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Bonus Patreon Release: Alexei Vazhin! With Tristan Palmgren and Derek Kunsken! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grey Malkin Lane Patreon channel.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I've been in a kind of an odd journey this year.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're in the giant size era, and the character I've found that I know the least about and that has been oddly the most unfamiliar to me is Colossus.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I've been researching more and more Russian and Soviet characters to properly frame Colossus in my mind, and it's been a fascinating journey.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I got to talk about the character Lexi Garnoff or Blind Faith earlier this year on the show.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today, we're going to talk about a very supplementary X-Men character named Alexi Vajan, who is the director of the KGB and is kind of an odd and compelling narrative.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: The more Russian characters I research, the more fascinating it becomes.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm currently in the middle of researching Ursa Major, for example, who's the big bear guy, which is a lot of fun.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So be prepared for more Russian content.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And early announcements, specifically for Patreon subscribers, in July on the show, watch for the trial of Piotr Rasputin or Colossus.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So all this journey is leading me to a particular space.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am so happy to be welcoming to my very favorite people back to the show.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some of my earliest show guests and some of my long-term favorite friends,
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I neither of whom I met in person, which is just a crime, and it's also been far too long since either of you have been here.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome my dear friends, Derek Konskin, and Tristan Pongkin, back to the show.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll have you introduce yourself with your name and pronouns, and let me hear a little bit of your preliminary thoughts.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: on a Lexi version.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to presume this is a character you had nowhere in your brain before we started this journey.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome my Derek.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's get back to the show.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Derek.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Chad.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was a good one.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm super happy to be here.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: My name is Derek Kinskin, a science fiction writer.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: People may know me from books like The Quantum Edition of the House of Sticks.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I go by heat him.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And as far as this character
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: even before I was a teenager because Xman 123 was one of the comics I got when I was still 10 years old.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he was a compelling spy archetype in that story and I had no idea he appeared to anywhere else.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so reading for today was was a lot of fun and it was super, it was an
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: are really interesting experience to jump across so many basic time zones.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're as of the X-Men, like you've got the 1970s, the 1980s, the 90s, the 2000s.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: And like looking at the art styles change and looking at the writing styles change and looking at the story types, it was just, it was a really fun exercise.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and looking at the government of Russia slash the Soviet Union.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because this character changes with that too.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yep, yep, yep.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, really wild journey.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've done some of these recently where reading from a, it's always a fascinating thing, reading from a particular character's perspective.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this is a, this was a crazy journey.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of those characters.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I did an episode on Nareel from the Savage lid last year.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's one of those like the Chris Claremont latches on to certain characters and kind of uses them a little bit sometimes.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Invasion falls into that category.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love you also welcome the incredible Tristan Palm you're back to the show.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi Tristan.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings comrades.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much for having me.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always a delight to be here.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am Tristan Palmgren and my pronouns are they and them.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have never heard of Alexey Valgin before Chad brought him up, but he's one of those characters who the more I look into him and the more I think about him, the more central he seems not just to the life.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: of Colossus, but to the world of you of a particular era of Marvel comics and a particular era of pop culture.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's an archetype that I look forward to discussing more in depth.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to begin from a very simple place.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a very smart panel.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have some very, very talented world-building writers here.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll toss a very easy question of both of you.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Derek, what's the KGB?
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, the KGB was a Soviet organization that's basically their intelligence group, they worked both inside and outside of the Soviet Union.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: They weren't seen as heroic by the people who interacted with them, which makes this vision a character and some of his characterization look a little different.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: President Putin of Russia was a former KGB officer for example, and after the full of the Soviet Union, the, they were various successor organizations of the KGB.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, Tristan, and a similarly easy question for you, uh, what's communism?
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, communism is where we all get along.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are no problems.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything is distributed fairly, and there's sunshine and rainbows everywhere.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Socialism is the particular organization of government, and the United States has historically been very anti-communist.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: But often what they call communist, they mean is socialist.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to go
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: The other thing we have to layer here, that's very, very, like, simply stated, Russia's a complicated place.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's history goes back far longer than the US.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's maybe one of the most complex political systems in the world's history, at least in the modern world's history.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Russia, or the Soviet Union, has always had a very, very, and we're going to use those terms interchangeably, by the way, there's any listeners who are very upset about that.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk, because I'm happy to hear or be challenged.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's important to discuss the era in which we're talking about.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the first comic we're going to talk about starts in 1979 and this goes all the way up through modern era.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the terminology is going to vary.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, as are the policies and the cultural events, but the complex history with the U.S.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: in the real world is quite complicated.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: If we go back into various world wars, Russia's history with wealth, with
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: famine with military resource allocation with complex stuff, right?
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we're going to kind of fast forward to the 1950s to open today's conversation.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Russia has a lot of really interesting components.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: The division of the state from the military, the presence of the church, and kind of
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have rich people, we have poor people, we have people who are expected to farm their entire lives, and they have a low salary and a low quality of life, perhaps, which is a place colossus comes from in Siberia, but that's just kind of the way things have to be and you sacrifice for the greater good.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you have a talent or your government expects you to give of that talent to them, it's automatically assumed that you will do so.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Up to and including your life in the military
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Russia also has a complex history of the United States when we consider the Cold War, the anti-communism era of the 1950s, and even before that World War II, where Russia, by the way, if you didn't know, has the greatest number of casualties in World War II.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Higher than the Germans, higher than the Americans, higher than the concentration camps.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Many of the more military deaths, but many more were civilian deaths.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: As people were starved, the only regime I think that has more deaths was China under Mao Zedong,
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of complex history woven into all of this.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: When we look at Marvel comics in the 1950s, I recently did an episode on Lorna, the Jungle Girl for those of you that have heard it.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a girl in a jungle and a lot of the folks she's fighting in the 50s are communist agents who are trying to pull for the resources that presumably America wants for itself, right?
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of those stories, Iron Man, and so many of our comic books come from anti-Russian propaganda.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fantastic four are trying to win the space race against the Russians in issue number one.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Iron Man is building weapons to get involved in conflicts that involved Soviet or communist ideas.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have a lot of characters who are named a red, blank, crimson, blank, etc.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who are always like domineering supervillains.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again, do they work for the state?
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do they work for the military?
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are they a private unit?
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of characters in early marvel from the red ghost to the crimson dynamo to the titanium man to the super apes.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of characters that weave in and out.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: The four things start to get much more complex in the 1970s.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Black Widow is the easiest journey to take with all of that because she started as my husband was a cosmonaut who died in an explosion and now I've been turned into a secret agent kind of the Madahari where I have to tempt American men to steal state secrets for Russia.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then eventually she defects against the country and is fed her whole career trying to make up for what she did.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: His way eventually learned she was a child soldier who was taught kind of an elementary and candid at kind of way to be a long term assassin.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's so many places that we could get lost in Marvel's history with Russia.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: before we introduce vagin at all.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of what vagin is about is Russia's history with mutants specifically, which is also very, very complicated.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have state heroes.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have mutant underground, like kind of anti-communist rebels who are trying to survive.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: we have corrupted governments, we have spies, and then we have like military units.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's so many pieces of all of this that kind of weave together to come to create a very complex framework.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on the Soviet or Russian influence in Marvel Comics history as kind of the great enemy.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Outside of like white supremacy and Nazism, the big foe in the early years of Marvel is this, either that or like the
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: When you're telling stories that are going to be pretty simple and they're going to be violence based and vigilante and stuff, sometimes you need people to hit who, nobody's going to object to you hitting them.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so you have Captain America hitting Nazis in World War II.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in the 1950s, it became very easy for
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like in one sense you hear people talk about okay comic books are part of American propaganda and you know sometimes I hear that and my first reactions Whoa, whoa, I like comics to talk propaganda, but then you you think back and it like even if it's not that the government is saying Oh, you should be against Nazis or you should be against whatever
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: The comic books tend to go in directions that are politically expedient and can be a short one-liner of explanation.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I think communist for a long time occupied that role of being somebody that you could just say that the hero has to hit.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: You don't have to explain it very much, everybody's going to buy in and then you just go forward.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: As Tristan was saying, things get far more complex or
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think comic books get more complex and sophisticated in the 70s rather than like I mean the situation itself as well is like yeah the political world of the 1970s is complicated to the invasion of Afghanistan and you know like it just it goes on and on so that's part of the way the Russian invasion of Afghanistan I've seen referenced in like 15 different Marvel comics like it's directly put on the page multiple times and people who have read these comics I don't think even remember it because it's like a thing you read a bunch of years ago but there's so much complexity
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Russia has a lot of complex relationships with Japan and Germany and Afghanistan and all of these other places as well.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Derek, you're absolutely right.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the character that it's okay to punch and to give like totally mustache evilness to, right?
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like they're against democracy, superman fights a lot of Russians as well.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think one important thing to add here too is that there was a very real threat of violence or being blacklisted if communists were Russians appeared in comics without being in a villainous role.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the era of McCarthyism.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: where writers and artists in general were under a great deal of scrutiny by the United States government to make sure that they were telling the line to enforce that with state violence if necessary and to ostracize anybody who is not followed.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is another pressure without that the writers of these comics were facing as well.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So another thing to consider, and we have to introduce this before we get to Vajan very quickly as well, for a long time the only characters that were allowed to be seen as heroic, who were Russian, are those who had defected.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Basically people who said my government is corrupt and inferior, and now I want to be part of your government.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: To give this an odd real world comparison, I recently read an essay that compared what's currently happening into America where a lot of people are leaving the country to what happened in Russia specifically after World War II.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you think about the type of people who can easily emigrate, it's scientists and artists and dancers and performers and musicians.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we have a number of stories about ballerinas and tuba players and everything else leaving the country and coming to the United States.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we have those crazy stories about those like Russian creepy soldiers who come after them with the attempt to kill them.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And even in modern America, we hear stories about reporters, and officials, and outspoken individuals who are being silenced and killed even if they go to another place.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that story remains very consistent.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's easy for me when I consider Colossus, specifically, I always think of him as the big strong guy who's the painter with the heart of gold, who falls in love with every girl who pays the touch it to it, right?
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's the character I think of.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I don't often think of Colossus as the defector, the one who, because of Charles Xavier's influence, was able to leave Russia behind, and Russia and its history with mutants, fictionally, is very, very complex.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Defection and the idea of its heroism is another story, which is Black Widow's story, frankly.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: When Colossus comes along in 1975, one of the narratives that we get very strongly from Claremont is this as a complicated person.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: He loves communism.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: He loves his country.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: He loves his family and his farm.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: He misses the simplicity of it.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But as we're about to learn, there's a lot of complications about its history, especially with retroactive
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get to this eventually in a Colossus trialed, perhaps I'll invite you both because you've taken this KGV journey with me.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're interested, let's talk about it.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I'd love to hear your thoughts as Colossus as the defector who still loves his homeland, already we're changing the narrative.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Is it canon that he defected?
