Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
BONUS - Heroes for Hope w/ Alex Goldman
96 Plays12 hours ago
Returning guest and newly-christened friend of the show ALEX GOLDMAN is here to talk to us about a bizarre Exquisite Corpse-style comic Marvel did in 1985 for famine relief - without asking any of the related charities beforehand. Featuring an unbelievable roster of creators, this whole does not quite equal the sum of its parts.
Topics Discussed:
Does Stan Lee know what's happening? Kill the mailman. Catholic Hades. Alex Goldman as the next Wolverine. The ol' drowning-your-friends prank. My favorite soup! Wolverine's Banana. 5000 words for 3 pages. Alan Moore nails it. Unicorn trap! A naked Logan, hair normal. Having a threesome with yourself. Storm hit in the face with a pie. The precise location of "Africa". Poverty porn for middle-class Americans. The co-creators of Swamp Thing AND Man-Thing.
TIMESTAMPS
8:40 - Heroes for Hope Background
18:19 - Overview
24:10 - Stan Lee/John Romita Jr. pg 1-2
26:30 - Stan Lee/John Buscema pg 3-4
20:23 - Ed Bryant/Brent Anderson pg 5
31:00 - Louise Simonson/John Byrne pg 6-8
34:23 - Ed Bryant/Brent Anderson pg 9
35:40 - Stephen King/Berni Wrightson pg 10-12
38:20 - Bill Mantlo/Charlie Vess pg 13-14
40:54 - Ed Bryant/Brent Anderson pg 15
41:30 - Alan Moore/Richard Corben pg 16-18
46:10 - Ann Nocenti/Mike Kaluta pg 19-21
48:20 - Harlan Ellison/Frank Miller pg 22-24
56:38 - Chris Claremont/Brian Bolland pg 25-26
59:58 - Jo Duffy/John Bolton pg 27-28
1:02:03 - Mike Baron/Steve Rude pg 29-30
1:05:15 - Denny O’Neil/Bret Blevins pg 31-32
1:07:21 - George R.R. Martin/Herb Trimpe pg 33-35
1:12:35 - Bruce Jones/Gray Morrow pg 36-37
1:16:43 - Steve Engelhart/Paul Gulacy pg 38-39
1:19:37 - Jim Stupid/Alan Weiss pg 40-41
1:23:44 - Mike Grell/Jackson Guice pg 42-44
1:26:37 - Archie Goodwin/Howard Chaykin pg 45-48
1:33:10 - Final Thoughts
Hyperfixed: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/
Amityvilleville: https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/amityvilleville
Join our Patreon! Free, or pay-what-you-want: patreon.com/mutantmenace
Write into Pat's Email Corner: mutantmenacepod@gmail.com
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/fPv7hRgTeV
Instagram: @mutantmenacepod
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Mutant Menace and Africa's Portrayal
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Trish Tobey with W.A.R.C. reporting to you live from Westchester, New York, where there appears to be some sort of mutant menace on the loose.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hey, everybody. I'm Matt Allcamp. And I'm Pat Reber. And I'm Alex Goldman. And say it with us, Pete. Welcome to Mutant Menace. Perfect. Nailed it. How's it going?
00:00:52
Speaker
Alex Goldman, you're here again. i know. ah Back again and better than ever. You guys only invite me on when you want to talk about problematic portrayals of Africa because we're two for two so far.
00:01:05
Speaker
i I forgot that there was a problematic ah depiction of Africa the last one. Yeah, we did ah X-Men Giant Size 1, which ah portrays Storm as just like a noble savage emerging from the muck.
00:01:20
Speaker
These people think I'm a god because they don't understand anything. i will say it's it's not intentional, but we did specifically think of you for this comic, Alex. We were like, should we get him back because this will blow his mind? Thank you. It's just such a bizarre comic book, right? Really weird.
00:01:41
Speaker
um How are you doing? How have you been over? We haven't talked to you in it's five, six months. So longer than that, I think we recorded in July of last year, so it's been almost a year.
00:01:52
Speaker
Jesus. how Wow. Time's times flying outside of the ah the chronological order of X-Men.
Amityvilleville Podcast: Movies and Legalities
00:02:00
Speaker
ah I am good, you know? just i mean, there's so little to report. I'm trying to avoid ah the news as much as possible, which I do a terrible job at. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, just... um Making podcasts and reading books and all of my normal stuff, I guess. wish I had more to report. I feel so boring here. no, I don't know where it's at.
00:02:30
Speaker
When people ask me what I've been doing, I'm just like, oh, yeah I've been reading a lot of X-Men and recording episodes about it with my friend Pat. Well, yeah, I guess that's the thing I've been doing. So I started a podcast called Amityvilleville, yeah where we're watching all we're watching all the Amityville movies in order. so ah And we're we are we're watching way ahead. So the audience is only up to, I think, episode seven, six or seven. We're on like the 12th or 13th movie, and we're- My goodness. Holy moly.
