story.
• 1:25:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for this time.
• 1:25:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you everybody for listening.
• 1:25:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: During that crawling month, I hope it's been an epic adventure for all of you.
• 1:25:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have a fundamental understanding of this character in a way that I never thought before.
• 1:25:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would love to write him all day long.
• 1:25:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's incredible.
• 1:25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know he's a fan favorite.
• 1:25:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Easily one of my top favorite, X-Men.
• 1:25:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love him in the way I love Canon Ball and Rogue.
• 1:25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like some of my just all-time favorite characters.
• 1:25:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Any final thoughts where can people find you online anything you want to plug for January 2026 have been working in TV in a little bit but in the interim I've been doing Well, then I came up with a game online game that I would love people to check out if you have a moment if you're in music fans and you like concerts while this is the game for you It's called best concert ever and the website is best concert ever game.com
• 1:25:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We challenge you on a daily basis with a different theme in a different topic to give us what is your opening band?
• 1:26:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is your second act and what is your headline or for your dream concert?
• 1:26:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got a leaderboard, we've got a merch store, we've got all this stuff that a lot of everyone just sort of check out and spread the word and share.
• 1:26:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Other than that, I'm currently writing the last Starfighter comic for Mad Cave, which will come out later this year.
• 1:26:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And another project for there in the comic press line, which has yet to be announced.
• 1:26:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm looking forward to that.
• 1:26:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah.
• 1:26:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't wait to check it out and it's great to see you buddy.
• 1:26:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for for hanging out with me today.
• 1:26:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what I'm going to chat anytime.
• 1:26:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's that's that's like that game sounds really awesome.
• 1:26:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be checking that out right after we close this um yeah, you know right now I'm trying to not be online a lot.
• 1:26:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm I'm really angry at Silicon Valley for trying to take
• 1:26:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: All our brains away from us, you know, I think you can you can find me in the art that hopefully I'll be able to keep creating it's a hard time in our industry right now, not just because of AI but just corporate greed and general.
• 1:26:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think if you're a real fan of human creative stories, please just keep supporting in that way, just support your comic artists, your comic writers, the media that that you like to consume just, you know, be wary of where it's coming from and who's making it.
• 1:27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: support human creativity if you can, would be really appreciative.
• 1:27:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then hopefully otherwise I'll see you all out in the real world.
• 1:27:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need to hang out so soon, you and I, I'm so excited.
• 1:27:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It'll be great.
• 1:27:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so needed.
• 1:27:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, lastly, follow the show, great, welcome, underscore, land on Instagram, my own social media, private, it's getting at kiddos, the two of you are well following me.
• 1:27:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just ask, watch for my book coming out.
• 1:27:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: This may, yay, again, I'm seeing the graphic novels being released in May, pre-orders are available on Barnes and Noble.com.
• 1:27:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's beautiful.
• 1:27:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I cannot wait to share.
• 1:27:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the theme next month on the show, we're going to be all themed around Brother Voodoo.
• 1:27:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're staying in the magical world and talking about Voodoo.
• 1:27:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have some incredible stuff already recorded for it on both the main show and the Patreon channel.
• 1:27:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was a whole education.
• 1:27:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please keep listening.
• 1:27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll teach you stuff.
• 1:27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Shit every week.
• 1:27:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I promise.
• 1:27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks everybody.
• 1:27:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Emmett.
• 1:27:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks Ben.
• 1:27:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you all back here next week on the Graimalk and the Patreon channel.