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I had always assumed he had come over on some sort of student visa or something.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: As far as I know, we've never seen an official story about Lincoln swearing off his citizenship.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we do get direct stories in Vassian's story.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about it of Colossus being seen as a defector by his people.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I took that to be manipulative, but like we can discuss as we get to the issues.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's almost like a choice he didn't make, but still it's it's a huge piece of his character because he makes the decision to come back to America and almost every time Colossus goes back to Russia something very, very she happens like one of his family members being horribly murdered.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is a boy scout though and and right in his origin, it's defined like father shouldn't like shouldn't my Power belong to the state and his father says, you know, maybe as this professor says your power belongs to the whole world and so like his starting point is a loyalty to the state.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Claremont gives us a lot of Colossus's kind of internal world, right?
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a character that even in giant size X-Men number one, he says I want to bring you back to America and Colossus, so we have to talk to my parents first.
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to miss you, Mom and Dad.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for your approval, right?
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: A few issues later, when he goes off into space, he thinks about how his brother Mihail died in a cosmonaut explosion.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we get an issue a few a little while later where we start to see him address I miss my home land this world feels big and confusing and a way that storm is similarly wrestling with as a woman from Africa okay so we're going to fast work to nineteen seventy nine.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: and Chris Claremont gives us the brand new character, Alexi Vaughan, and this does happen in a colossus story.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: In this book, Colossus is captured by Arcade, and he's placed into a scenario where he's interrogated by a robot of a man named Alexi Vaughan.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's not officially Vaughan's first appearance.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the robot version made by Arcade.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vlogin is from the KGB.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's identifying as the, which is of course, as identified as the committee for state security think of all the shitty things the CIA does to protect American assets and whatever that means with a conservative government and that's kind of what your parallel is in Russia.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Vajn, the robot, wears a black hat, a trench coat, sunglasses.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: He always has an iPad.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like the Russian Nick Fury in that way.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: His lapel is covered in metals, and he informs Colossus that he needs to return to Russia to be tried as a trader.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Arcade is doing that shitty thing where he makes somebody tortured by their most vulnerable thing.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: He accuses him of defecting to the United States.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: At Colossus's briefly brainwashed after this into being a Russian agent,
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, this is a famous Anthony Olivera recently brought the robot version of this character back back in Avengers Academy.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's called the proletarian and he wears like a Tom of Finland little sexy number where it's just overalls with his like big old chest and shoulders and arms hanging out.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, so he's he's the proletarian and he fights the X men basically.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: A proletarian, by the way, is defined as a member of the poorest class of the community who is without capital or regular employment.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this can be a derogatory term for the lower class and fuck arcade.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Although I love him, he's one of my top favorite villains.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's where we first meet Vajan.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're not really meeting Vajan, but it is nice.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think continuity wants to get the name in there ahead of time.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a trip that we see a few other times in other media that I'd love to talk about, but since it's a spoiler-heavy subject, there are other places where we get first to get introduced to a character via an imposter that is always fun.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gives you a slanted view of the character at first.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You start from a basis of this person being alien to themselves.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not going to talk about the Cold War.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's too complex to break apart.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when you consider the space race, red ghosts and the super apes are the Russian version of the FF.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Crimson Dynamo and later the Titanium Man are the Russian versions of Iron Man.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have the space race and then we have the Arms Race, right?
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Chris Claremont next writes vagin or first writes vagin.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I should say in Marvel team up annual number two, which is not an X-Men story.
• 17:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see Peter Parker on a date with a girl named Sissy Ironwood.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go look her up if you want to learn more.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're attacked by the Crimson Dynamo and Dark Star and Vanguard.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to talk more about Dark Star and Vanguard in a few minutes.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are mutant characters who first appear in the Champions short before it's shortly before this.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, Dark Star does.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vanguard shows up an Ironman for the first time.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they are twins and they are very powerful mutants.
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dark Star can manipulate the Dark Force.
• 18:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vanguard literally wears the hammer and the sickle and carries a hammer and a sickle into combat.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the hammer and the sickle are like a propaganda symbol that basically shows like the peasants and the government working together.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Madric later fights some guys named hammer and sickle, like this is a recurring theme in some of Russian comics as well.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so Crimson Dynamo, Darkstar, and Vanguard are here.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: They kidnapped Sissy and her father, Daniel Ironwood, because it turns out that Professor Ironwood has studied cosmology the study of the construction of the universe, and he's designed some bombs before being blacklisted during McCarthyism, which is an era and American history.
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you look up Hugh Ac, H-U-A-C, you'll see a lot of this stuff.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: where we see people who, if you are affiliated with communism, communism or ever have been, you're out.
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we don't fucking trust you ever again, which is something we're seeing in Trump as an uncomfortable way.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he has theorized, I earned what his theorized of an anti-matter bomb.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, over on Castle Rock Montana, Bruce Banner has gotten into a fist fight and he's gonna change into a Hulk, but there's a KGB agent named Alexey Bajn there in cowboy gear and glasses in Montana.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got his eye patch on and he tranquilizes Banner stopping him from transforming.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says that she says I've come a long way to find you Dr. Better.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: It seems I've arrived in the proverbial nick of time pleasant dreams comrade doctor.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's hope when you wake up the rest of the world will be still still be alive to greet you.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So better wakes up the next day and vagin basically is just being all pleasant.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: He serves him some breakfast and better recognizes him.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a Lexi version.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're from the KGB.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a Russian secret agent.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Glent Albert has a file on you at Glent Albert's Terrible.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, Vashin says, Talkmark's Doctor, but I'm a Colonel now.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's a change of clothes.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bruce says, are you trying to kidnap me for the atomic secrets hidden in my mind?
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he says, doctor, if I was after you, you'd be waking up now deep inside mother Russia, instead of being in a Winnebego parked in front of a truck stop just over the Colorado state line.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm here to ask your help, yours and the Hulks.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I won't betray my country version.
• 20:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you're going to need to notice a lot of eddy commuters of, uh,
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: characters, I'm asking you to save your country and mine and the whole world from obliteration.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Your nation and mine have between them, the power to destroy all life on earth, many times over, which is a real fear people lived during the Cold War.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: The idea of nuclear armageddon was like huge in the 70s, 80s, even early into the 90s, all kinds of American storylines and music and everything is related to this.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: For the past few years, we've been working to reduce international tensions and rivalries through the talk, through the talk, but just as many in your government distrust Soviet votes and actions, so are those in the Kremlin who distrust your government.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Vagin explains how there's again a general Nikolai Kutsov
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who's the chief of the ninth director of the KGB and quote a rising star in the Soviet Union has recently opposed the strategic arms limitations talks treaty and this is a real thing are from from world history This was signed in Vienna in 1979 literally the year this comic book came out
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, so this guy coots off his stolen some KGB files and he's tricked Darkstar of it then guard and the Crimson Dynamo into kidnapping Ironwood to build a bomb in order to try to drive America to nuclear war.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So as one of those old stories, the Russian madman trying to cause nuclear on the get-in.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an anti-matter bomb and they're really worried about it and Vajn needs the, the, the Hulk's help to stop all of this.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: You are, quote, the world's foremost authority
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Vagin and Banner take some horses across the Rocky Mountains.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have to fight off some operatives and evade gunfire, Spider-Man gets involved because he's coming after his girlfriend.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a big fight, they trigger an avalanche.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vagin is up sneaking into a base to confront Kootsoff directly.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's an abandoned KGB base on American soil that was built recently, C2 spy on the Valhalla base and on Nordad.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And go back to X-Men 94.95 with Count Nefaria and the anime.
• 21:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's where they had their big fight and Thunderbird died.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so the antimatter bomb has been built.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vashn has a gun, and he confronts Nikolai directly.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: He just says, you know, you're doing something huge.
• 22:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to prevent lunatic from destroying the world.
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Kutsoff throws a wrench, knocks the gun out of Vashn's hand.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: You were good in your day, Comrade.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says, but your day is past.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's ready to take a wrench to Vashn's head, but Spidey and the Hulk are there.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Kutsoff gets defeated.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: He activates the bomb however, and the Hulk has to send it to explode in the upper atmosphere.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So fucking nuclear explosion, and there an anti-vatter explosion in the air, like it actually went off.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So everyone's at peace now, everything is de-escalated, and Voshen has his gun back, and he shoots Daniel Ironwood right through the heart.
• 22:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Spider-Man says, you lousy, stinking murdering, you shot him in cold blood, why?
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: but Ironwood is actually glad he's dying.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because of me, the anti-matter bomb became a reality.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: One which almost destroyed your world.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: How long would it be before the others demanded my formula?
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Next time my friends, we might not be so lucky.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Only I know the secret.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I discovered it partly by accident, no other researcher on Earth is even close.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let that secret die with me.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And a vagin says, we live in a cruel sometimes desperate world.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Knowing of Ironwood's discovery, my master's in the cremland could never believe he would not build another such mom for America.
• 23:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Out of the fear you might someday use it against Russia, they would strike first with nuclear weapons, no matter what the terrible cost.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And banner agrees, like, yeah, this could be the end of everything.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Ironwood dies, like my daughter, I love you, and we get the final narration.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So long as the bombs exist, they'll get bigger and bigger.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: There will be more of them.
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: and more countries will have them, and will live in mortal terror that one day they might be used.
• 23:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: To change things, Spider-Man, humanity as a whole would have to rise up and say no more bombs.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is Vajad, and this is who he is.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't believe the world has the right amount of courage to be able to move forward properly.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's talk about this story, but I also want to focus specifically about what we have learned about the director of the KGB, written with a certain level of respect and complexity.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think is brilliant on Claremont's part.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a fascinating first appearance, and it's part of a broader movement in pop culture where there was a noticeable chilling of tensions, even in pop culture and people talked more about the Russians as
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're still like an antagonistic force, like a country that could be reasoned with people who like who had families that they allowed to, didn't want to die, who were worthy of respect.
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this, like I said, there are other characters like him in pop culture from Star Trek, with the clingsons, who occasionally cooperated with the crew of the enterprise to James Bond,
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: where you have General Google who's a recurring character in those films in the Roger Moore era and who is sometimes an antagonistic role but more often than not works together with Bond and with Western agents to stop some kind of greater tragedy, whether it's a supervillain who wants to
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: flood the world in water or somebody who wants to manipulate both Russia and the United States into war for their own purposes.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It writers and artists are being allowed to say now about the state of the world and how they are advocating for peace in a way that didn't seem possible.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just a few years earlier in the 50s and 60s and the stories you talked about.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, a few years before this comic was released, we had the first Godzilla movie come out.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know the exact year, but we have this kind of, if you've ever seen the original Godzilla, we have this storyline being explored where the scientists just created the weapon that destroys Godzilla, but he takes his own life in the end, basically, because I don't want anyone to have access to these secrets any longer.