00:03:03
Speaker
had no idea there was that many. Honestly, I didn't either. I read it somewhere and i was like, this has to be a gag. But I guess the deal is you can't copyright the name Amityville. And since it's a true story from which all for which all of the sort of main characters are dead, you can really kind of...
00:03:20
Speaker
Portray them however you want or not portray Them at all yeah to be clear When they were alive The Lutzes the family that were Allegedly haunted in the Amityville house Were incredibly litigious And sued the makers of many Amityville movies um Including the Up to the 2005 remake with Ryan Reynolds and the only reason it didn't advance In the courts is because George Lutz Passed away during the lawsuit Wow. Around 2011, Asylum Pictures made Asylum Pictures, who is best known for like Sharknado and all those movies. They made an Amityville movie and then everybody just kind of followed suit. They were like, all right, well, let's get it.
00:04:01
Speaker
So between 2011 and 2023, there were and I have to do some math here. ah my beness oh Oh my God. it's Most of these are like on home video. Like okay a lot of them are available on YouTube. The what most recent one we just watched was very, very bad or to the point where like,
00:04:28
Speaker
At the end of the movie, it's supposed to be like a found footage movie. And they show the ah written autopsies of all of the characters that die at the end of the movie. And they say they say I'll say died of extreme blood loss. And extreme is misspelled on every single one of them
00:04:48
Speaker
E-E-M? It's X-E-E-X-T-R-E-A-M. Extreme. ah An extreme of blood fell out of my head. Why? like But like, I'm really, the more we watch, the more I'm like, we just got to come up with like amusing diversions for people because I can't talk about these. There's nothing to say. They're so fucking bad. And is it it's just it must be just the same story over and over and over again in various ways, right? A lot of them, yeah. But like I'm really looking forward to like there's like Amityville Outhouse and Amityville in Space and Amityville... Amityville in Space...
00:05:30
Speaker
There's Amityville vibrator, which I think is probably going to be pretty interesting. So there's like a whole bunch that I'm going to like, we're going to make our way to that. I think are like interesting. We actually skipped all the way to the end because a brand new one just came out and the people who made it also happened to be making their own. We're watching all the Amityville movies podcast. Yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
ah And it's and in a very sort of nicely recursive circular way, it is Amityville NATO and it's about a haunted tornado that's killing people.
00:06:03
Speaker
OK. All right. That's incredible. It's really it was very entertaining, very funny movie.
Exploration of 'Heroes for Hope': Critiques and Intentions
00:06:10
Speaker
So if you're 12 in, have you gotten to like the camp side of things yet, or are they still taking it pretty seriously? I mean, to be fair, they began as camp. I've only got more than that when time has gone on. um We have not yet. We're still in sort of, we just finished Amityville haunting. And the next one is Amityville asylum, both of which seem to be taking themselves pretty seriously. Okay. We'll have to wait and see. And are some of these just incredibly hard to find or have you been able to find them all pretty easily? I mean, so far, everybody's really excited about making these things available.
00:06:49
Speaker
ah But, that you know, like i we want with the Amityville curse, which is the fifth one. I was like, this movie is terrible. There's like no redeeming values value to this. This has to be the worst one. So when we got the guys who did Amityville NATO on, which will come out, I don't know, three, four weeks from now, ah probably out by the time this episode comes out. Yeah. Nice.
00:07:10
Speaker
We were like, Hey, Amityville curse was the worst, right? And they're like, oh, no. not Not on your life. They were like – was like, what's the worst then? And they like, well, Amityville elevator has like a 17-minute scene of a guy who's just like screaming. It's like experimental theater almost. Oh, no. And I was like – I was like, I got to be honest.
00:07:32
Speaker
i That kind of excites me. um That's – I mean – And interesting, i can relate to the, you know, you read the material that you chose to do your podcast about and then you're just kind of like, oh, no, what do we say about this one? But with us, it's like when the comics are good, which a lot of the Chris Claremont ones are not the one we're talking about today, but a lot of the Chris Claremont ones are. It becomes like, oh, no, what are we going to say about this one? We have so much less to say. There's not enough to just dunk on.
00:08:05
Speaker
Totally. I get it. um i had i did i I was kind of surprised that this was c Chris Clairwant. Everybody was sort of speaking in soliloquies in this one. It was very very weird writing on and in this particular comic as well. Yeah. A lot of people still stuck in that Silver Age mentality here. How how many is it? 16, 17 writers on this?
00:08:28
Speaker
Oh, right. right that I read the the the editor's note at the end of the thing that was like, We asked everyone who worked at Marvel and some people at DC to work on this particular issue of X-Men. So let's get into what this thing is. So today we are covering Heroes for Hope, which is Marvel's attempt to capitalize on the success of things like We Are the World, Live Aid, Do They Know It's Christmas, that sort of push in the 80s to raise money for famine in Africa.
00:09:02
Speaker
This was done. it's pretty wild. This was done at exquisite corpse style. So for ah anybody that doesn't know or just wants a refresher, it's also called the comics jam in comics, but it's when you hand each section of a book off to a different writer. So for example, here's Stan Lee, wrote the first four pages, handed over handed it over to Ed Bryant, who was a successful science fiction short story writer at the time. He wrote a page, handed it over to Louise Simonson. We have a crazy list of writers here, actually. the same with the artists. They just put together different pairings and page by page switched off, took turns.
