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Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine: Another Fine Mess! Featuring B. Earl and Jeremy Whitley! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well yeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: All month on Grey Malcolm Lane, we've been talking about Cowboys, and Marvel's kind of weird sets of sub-set of 1950s Cowboy Western genre, and how it all fits into our universe.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, this is an X-Men show, there are plenty of Cowboy X-Men theme stories.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of them lands very loosely or tangentially in a weird series called a astonishing Wolverine and Spider-Man.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now I've been covering Wolverine's early origins on the show, a little bit consecutively, and this is one of the stories that flags in Wolverine's early origins because of one specific part of the story.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get to the review in our latter half, but reading this was an undertaking, so I'm always grateful to guests who are willing to do crazy homework.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome you both to the show.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to have you both share your name and pronouns.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell everybody a little bit about you and my initial question today.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any connection to Cowboys, country western, famous movies or TV shows or whatever flags for you from your real life or your fictional pursuits?
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's where we'll start today.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much, Adam.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: So grateful to be here.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, you can call me Ben going forward, but uh, B-Roll uh, there's a whole story there as well as we will maybe find out on this adventure I mean, I'm ready for that story now
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, so it's interesting.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: My name is a challenging one.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: The last name growing up was Jack and Dough.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I hear it.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I hear it.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: There you go.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, and this is, I don't often talk through this story on many podcasts, but since you asked,
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: I will give this story, you know, so I was always sort of in the background of many things and you know, film editor, et cetera, and it had to change my name for one movie, I edited, uh, called Christian Mangle, uh, the director Corbin Bernson was like, as
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if you can use this name on a movie for Christian mingling, and so my name was like front card, so I changed it to my mom's maiden name of Earl.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then I was kept using my last name on a lot of other things.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: My son, we gave him...
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Officially the last name Earl that is he's now going to be 15 But many moons ago he he was given that last name so he is officially on record with the last name of Earl Thinking that you know this would be a better name for him to go to high school with which he's in now and thanks me every day for having given him
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: That name.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I've been writing with Marvel for the past gosh.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean nine years.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean first book I did was with my original name with Masters of the Sun They did with the Black Eyed Peas and that was put out through Marvel and then Taboo and I teamed up to start doing some other projects with Marvel.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: We did Marvel 1000
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: We did a Red Wolf One page and then from there jumped off on the world by night and Delhi neighborhood Spiderman and Daredevil and Echo and spirits of engines and Blade and Echo blah blah blah.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm actually right now working on an independent project that is Western themed and driven.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: It starts in the 1860s.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I've been really doing a lot of deep diving and digging into that.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a modern day story, but and it's not time travel.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's more of a
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: story.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then growing up, you know, we had a relative who had a tobacco farm in Virginia.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I remember as a kid growing up going down to a, I don't know if that's really Western, though.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I guess tobacco, spin to back.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll bring in Saber to get definitely fighting at tobacco field immediately.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why?
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, hang me on that and pay this from Virginia.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's rock the whole Western gimmick for like 10 years now, so.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: uh... with speaking of christian mingle that's where i first met jermie with lee jermie welcome back you nice wild wild gameplay people you meet around there yeah uh... thank you for having me back uh... i'm jermie with the i'm a uh... writer of a lot of things uh... most of which are comic book i just last year i had a
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stonewall honored a book navigating with you, which is sort of a queer way romance about two girls who fall in love over their shared love of manga.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been all over the place people might know me from my series, Prinseless, or from working on Marvel on the unstoppable wasp and future foundation, or maybe from writing 60 issues with my little pony comics.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I've been all around using the gayest thing you've done.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, man.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am I'm setting new records on that front.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I'm on a regular basis writing wise, but yeah, I do all of that.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I also have my own podcast progressively horrified, which is all about watching scary movies and talking about the progressive politics that are sometimes aren't in them, but
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mostly a lot of horrible, he's have a lot of aggressive politics in them.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So my Tata, my dad's that then huge Western fan, I was forced to watch many because he would fall asleep in front of them and as soon as you tried to change the channel, would immediately wake back up and make you turn it back.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I got to know Western's early.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got to love him quite a bit later, but I'm a I'm a sucker for for Western's and I guess just recently wrote started writing my own the first like sort of Western inspired thing that I do, which is a comic that I just funded through soup called slay, which is sort of a futuristic monster hunting Western, which also takes place in Virginia, strangely.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So three things we all have in common.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know your direct ages, but I think we are of a similar age.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are all parents.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things I want to focus our initial conversation on is the transforming world around us, which is a crazy day.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to look this back into westerns in a minute, I promise, because we're going to land in time travel.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: But as each of us are seeing our children come up in a very different world than the ones that we were brought up in.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the questions I want to start with for both of you, and I'm going to throw a couple characters your way for each of you, focusing a little on your Marvel stuff, but I'd love for you to reference anything that you're writing.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Writing kids these days, writing the resilience of children, what it means to be an outlaw, what it means to be a hero,
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: what it means to be a villain and how we are redefining those things in the eyes of a younger characters is a really fascinating thing.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I see you guys write this stuff and there's some commonalities in the way that I see you both tackled this as we look at this kind of next generation level.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm always frustrated, but also so thrilled that you get to write so many indigenous characters, but it frustrates me because you should be writing so much more than just indigenous characters.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like there's a lot more that should be happening.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's kind of open this idea.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: The concept being writing younger heroes, redefining legacy, how do we capture that?
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's start with Jake Gomez, a character that you got to create at Marvel as the new, where Wolf by night.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a fun place to start, so Jake Gomez, tackling that character was really the idea of how do we bring a character that's very like a WB or CW type hero into this storytelling, right?
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like someone who's that Twilight version, but not, you know, where his name's literally Jacob, so it tells me you're on Team Jacob for sure.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know what's funny so there's a reason why so Jimmy Gomez.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's Taboo's real name and Gomez became the last name and Jake being that Jay, you know, Jimmy, Tab has a lot of you know There's a lot of Jay's in his family, but Jake was also our editor Jake Thomas So we're like all right Jake.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna give you a bone here To Gomez's taboo's last name, and now we got Jake Gomez.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: There we go
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's a lot of like really fun references in the story, like I put some of my best friends actually, they were all the like racist bad guys in the very beginning.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: I put all my friends as not that they are, but I'm just like, I'm gonna do something you guys, I hope you don't mind, but you get to be in a comic book and you get to be a bunch of jerks.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So now I mean, so Jake Gomez.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: really was this idea of how do we take someone who is sort of, you know, rebellious and a badass, but, you know, also a child, really, I mean, he's 17.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, that was jumping into that storytelling was like, what was I like at 17, you know, and talking with tab a lot, and that's, you know, our writing process, I mean, in how I write with tabo is very much about, like,
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know, tell me stuff.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of it's more on me doing like research, I guess you could say downloading it all, filtering it synthesizing it and then generating that character.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of it was coming from, you know, tabs up bringing being a kid, you know, in Hollywood, being, you know, rebellious, growing up with his grandmother, and then my own background of, you know, just being this kid, you know, in a small town living this life with, you know,
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Please, you know, my best friend who was a girl growing up.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, like, amalgamating all of that, and that really became Jacobus.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, a lot of these characters you see are sort of these mirriads of life characters in my world and in taboo's world.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I even put, so, my son is in the Daredevil Nakobuak.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's the kid who is Leor.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, we're always putting people, we know, we love, maybe we don't like, you know, is this what writers do, right?
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't like you, I'm going to kill you all of my story, you know, we're just making you be a real jerk.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, dulling into
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: these 70s characters that have kind of more modern characters replacing them.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, kind of in the lines of diversity, Jeremy focusing on your most recent Marvel book in strange tales.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk a little about working with Gwen Stacy Ghost Spider and even sure as kind of the newer Black Panther character?
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, newer generation capturing older hero legacies.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's fun with that one is, you know, we wanted to do, we wanted to do something that would be a seasonally appropriate, you know, Halloween story, something that people can pick up every year that, you know, would get younger audiences in the door.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we were thinking like, who is who is fun like Halloween theme, who is something somebody we can do something with.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: that, you know, is sort of doing a unique thing story wise within the Halloween structure and we were like, we want everybody to be some sort of Halloween archetype.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, she is both a ghost and a spider and pretty literally ghost like throughout this thing.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's fun to get to sort of play with her as a young up and coming character and we did this what I feel like was more daring as I was writing it than I realized when I pitched it of like her fighting Norman is the green goblin, which is very like, you know, that's.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the guy that killed Arguin Stacey, so like putting them in the same room together and having them fight not really neither of them really knowing who the other one is was a really like interesting dynamic to put on that.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love the young like teen Marvel characters, you know, in that same book we got to use the good to use Nico Minoru, who's one of my favorites who I'd not gotten a chance to write even though I kept trying to squeeze her into everything before that, so you know, they really wanted to do Scarlett Witch, and I was like, what?