• 25:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we see that storyline here a little bit iron would willingly dying, but Voshen still kills him without his consent.
• 25:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: but we also see vagin played off against the idea of the evil KGB guy, the one that's actually trying to drive the world to war.
• 25:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Derek, what are your thoughts on vagin and comparison to the evil KGB agent?
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: What do we learn about vagin at this first appearance?
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think this, I agree that this one and the X-Men origins colossus were the ones where I found out the most about vagin and what he's like because he was a real character that changed the story and he was participating in it.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: for them to have, you know, a bad communist KGB agent for us to be able to say, okay, vision is not as bad as this guy.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Therefore, yes, I can sympathize with him.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think they set up the sympathy a little like they did with the captain of the Red October, where they're like, okay, this is somebody who is a nationalist, this is somebody who is loves their country, but the country has to survive within the context of the world.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so there has to be a certain level of statesmanship that happens.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that that's the set up I that impressed me.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think the greatest bill of victim of this story though was Spider-Man.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because he was about to get some Sissy was really suggestive.
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: They were going up the stairs and she's like, come on up to my apartment.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're amazing.
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have a coach.
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's go sit there together.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then the Russians come in and like, oh my god.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: For Spider-Man.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: First that Parker look, one of the reasons that makes fashion really compelling, he's not heroic because he is abiding by seeing America as superior to Russia.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he's a character who's willing to work with Americans for the greater good.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he'll still be manipulative.
• 27:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He still has plots within plots.
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he will pull the trigger.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: He'll do whatever it takes.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you can almost see him view the world.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to see this reinforced a number of times in some of his key stories.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where this is the mission I have to accomplish.
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the way I'd like to do it because it's the easiest, kindest way.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if that doesn't work, then I will do this.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if that doesn't work,
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: then I will do this.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got wheels within wheels in some certain ways, and we see him have to make some tough calls along the way, but I really love his complexity.
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's an extremeest.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: He wants a piece above all to save the world, basically.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: The world is broken, but we have to maintain its current level of brokenness, or it will get worse.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of his, there's Emma a little bit.
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: he's a transactional sort of ally that you can't turn your back on right he'll be your ally for the moment because of the circumstances and you Contrast him as far as those circumstances force his hand and then after that he converts back into being your opponent and You can tell it a lot of times.
• 28:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's never quite stated on the page, but his methodologies aren't the standard agents in Russia Those in power Who does not like this guy like he's not someone
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: who follows orders he has his own clear agenda and there's always a very careful and like delicate balance in what he's trying to achieve.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the KGB director writing horses in the Rocky Mountains to kill a scientist that might drive the world of war and you probably think he's doing five other things while he's here, right?
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Klamot brings him into uncanny
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how to pronounce a lot of Russian words.
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a blank spot and an area I need to keep working on, but in Dershinski Plaza, the headquarters of the Komitat Goldurostev Noi Bezo-Pastnosti, which is the kitchen.
• 29:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: KGB though, the committee for the state security or Soviet Russia's dreaded KGB.
• 29:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Voshen has been working out, he is at a white shirt red shorts.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He meets with his aide Sasha, as he looks out over red square, which is its own place.
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'll talk about it in another time.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Voshen has heard about the operative Nimrod, and he wants Sasha to provide a full report.
• 29:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's looking over things.
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he thinks, I must know what the Americans are up to.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men have risked their lives on countless occasions to defend both the United States and the entire planet.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Their archfile magneto claims no human government can be trusted, but despite the noblest intentions, they will always fear and then try to destroy mutant kind.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Washington seems bound to determine to prove him right.
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're faster approaching across Rhodes, Sasha, and I fear that somewhere somehow, the decision is already made to turn us irrevocably toward Armageddon.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we have to pause here for the longer conversation, which we will do more another time.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Russia's history with mutants at this point is really expanding.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see a lot of Russian manipulative stories superhero stories, super villain stories.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the characters that's quite prominent that we will do be doing a Patreon in a few months is the character of the presence whose Sergey Krylov, who is literally the Chernobyl story,
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: what if a scientist set off the bomb and absorbed all that radiation.
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's basically Chernobyl and he's the father of a dark star and den guard, which is crazy.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get a couple of dead characters.
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do you know, do you know the presence?
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, because I was a defender's reader, like you're a defender's reader too, and we act.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I mean, yeah, no, I love that character.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love him too, he's amazing.
• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have a couple stories, X-Factor Annual One is where X-Factor goes to Russia for the first time and they literally find a mutant concentration camp scientist from Germany, experimenting on Russian mutants.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they literally discover there's a pit of mutant bodies and children being experimented on.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the origin story of Dark Star Vanguard and Ursa Major, as well as some other characters, is these were mutant babies who were taken away from being experimented on.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And given to this crazy anti-mutant guy to be raised in an orphanage so that he could train them to be state operatives.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of history here.
• 31:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when you look at Xavier with Colossus, as well as McIll, Rasputin and what his actual story is super complicated, we'll be getting into all of that in other episodes.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: but when we see Vajan analyzing the mutant problem and what the X-Men represent, we're also going to see him tied directly to Colossus very quickly here.
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So just food for thought, hold on to all of that for a moment.
• 31:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to take one side tangent very quickly.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just forgot.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is a character named Major Alexander Vajan.
• 31:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: from the old British show The Avengers.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you've ever watched that with like Emma Peel and all those characters, he's probably the inspiration for this character.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll just throw that out there.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: X-Men 94 was, I think four years after X-Men 150 when Magneto sank the Soviet sub, it was a nuclear sub, it was a big deal.
• 32:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Lenin grad, yes, is a really big turning point in X men history with Russia and the world and and and magneto's relationship to the world.
• 32:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: So so yeah, I think just I wanted to drop a pin in that just to point out that like there's there's this context in the background that doesn't involve fashion, but it does involve the you know Soviet policy and Soviet foreign policy and even world policy towards mutants.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, this is a relatively short story, but we have to spend minutes here because this is the story that defines Colossus for me in a lot of ways.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll cover this relatively quickly, but classic X-Men number 29 has a backup story where we see Colossus go back to Russia.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's set a few years earlier, so this is a clear month story.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you go back to classic X-Men 5, Colossus has a solo story where he meets a Russian defector.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a woman who's a dancer named Ania, who has run away from the state and is performing, and people are after her, and Colossus falls in love with her, but she finds out he's a mutant and runs away.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've never seen her again.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's been some interesting exploration of this.
• 33:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in 2009, we flashback to when Colossus joined the X-Men, and sometimes passed and he goes home to visit his family, and he discovers that a lot of men his age have been pulled away to war in Afghanistan.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Many were killed, many were mailed and disfigured, and everyone is fucking furious with Piotr for leaving.
• 33:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like you should have done your duty if you have power you should have given it to the military.
• 33:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Peter uses his powers to like save some civilians from an accident, and then he immediately surrenders when he's arrested, and they throw him in jail until he is pulled out by a guy named Comrade Colonel Vajan.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So denying the need for an escort, Vajan in his suit with his eye patch takes Peter on a drive.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, if I read this section, uh, interestingly, would you read Colossus if I read Voshen here, stirred up some wrenches passions you did, youngster.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have no rights to mock their feelings.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I will not allow it.
• 33:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You, Sonny, are an accused enemy of the state.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's you who got no rights granted, giving your armored capabilities.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You could break me like a twig as easily no doubt as you did those handcuffs.
• 34:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then you'd really be what they accused you of.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It used to become a
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Vashn takes off the handcuffs.
• 34:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He lights up a cigarette, pulls the car over to the side of the road and says 64 rubble question answers up to you.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you stay, we'll have to take official action.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can't go into the army, of course.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: The use of enhanced power beings in the armed forces is specifically an absolutely forbidden by treaty with the Americans.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: That doesn't stop him from doing secret things, but in the most various amount allowed.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Klaus has says,
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know.
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: It isn't exactly something either side broadcasts the world, surprisingly though, it's one of those rarest of international agreements that is scrupulously adhered to by all parties concerned, which means you'd have to go to work for covert operations for me or something like me, or you could go back to the X-Men.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not enough, I command the 13th director at Moscow Center.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: My brief is people like you, groups like yours, who you are, what you're capable of, to determine ultimately whether or not you're a threat to the Rodina and Rodina means the mother land, basically.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am Russia, if my country needs me.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: We do desperately, but occasionally a man can best serve his mother land by serving the whole world.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: You are a human being, Colossus.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: In that context, the Earth is your Rodina.
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, but what is right?
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't deal in right.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's God's prerogative.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, the Chairman's.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't the competence.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can find myself to what's necessary.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember that.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not what's right.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's what's necessary.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: The world's changing, boy.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Faster and on more fundamental levels than the wildest of us ever imagined possible.
• 35:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we must change with it.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Adapt, evolve, or be ground to dust.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I admire your love for your homeland, but is your home truly that collection of buildings?
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think not.
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Home is in the heart, be altered, make-o-live-a-ch.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is the memories.
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: The feeling we have for our country as it is, and we dream of it becoming carried forever in our soul.
• 36:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry, I'll see your letters reach your family, but you cannot, officially you must remain.
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: All of your friends denounced you as,
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: My parents will think me a deserter, a traitor.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Most likely, by all means, tell them the truth, perhaps someday they'll even come to believe you, but as long as you remain colossus, built or Nikolay Vichras Putin can never return to this place.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did farewell to the farm boy's sonny?
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a hero now.
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The hardest life of all, you'd best get used to it.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go back to the X-Men Colossus.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's where you're needed, where you can best serve your true rodina.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lad, that's where you belong.
• 36:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if we put this to a couple of months after Colossus joined the X-Men, it answers the question of why did it never try to go back to Russia.
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Derek, what are your thoughts on this interchange?
• 36:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really, really written.
• 36:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, no, I love it.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, the idea that, you know, there's a human cost to the Afghan
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: like when you back later, you've got, you know, they're going to be saving Japan, they're going to be saving the savage land, they're going to be fighting dark phoenix, they're going to be defeating Magneto.
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like all of these things that the X-Men do that are not specifically defending the United States are all going to happen with Colossus's contribution because
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: This KGB guy said, you know, yeah, you can work for me, but you'd be better off where you were and more importantly where you were.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that's it's really interesting and I wonder where Vashan gets this kind of long term big scope vision, right?
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because, you know, no matter where you are, it's hard to lift your head up and see way above everybody else and figure out what's best for everybody, right?
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're gonna take a divergent path for a moment and jump all the way to 2009 to X-Men Origins Colossus number one.
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the story and this will be coming out on my show right around the time we release this.
• 37:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Erica Schultz and Sarah Galey join me for a review of this very issue.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is written as retroactive continuity that tells the story of Colossus, joining the X-Men.
• 38:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'll cover this very quickly, but our entire understanding of Vajan shifts, and it almost doesn't quite light up in some ways, but it's really fascinating.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Vajan grew up near the Rasputans,
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: in Siberia and again they're part of this farm collective.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And apparently he is best friends with Mikhail Rasputin.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Mikhail was a cosmonaut that blew up and he's gone forever and ever and ever.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: They talked about him first in 1976, but he doesn't we don't ever see him until like the late 80s early 90s and it will's potato story where we actually learn he's an insane maybe because of his Rasputin blood or maybe because of his powers, but he's an insane reality
• 38:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to do another Patreon on Mikhail Rasputin this summer during my month about Colossus.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So be prepared for that conversation, but he was best friends with Vajn, and he basically made Vajn promise, hey, I'm going to go off to war, you got to take care of my little brother if anything happens to me over simplifying.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Eliana has not been born at this point.
• 38:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the family gets the news, the Mikael is gone, and Piotr, who is an adolescent, as grieving heavily, because his brother, his hero is gone.
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: He runs out and his powers activate.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: He shifts to organic steel for the first time, maybe the first time, in a moment of trauma, and it's quite violent.
• 39:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we also learned that Vajn is working for the federal security service.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he has chosen to lie about Peter's powers to his direct supervisor, again, a Mr. DeBanko.
• 39:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So at some time passes and the time period and this doesn't work because it talks about like years going by and in a period that just doesn't make sense.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But they soon hear about the X-Men fighting Magneto.
• 39:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Four years later, Voshen is telepathically contacted by Charles Xavier in his pre-X-Men or early X-Men years.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: one day while he's having a beer in the bar, and he finds himself telling Xavier all about the rest of you, because Xavier's a telepath who can make you to tell your shit that you don't want to say coercion is what it feels like.
• 39:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Xavier gets the information you needed, and then he's like by the way, Vaughan, they thought you were drunk, Katatonic in the bar, so they threw you out in the alley,
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So two more years past, Aliana has been born, and the Russian government has discovered like Piotr actually is a mutant.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Vajan is arrested for treason, but Xavier helps him escape.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So then armed operatives are sent to the Rasputin home, and Piotr destroys a lot of them.
• 40:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like he's ripping helicopters apart, he's taking gunfire and protecting his parents and his little sister, like his home is being shot up.
• 40:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Vajan shoots his superior officer, kills Devanko.
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then Xavier erases all of the soldier's minds and presumably pewter's parents, maybe, about Colossus being a mutant in the first place, and then Xavier kind of gives Vajan, like a glow-up.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vajan gets appointed as the new director of intelligence for the KGB.
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Xavier has built himself an operative and a foreign government to watch out for mutant affairs in a place where mutants are being tossed into grave, like mass graves.
• 40:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Crazy story and it's a piece of Charles Xavier.
• 40:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: No one has ever explored.
• 41:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a massive story that I want to write if I ever get the chance about Charles Xavier's early days in Russia So basically what we've learned is there has been a loophole created all the information about Piotr has been deleted out of the system And out of everyone's brains and Voshen is like yeah, this is the guy that gets to leave because I love McIll and he's gone Charles you can have this guy and must Charles made him do it
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: wildly crazy origin at Retcon that is maybe the most established that we've never really seen followed up on.
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've never seen Vajan and Mikhail interact since Mikhail's resurrection, etc.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: etc.
• 41:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have thoughts on this story?
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's absolutely loved it.
• 41:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was so good.
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was my favorite of the reading.
• 41:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think Yoast was just a spectacular writer on this.
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it does some of the best read counting I've ever seen where you're filling in gaps.
• 41:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're not changing any of the history, but you have to reinterpret everything you've read after you've read this.
• 41:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: You reinterpret it in a more constructive, more fulfilling way.
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Also, like I read it purely textually and I'm not suspicious of Xavier.
• 42:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so Xavier was very heroic in this.
• 42:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I would put this up and say, look at this.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Russian state was going to take a Peter and look at that, you know, Xavier saved them and got rid of some bad guys.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: It ain't, but there's also a sanction in assassination.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Look, you know, the lights here.
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think you're waiting for a shot.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: alternative was worse.
• 42:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love the way this gave fashion a lot of interiority as well.
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love how it gives him a deeply personal reason to be involved with Colossus and to be watching over Colossus and other mutants in Russia specifically.
• 42:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't change his motives in the earlier story that where he is broadly seeking peace between the Western world and the Soviet Union.
• 42:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: but it does teach us a lot about why he's involved with mutants in particular, why this is important.
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's not just an extremist.
• 42:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is an extremist in addition to feeling responsible, arguably, having been manipulated by Charles Xavier into feeling responsible for blastsus and for mutants in general.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: In most of the rest of Washington's appearances, it's a little supplementary, he's a little background.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there's two really key ones with him in X-Men history.
• 43:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of them is uncanny X-Men 263 264.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tristan, would you tell us about this story?
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is from 1990.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, jumping ahead a number of years to a very different political situation.
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the wall is down, y'all.
• 43:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Vajan in a fashionable green jumpsuit and a black jacket sets up a meeting with Valerie Cooper in a trendy club in Washington, D.C.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: He has an aid with a major Deborah Levin, who is a woman with short brown hair and freckles.
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, is working actively with Larry Hama, crafting the X-Men world, right?
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hama's taken over kind of Wolverine.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hama was also writing GI Joe for many, many years, as well as other titles.
• 43:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Deborah Levin is a character that Hama created in a different part of Marvel's, like a different universe.
• 43:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's very clearly an homage to Larry Hama's work with his version of Deborah.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we're going to do another reading, could I ask either you or Derek to take the, uh, take a roll of Dr. Cooper, uh, Derek, you, you, you screen Valerie Cooper to me.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the, it's the golden locks.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Halgen says my apologies, Dr. Cooper, for the matter of my invitation to this meeting, even in these heavy days of glass nost, a KGB kernel can hardly phone the White House for an appointment.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And notably, I think this is Valgin's first appearance since, uh, glass nostence, since the radical lowering of tensions.
• 44:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and glass nostence, by the way, just very, very, very simply put is like the Russian government's effort to be more transparent with its civilians.
• 44:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like people were protesting and they had to change things around.
• 44:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in this era of transparency is basically what he's saying.
• 44:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, uh, Valerie Cooper says, I appreciate your need for discretion, Colonel Vashin.
• 44:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: But why this?
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're much noise to eavesdrop on a conversation, too many frenzy thoughts for a telepath.
• 44:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: My associate, major 11, provided your new wardrobe, partly for the camouflage, it being totally unlike your normal attire, but also to assures you carry no recording or tracking devices.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: This assignment must be totally off the record.
• 45:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't believe it.
• 45:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: The great Alexi Vashin, James Bond, Nick Fury and George Smiley rolled into one, you're actually scared.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But of what?
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without hyperbola doctor, the possible end of human life, as we know it on the earth, mutants are resolving themselves into factions, choosing sides, each with a with their own agenda and goals to name but a few of the major players.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mutant deliberation front, a creature calls himself Apocalypse, another known as Mr. Sinister, plus another who remains as yet unidentified.
• 45:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is no longer a question of criminals acting to gain for themselves a modicum of wealth and power, but of political and military forces seeking dominion over the globe itself.
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in this brave new world, Dr. Cooper,
• 45:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ordinary non-superpowered humanity may well have no place.
• 45:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Magneto was the first, but he at least presumed that we would all co-exist, simply with mutant kind on top.
• 46:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Genocia exemplifies his worst nightmare.
• 46:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: A country wherein mutants are a little better than slaves, but who also give a power and influence far out of proportion to its size.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fashion lights up a cigarette from a case.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Please Colonel, do you really believe that island to be a match for the Avengers or freedom force or your own Soviet superbeings?
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The honest, I'd rather not find out that you considered the consequences of open warfare between such teams.
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine Bay Root, but on a global scale.
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine a comparative handful of people.
• 46:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Having the same effect on the biosphere as a full-fledged strategic nuclear weapon exchange, imagine the death dot, the devastation.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the past, the superheroes have somehow enforced a code of conduct that prevented things from getting out of hand, but that old order is breaking down.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not so long ago, many of the world's supervillains united in a concerted, coordinated assault on the heroes.
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was rebuffed.
• 47:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: This time, I fear this is a new game, Dr. Cooper, with no rules at all, and no matter which faction wins, we, homo sapiens, will lose.
• 47:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So with that dramatic pronouncement that I've hopefully given the correct amount of gravitas, we'd go to uncanny xman number 264.
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: where Valerie is running in a pink trash track suit when Colonel Levin finds her Valkal's Hall's Colonel Levin.
• 47:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bo to the KGB's QD commando herself.
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Killer QD commando, which is amazing.
• 47:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can relate.
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But though she grabs a towel and sits for some orange juice with Belgium, who is in a sweater and short shorts.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: From here often, Colonel Vassian.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every opportunity, I'm a charter member of the club under another identity, of course.
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Of course.
• 47:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Is there any place in this town by Master you don't have entry to?
• 47:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: The orange juice is fresh squeezed, or there's water, a few people.
• 47:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is fine.
• 47:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I must say though, Colonel, you make the damnedest meetings.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm almost afraid to ask where next.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: In my profession, discretion is the watch word of survival.
• 48:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're world and welcome to it.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this instance, you do well to pay attention to its lessons.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: She ever stopped watching your back.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where Valerie has seen Colonel Levin standing guard.
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Falgin says, after I am dead, she rethought, what's up, Tobarish?
• 48:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your quarter, talk to me.
• 48:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: When last we met, I identified three main mutant factions that mutant deliberation front apocalypse and Mr. Sinister.
• 48:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so pause for one second.
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mr. Sinister is an evil judeticist.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Apocalypse is a world dominating Darwinist at this point.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the mutant liberation front is a group of people under the order of strife who are giving like political bombings and demonstrations and killing key figures in order to represent their cause.
• 48:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fascinating choices, because the X-Men aren't on this list.
• 48:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I remember, can't say much for their choice of names.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, no world that boasts a national leader named Dr. Doom, who are we to judge?
• 48:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I now know the fourth.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There exists in the external affairs director of the KGB and its predecessor, the NKVD, a special operations account.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: to an operative identified only as the shadow king, the ultimate powerbroke who excelled at playing all sides against the middle, working simultaneously for every great hour on the globe, somehow making himself so indispensable to each that none there take action against.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: a nice piece of work.
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is evil.
• 49:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Elixie isn't that a bit much.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did not use the term like label.