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it would be fun to have this sort of tie of like having an old witch in a young witch from these different generations with you know, Wanda and Nico, you know, having them showing the very different ways that they interact both with the world and what their powers was a lot of fun.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I mean, sure he's a ball to write.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's such a big gap between who she is in the comics and who she is in the movies that there's this sort of weird space to play in.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we got to sort of mess around with that a little bit and
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: and throwing her up against, you know, a rampaging Hulk with, you know, two of her guards by her side was a lot of fun to play with.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, what would she do differently than, you know, we've seen Black Panther take on Hulk before we've seen the chocolate do it.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, how's sure you're going to do it?
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's different.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's sort of fun to play with those dynamics and putting these characters together who've never been together before.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And did I just, even like, one of the things that was fun about unsathable wasp as well is getting to plug in these younger characters into these types of stories that we don't really tell as much anymore.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Westerns is one of those obviously, but also with hers, it was a real like, big 50s science action, right?
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we don't do science adventures all that much anymore.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: and, you know, young teenage girls were not featured really in those stories when they were popular.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's fun to sort of take that, you know, the new characters and the new ideas and fit them into those types of stories and then do something that hasn't been done with it.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're both excellent at writing on characters.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jeremy, if you listened to the show last August, I did the trial of David Cannon, the whirlwind.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I do one big academic panel once a month.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we reference you writing Janet Van Dyde beating the shit out of him really actively.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in May on my show, we're doing the trial of Janet Van Dyde.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: So stay tuned because we have a lot to say about your unstoppable loss spread.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love it very much, my friend.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: been jumping back into that same kind of space.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really love your character dream spider as well.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Crystal Katani, do you want to talk about the same topic, but do you want to talk about the creation of this character?
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, she's one of my favorites, too, to have been able to create because she, I mean, so backstory, huge horror fan, right?
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like growing up, not so much as a kid, but as soon as I got over my fear of like Jason and all that, you know, I was like,
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Freddie Kruger hands down one of the like my favorite characters and tavern I always would talk about like horror stories and horror, you know characters that we love and you know going into this It was like all right, we have an opportunity here to create something you know fun and cool
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this idea of taking, you know, all those hard tropes and kind of throwing it into one.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, Crystal Katani and Dream Spider is in my opinion.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's Freddie Kruger, but like the good version.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: She comes in your dreams and, you know, fights all the bad dream monsters away.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Instead of trying to kill you in your dreams, was always really interesting about her, is that, you know, there's just so much
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, depth to dreams psychology, sort of that space and I love playing in that space personally.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: She was originally going to be called, uh, story or story spider.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then Nick Lowe was like, but wow, we should we should call our dream spider or, you know, three through a few names at us, and that was the one that really stuck.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, as as sort of getting that by issue four as we named her, because throughout I was always thinking of her as this like,
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Keeper of Stories.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So in the story, you know, she's got that rock.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the Peter got was the rock and the rock has all the stories and it's connected to Ian.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's, you know, got all these like elements connected to it and the whole story of, you know, the shooting, the arrows and blah, blah, blah, whatever.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you've read there, you know,
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I know you read it, Chad.
• 15:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure people in the audience maybe haven't read it.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I, you know, I won't spoil things.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so pretty.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a pretty book worth, worth for the art alone.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the story, of course, is incredible.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's a beautiful book.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, one for rare, by the way, big shout out to Juan.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Juan was such a pleasure to work with.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's what I'm gonna show.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: What a great guy.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he's just, he's the greatest, you know, I always say working with Juan was like playing jazz.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: There would be elements of the the writing and how I would come up with the panels and then one would come back with his version and I'd be like Oh, okay, I see where you're going with this so and sometimes those would happen And we would be getting it you know all the pages would come back and then it would be like and now we have to go to letters So I would be like literally rewriting it around his
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: His panels and changes that always made it better, by the way, you know, I always defer to the artist, but, you know, that was such a fun story to write and really would love to see more with her.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: We got to do that little one shot, I guess you could call it a one shot, ten page or an edge of the spiderverse.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Where we got to introduce Uncle Rockus was going to be her, you know, big bad, made up of all the fear of all the children.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I mean, she is really the keeper of stories in my opinion, and dreams are the place where so many of our stories, you know, sort of come from or are kept, you know, deep in our subconscious, and maybe collective unconscious.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that is, she's very youngy and I guess in her, in her devising.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But taking a slight step backward, we're talking about writing a younger generation.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about the younger generation that was introduced 20 years ago.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've written lots of characters like this, but if we focus on wicked and whole-clean, when those characters were introduced in 2005, they became kind of the face of gay relationships for a whole new generation of people.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: In a time when gay marriage hasn't passed yet.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now they're like the couple, it seems like people are afraid to do things that they're almost because of that archetype they're stuck in a little bit.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you got to write these characters, and writing them alongside some of my favorite writers like Josh Trujillo and Anthony Olavara, who've gotten to use these characters as well.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love working in Hoping, the young Avengers are collectively one of my favorite groups of characters, but I think, you know, Wicked in Hoping is such an interesting relationship.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are so complicated as characters, because
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: God bless all the creators on this series initially because like you took two of the most like already very complicated families of Marvel stuff in the, you know, Captain Marvel side of things and then in the Maxim off side of things and you just not only like put them together, but made them more complicated by doing so.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I have a half.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, Cree Warrior mixed with a scroll princess on one side and then half like devil baby mixed with the android and which essence of a, yeah, we're Yeah, crazy times.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember very distinctly like I love getting into like real messy continuity in comics.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does anybody who's right on stopable loss can tell you that devoted almost a whole issue to outlining who her family is and who she isn't isn't related to, including wick or wick and then hulkling I guess, but we can specifically, but also including Tigris baby by a scroll.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, by a scroll pretending to be Hank at the time.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so like it's it's so there's such a temptation with them to go off in one of the many many different ways that you can go with either of those families and trying to sort of like get to get to the ground on either of those
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I particularly enjoy Karen Gillen and Jamie McElby's version of them.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: As being sort of complicated, I think having worked with them in the past, to some extent, and having pitched a lot of stuff, new Avengers related that is not seen the light of day.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you that Marvel is very protective of that group of characters, and before it in particular is very protective of the young Avengers.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I do think it's this rough kind of thing of I think this happens with a lot of different types of queer stories and is something that you know I'm dealing with myself and doing a sequel to navigating with you of like when you tell queer romances in sort of that context especially with young characters I think there's a tendency for them to become sacred to both the audience and to the people reading it and I do think at some level there's got to be a there's got to be a burden on the right or to be honest about relationships are like and
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: that not every first queer relationship ends up with you getting married.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I would argue most of them don't just like most relationship, and historically probably even more of them for obvious reasons.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a tough thing to try and tell those stories honestly.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll also like giving people room for a happy ending, even if it's just a temporary one.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, another character that falls into this genre early 2000s, maybe late 90s, another character that I adore is my Lopez or Echo, who has gone into kind of have her own mythology.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know this is not when you created obviously as well, but taking this character and creating new stories in her post-finex force era, which is wild already.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk about your work with Echo?
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've done a lot of really beautiful things with her.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, she was a tough one to jump into with the Daredevil and Echo because that is such a heavy
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know obviously becomes it's hard when you have such a big character like Daredevil and they're both in the title, right?
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like how do you give her a major component to the story and then of course we got for our name was like can we put a ghost rider?
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: So like, you know, I've got this reveal with ghost rider coming in and they're like, all right now.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: We got a three-hander and we only have four issues but
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, that was, that was a real challenge to really make sure that Echo had her shine in Daredevil and Echo.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: But getting the opportunity to do the Echo one shot just that came out last year was such a blast.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because I knew I wanted so much more to do with her during Daredevil and Echo.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: But in a lot of ways she, you know, and her relative, because that was, that story was, it wasn't really time travel, but it was very much about playing with these two time periods.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: it was dealing with genealogy and generational trauma, right?
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there was a connection to that generational trauma with echo and her relative going by the name of creeping death.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: But there wasn't that opportunity to really let her spread her wings in the ways that I wanted to let her do that.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we also were supposed to have five issues on that series.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we got one cut right going into issue.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like issue one was written and it was like by the way We only have four issues for this so an entire issue had to get cut and all of a sudden it was like Yeah, he's like dying a long going like I know that story will Every writer ever interviewed.
• 22:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not just you.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know what that doesn't make you
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you about my sixth issue ongoing series.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's anyway, but but Akka echo the one shot You know for me getting that opportunity to revisit her and go okay like what can we do with her in a way that that gives her just a just really plays with the character
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I've been wanting to tell like a real crime story, really a noir vibe in that tab was like, oh, we got to make it happen in LA, I was like, yeah, let's do LA, let's make it like that Chinatown, she comes to LA, she's got to solve a crime, her cousin, always family, obviously family, always, you know, gives a lot more high stakes when you're telling us, especially a short story, right?
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we were also
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: really that project started off as hey we need to give echo a new super power and we need to make sure that it's a super power that allows her to get dropped into different stories kind of like misty night so that's the vibe of echo right and it was like okay oh and we need this written within the next like couple weeks and we need the pitch for her new power oh you know so you're like all right quick
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: to the back cave or to the echo cave.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's figure this out.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It would clearly be the echo chamber though.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just want to say the echo chamber.
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: The bad writer in me right now is so...
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's one of you in the back cave, you know, all that anyway.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, so that was really, you know, how do we give echo this new power?
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that was such an interesting opportunity because I'm so obsessed with symbols and symbolism and storytelling in that way.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was like,
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: What if we get, she's, obviously, she's deaf, she doesn't have the ability.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: So if symbols were able to come out of her mouth and she can only read what other people like she's reading lives, where she could read more than just lives.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that was this idea of like this universal archetypal language.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: and it was also a throwback to the Daily Neighborhood Spider-Man language that wanted and I kind of worked out in the wind Spider-Man and the demon bear are having that conversation.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's all these like symbols that are happening, right?
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I was like, what if that's this universal archetype of language within the Marley universe?
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she gets to actually read that coming out of people's lives.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that became like, let's make this super grounded story
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: doing this whole voice over narration, you know, what do you call from Chinatown, Jake Gettys, right?
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Jack, what was it?
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, right?
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, and that was the kick off, but then it was something got really weird and trippy.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was also me going like, I am so sick of all these crazy cults that are sucking people in.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're all based in like wellness.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And hey, let's do some book foe.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And everybody's cool to get hot, do I, Wasko?
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you're gonna see God, and it's like, kids, I can't fuck out of here, man.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, this is that, I hate that more than anything.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Especially in LA, Jeremy's probably like, not gonna look, I'm like, yeah, I know, I know those people exactly that are such like, phony baloney, like, spiritual people.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that was, that was really the drive with echo.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: That she could see through that bullshit, right?
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she could read the lot lies coming out of these people's mouths.
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me ask you both one more, although obviously we could talk for hours.
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: The other genre here is let's take a character that's new, but put them back where they were at the very beginning.
• 26:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at Ottawa, Jarvan, I don't think you're expecting this question.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do you want to talk about the creation of the promoter?
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: One more elder of the universe out there.
• 26:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's wild because I don't know if you've seen, but they just put out a trailer for the Marvel Tocan video game, which is the fighting game, where they included the promoter in this story.
• 26:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's more than a one-hit wonder now.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's so wild because she was, they wanted to do a Thorne Hulk story where it wasn't just them fighting the whole time, but it needed to be sub-sort of competition between the two of them.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, all right,
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to use the champion at the universe.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love that guy.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love the idea of this is just a dude who's like a He's almost like a wrestler who just goes from like world to world like I want to fight your toughest guy Who's your toughest guy?
• 26:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to fight him and that's that's his whole thing, but I was like he's kind of boring
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: and that like he doesn't really have much of a character beyond that and I said, well, what would you do if like this was a real wrestler if it was, you know, Brock Lesnar, right?
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's guy without a personality who's just a big strong dude.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, well, you give him a Paul Hamon, you give him a talking guy.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody to do the promotion and the managing and everything.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, well, what if we had
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: and elder of the universe who was the promoter to go along with the champion of the universe.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like the fun thing with her was the the whole concept of her powers is she is literally capable of changing the fabric of reality.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: She has beyond her level powers, but she can only do it for the benefit of other people.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like she is not able to to gain from her powers at all.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's sort of a fun way, like, as working for him, she can set up whatever she wants as a tournament.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: She can send people to whatever world, wherever it's fun for them to fight, whatever is a fun goal for them to have.
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, he said, she sends Thorne Hulk to an asteroid in the middle of nowhere, and they're supposed to get this belt that used to belong to a frost giant.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: What they don't know in that first issue is that the frost giant has been infected by the brood.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so like it's as like it's this opportunity go unlimitedly big to go like as like that's the first thing I threw out and as I every every issue is going to get a little bigger we're going to go a little farther a little while they're except for the one where you know we we threw in moonstone so a whole can throw or have to deal with where they're really weak, which is their brains.
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love a character who's an evil psychologist, right?
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's just, you know, it says so much about our archetypes of superheroes is like who could take them down?
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, somebody who's smart and knows how brains work because they, they all have real problems.
• 28:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, she was so fun to get to play with and I'm glad that they picked her up and through in this game because she's, you know, that was a six issue sort of throw away a marvel on limited many series that I created this character for knowing that she might never get picked up anywhere else and hasn't for the last five, six, seven years however long it's been and then somebody's like, hey, we see in this trailer a character you created is is in it and I was like, oh, word, let me see.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We see what that is.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And not totally not expecting to see this, you know, white hair, you know, black woman with tap and tap hat and tails and purple eyes and I was like, oh, and then this is an interesting one.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to ask you about again.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is not a character you created, but this concept of the character's been there from the very beginning.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: You got to use the demon bear your recent story as well.
• 29:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Talk about using the demon bear and can you tell people what that is.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I find the demon bear very hard to define.
• 29:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, the demon bear, what a great character that was, uh, was a building sandwich in Chris Claremont, right, that, uh, created that one.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, built, by the way, it was so awesome to see the build at a, uh, variant cover for, uh, for our series, the deadly difference by the way.
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it was, it was awesome to see Bill revisit the demon bear in, in a variant.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was the nicest person I got in these a couple of years ago.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: What a, what a sweetheart.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just a great guy.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, so amazing.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know what's funny?
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's part of my own backstory.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I did a documentary back in 2001 on comic books and I got to film Bill's in Kavich at Columbia University.
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you interview him.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're using Columbia University as a backdrop.
• 30:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, so cut too many moons later.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now I'm getting to play with Bill's character, the demon bear.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, getting that character, it's sort of, it was interesting because we were gonna have Danny Moonstar be in this series.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: we ended up not using her for the Spider-Man series.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: We were going to, I really wanted to throw a lot of X-Men into the Deadly Neighborhood Spider-Man series.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And ultimately the only part of that that stayed in there was demon bear.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: The only character that sort of maintained that he like still clung on because originally there was gambit was going to be in it.
• 30:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like there was all this huge crazy pitch that was set out and
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, we're in speed, we're fine, we're fine, finally came down to demon bear and creating a new character.
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, to me, the demon bear is this like incredible, again, and I keep using the word archetype, but it's this this archetype that is within all of us, this monster that sort of sits within us and is ready to rip us apart when we're not true to ourselves, right?
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like,
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's me.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I see it, it's like a being from another realm that takes on the form of your trauma and manifests, which gives it a very Cassandra Nova, kind of Muma Drive vibe.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was just really creepy.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, but it's like primal nature, right?
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is a bear.
• 31:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is this thing that, you know, is ready to lend you limb from limb, but also comes and eats all of your cookies and crackers and your tent, you know,
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's a cuteness to it.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: We have teddy bears.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've sort of taken the claws, so to speak, out of the bear and made them into these very child-like, you know, stuffies that you go to bed with.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the real true primal nature of the bear is this, you know, powerful entity within our culture.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, throughout culture, bears have had a lot of like powerful primal energy representation.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things that I really didn't wanna do with the demon bear and this kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about this like universal language, whatever.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was like, I was writing it and I was like, is the demon bear go, oh Spider-Man, I'm gonna get you, you know, demon bear growl.
• 32:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, like, I was like, how do I have the demon bear communicate with Spider-Man?
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, how do I have this conversation happen?
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that was like this huge challenge because I felt like it was gonna be so corny to have a talking bear.
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, it just felt like put him in a top hat and kind of, you know, do a little dance or maybe it's a her, I don't know, it's a demon bear, you know, what is the demon bear right what entity I always think of it to represents who you are right.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, yeah, the demon bear very fully firmly would use they then pronouns.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's it's it's it's all it's all of the above.
• 33:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it is but again, it's an entity and I think that was going into that entity was like how do I have this demon bear speak to Spider-Man and after this I did not make up this joke I'm just repurposing it for the this this this conversation, but how does a non-binary demon bear kill its victims they slash them
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thousands of questions I want to ask each of you, but we're going to transition into our issue review, let me just say I'm delighted to hear every story you're sharing and I know you have a thousand things as writers in this day and age in the market that exists in the way that it is I know the constant reduffinition of self.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: rediscovering the joy of storytelling in the market that is out there is a lot, and YouTube brings so much enthusiasm and love as consistent writers working on the things that you do, and we'll talk about some of this stuff you're doing outside of Marvel, of course, when we are wrapping up at the end, but thank you for celebrating your Marvel work would be specifically today too.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to jump into the world of astonishing spider men and Wolverine.
• 34:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a very self-indulgent series.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It feels like to me it's a lot, y'all.
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is kind of an intense fun in a lot of ways.
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a ton to keep track of.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very word dense.
• 34:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what we're doing today kind of a setting all this up is establishing the concept of playing in this giant Marvel sandbox.
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when you are doing things like time travel, you're taking two characters like Spider-Man and Wolverine, where every version of every story has already been told.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now we're bopping them around through time in different time periods, time periods, or flipping on their heads, and the premise and payoff, I'm not quite sure, is worth the estimate at the end, but it's a hell of a lot of fun getting to the end of this journey.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is a six-issue limited series.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to delve deep.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: My show tends to cover early continuity, but we're just mixing in things as we go, and this does have some early continuity touches.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is Jason Aaron, and
• 35:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Adam Cubert with Mark Morales text divine Justin Ponzer Robstein, Dan Kachem and Nicklow are the editors and this was produced in 2010 and the featured villain in this series at least initially is the orb who I have an episode out on he's a guy with a giant eyeball for a head and
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: and he has a team of orblings who all wear little masks on their faces as they go rob banks.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: The premise in this series is they break into a bank vault and access something called the time diamonds, which grow on another planet, but if you have them, you can bedazzle your shit with them and then like wax stuff and knock you through time.