• 49:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I had even a prayer of establishing a positive identification, I would order his immediate execution.
• 49:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Best of luck, but what's this got to do with me?
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've traced his current operations to this country at the cost of two of my best agents.
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the President's national security adviser for superhuman affairs, you, Val, are the American government official, primarily responsible for mutant and superpowered activities.
• 49:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the coming era, with the splintering of the established world order and the possible dismantling of strategic nuclear stock.
• 50:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: hiles, there'll be a greater interest in their biological counterparts who needs a nuke when there's a habit or a Thor want to handle on them.
• 50:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The person to go to is you consider yourself warned.
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the implication here, and just now I want to hear your thoughts for sure, Valerie Cooper represents the woman working within the Reagan administration.
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Reagan's move
• 50:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Regan's gut-like relationship with Russia is already very complicated, but this is the woman who's always telling students she's on their side while she's like telling whatever conservative agenda like it's it's a lot of Complication, but who is fashion talking about is this fourth faction?
• 50:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did either of you into it who was the shadow king?
• 50:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the shadow king
• 50:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a psychic parasite of hatred and evil that exists in the minds of all men and is driving them toward, you know, that careful balance of power, like you know how we agreed not to do each other or use our soldiers and military combat, that guy is going to push us too far and I can't kill him and it cost me my agents to track him down and we're in danger.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got to work together fascinating.
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's falling back into the original world that he wasn't the first few stories where he has appeared.
• 51:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is an antagonistic peacemaker.
• 51:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is somebody who is cast into an antagonistic world, but somebody who the heroes can deal with.
• 51:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody who is amoral is willing to do things that other Marvel, more heroic characters are not.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But someone whose ultimate goal is the preservation of Russia that entails the preservation of the world.
• 51:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's
• 51:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's a certain amount of real politics going on, right?
• 51:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's these people who have power and they have access to people who have even more power and they're trying to solve the world's problems and it again, it's the transactional sort of ally ship.
• 51:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not that, you know, he and Val Cooper are ever gonna go up for Memosas when this isn't happening, right?
• 51:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's that there's something going on and the enemy of my enemy is my friend and we gotta work on this together and we can go be enemies later on.
• 52:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's an interesting rail politics is what I think it is.
• 52:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, human hatred and human evil that exists in the minds of men, this psychic parasite from the astral played is the thing we have to really, really be concerned about or the balance of power is disrupted, fascinating.
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's easy to see Vaussian as either a villain or a hero here, but this is one of the things we love about Claremont.
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Claremont showed us early on.
• 52:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: The thing we're actually afraid of is the days of future past.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: where mutants are all being killed and the world is devastated as a result.
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that isn't an odd way what Vaussian and Cooper in their own methodologies are trying to prevent.
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Things get a little bit more fun in Excalibur 33, I'm just interested to do what I tell you about this one.
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: We go forward to 1991 in London where we see Valgin's
• 52:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: smoking in a trench coat at high and watching a limousine from the shadows with Colonel Levin and if they see is Margaret Fatcher and she is in therapy and the comics with with with mesmero.
• 52:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember that time mesmero was Margaret Fatcher's therapist everybody because I do.
• 53:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: That did a lot to unpack there.
• 53:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: If we are doing another reading of darker chat.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: With all due respect, Comrade Colonel, I do not believe my eyes.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Whatever does the British Prime Minister see in such a show.
• 53:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Prince's and presidents need analyses to deprive of our just as commoners do.
• 53:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Somehow, I find it impossible to accept that of her.
• 53:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: perhaps then someone to confide in.
• 53:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: A means of unburdening oneself of the stresses and strains of public office.
• 53:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, this one seems far more repeatable and effective than most.
• 53:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: So what's our next move then?
• 53:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Get a line on that shrink and through him hook her, wouldn't that be the intelligence crew of the century?
• 53:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: My dear Major Levin, I am shocked.
• 53:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Haven't you heard?
• 53:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Rodinia is now friends with the West.
• 53:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: We of the KGB simply do not do that sort of thing any longer.
• 53:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Gag me with a dragoonov sniper rifle.
• 53:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I swear that's the last time I let you anywhere near an issue of GIGO.
• 53:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The writer's positively corrupted you.
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a very homer reference everybody.
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, the French jersey and bruhal wouldn't hesitate for a second.
• 54:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as for the CIA, leave well enough alone, Deb.
• 54:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've simply been satisfying some idle curiosity.
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And besides, we far more pressing concerns, such as surviving long enough to find a means to dealing once and I pray for all with our true enemy.
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ultimate threat to all humanity, the Shadow King.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Margaret Thatcher and Mesmero go on to have their own set of adventures.
• 54:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: But here is Vaughan, and the implication that Margaret Thatcher, the conservative governmental representative in England, has been corrupted by evil Mesmero, is somehow hilarious to me.
• 54:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the Shadow King version story wraps up at the end of the mural in Saga, which is where everything explodes and all the teams get revamped in the early 90s.
• 54:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we see Vajn back at X-Factor 1969.
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a complex story and we're just gonna focus on Vajn's piece here.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Put together an international task force to take down the Shadow King.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: was built a base of power on Muir Island with connections to Polaris and Legion.
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in Washington, D.C., he joins Valerie Cooper, Charles Xavier, and an FBI agent Jacob Rice.
• 55:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: They take a submarine to sever the monster's connection to Earth and rise.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: controlled by Farak nearly kills Xavier, who turns out to be mystique in disguise.
• 55:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so this amps up in uncanny X-Men 280, where Valgin remains on an orbible ship with mystique, while Xavier and Agent Stepon were island and shield of sysuits to block them from telepathic influence.
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Several agents are killed.
• 55:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Vasion is overwhelmed.
• 55:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: realizing the shadow king may be unstoppable.
• 55:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: He snuffs out a cigarette thanks to himself Russian cigarettes taste like wet garbage and then he prepares for a nuclear strike on this location.
• 55:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in the end, the X men are able to defeat the shadow king on their own.
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Watch for the trial of mystique someday, but this is the story where Legion kills destiny and it changes mystique forever as a result But what I mentioned earlier is Voshen wants to do the the nice thing He wants to do the complex thing, but if he's not he has the contingency plan He's ready to drop a nuclear bomb to stop this man.
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also see the next very complex Voshen story in Xmen 17 through 19
• 56:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'll do a tiny bit of setup here very quickly.
• 56:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: A mega red is a supervillain that is complicated, who is very much like the mutant turned into a Russian weapon.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very the Wolverine story.
• 56:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's been manipulated.
• 56:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got gross powers, but he's used in all these complex stories.
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: We later see this revisited with the Winter Soldier.
• 56:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: We meet a character in this story called The Soul Skinner.
• 56:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: who has been manipulated by Russian influence.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they basically don't, he's too dangerous.
• 56:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they like mind-wipe him and put him in another community to live like a normal life and just hope that his powers will never re-awaken.
• 56:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because if they do, he's gonna like render everyone in a hundred by already as like brain dead and like officially like off the table.
• 56:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of the setup of this story and we get complex as we go.
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Derek, do you wanna take the reins here?
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me provide one more piece really quickly.
• 57:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right around this time, Fabian, they see as I put out the story, the Supreme, excuse me, the Soviet super soldiers, which is a really interesting story delving into three teams of operatives.
• 57:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of them is a state sanctioned group of superheroes.
• 57:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: one of them is a military sanction group of heroes and one of them is a group of mutants who are operating as heroes in Russia off the radar and they're being hunted by the military and the state and that's the story where we take characters like blind faith and dark star from at this time and Vajn is kind of navigating the complexity of these like superhero world in his country.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that it set up is just a little bit important to what we're about to review that helps.
• 57:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Shantelog reports that two mutants, blind faith and dark star, were sent into this town, but they've gone missing.
• 57:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so now here's fashion talking, which muties were they, Colonel, General Shatelog.
• 57:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Shatelog is the current crimson dynamo.
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's one of the like military sanction heroes here.
• 58:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows, they're all the same to me.
• 58:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fiona, you know how I feel about this big it.
• 58:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Our either of you prepared to mobilize your forces to handle the situation in Neftalentsk.
• 58:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here, Vashkin determines, Omega Red is going to have to be the one to go in.
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Omega Red does go in, but he also goes missing, which, you know, increasing horror stories sort of thing.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: They determine the only other expendable operative is Elie and her husband, who was magic, but now she's been revered to a little girl and is living with her parents in the collective again.
• 58:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: This story, you're right, Jed, that it is complex, but I don't know that it's been certainly complex in the good way.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Soul Skinner is a mutant telepath who manifests fear and takes over minds and unchecked, can spread through the minds and potentially be a doomsday weapon scenario.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, Vashin calls in the X-Men.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: You've got Colossus, Jubilee, Wolverine, Iceman, Cyclops, and the Cyclops.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: Vashin himself is becoming an action hero.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's got this orange armor suit with a full helmet.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: He lets them know that he's been watching a certain mutant for 14 years, but they lost contact with a month ago.
• 59:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And also this mutant doesn't show up on cerebral, which doesn't help the X-Men.
• 59:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: So here's Vashin talking again.
• 59:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: This target mutant appears to generate an electromagnetic mask cyclops in perceptible to any of our methods of detection.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he tells Piotr, we are what we are Nikkelovich.
• 59:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what are we about ponds and an endless game between those who have power and those who crave it?
• 59:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: So at this point, Bashan gets into his full suit, which turns out to be a kind of psychic armor, and they go into the town looking for soul skinner with the X-Men, and they find Garnov and Darkstar froze in there.
• 59:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a lot of people in this town who are just kind of being blank, then that was the experience of Darkstar and Garnov when they first came in.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're like, all these people are here.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're just sitting around, but like their their
• 59:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we reach a point where things have heated up so much and they realize they're completely out of their league here.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: This, this weapon is going to continue and they decide they have to run.
• 59:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to pick it up there?
• 59:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like running is not running away is not my nature.
• 59:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
• 59:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 59:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Flosses is telling Belgium that running away is not my nature.
• 1:00:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Survival is mine in Kylovic.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: We aren't going to win there, at least this lets us gain a respite to plan a strategy.
• 1:00:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: They soon find an entire room full of children who are immune to the Soul Skinner and Colossus accuses Vashin of being inhumane.
• 1:00:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Nikkelevic, your attitude towards me is unwarranted.
• 1:00:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it for years your kind has manipulated me and my loved ones if not for pathetic games of power such as this my brother might still be alive is that enough reason for my attitude very well it is odd and disturbing that the that only these children of everyone in this town we found seem to be immune towards the soul skinners mutagenic abilities.
• 1:00:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you find that disturbing about him?
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: This can only mean the skulls of the soul skinner's power is not absolute.