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's basically what happens.
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: A couple of drug dealers who feel like uncomfortable stereotypes named Big Zarr and oh, I forgot the other ones name now.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I think big murder, isn't it?
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, big murder in the bar.
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what their names are.
• 35:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: They feel like fat Albert characters, uh, in the worst kind of way, they end up getting these diamonds and popping all through time.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's all these like very inversions of them that are just trying to fuck Spider-Man and Wolverine up specifically as they're like crossing paths.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a kang the conqueror or like cable kind of adventure as they kind of weave in and out.
• 36:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're not gonna delve deep into the continuity of it all, but this is a wild ride, and it's a ton of fun.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, I've met Jason Aaron, sweetheart of the guy.
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's an incredible writer, and maybe the best writer in modern days of doing this kind of Conan style hypermasculinity.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm gonna land in the realm and conquer the world and bed the beautiful princess.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, the story that we see so frequently at Hero Comics, he does this with name or he does it with Wolverine and he does it with all these characters in a very effective way.
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was reading monthly comics fairly regularly at the point this came out and I remember I got the first issue and it was just something I picked up off the shelf because I didn't know anything about it.
• 36:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a little mini series.
• 36:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, I'll give it a shot like it's a it's a good team, Jason Aaron, and they have a cube of it.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I read the first issue and I was like, oh, this is really good, but I never picked up another issue and reading it now kind of, I'm grateful for that because that moment, I'm with it.
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I even like some of the, you know, the traditional X-Men villain who has introduced halfway through.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But boy, the moment that these new villains Zaron Big Murder Walk on screen, I was like, oh, no.
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, is that this I would have grown I would have grown to them in 1995 in 2010.
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm certainly like oh, I don't know
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: trying to write characters that that speak.
• 37:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
• 37:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: This feels like airplane like they speak in jive.
• 37:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The way that they are Chris Claremonting, this dialogue and the way that they write out accents and stuff like that, is like it's obnoxious when Chris did it in the 80s.
• 37:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's wild when you're doing it with two black characters in 2010.
• 37:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like a white writer trying to write Luke Cage in the early 70s.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like very giant talkie.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I, that's my least favorite part of all of this.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the time travel crazy, wow, it's a lot as well.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I kind of piggyback of that with Jeremy saying, look, it's tough writing, you know, black characters.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had to do it in Master to the Sun, and which was primarily all black characters.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, with Will, it will, will I am?
• 38:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, so, you
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're kind of having to walk a very fine line when you write that, especially as a white dude.
• 38:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, writing that.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you know, that to me, like I can empathize with what he's doing, but I can also go like, man, like, we didn't need those, as soon as you said, Jeremy, like, when they walked on the page, I just was like, really?
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was so underwhelming.
• 38:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I just so like, just checked out.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: At that point, I checked out.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: All right, and then Mojo comes in and I'm like, well, that's fun, but now I feel like we're just spinning plates and what are we spending these fights for?
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I'm gonna do one issue at a time, and I'm gonna read brief synopsies.
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not gonna delve deep into this.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're just gonna let it be what it is.
• 39:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about the problems.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about the joyful stuff, but this is a time travel.
• 39:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: This feels like an episode of Rick and Morty.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: where it's so looped in on itself that it almost hurts your head, but there's a good way to do it.
• 39:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a way that just takes it a little too far.
• 39:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: This series is mostly a lot of fun and the arts are pretty beautiful.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spider-Man and Wolverine have an interesting relationship.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: They've been on the Avengers together.
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They've teamed up a bunch of times.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverines, a killer, Spider-Man, Zagilty Hero.
• 39:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: In this they're very annoyed with each other, but you know, fun team up.
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's Marvel's two biggest properties, frankly.
• 39:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, in issue number one, we open with a gorgeous action shot of Wolverine and Spider-Man leaping into action in the city against the night sky.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Adam Cupid on cover and interiors.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really beautiful overall, and the story is titled another fine mess.
• 40:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: We open on Peter Parker who's been stranded in dinosaur times for months.
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's making the most of his time to study dinosaurs and the stars and he's been collecting specimens.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he also has this woman's face trapped in his dreams that he keeps carving everywhere.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now remember that because this woman's face, well, we'll just spoil it here, we'll get to who the woman is, but at the end of the series, the scientists have found this woman's face carved in ancient times and they're like, oh, who is she, but she's like a modern woman who will never see it another comic again.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, there's there's that time.
• 40:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also see Wolverine living in the valley of fire with the small folk who and he's protecting them from the kill folk.
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yes, this is the world of Moonboy and Devil Dinosaur who never show up at all except kind of.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Logan goes by the name six claws here and he's ruling the valley and spider bands like you're not supposed to change the present which both of them are changing the present which is going to alter the future whatever.
• 40:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: We flash back to months ago, the orb in the orblings robbed the stuff from the bank and they end up with a fight with Spider-Man Wolverine and the time diamonds hit them and we go back to the past where a meteor then hits the earth and Spider-Man and Wolverine wake up millions of years in the future where the fall people are now an advanced civilization who are writing battle bots version of like devil dinosaur into combat with the kill folk millions of years later and the moral of the stories you should not mess with the timeline.
• 41:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, there are some really beautiful pin-ups at the back of the issue one.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: You get it work by Nikolka Henrishan, Amiko Soyan, and Andros Mosa, Alex Maliv, Mark Brooks, Humbered Arromos, and Elderdogato, Nick Bradshaw, and Jim Sharla, wow, Sharla impetus.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if I've said that, Dave correctly.
• 41:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then at Venomerta Ramos, and Edgardel Gato pieces is amazing.
• 41:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, this is the, I think the only issue I had read before this and it's it's a really tricky thing because, you know, you do this sort of starting in media strategy and like you're okay there's this huge problem we have to take care of and they jump back to, you know, where this all started.
• 41:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it really works as long as the, the journey, like the destinations of being worth the journey, which I'm not sure entirely was, but like the journey itself is really like interesting and engaging I kind of like this, you know, version of spider man and Wolverine is sort of the same version of Wolverine, he always is just a little more feral than usual.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: For the 10 people who know this reference, I feel like this issue or this series was written specifically for Strongbad from HomeStar Runner.
• 42:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you know that reference, yeah, I'm back.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 42:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like the one I'm drawing door burned it out of it.
• 42:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Just like, wow, that is, that is of early 2000s, flash out of me, and that is absolutely what Strongbad would call Wolverine, this is six-cloth.
• 42:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Six-cloth.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's my original character, six-cloth.
• 42:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
• 42:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, strong bad would be Wolverine.
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he would cast Homestar runner as like the lame spider man.
• 42:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then he'd get the, he'd get the babe from the team.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're a squad, right?
• 42:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we're going to be a star runner here.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, you like, too.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the cover, Wolverine is aiming a Phoenix gun right at us.
• 43:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Y'all, when they try to weaponize this cosmic force of Phoenix force into something like a bullet and a gun, it annoys the shit out of me so much.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hate it.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really, it's one of the tropes I dislike the most.
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, that's what happens here.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're in this future of highly advanced caveman, Spidey and Wolverine, have found a building full of dead weapons, and we see it severed arm in there.
• 43:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It might be cables or the winter soldiers, but Ironman's armor cap shield, a cosmic cube that's not working.
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dr. Octopus's tentacles, everyone's dead.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: They passed the ruins of, quote, garbanzo's superhero wax museum.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: and an exhibit of history's lamest heroes display where the only really recognizable character is Squirrel Girl, and fuck that, because she's amazing.
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fall people see Logan as their Messiah, because they have memories of him for millions of years ago, but he's not interested.
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a fight with some old robots.
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spidey sees the orb, who's now all buff and time traveling, and he's ranting about the minute men who are trying to sort out all the time crazy.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And also watch out for the Zarr, who we don't know who that is at this point.
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Doom the Living Planet shows up.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Spider-Man is somehow packaged the Phoenix Force into a single bullet and made a gun for it.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of like the ultimate nullifier.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you guys know that Marvel device where if you shoot it, it's going to kill you.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine knocks him out, takes the gun,
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then meanwhile, we see someone dripping in diamonds is watching, and that's the big murder character who's just decked out and bedazzled in these timed items.
• 44:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's issue two.
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben thoughts.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Whoa, I mean, you know, this is a dirty, is a dirty, I, you know, I really was in it for this issue.
• 44:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I was really like five in this one because I was like, all right, this is getting wild.
• 44:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like we're just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was seeing the payoffs from issue one where I was feeling like, all right, cool.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like we had that set up now, we're in the future.
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's, you know, ramifications of what happened if you won.
• 45:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I really liked Wolverine's costume in this.
• 45:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I just felt like he looked, you know, almost like a mixture of samurai and native.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, you kind of reminded me a little of, like, uh, I don't know if it would be thunderhawk or one of those, you know, he has, it just, it looked cool.
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It just looked cool.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the artwork in this, I mean, obviously, I'm Cuba's fantastic.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, but yeah, I mean, I, but I'm in, has the word lame written on his ass through this whole issue.
• 45:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Don't see me.
• 45:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god he does.
• 45:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking back at right out.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he gets his costume because he doesn't have like his costume is torn off when they go when they're in the far future or the far past.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that display in the museum.
• 45:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's happening to superiors.
• 45:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The costume has been taken off the Spider-Man that's up front.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's that's what he's wearing is the costume from the display.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I love that.
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is high level like Mad Mac shit.
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Robot double blind sword, the Phoenix gun and doom the living planet.
• 45:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot, friends.
• 45:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But by the way, that doom design pretty freaking cool.
• 46:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I prefer my doom as a T-Rex though.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's like a fiery eyes like over the tap and Z bridge or whatever, well that's the Brooklyn bridge.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The story is a lot of fun.
• 46:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: My biggest problem with this issue is that it's the same issue as the first issue.
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: You pick up, they've been in this place for a while, they're separated, they're hating each other.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: A big event is coming, they had to deal with the big event and they warp off some other time.
• 46:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So issue three.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spider-Man and Wolverine were the cosmic cube on the cover.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Logan kills the doom-the-living planet with the Phoenix gun, but he ends up evaporating.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spidey holds a vigil for him on the fallen torch of the Statue of Liberty, which is giving very planet of the ape's vibes, which is one more layered reference.
• 46:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure we needed.
• 46:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine is set to enjoy the effort after life.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: His mother, the character Paul Jenkins, created in the origin series, is calling to him, you know,
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Spidey uses the cosmic cube to bring Wolfie back to life and naked, and he is displeased at least at first.
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: They fight, then they get yanked out of time again, and this time adult Spider-Man ends up with young James Howlet fresh from the origin two series living in the woods with the wolves.
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is the Claremont backstory before weapon X gets him.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's a long time later, but
• 47:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is when he's initially in his savage era.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So adult Spider-Man is in teen logins, like Arctic Wilderness, and adult Wolverine ends up with Spider-Man who's brand new with his powers, getting ready to go do the whole costume wrestling thing from like amazing Spider-Man 15.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Jeremy thoughts.
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't enjoy my best guys.
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's it's interesting that he's doing his best to like you know dance between the rain drops here and like put them into each other's origins or at least there at their early days.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The spider man here feels like wildly of character that you know the the the the wrestler spider man is really like he feels like a mid 20s early 30s
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he comes across, especially more in the fourth issue is very like, uh, like guy who knows too much about wrestling, who just just keeps talking about it the whole time.
• 48:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, issue four, this is where it loses me.
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first three are kind of a high octane like heavy metal, you know, ride, then I'm just like, okay.
• 48:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're now bouncing around time.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: We need big murder and desire.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: One is a tall black man, one's a little, their drug dealer is, they've got the time diamonds and deck themselves up.
• 48:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: They feel like black exploitation era characters and if they were written by a black person, I might be more sympathetic, but these two characters are just offensive and we're just gonna move on and let it be.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have a whole palace full of women that they've stolen from all of time to just stay there and I guess be their herum,
• 49:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He says it!
• 49:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, he has my hair on.
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're in her film and rap videos or something.
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: They spar with the night's Templar.
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: They send one into the bombing of Hiroshima.
• 49:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And suddenly we go all Bill and Ted.
• 49:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, as of seeing these movies, they're collecting people from time having an adventure, right?
• 49:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: We go Bill and Ted and they get to see that we see their secret hideout.
• 49:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's the harem.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Helen of Troy is here.
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Joan of Arc is here.
• 49:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: James Brown, Jimmy had Drake's Miles Davis.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: CLEAN.
• 49:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: CLEAN.
• 49:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: CLEAN.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: CLEAN.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: CLEAN.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: CLEAN.
• 49:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: CLEAN.
• 49:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Excellent adventure.
• 49:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what we would call it.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Excellent.
• 49:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Love it.
• 49:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's love.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Summer team ups with Wolverine and Teen Spider-Man and Adult Spidey and Teen Wolverine.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really not going to get lost in it, but this is an official part of Wolverine's origin because this is apparently the 6 months, 6, even though all the alternate future stuff isn't.
• 50:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in this, we see Logan get tracked down by dog Logan.
• 50:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is where things get a little bit complicated.
• 50:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if you guys have read origin by Paul Jenkins, it's really well done.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dog Logan is the character that was kind of intended to be saber-tooth, but maybe also Logan's anyway.
• 50:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jason Aaron later uses this guy in Wolverine in the X-Men because at the end of this story, dog Logan gets his hands on some of the time diamonds.
• 50:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: and becomes like a time-traveling villain who then attacks the Jean-Gray school for higher learning.
• 50:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this is the only part of this issue I want to read.
• 50:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says little brother, you hear me, Jamie Boy, it's your old piled dog.
• 50:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: You should have killed me when you had the chance.
• 50:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you think I was just gonna forget about you, huh?
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I remember you every time I look in the mirror, you little rut.
• 50:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Isn't it that they are maybe related that like he so Logan was the groundskeeper where he was born and and I think there's like an implication that perhaps our james how it is actually the son of the groundskeeper that like illegitimate son of the groundskeeper.
• 51:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know him and this is sort of it's duties possible but never confirmed so the groundskeeper Logan is leg James takes his name from that guy and dog is his son so it.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says, I remember our daddy, too.
• 51:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: How about you?
• 51:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You remember the man you got to like a fish with them claws or yours?
• 51:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so the implication you're employing Jeremy is that the gardener might have been James's dad.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought that was supposed to be the case, but I don't know that that's ever confirmed.
• 51:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like that's hinted at, but never canonized.
• 51:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I remember, I'm going correct.
• 51:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know it wasn't much, but he was all I had until you took him away, just like you took everything.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everything that should have been mine.
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You don't deserve, didn't deserve none of it.
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like your mom has said, James, you know right before she bloated, dammed, brains out, you're an animal, a rabid little animal.
• 51:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm here to put you down.
• 51:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's the speech we get.
• 51:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This guy's after Logan, and then from here, he gets to jump forward in time.
• 52:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like a little pioneer dude.
• 52:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, my favorite moment was when he came back and he was like, you should've left me dead, but that was, I think that was an issue three.
• 52:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I kind of liked this character.
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: It brought me sort of back into it after bar and, you know, like you said, like, that was a great speech.
• 52:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was like, yeah, this is some Jason Arryn.
• 52:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I love Jason Arryn.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's such a fantastic writer.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this was like, the really just Jason Arryn meat that I was like, yeah,
• 52:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 52:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one thing that's funny to me about this is I know Jason Aaron is from the American Southeast like I am.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's from the South and he write dog who is a Canadian redneck as if he is an American redneck.
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's just writing with a very like southern accent, whereas he's got a lot more like long vowels in here.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we bounced through time again, Logan and Spider-Man end up getting burned during the Salem, which trials, which is just a trope we see often, and then we zoom out to Harvey Weinstein.
• 53:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Mojo, who's in his little fear, ranting about wanting to give the people what they want.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, are you a Mojo fan?
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, when Mojo, as soon as they started doing the TV thing, I was like, oh, here comes Mojo!
• 53:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, I like Mojo!
• 53:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there's like, gosh, I remember a series ages ages ago, back in the 90s, where I'm pretty sure Mojo was the main villain, and it was just, it was fun.
• 53:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: It just felt like, and then of course reality TV comes around and it's like, oh wait, this is a little too close to home.
• 53:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, somebody must have taken a page on a Mojo's book when we started doing reality television.
• 53:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, but yeah, I like mojo.
• 53:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think I wanted to use mojo in a story at one point and ended up not getting the opportunity to but uh Yeah, and mo dock is another mojo and mo dock right like you these giant ones of big fat head And ones of big fat body now.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: What would happen to mojo and mo dock at a baby?
• 53:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: That would be the Captain America villain this slug.
• 54:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone go look that character.
• 54:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just kidding.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We jump to astonishing Spider-Man.
• 54:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine number four, where big murder and desire make the cover, don't worry about it.
• 54:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then on page one, we get the Spider-Man and Wolverine show.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spider-Man's going bull yawn, Wolverine's going snick to the snick.
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here comes the stabbing.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: This looks like the mini marbles, like show for kids.
• 54:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: The theme song.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: The whole spineless mess is it's.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Web, snanger, and weapon x, so crazy adventures, loaded with sex.
• 54:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm punching in beer and things to go boom, robots and dinosaurs and planet size doom.
• 54:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Watch them, act stupid as the trippin' through time, something, something, something that rhymes.
• 54:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Best show around, everybody says so, all things to the genius of the almighty mojo, and he's like, nah, let's go with sexy, I mean.
• 54:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: and one of the grossest images in Kujo's face ever.
• 54:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think this resumed in, it's horrifying.
• 54:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: His little tiny eyes, his massive jails.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we get the classic mojo, like, major dome, like his little boyfriend trying to keep everything calm.
• 54:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, but this is what we desire, your logic.
• 54:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it's a fun dynamic.