• 1:00:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: You don't understand X-Men.
• 1:00:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: This means that the red flag will not be affected either.
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the scenario is quite specific.
• 1:00:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: If we were to fail, then the net delince incursion is to be destroyed.
• 1:00:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Destroyed, but how do you accomplish that without destroying the entire village?
• 1:01:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So basically, Voshen is trying to come to a peaceful accord.
• 1:01:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We sent in some agents.
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now we've brought on the X-Men.
• 1:01:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also brought in a mega red, nothing is working.
• 1:01:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the plan that has been enacted that he's really trying to avoid is we're going to have to kidnap Iliana.
• 1:01:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Age her up to teen years and activate her powers so that she can basically teleport the entire village to limbo.
• 1:01:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, this is going to spread.
• 1:01:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is weirdly like a Chernobyl story.
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like the radioactivity spreading.
• 1:01:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And unless we stop it, it's going to doom everything.
• 1:01:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Bauchin is authorized agents to go get Illiana, but he did not authorize them to do something very specific.
• 1:01:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: A Derigler happens.
• 1:01:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was surprised when they went in the house because these people just went in guns blazing and they killed the parents, like just in cold blood.
• 1:01:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is the death of Colossus's parents.
• 1:01:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're deaf.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was fast.
• 1:01:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: There was no need for it.
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was like they couldn't, like they could have bumped the meat on the head and then grabbed the girl and gone.
• 1:01:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like it was a very gratuitous, unneeded set of deaths.
• 1:02:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I feel bad for Peter and Iliana.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Vajan is confessing to Colossus, like I basically had no other choice.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to read us his speech to Colossus here, Derek?
• 1:02:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I will tell you everything, Peter.
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Our scientists have been experimenting with teleportational and warp technology since your brother Mikhail first manifested his warp abilities years ago.
• 1:02:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was decided then to keep a close watch on his sibling should similar powers develop.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: such powers did manifest in red flag 133 in an odd way when she was older than she is now.
• 1:02:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then in his armored form, Colossus grabs Vashin and he says, My sister, you plan to use El Diata, but she is a child.
• 1:02:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her powers will not manifest themselves again for years.
• 1:02:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I, I know, but there's a genetic accelerator process we've been developing.
• 1:02:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: It could successfully evolve her towards adolescence again, enabling the child to access her warping powers, or it could very well kill her.
• 1:02:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Though Vosha to this point does not know that the rescue and parents have been gunned out, but he has authorized the kidnapping and artificial aging of a child, which is a rough thing to consider, right?
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: The ethics of it, but this will guide all do what it takes to protect life.
• 1:03:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: It feels a bit like, you know, police in a situation where they've got hostages and they're like, okay, we'll send in the negotiator and we'll try as long as we can with the negotiator and that doesn't work.
• 1:03:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've got snipers everywhere, right?
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in this case, he's not sniping with a new because they were discussing in one of the earlier stories.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's got to get this silver bullet sort of thing, which is Iliana Rasputin and the only way to make her into that silver bullet is to again take away her childhood.
• 1:03:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: and they're having this whole speech in front of a room full of like innocent children who are immune to the soul's skitter.
• 1:03:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you're of a spiritual inclination pure trinical of itch, I advise you to pray because our debate over the welfare of your poor sister may have become a moot point.
• 1:03:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: As unbearable as the situation might be, is not the life of one city and its residents more important than the life of one person, even if that person is a child.
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: your argument is based on logic, bureaucrat, mine on love, on passion.
• 1:03:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will not allow my sister to be hurt, no matter what the noble cause.
• 1:04:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is not intended to be the start of a debate on the greater good.
• 1:04:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is a fact.
• 1:04:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's cold, hard, and final is a tombstone.
• 1:04:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And something you need to know about Colossus, this is not a man who makes decisions easily, but if you corner him, if you piss him off, he will fucking murder you.
• 1:04:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: He will snap your neck with a hand.
• 1:04:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's a thing we've seen over and over with him.
• 1:04:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't want to be pushed too far.
• 1:04:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Eliana is brought in and Peter doesn't know his parents or dad, and Colossus advances and rips off Vashan's headpiece.
• 1:04:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm going to leave you vulnerable like the rest of us.
• 1:04:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the Soul Skinner is there, his powers are active and he's about to explode again, Chernobyl.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Soul Skinner forces Vashin to confess that what happened to Peter's parents and Vashin says, no, Peter, no, I swear to you, that was never the intention of the flagwatch agenda.
• 1:04:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You claim to be ignorant of what your own people were doing.
• 1:04:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the Soul Skinner says your parents were basically killed because they expected to really go on to die anyway and how do we deal with that later because if she dies in this then what are they going to do?
• 1:05:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if they're dead, it simplifies things.
• 1:05:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: They are able to defeat the Soul Skinner, how Derek?
• 1:05:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I'm calling this sidewalk ex-makina.
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: She takes the innocence of the children's psychic Lee and puts it into a psychic dagger and then stabs that psychic dagger of innocence into the soul skinner and all of a sudden that that does something The soul skinner is gone and vision immediately draws a gun and shoots the man in the chest.
• 1:05:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like we're not we're not risking this ever again and Cyclops is like that was called blooded murder
• 1:05:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: was it?
• 1:05:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: The flag-wet program was created to protect humanity from your kind summers, not to eliminate them.
• 1:05:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: This was an aberration, but the program will continue as a live operation, because as long as mutants like Skinner exist, then the need exists as well.
• 1:05:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Elgana is still a child, although she's going to die from the legacy virus, cinematic.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts on this very resonant story, Voshen versus Colossus?
• 1:05:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I really liked that Peter's first reaction was, nope, I don't care about the city, my sister comes first.
• 1:06:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, really you expect heroes to be saying, you know, yes, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few sort of thing.
• 1:06:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: But Peter loves his sister and it's really great to see that sort of purity of loyalty and love and emotion expressed in this way in a way that you can really get it like you can see why he would say that because I think if he had said yeah you're right I will give up my sister which actually does happen at one moment of the story but that's a different part you know you would have been suspicious if he went to that right away so I just Claire Montez really a master of like the emotions of the characters he knows so well.
• 1:06:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to cover the rest of Vajan's history quickly, and then let's talk about the key points.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see him in Xmen unlimited number two, which I've talked about on my show a number of times.
• 1:06:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Magneto's back, they are considering how to handle that.
• 1:06:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vajan is called here the head of mutant affairs for Russian state service.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's in D.C.
• 1:06:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Valerie Cooper's here, Henry Peter Gaierick, Adrian I sculpt, he's the board avalan and he is cloaked and they're going after Magneto basically and Vussian's keep ranting about the idea of the greater good.
• 1:07:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says about Magneto, the very fact that he exists hovering above us is causing enough for any actions we take.
• 1:07:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: One way or another I believe we are all in agreement Magneto must be stopped.
• 1:07:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Magnetow tried to disable the entire Earth's electromagnetic system shortly after this, so Vajad can recognize the threat.
• 1:07:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: When we jump to uncanny X-Men 383-384, Claremont and Davis are back on the book, and they bring Vajad back, we learn his middle name as Mikhailovich, which basically just means his dad's name as Mikhail.
• 1:07:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Storm and Gamma and Beast and Cable are summoned to the, quote, research addicts of the 13th directorate.
• 1:07:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: which used to be the KGB headquarters.
• 1:07:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Russia is a very different place at this point, the Soviet Union.
• 1:07:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Russian has a very bare office and basically he lets the X-Men know everything he knows about them to impress them.
• 1:07:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see him drinking vodka.
• 1:07:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We were told about a favor he once did for the thieves guild.
• 1:07:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: He admits he has a lot of research powers personally but the government is having a hard time giving him any operatives.
• 1:07:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So one of his top AIDS, and this is Deborah Levin, whose codename is the Revenant, has gone missing while working at an exclusive club in Russia called The Slash.
• 1:08:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Vajn is based in a building, and since Gaya Square, it kind of looks like Chicago Sheard's Tower.
• 1:08:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's lays on its side.
• 1:08:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's bigger, there must be space here for thousands of offices.
• 1:08:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Get Vajn occupies it with just a staffer, too.
• 1:08:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: himself and his aide, Major Debra Levin, the Scully and Director Skinner of the Russian Republic, which is a ridiculous assertion.
• 1:08:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men eventually end up bringing the slave or tell a more vogue in, and the storm gets involved.
• 1:08:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: She knows like a Russian underworld kingpin named Kurosov, and there's these crazy guys called the Seedogs who get involved, and Defense Minister Demetri Kornia, who is held hostage, a vision gets knocked out.
• 1:08:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, that continues.
• 1:08:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see him referenced by reporter Menoli Weatherall and extreme expose number one, because the X-Men are missing.
• 1:08:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: He calls her a beautiful woman.
• 1:08:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: In extreme X-Men 33 and 35, he's back with Claremont again.
• 1:09:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alongside Valerie Cooper, Alistair Stewart, Maria Pilar Cortez, and Tan Gemin.
• 1:09:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Storm is really pushing the idea of all the government's working together to provide a safer space for mutants.
• 1:09:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Storm indicates the vision in this story is a grandfather, and she asks him what kind of legacy he wants to leave.
• 1:09:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the character has really aged up.
• 1:09:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't know if we don't know anything about his personal life or his children or his spouse.
• 1:09:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Storm proposes the excessy, the extreme sanctions executive and gets it officially approved.
• 1:09:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see Vajn again in district X number 7 through 12 where he sends an assassin named Sashenko Papulva to kill the mutant Mr. M who's another reality warping mutant who is a major problem.
• 1:09:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: and that we get involved while Bishop comes back to Voshen.
• 1:09:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like, don't fucking mess in my place.
• 1:09:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like don't you dare, I'm not going to do this anymore.
• 1:09:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We also need a mutant and Billy Bates, who has killed a human supremacist from purity.
• 1:09:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Voshen has his agent Jerry Hallowell, no joke.
• 1:09:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the person, maybe it's the actual spice girl.
• 1:10:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Popolva interferes so that Bates gets killed.
• 1:10:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then lastly, in Darkstar and the Winter Guard, we see the former Crimson Dynamo, Dmitry Booker and Placed in Charge of Monitoring, a new Winter Guard, Voshen is overseeing him basically, and they have to go after the Presence.
• 1:10:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's all of the Voshen stories kind of wrapped up together, and there's way more than you think.
• 1:10:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of compelling pieces to this character, his relation to Xavier, and
• 1:10:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: his relationship to Mikhail, what he determines to be like the most of mega-level threats that he has to intervene himself in.
• 1:10:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we know nothing about his personal life or kind of his shifting politics.
• 1:10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: What does this man do with Putin in the group, right?
• 1:10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of stories that could be explored.