• 54:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Mojo is ranting.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has implanted the mind of the bank Tyler from Issue 1 in Spider-Man's brain because he wants an epic love story and we're leaning in that direction and that's the face of the woman's spidey was, okay, Mojo then does a public broadcast and this I'll use my normal voice so it doesn't scream out.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The rumors are true, I, Mojo, the life-bringer, Wizard of the Wild, ways producer of such celebrated shows as Uncle Clucky's punching hour, and the all new exploding ex-babies have at long last unlocked the various secrets of the cosmos itself.
• 55:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And from its dread, ma, plucked the recipe for the greatest television series in the entire history of the Mojoverse.
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't even travel.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is not a man you want with time diamonds.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's all I'm saying.
• 55:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get more of Big Murder and the Zarr.
• 55:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: When we get a close up of this black man, he's put time diamonds on all of his teeth and somehow that's the worst part of the character.
• 55:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really awful.
• 55:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spider-Man and Wolverine get yanked into it all, and they are having adventures and the orb gets involved, and now this bank teller is here, and there's a giant fight and things start exploding.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: The time diamonds are falling out.
• 56:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alternate versions of Big Murder and the Zarr show up to warn them that things are about to get really bad, and then Wolverine and Spider-Man get to deck out themselves with time diamonds.
• 56:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine puts them on his claws, and he's all bedazzled that way, and Spider-Man surrounds his eyes with them.
• 56:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a moment, and this is almost my favorite in the whole series.
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spider-Man says, how is it we just bedazzled ourselves with magic diamonds, and you still come out looking all tough and mean while I look like the world's worst liberal artsy impersonator.
• 56:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They kick the asses of the Zarr and Big Murder, and then a Wolverine with the Phoenix Force shows up to destroy them just like doom the living planet did.
• 56:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's something about like this event that's attracting world ending threats.
• 56:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then how are we doing at the end of five?
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we are just like jumping the shark here.
• 56:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I think it can be fun I guess I mean, I don't know it's it's sometimes there's points where you're writing something and you're just going like All right, I don't even I don't even know the story is just going off the rails and we'll follow it where it goes and but yeah I kind of lost me a bit.
• 57:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I know writing time travels tough.
• 57:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I tried to do with kishala and and you know I
• 57:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Feel like sometimes a lot of it, I wish I could do it again because I feel like I dropped the ball a little bit in places and I really understand what Jason's doing here and I see the intention and I feel that it's getting there, but there's those moments where you're like, oh man.
• 57:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of time travel stories out there, but this feels like the movie inception, but there's seven too many layers.
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like it's just it's too much for me.
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It might head hurts.
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's six.
• 57:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just six, we got more hops through time, and then Spidey and Wolverine end up in the, hey, remember it's cowboy Western month on Grey Malkin Lane.
• 57:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to play to the movie.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Peter is living as cowboy and he's romancing the bank Tyler Sarah who is a Sarah Bailey is her name and Logan has become the chief of an indigenous tribe which I don't really like because he's in a full ceremonial headdress and even though he dated silver fox that one time this is a dances with wolves layer to the story that I didn't need.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and then the minute man of the time variance authority show up right as Spider-Man's like, Oh, I found the love of my life, Sarah Bailey.
• 58:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna live in the old west together forever, which this man would not say any of that.
• 58:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: His aunt may his back at home.
• 58:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's no way he's gonna let himself stay in the past.
• 58:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Phoenix disappears.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: The time guy diamonds get stolen and dog Logan gets some of them.
• 58:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Beast appears in a random panel is like, Ooh, I should create a Phoenix gun sometimes.
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Doom is like, Ooh, I should become a living planet one day.
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then at the end, Spider-Man is lonely.
• 58:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine is drunk.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're done.
• 58:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's so much fun.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jeremy, how we do it?
• 58:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well done.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well done.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it looks y'all.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This one was tough.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a hard summary.
• 59:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get it.
• 59:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The wild thing is by the end of six, we didn't need Zarr and Big Murder.
• 59:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like they're completely unnecessary to this plot.
• 59:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you can't have used any number of Spider-Man villains.
• 59:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You could have just given Mojo somebody.
• 59:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: These guys's origins is convoluted and like they're bad.
• 59:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're bad characters.
• 59:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like yeah, I don't know the Sarah Bailey edition.
• 59:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about, I don't know how on earth that one tree would have survived these several hundred years, but I don't know.
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Also where is this tree?
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly, like most trees in this area probably wouldn't chop down.
• 59:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just, you know, anyway But it's not on Wolverine becoming like the indigenous chief.
• 59:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, look that that He obviously would never have been wearing that.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there would have to be so much Retconning about Wolverine to make him native
• 59:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, how where he's alive, I'm gonna head dressed here.
• 1:00:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's see.
• 1:00:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I know, and that's what I'm saying.
• 1:00:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it just doesn't track at all.
• 1:00:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, how would he become a chief?
• 1:00:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Where does that?
• 1:00:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just so much just thrown into it to justify it being in this like, you know, cowboys and Indians kind of story.
• 1:00:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, it felt like they said they call it big chief Wolverine in one panel and like, oh, no, no.
• 1:00:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, there was earlier line I think was it big big murders like I want to go see some cowboys and Indians or something like that Right, it was just like right after the night's Templar and it was like and then there's this like I don't know it just it didn't track for me at all and I kind of feel that was like okay.
• 1:00:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean
• 1:00:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why it's not like literally an anti climax like the last issue ends with like all right now Here's this big problem we have to deal with and it's on the first page of this one and then they just jump past it They just jump past the climax and they it's you know they explain how it's resolved the couple pages later and then like there's nothing else that happens in this issue It's all just wind down and
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, and I don't know.
• 1:01:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Bunchy like buttons put on to try to stitch up the earlier stuff.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's some casual racism.
• 1:01:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's some wonky time travel.
• 1:01:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's definitely a heavy metal soundtrack.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: The strong bad reference works if I'm reading here.
• 1:01:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: The rest will never be referenced ever again, but for those of you who are Jason Aaron Wolverine in the X-Men fans, you now know the origin of those fucking time diamonds.
• 1:01:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is where they came from.
• 1:01:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I didn't even really cover that.
• 1:01:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: and Spider-Man land on another planet where the time diamonds have been harvested from you.
• 1:01:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not worth the journey.
• 1:01:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: You need to take to go there.
• 1:01:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a wild one.
• 1:01:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad we covered it.
• 1:01:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's fun and it's fun to do this with both of you.
• 1:01:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Specifically, do you have opinions on the big X-Men continuity?
• 1:01:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, like do you love these summer's family timeline for example?
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like do you love to get lost in that big concept shit in our end your comics?
• 1:02:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, sometimes I'm a sucker for canon and looking at like, you know, connecting dots and continuity and I think, you know, one of the things I really do love is when you can pay off for an audience something that is like a small little flavor from a long time ago and bring it back and people that get it get it, you know, or really kind of just do those those fun little moments where they're
• 1:02:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Throw away lines or throw away like I mean I love that scene where you saw the stuff in the Where it looked like cables are maybe it wasn't maybe as you said maybe but it could have been could have been cables are So yeah, I do love those things and I remember being a kid going back to my own timeline of reading X-Men Just I would absolutely get lost in all the this summer's world
• 1:02:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, and I mean, it just was, it just was so much fun.
• 1:02:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I mean, I dig it.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: If, look, I'll be honest, if I had an opportunity to write some X-Men, which has always been one of the dreams, I would absolutely throw myself deep into that, that pool.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So let's just put that out there.
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Given the chance, Adam X is making your line up.
• 1:03:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I finished a book, I loved to have like fuck yeah, that was great.
• 1:03:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or, oh, that was sad.
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or, oh my god, I can't wait to see what happens next.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I finished this book, I'm like, oh, okay, I need to go for a walk.
• 1:03:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the art is beautiful.
• 1:03:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if you really like the high octane shit, the Phoenix gun, the Doom Believing planet, the crazy wonky, devil dinosaur transformer.
• 1:03:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of fun stuff here.
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we're gonna end our review there.
• 1:03:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everybody for joining us for this is a crazy episode.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jeremy, you've done a few of these with me now.
• 1:03:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't normally go this high concept.
• 1:03:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's normally like, oh, look how Polaris can have, like, look at each other.
• 1:03:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, isn't this what is the love of craziness?
• 1:04:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's my, maybe it was the first time I was on here.
• 1:04:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We talked about the Avengers fighting Banshee who was still, I don't know, a criminal at that point, just wearing a trench coat with his mutant costume underneath is walking around.
• 1:04:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, oh yeah, it was that Captain America country western issue.
• 1:04:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was fun.
• 1:04:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was fun.
• 1:04:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, everybody.
• 1:04:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for the ongoing support.
• 1:04:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's such a joy making this show in this crazy world I love connecting with creators.
• 1:04:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had a great time with you both today Follow the show at Graham all can underscore lane if you'd like to see regular content I keep my own social media private cuz I got kiddos, but even though
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I published a few books in the past.
• 1:04:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: My new big book is coming out in May.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So just a few weeks after this it's available for order and I'll be doing the concert get especially in small press associations.
• 1:04:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the graphic memoir version of my life story called Game Warman Dad is come out.
• 1:04:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I literally just got my first print copy in the mail.
• 1:04:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's beautiful.
• 1:04:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's moving.
• 1:04:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait for everyone to read it.
• 1:04:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: on the show please watch for the next episode coming out of the end of the month which is the trial of the raw hide kid full celebration of marvel's westerns and queer cowboys specifically and over on the patreon we're closing the month out with the Apache kid with my friend Matt parent joining me for that.
• 1:05:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you can find me on most of the blue sky at Jeremy Whitley, my website, JeremyWitley.com and my podcast progressively horrified, which is available wherever you listen to podcasts.
• 1:05:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's all about horror movies and it's all about taking a part from a progressive lens.
• 1:05:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry, it's not as serious as it sounds, it's still like we just have fun with horror movies, but we also ask questions like, is jazz feminist?
• 1:05:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, which you'll have to tune in for the answer to that one.
• 1:05:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, as for stuff of mine that's coming up, uh, in May, my, the third book of my series with Jamie and Gucci, the School for Extraterrestrial Girls, uh, which is sort of a YA series about a girl who finds out she's an alien when she spontaneously can bust in the middle of class and, uh, has to go to a school for, uh, alien girls.
• 1:05:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, the third book that comes out in May, you can preorder right now and pick it up then, uh, and also as of, uh,
• 1:05:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: As of now, my next book, which is a sequel to my previous award winning Navigating with you.
• 1:06:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just called Navigating with you volume two.
• 1:06:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll be available this late this fall early winter and it should be available for pre-order right now.
• 1:06:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're looking for more queer YA romance, that's the way to go.
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: excellent to see you my friend.
• 1:06:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been far too long.
• 1:06:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ben, YouTube.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram, be your old writer.
• 1:06:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, they're pretty often.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and also LinkedIn, I use that relatively frequently, not as much as I used to.
• 1:06:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, and I also have a sub-stack called Lookmano Hands.
• 1:06:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, right that weekly.
• 1:06:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is sort of an eight
• 1:06:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: convergence of spirituality, creativity, and technology, and coming up, we're going to be dropping a, well, when this comes out, it'll be with Zoop.
• 1:06:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll be in our Zoop.
• 1:06:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's on a Kickstarter crowdfunding for a project that I am writing and producing for a band called Fangbanger.
• 1:07:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a really, it's a really powerful story.
• 1:07:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're a band that, you know,
• 1:07:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: was playing throughout LA and the lead singer died in a tragic motorcycle accident.
• 1:07:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: He was also gay and was HIV positive.
• 1:07:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a whole part of the story of the band and you know it was really unfortunate.
• 1:07:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: They were about to drop their first album and he died.
• 1:07:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this graphic novel anthology we're doing is in conjunction with the album.
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So each of the songs is going to be a story.
• 1:07:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm writing it.
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've got an incredible lineup of artists that I'm working with and have pulled in.
• 1:07:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm really excited for this project.
• 1:07:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, can't wait to bring it to the world amongst other things happening in the works.
• 1:07:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: But this is the thing that we're in the midst of right now.
• 1:07:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Being a successful writer these days takes a hustle and you're both really hardworking and very excellent at your craft.
• 1:07:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's wonderful and thanks for being incredible allies.
• 1:07:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for being wonderful storytellers.
• 1:08:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's great to meet you both, can't wait to hang out again sometime.
• 1:08:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everybody for listening.
• 1:08:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will see you all back here next week on The Graham Outcome Lane Potch podcast.
• 1:08:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and it's modern applications.
• 1:08:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: In March 1939, the story of Czechoslovakia didn't end with a bang so much as a quiet unraveling.
• 1:08:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just months earlier, the country had been forced to surrender its fortified borderlands under the Munich agreement, leaving it exposed and politically shaken.
• 1:08:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: What remained was fragile, it's leadership under pressure, it's defenses stripped away.
• 1:08:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Into that uncertainty stepped at all Hitler, summoning Czech president, email Hacha to Berlin.
• 1:08:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: The meeting stretched late into the night heavy with threat.
• 1:08:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: By the early hours of March 15, after intense pressure and warnings of military action, Haca agreed to place his country in German hands.
• 1:08:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: A simple signature.
• 1:08:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: German troops entered Prague the next day, not as invaders crashing through resistance, but as a force moving into a space already softened for them.
• 1:09:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: There were no large scale battles in the streets.
• 1:09:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Instead, there was a sense of inevitability, as if the outcome had been decided long before the first soldier crossed the border.
• 1:09:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Soon after the Nazis announced the creation of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a new political entity that would supposedly preserve order and stability while allowing a degree of Czech self-administration.
• 1:09:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: On paper, it sounded almost reasonable.
• 1:09:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: The word protectorate suggested oversight rather than conquest, guidance rather than control, check institutions were left standing at least in form and a local government relay remained in place.
• 1:09:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The real authority rested firmly with German officials, particularly the Reich Protector, who answered directly to Berlin, decisions flowed from the top-down.
• 1:09:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the illusion of autonomy masked a system designed to extract resources, suppress dissent, and fold the region into the broader machinery of the Nazi state.
• 1:09:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: For those living there, the shift became clear not through declarations, but through daily life, policies tightened, freedoms narrowed, and resistance grew more dangerous by the day.
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what had once been presented as protection revealed itself as occupation.
• 1:10:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: and then built step-by-step through pressure, language, and careful staging, the transformation of Bohemia, and Moravia was not framed as destruction but as reordering, and that framing order stability protection was precisely what made it so effective.
• 1:10:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: We know what happened after that as the war advanced.
• 1:10:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now we're going to jump to Captain America volume five number seven.
• 1:10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the before the evil version of Captain American come can come after him.
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: The red skull gives one last speech.
• 1:10:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have come so far my brothers Hydra has made itself known across the globe.
• 1:10:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your strength, your sacrifices, all has made all this possible.
• 1:10:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now Revolution is upon us.
• 1:10:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are striking at the very heart of the establishment exposing their weakness and corruption to all.
• 1:10:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: They fear us now as well.
• 1:10:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: They should, they see their regimes collapsing around them as the people demand to have their voices heard.
• 1:10:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so of course they fight harder than ever.
• 1:10:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: ever to break our, or try to break our resolve, but we were answering it again.
• 1:10:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have enriched themselves while you grow poorer.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have welcomed your enemies to the table while you feast on scraps.
• 1:11:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: These sins will, will not be forgiven, and now it is time for us to open a new front into this war.
• 1:11:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: My friends, it is not
• 1:11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: enough to merely tear down the old structures.
• 1:11:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We must also build a new that which we destroy.
• 1:11:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: We ourselves must offer a better way.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will show the world what our glorious reign looks like and we will rush to join and they will rush to join us, laying waste to their masters.
• 1:11:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so we will begin here in this place, Sikovia.
• 1:11:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tonight we will break a nation and make it ours.
• 1:11:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when it is over, they were in need of before us.
• 1:11:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: They were no our true power.
• 1:11:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: As we go to fight, let the call ring out, hey, hydra.
• 1:11:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: They are very much gives Hitler, they're giving one of his crazed speeches.
• 1:11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hydra logos and red, a tentacle red skull hung all over the country as detractors are hung publicly by ropes.
• 1:11:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in Sikovia, the streets are hit by a war poverty and classism.
• 1:11:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hydra steps in as a new world orders, saying they are there to save the country.
• 1:11:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's been launching a long-term military campaign and soon plans to let the rebel forces of Sikovia in so that he can turn it all to his own advantage and push the Hydra objectives forward.
• 1:12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So to talk about this crazy story, let me welcome my dear friend Excel to the show, Excel hello my friend, are you a red skull fan?
• 1:12:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't say that I'm a red skull fan, I don't know.
• 1:12:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would feel about people saying they're a red skull fan.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe they enjoy red skull as a villain and enjoy reading stories with red skull in him, but a red skull fan that's a little suspicious.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: That, there's a lot to say about that.
• 1:12:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you a Captain America fan?
• 1:12:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have you spent a lot of time reading cap comics over the years?
• 1:12:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've spent a ton of time.
• 1:12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did, well, I didn't remember this issue as vividly, I did read a lot of Brew Bakers, Captain America.
• 1:12:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I read a lot of stuff around the death of Captain America.
• 1:12:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got really into that because it was,
• 1:12:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Breaker writes really good capture America stories and I do enjoy like once I kind of like realize what was kind of like the meat of Captain America rather than just like what you see at face value I think a lot of people see it as like a like patriotism person But like when you get down to who Captain America is and what he stands for he stands for the idea of like what America can be rather than like just patriotism for the sake of
• 1:13:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: that that's something that like kind of comes out in this story too, because we get the a through line of of Nomad, which is like a Captain America persona that he took on when he was feeling displeased with the government.
• 1:13:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nomad is not an easy character to sum up in a few words.
• 1:13:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you know this guy's old?
• 1:13:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, really?
• 1:13:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't, so I don't know a lot about Jack Monroe.
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know a little bit about Captain America's no madface, but I don't know too much about that.
• 1:13:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me give you, let me give you the 30 second like X-Men continuity, right?
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in the 1950s there was a line of books called
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: there's a Captain America and a Bucky running around who are like not great and they're like saying awful things and like they're the cold workout.
• 1:13:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So a few years later than they call me.