• 1:10:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: What do you find most compelling about Vajn and what do you find to be the biggest mysteries that remain about him?
• 1:10:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's important to note, I think that the X-Men Origins classes one issue that we talked about earlier, the one that gives Valgin a very personal reason to be involved with Colossus's family, to feel like he has some responsibility for Colossus, that takes place chronologically after the story in which Colossus's parents are killed directly as a result of Valgin's orders, but it was written afterwards.
• 1:11:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it really places that earlier story in which, in a very different context.
• 1:11:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is kind of the crime for this character.
• 1:11:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: During the Krakowan era, we see Mikhail Rasputin brought back in a giant way.
• 1:11:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men have declared a nation on Krakowa.
• 1:11:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Mikhail Rasputin, the Omega-level brother, the crazy guy that belongs, that that's part of Colossus's family.
• 1:11:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And is it ideally Alexi's best friend at a certain point?
• 1:11:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: has decided to basically secede from Russia and create his own nation of mutants in Russia.
• 1:11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's formed a political agreement with the Russian government.
• 1:11:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ultimately, it falls apart of course, and Colossus has to kill his brother.
• 1:11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very complicated, but Vajans never a part of that story, which is kind of a crime for this character, I think.
• 1:11:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think if you step back and squint a little bit, it's almost like he's an agent dunking from the early X-Men, except he's international modern and he's packing power, political, economic, and firepower.
• 1:12:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I think the mysteries, like when I was a kid reading this, I didn't know what Russia was like on its inside.
• 1:12:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think we still don't know, like unless you've traveled there, we don't know what's on the inside of Russia either.
• 1:12:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think, you know, Russia's invasion of Ukraine
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: inside of Russia right now and how it's working and stuff like that.
• 1:12:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's so many more story possibilities of things you can do within Russia that you can't necessarily do in the US because somebody will say, well, that's not what happens in Minnesota, you know, that's not what happens in Quebec or whatever right in Canada.
• 1:12:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's I think
• 1:12:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: putting it far enough away and in a country that has, you know, got this giant military power gives you, like, you can do lots of neat things and that's why you had this, you know, the mutant group the military approved ones, the, the, the, the spy sanction one and so on.
• 1:12:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: So lots of mysteries still to be told about.
• 1:12:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a bit of fascinating research journey for me and solidifying this character in this conversation with two people that I respect so much.
• 1:13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is delightful for those that want more of my complete thoughts on this go back and listen to my episode on blind faith that that mutant character who's kind of the Russian Charles Xavier in
• 1:13:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: some ways.
• 1:13:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then watch out on the Patreon in July when we do Colossus Month.
• 1:13:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: The characters were planning to examine and give a similar focus on what my episodes will include episodes on Mikhail Rasputin, or some major, the super apes, the presence.
• 1:13:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to go all over the place with the Rutherton Breston mythology.
• 1:13:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of things to consider.
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Eventually we'll get to the trials of Darkstar and Magic on my show as well.
• 1:13:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear any final or resonant thoughts on this.
• 1:13:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for taking this journey with me.
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know we went a little over time, so I really appreciate your patience in an evening when you're both very busy.
• 1:13:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So any final thoughts, and then where can people find you online?
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything you want to plug for April 16th?
• 1:13:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks.
• 1:13:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm easy to find online.
• 1:13:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you can spell my last name, you can find me, so I'm Derek D.E.R.E.K.
• 1:13:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Constraint K.U.N.S.K.E.N, and I'm findable on my website on BlueSky.
• 1:14:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I still maintain a presence on Twitter a little bit.
• 1:14:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: April, I've got a collection out right now, and if
• 1:14:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: people want, we're interested in seeing what I write in short fiction rather than in novels.
• 1:14:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's called Flake from the Ages and Other Stories, and it collects a lot of my sci-fi stories that appeared in Asimov's Analog magazines.
• 1:14:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm Tristan Palmeran.
• 1:14:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can find me online at a variety of places from my website to to Blue Sky.
• 1:14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I am again, if you can spell my last name, you can find me.
• 1:14:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: First name is Tristan
• 1:14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this is coming out on April 16th, I have an exciting new novel coming out.
• 1:14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: As of yesterday, April 15th, voice of one.
• 1:14:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is a novel set in the Twilight Empirium Universe, which is a space opera board game.
• 1:14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is about some of the most alien factions in that board game.
• 1:14:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you are interested in space opera, alien perspectives, please check that out and
• 1:15:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you like the Shiar read some of Derrick's books, if you like the brood and read some of Tristan's books, these are both brilliant sci-fi writers.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so pleased to know you both, and thank you so much for the gift of your time and talents this evening.
• 1:15:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lastly, I'm Chad Anderson, I keep my own social media private because I got kiddos, you can follow Gramell, and underscore them on Instagram most prominently.
• 1:15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: The show has just been planned out into June and July, I have some brilliant things happening, and putting July together around Colossus has been a delight.
• 1:15:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Next episode out on this channel will feature the character Lira, who is a undersea mutant, who is an arch nemesis of name or one of my favorite villas she's delightful, Glen Herdling, and Demento Martini will be joining me for that episode.
• 1:15:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Out on the main show, watch for a review of X-Men Origins Night Crawler number one, with author David Moro of the classic X-Men book and my dear friend, Seth Martell joining us.
• 1:15:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you everybody for listening.
• 1:15:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Derek.
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Tristan.
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will see you all back here next time on the Grimmalk and Lane Patreon.
• 1:15:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.
• 1:16:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Germany emerged from World War I, defeated, disarmed and disillusioned.
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Treaty of Versailles forced it to give up its acquired territory, forced it to limit its military, and forced it to not only take blame for the war but to accept reparations for the war.
• 1:16:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the country, as a result, spiraled into economic chaos, political extremism and national shame amidst that turmoil, a resentful corporal named Adolf Hitler slowly began to find his voice and millions of people started to listen.
• 1:16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile,
• 1:16:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: In Central Europe, also after World War I, the country of Czechoslovakia was born in 1918.
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was built from previous Czech and Slovak regions in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.
• 1:16:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was one of the only functioning democracies in the region in the post-World War I, with a robust industrial economy and a commitment to rather liberal values.
• 1:16:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in the meantime, we find liberal values.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: We find queer safe spaces.
• 1:17:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: but it was also very ethnically diverse, with over 3 million ethnic Germans living in its borders, mostly living in the Western border, so that known as the Sudet in Lond.
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: The tension soon became a weapon in Hitler's hands, and by the mid-1930 Hitler was in power and opening openly flouting the terms of Versailles and willing to break national custom as it had been previously established, he rearmed Germany, remiliterized the Rhine land, against international sanctions, and then turned his attention towards the Sudet in Lond.
• 1:17:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: claiming that ethnic Germans there were being mistreated, it gave him reason then to have the territory handed over to him in demands.
• 1:17:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in September 1938, British and French leaders met with Hitler in Munich, desperate to avoid another war, they agreed to give him the suit at an end, without invading Czechoslovakia, hoping that that would appease him.
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in this ultimate act of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain returned to London proclaiming, we've acquired peace for our time.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, in Prague, there was no peace, only betrayal.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Czechoslovakia lost its border defenses, its industrial backbone, and its strategic advantage without firing a single shot.
• 1:18:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the early hours of March 15, 1939, Hitler set the final act of his deception in motion.
• 1:18:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He summoned Emanohacha, the elderly president of what remained of Czechoslovakia,
• 1:18:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: To the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Hacha was 66 years old, frail, and exhausted after a rushed overnight train journey.
• 1:18:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: He came hoping to preserve his country's independence, but he found was an ambush disguised as diplomacy.
• 1:18:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler flanked by top military commanders and SS officers delivered an ultimatum.
• 1:18:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Germany would invade it non, and any resistance would be crushed with fire and blow it, excuse me, quote, with fire and blood.
• 1:18:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: According to multiple accounts, a hermen goring threaten to level prog with air raids.
• 1:18:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hacha overwhelmed and terrified collapsed from the stress.
• 1:18:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: A Nazi doctor then injected him with stimulants, so once conscious again hitler pushed forward a document, it declared that Czechoslovakia was placing itself under German protection.
• 1:18:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: a phrase designed to simulate cooperation while masking conquest.
• 1:19:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tasha signed, German troops were already mobilized.
• 1:19:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: The same day, German forces entered Prague without resistance.
• 1:19:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Czech army, having been disarmed after Munich, was powerless.
• 1:19:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler declared the formation of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
• 1:19:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: annexing the Czech Heartland into the Third Reich.
• 1:19:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was now a Nazi colony in all-bit name.
• 1:19:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hotscha remained in place as a puppet president, but he had no authority and all real power belonged to Hitler's governors and the SS enforcers.
• 1:19:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Nazi regime exploited Czechoslovakia's factories, mines, and railways for the war effort.
• 1:19:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Czech workers were constricted into forced labor.
• 1:19:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Descent was met with brutal suppression.
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, sorry, this is the heavy part of the Jewish population who numbered over 260,000 in the region was then immediately targeted for extermination, most of them perished in Auschwitz, Tarazin, or the other camps.
• 1:19:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Check resistance groups formed, but their activities were dangerous and often fatal as it led to people being exposed and put to death.
• 1:19:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And,
• 1:19:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 1942, Chuck Agents assassinated Ryan Hard Haydrich, the SS overlord of the protectorate, and in retaliation, the Nazis destroyed entire villages, including the town of Lidies, where men were executed, women were sent to the camps, and children murdered or sent for what they called, quote, Germanization.
• 1:20:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hotcher remained in office as a powerless figurehead, increasingly sideline and humiliated, and after the German defeat in 1945, he was arrested by Czechoslovak authorities and taken to Pankrok prison.
• 1:20:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He died there June 27, 1945, before they could put him on trial.
• 1:20:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: To some, he was a ruler broken by impossible circumstances, to others a collaborator who handed his nation over to a madman, and history remains divided.
• 1:20:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Those are crazy historical anecdotes leading us into Captain America 3463348, where we can be Johnny Walker, the newly appointed more military Captain America growing increasingly unstable as he faces ever increasing threats.
• 1:20:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: His parents are gunned down by terrorists, and Walker then grows ever more violent against his foes.
• 1:20:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: The government, specifically the commission on superhuman activities, considers retiring him, and there's a strange man in shadow manipulating events in secret while smoking a long cigarette.
• 1:21:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Shit's the red skull.
• 1:21:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: He wants the unstable Captain America to remain in his appointed position and he wants the task master, let out of jail.
• 1:21:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: In issue 347, we see the red skull hunting down the communist version of him from the 1950s.
• 1:21:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Albert Malik, I talked about that guy and the previous episode of my friend, Darrell Lawrence.