• 1:13:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's not the official title, but yes.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in the early 60s when they brought the real cap back.
• 1:14:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: a writer a few years later, decided, oh, we got to explain who these 50s versions were.
• 1:14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the the retcon was that there was an alternate cap in an alternate bucky in the 1950s who were like programs to be kind of bad.
• 1:14:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And both of those characters come back in modern comics.
• 1:14:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of them is kind of an evil Steve Rogers look alike.
• 1:14:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He often goes by the name the grand director.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the other is Jack Monroe, who was the Kami Smasher Bucky, who ends up been suspended animation, and then he ends up as Cap's teen sidekick no mad, and there's a lot of stories with this guy, and that's all before he comes to the scourge.
• 1:14:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Which I so I did some like looking up.
• 1:14:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I did I did some reading of the history like on the wiki page of stuff like that.
• 1:14:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the scourge outfit like how it's like kind of bad.
• 1:14:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just like really over the top and I Like a horned Magneto helmet like the whole.
• 1:14:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's very I don't know for a reason it reads very like dream queen from alpha flight to me There's something about something with horns and just in over the top outfit that I'm always gonna love
• 1:15:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in the 90s, maybe Niseez gave Jack Monroe his own title.
• 1:15:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a title called Nomad that runs for, I don't know, around 25 issues or so.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's quite edgy.
• 1:15:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is, he's got a baby strap to his back and he's like committing gun violence in like a long, like leather trench coat with like long hair and sunglasses.
• 1:15:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's addressing topics like AIDS.
• 1:15:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Niseez, it was writing this at the same era that he was writing like X-Force, but it's giving a voice to like,
• 1:15:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: sex workers and like organized crime.
• 1:15:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's, it's quite good.
• 1:15:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So later, he's the one that turns Monroe into scourge in the Thunderbolts.
• 1:15:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize he had a baby with him like lone wolf on Cubs style.
• 1:15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know that.
• 1:15:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I have a series.
• 1:15:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the baby's name is Bucky.
• 1:15:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I had a series, I was just looking up the cover because I know this cover because I had a series of trading cards.
• 1:15:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was very into trading cards.
• 1:15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they were all number one issues.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like that just the covers of comics from number ones.
• 1:16:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's I'm familiar with a lot of first issues because of that Marvel comic trading card collection.
• 1:16:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this was one of them.
• 1:16:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm familiar with the cover.
• 1:16:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, are you familiar with the access event from a few years back, where the red still goes crazy, and then we get like evil Captain America afterward, because the cosmic cube rewrites Steve Roger.
• 1:16:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:16:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I call it success because the marketing, the way that it's a styled and you could flip it upside down, I think it's funny to call it success.
• 1:16:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's a very shoehorned wild event with some very interesting outcomes from it.
• 1:16:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's not my favorite era of books it's it's kind of weird of taking characters and being like in like switching the moral compass like things are kind of that black and white or have like a direct like opposite or positive and negative of something.
• 1:16:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it led to some like interesting stories like there was some like weird havoc stuff there was some weird Saber truth stuff and then it did get us however.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: and on like an updated onslaught marble legends character are figure so like not mad at it for that.
• 1:17:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah it was a kind of wild event in a time where it was just event after event after event.
• 1:17:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when we get evil captain America he often interfaces with our X-Men comics.
• 1:17:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you read like uncanny Avengers during the Krakowat era he's like the new flag smasher leading the mutant liberation front.
• 1:17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you remember all those books.
• 1:17:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that yeah shows up again and again in our books
• 1:17:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: because he shows up he wears the Captain Cracoa suit for a little while right during the moment.
• 1:17:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yup, yup, he, uh, oh yeah, I forgot about Captain Cracoa.
• 1:17:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a cool design, I really don't know.
• 1:17:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like plant-based weird costume.
• 1:17:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's fun, it's a lot of fun.
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let me pause.
• 1:17:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I see the issue.
• 1:17:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the comic I wanted you to read was Captain America's Steve Rogers number seven.
• 1:17:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like a volume, but what happened was completely fine.
• 1:17:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So again, I'll make it all seamless and post with my words, but it took a minute to light up.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wait, where did that happen?
• 1:18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: No worries.
• 1:18:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they're just like things are numbered really weird.
• 1:18:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 1:18:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm seeing it.
• 1:18:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm seeing it now.
• 1:18:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I read the one that I read was the brew baker, the the Lonesome Death of Jack Monroe, which is just a rough grade.
• 1:18:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:18:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:18:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a sad one.
• 1:18:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk about your feelings on the death of Jack Monroe?
• 1:18:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Poor guy.
• 1:18:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know.
• 1:18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is like a you kind of see it coming throughout the issue.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like you can kind of like get a sense for how that
• 1:18:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: story works and that he's maybe not a reliable narrator.
• 1:18:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of just the sad one-shot story of the somebody who was let down by the super hero kind of machine, just like creating super
• 1:18:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: taking care of anybody unless they're like, you know, popular and pretty.
• 1:18:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so it was just kind of sad to see his downfall like that.
• 1:18:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then to be, um, you know, turned into an unlikely.
• 1:18:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that may be not unlikely, but into like an unwitting villain.
• 1:19:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, though I really did like the point where he, I like how they handled the part with his daughter and like going to see his daughter and him not like that.
• 1:19:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: That daughter was the baby that used to be strapped to his back.
• 1:19:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, got it.
• 1:19:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That makes a lot of sense.
• 1:19:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really like how they handled that in the in the comics in this comic in particular where he he like he sees her he's like cool.
• 1:19:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know she's okay.
• 1:19:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't need to upset her by like entering into her life at all.
• 1:19:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't need that.
• 1:19:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just want to make sure she's right.
• 1:19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm going to go take care of this other stuff.
• 1:19:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's something so odd about the idea of comics with the word America on the title these days.
• 1:19:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: How you doing in 2026, my friend?
• 1:19:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are crazy times.
• 1:19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are any of us doing in 2026?
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's wild to see to grow up during a period where being an Nazi was the worst possible thing you could be.
• 1:19:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then seeing rise of neo-Nazi as a more fascism or authoritarianism and dictatorship come up.
• 1:20:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: that made them think that that kind of thing was the good guy perspective like when you look at Star Wars and you're like, oh, yeah, like the empire were the rebels like it's a bunch of mental gymnastics that's just kind of wild to me, not to read these and kind of see what's actually going on.
• 1:20:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, you know, I've been giving a lot of thoughts of that.
• 1:20:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I grew up in a in a really kind of manipulative religious environment and I've been thinking about all of the thinking styles I grew up with, you know, somebody's temporary wellness was less important than their eternal salvation, for example.
• 1:20:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: like it's fine for you to be in this miserable marriage as long as in the in the in the long run you're doing the thing that makes you follow all the rules.
• 1:20:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like the way we rank priorities and like give privilege to certain people.
• 1:20:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I think about that this is that all magnified and it starts to become uncomfortable but it doesn't hit me out of the blue like it used to.
• 1:20:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I realize oh yeah there's an origin for all of this you know it's intense to realize
• 1:21:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: uh, we're working hard to create joy in this world.
• 1:21:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know you are someone who really enjoys being joyful and having wonderful things around you.
• 1:21:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I hope you're able to do that and separate that while you're building your community out there.
• 1:21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: As always, super glad we're friends and my friend.
• 1:21:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do have a sense of words of advice or thought for people.
• 1:21:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think it's like my, the thing that I keep like coming back to is like a focus on your immediate community and like some of the smaller kind of unsexy political races or ways that you can get involved.
• 1:21:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It, I was just talking with a friend today that I
• 1:21:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: it's really hard to experience the feeling of being just to drop in the bucket when you don't feel like you have a chance of like tipping that bucket over or overfilling it or things like that to keep yourself motivated when you're like what do we even do?
• 1:21:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think being able to have the support of the people in your community and keep having those conversations of like what can we do?
• 1:21:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do we understand this?
• 1:21:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it is
• 1:21:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: important to me to be able to look up stream and see like where is this stuff coming from like where is originating and then look downstream and say like what's the potential impact and then kind of look at where where we at now and what can we do about it.
• 1:22:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of that comes down to building that out from from within your community.
• 1:22:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which brings us to being no man's ourselves, I suppose, if we want to bring it all to us.
• 1:22:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't have a deep of a bee on any of my clothing, I don't think.
• 1:22:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you should.
• 1:22:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got it.
• 1:22:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe.
• 1:22:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, my friend, it's wonderful to see you.
• 1:22:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for hanging out today.
• 1:22:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everybody for listening.
• 1:22:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Please take care of yourselves.
• 1:22:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Living joyfully remains an act of defiance in these crazy times.
• 1:22:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you all back here.
• 1:22:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Next time on Dream Market Lane.
• 1:22:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for yourself.
• 1:22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Take care.
• 1:22:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.
• 1:22:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.
• 1:22:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah, with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.
• 1:22:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Look for us on Patreon, where we are releasing weekly episodes about obscure characters and facts.
• 1:23:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a great way to participate with the podcast for only just a couple of dollars a month and it helps support what we are doing here.
• 1:23:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, the best way you can help with
• 1:23:13
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• 1:23:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next time on Grimmulkin Lane.