• 1:21:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then in 348, we see the commission on superhuman activities, learn that Johnny Walker just tried to kill two criminals, left winger and right winger.
• 1:21:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They like he blew these guys up, it's pretty bad.
• 1:21:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: They did some bad shit.
• 1:21:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, they're ordering Johnny Walker to turn himself into the guard's man when Ronald Reagan himself walks in, promising to keep Walker as the national hero while demanding this Steve Rogers be released from custody.
• 1:21:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: The nervous rock well from the commission of superhuman activities calls the man with the long cigarette nervous update again.
• 1:21:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to stop there.
• 1:21:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: The red skull is slowly a certain control in the American government and things are going crazy.
• 1:22:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome my friend Kenny Chris to the show to tell you about this crazy fucking story.
• 1:22:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't hear you are red skull fan.
• 1:22:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am not and I am not a Captain American fan either.
• 1:22:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I was a little surprised to see I did not know any of these characters like any of them.
• 1:22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it's a it's a crazy but why are you not a Captain America fan?
• 1:22:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was never a partner in Captain Britain.
• 1:22:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a flagged suit guy.
• 1:22:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: They tend to be cops and I am a mutant through and through.
• 1:22:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just don't trust someone that's like all dressed up in star-spangled Banners.
• 1:22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: The only character you may have recognized in this run is in the commission and superhuman activities, Valerie Cooper sitting at the top next to Henry Peter Geirick.
• 1:22:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you might have saw those two as there.
• 1:22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did in people's room there.
• 1:22:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't I didn't know that there was like another like quasi brotherhood happening.
• 1:22:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's yeah, there's an interesting resistance.
• 1:23:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: The resistance you didn't pair a military force.
• 1:23:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, anyway, that's a whole nother story.
• 1:23:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this isn't ever, we're Captain America has given up being, or Steve Rogers has given up being Captain America and is where it lacks suit because he doesn't believe in the 80s American principles that exist at the time and then we get the paramilitary John Walker.
• 1:23:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've seen this story play out in the movies, John Walker's part of the Thunderbolts film, if you saw it recently.
• 1:23:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, scary, you can't watch this.
• 1:23:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a PTSD slowly going nuts.
• 1:23:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just truly brutal.
• 1:23:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like what happens to his parents and then what he does to left-hander and right-winger, which are the worst comic book names ever.
• 1:23:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for real.
• 1:23:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize that I would have such a miserable reaction to Ronald Reagan walking into a room.
• 1:23:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: But like, I literally like bit my left in annoyance that he was pictured in this comic.
• 1:23:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was born in 87, so like nothing, I don't remember any part of his presidency whatsoever.
• 1:23:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just hate him so much.
• 1:23:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so you know Madam Hydra, like the green hair vine, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a story in this run that just right around here where she sneaks into the White House and poisons the water supply and Ronald Reagan drinks it and turns into a snakeman.
• 1:24:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: never having like been inspired to re-confident America.
• 1:24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I enjoyed it more than I thought I was.
• 1:24:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some freedom force in here too.
• 1:24:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: You'll see me.
• 1:24:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a spiral getting caught in her little own dress and yeah it was it was a fun read like every they were familiar characters just popping out and I was like oh it's so nice to see you again.
• 1:24:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the uncomfortable realization here, when you read just a little between the lines and brilliant story-filing by Mark Runewald, but the Americans are caught up in their own political crazy.
• 1:24:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: What treaties can slide?
• 1:24:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who's given permission for what authorization do we have from where?
• 1:24:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the person pulling the strings very gently in the background is a old Nazi war criminal who is literally pushing toward fascism under the guise of democracy in its
• 1:25:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: You almost have to look for the red skull in this story.
• 1:25:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whenever there was like a creepy guy shadow on a monitor, I was like, oh yeah, let's clear the red skull.
• 1:25:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then they broke him out of, I didn't know that there was another one.
• 1:25:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so when they broke him out of jail, and he was like, where is my mask?
• 1:25:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he puts a, he was like, what the fuck?
• 1:25:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I swear that was like supposed to be his real face.
• 1:25:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I realized like, oh, okay.
• 1:25:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So he's just getting rid of his competition.
• 1:25:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and it's the same thing of like keep everybody focused on the crazy superhero drama over there.
• 1:25:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm completing political assassinations over here.
• 1:25:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Reagan himself on the page, the person going back to the red skull in the background like, Hey, we're going to pass this legislation.
• 1:25:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is that okay with you?
• 1:25:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit rough to read through a little bit.
• 1:25:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I give you that kind of real world comparison about the history of Czechoslovakia before.
• 1:25:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: What were some of your thoughts on hearing that comparison?
• 1:25:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I studied in Prague for a summer.
• 1:25:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I visited all these places.
• 1:26:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we, what a cool, unexpected connection then.
• 1:26:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's great.
• 1:26:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was, we went to like Schiller's factory and stuff.
• 1:26:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: We, we went to like the Jewish ghetto and the way like wall.
• 1:26:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it was very, I didn't realize how intense it would feel.
• 1:26:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I knew it would affect me.
• 1:26:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't expect it to feel it so heavily.
• 1:26:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whenever we went to Auschwitz, it was,
• 1:26:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: part of me was like, why in God's name are we here?
• 1:26:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like this is the I've never felt so terrible as a human before in my life, but it was a really eye opening and a truly jaw dropping experience.
• 1:26:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the history, as I recount it here, you know, Czechoslovakia and the new German control under the Vymar Republic, both formed after World War I. But Germany breaks all its sanctions, breaks all the international laws, breaks all the treaties.
• 1:26:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, well, let's give him this land over here.
• 1:26:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, maybe that'll appease him.
• 1:26:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy to me.
• 1:26:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 1:26:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we've got this email hacha guy who was pulled into Berlin.
• 1:27:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And for whatever he was going through, whether he was a fool or a weak man, I don't know, but he signed a paper, which resulted in
• 1:27:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: hundreds of thousands of people being put to death just a simple signature on a piece of paper what the fuck is democracy what is that if that's all it takes that's all right arrested as a war criminal at the end of it all you know history does not remember this part of us fondly which brings us to the 2025 America confess that
• 1:27:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: being married to a Canadian citizen, it is terrifying because we, you know, we fly back and forth between the two and he doesn't feel safe.
• 1:27:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're afraid to go to the border because he could get detained.
• 1:27:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We, you know, both make it all content.
• 1:27:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if they think that he might be coming to America and building, that's considered working in America.
• 1:27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And doing that was out of these so can get him
• 1:27:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's, there's just this, this or well, it's, it's looming this looming dread.
• 1:28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't seem, it feels like there's no end to it.
• 1:28:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: It feels like like the fucking red skull is actually behind us pulling the strings.
• 1:28:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is watching, seeing people just sort of roll over and excat to what they're told is it's so terrifying.
• 1:28:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: seeing even more, well, I'm actually impressed with your ability to verbalize this.
• 1:28:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: To speak out loud, like here's what I'm going through and here's what I'm fearing.
• 1:28:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm finding some people are really, I'm a therapist in my day job, right?
• 1:28:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some people, yeah, struggling to verbalize like what it is that's in the atmosphere that's affecting them, right?
• 1:28:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a lot of craziness going on.
• 1:28:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: This story culminates in a cap 350, which is a story called seeing red, we'll get there in the next review, but like we're all kind of going through that right now.
• 1:28:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a pretty
• 1:28:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: time for for people to really measure out how heavy all this feels and then like yeah being joyfully is like an act of rebellion on a daily basis, you know what I mean it's it's an act of rebellion and it is truly work.
• 1:29:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is trying to find something to bring you joy every day right now is physically and emotionally exhausting but it's so necessary.
• 1:29:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be like that guy behind the computers like you can't you know you can't stop fighting you like you don't give up because oh my god Do I want to give up like it is it is so daunting and it is so just it's a dark presence Looming over your shoulder at all times and so finding finding stuff like like comics even like something that gives you that escape and that joy is so important right now
• 1:29:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an act of defiance, and like what else are we going to do, right?
• 1:29:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: We, I didn't play inside.
• 1:29:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: We can put blinders on.
• 1:29:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: We can pretend it's not there, but we have very little control over these secret meetings where Reggin's showing up to discuss the, the almost, the almost blowing up of left-winger and right-winger.
• 1:29:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure there's such a fine day and something like that.
• 1:29:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is the same era where William Striker is like forming anti-militant church groups against the X-Men and Cameron Hodge launches a group called the right, which have the right belief faces painted on their Sentinel armor, like it's
• 1:30:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very thinly veiled, the 80s was a crazy time.
• 1:30:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: The part of the story that stuck out most to me was Flag Smasher now, not a villain.
• 1:30:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, like he would be a hero right now.
• 1:30:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like he's trying to expose like nationalism and how terrible it is.
• 1:30:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And doing that, albeit by attacking Flag suit heroes, Flag Smashers is the dress as like space ghost.
• 1:30:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he wants to do my copy dies.
• 1:30:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he wants to do a way with all borders and all flags.
• 1:30:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a certain level of anarchy.
• 1:30:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: All of his agents wear white masks, black sunglasses, and then black berets, which in some cultures is a sign of rebellion during certain historical moments.
• 1:30:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's also Swiss too.
• 1:30:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like they're sort of like making fun of the Swiss neutrality.
• 1:31:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and he also has a group called Ultimatum, which is one of my favorite Marvel trivia commitments of all time.
• 1:31:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ultimatum stands for the Underground Liberated, totally integrated, mobile army to unite mankind.
• 1:31:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yes, I know that off the top of my head in the more of that mix.
• 1:31:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: The cosmic cube has created an evil version of Stephen Rogers, that everyone likes to call Stephen Rogers.
• 1:31:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that guy is the new flag smasher.
• 1:31:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's trying to smash democracy from within.
• 1:31:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a real story.
• 1:31:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: My god.
• 1:31:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
• 1:31:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so that makes run deep my friend.
• 1:31:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna be talking about more about ultimatum in a couple of red skull episodes from now But join us next time.
• 1:31:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna be covering a Captain America 350, which is this culmination of the red skull story Yohan Schmidt has been reanimated in a cloned body of Captain America So he's got like hot cap body, but it reds like a literal red skull for a face This is a wild type of comics
• 1:31:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know you prefer when I have you on to talk about hot muscle heads, so we'll definitely make that happen again.
• 1:31:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what Stonewall made an appearance?
• 1:31:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm going to count.
• 1:32:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to count this is the win.
• 1:32:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Four arm and juggernaut are at the top of our list.
• 1:32:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know.
• 1:32:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right.
• 1:32:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: My bread is so good to see you.
• 1:32:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Just the huge of you too.
• 1:32:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everyone for listening.
• 1:32:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next time for the next conversation.