00:09:46
Speaker
So so they planned this thing. who Whose idea was this? ah This was Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson said we should do... i I don't know if the exquisite corpse part was their idea, but the idea of doing a benefit comic was theirs.
00:10:03
Speaker
But then Marvel decided they would do this comic on behalf of famine relief efforts in Africa. That is as as ah specific as they get in yeah Africa. And...
00:10:18
Speaker
and They chose their charity, Oxfam America, and they never told Oxfam they were doing this. They didn't get any sort of prior authorization or a green light to go ahead.
00:10:34
Speaker
So when they finished this thing, they handed it to Oxfam and Oxfam was like, no, no, we do not like this. Absolutely not. They called it extremely racist and sexist. and Wow.
00:10:47
Speaker
Wow. Like public. God, they must have been so embarrassed. yeah so Yeah. They were begging Marvel to not even print it. They said, in our opinion, this should not go to market. Just cancel the whole thing now.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yes. ah um So jim Jim Shooter, Jim Stupid, ah blog like he he wrote a blog about this. It's it's called Why I Don't Like Oxfam. Insane.
00:11:17
Speaker
And it's so wild and rambly. And so this was in 2011. So we were still stuck on this 30 years later. 30 years later. Oxfam is a very reputable They a record of being on the right side of history. And Jim Stupid puts him on blast here.
00:11:39
Speaker
it It seems like this is Jim saying they were being too woke about this all the term had ah entered the lexicon. Yeah. if you I think you can read through it and draw some conclusions about what actually happened.
00:11:57
Speaker
from Jim Shooter, Jim Stupid's perspective here. Sorry, we try not to say his name. they saw the mock-up. It sounds like they thought all of the black characters were too reminiscent of black celebrities, which is weird fairly common in comics. I think you would use a lot of photos of celebrities in magazines or models in magazines as your point of reference, especially in the 80s. But if you're not a comic person, then yeah, you're just looking at a Michael Jackson or, uh, uh, uh, Tina Turner. its There we go. They were disgusted by the over-sexualization of Storm. Uh, she is the book's only black character. They complained about the women's costumes in general, but especially took issue with Storm because she is, ah we'll get there, but extremely sexualized in this comic.
00:12:48
Speaker
They found Alan Moore and Richard Corbin's depictions of starving africans pretty racist there's also a use of the word yowza which yeah the yowza realize so strange had racial connotations but uh i didn't either apparently it comes from ah like minstrel shows Wow. I had no idea. was Yeah, so... I'm going to stop saying it.
00:13:14
Speaker
so You know, I was going to say, I think of that just as something Bugs Bunny says, and everything Bugs Bunny says came from a minstrel show. I should know. Yeah, that's true. So according to... what Jim Shooter, they thought that the logo, which was created by Marvel's resident graphic artist, her name is Janet Claire Jackson.
00:13:35
Speaker
In the book, they note the logo was created by Janet Jackson. Janet Jackson was a huge star at the time, an oxfam and and the Jackson family as a whole were ah notorious contributors to Oxfam. So Oxfam said... To us, this looks like you are trying to capitalize off the name Janet Jackson. Like the way Jim Shooter says it, they they said Janet Jackson didn't make your logo, you're lying, and then refused to believe they had another Janet Jackson at Marvel. So you're reading between the lines here. What I'm reading is that they said, why would you credit a logo does designer in a comic book
00:14:19
Speaker
you're just trying to put Janet Jackson's name on this so people will think it's the singer Janet Jackson. Okay. I can see, i can see the point here, especially because they don't put Janet Jackson's name in just regular comics. Yeah.
00:14:35
Speaker
That's, that's definitely, and I definitely, it's definitely something I would not put past Stan Lee, you know? Right. Yeah. Yeah. It is a very Marvel to do something like that.
00:14:48
Speaker
So, Oxfam rejected... You can read the blog post if you want. it is... Pretty problematic and a little bit racist, but... But it's it is funny to read because it it is Jim Stupid just going crazy about about a really, you know, kind-hearted, helpful organization because they didn't like his little comic book. It's made even weirder by the fact that I have to say, like, I loved the first half of the comic.
00:15:20
Speaker
Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, like, the the weird, there's sort of like a, it's like half a weird dreamscape and then half a very weird real and nauseating representation of ah of of starving ah people in Africa. that Very tasteless. yeah But, like, the dreamscape stuff I thought was pretty entertaining.
00:15:42
Speaker
I think as a comic, this this isn't this isn't terribly bad. It's just very weird. Yeah. And clearly an experiment. Right. It felt a lot more like ah Tales from the Crypt comic than it did yes an X-Men comic. Well, they have so many horror writers and artists on this book, too. Who?
00:16:03
Speaker
So they have um Stephen King. Yeah. Stephen King wrote on this? How did I miss that? So if you look all the way at the beginning of the comic, like the the the the first inside page, it has a list of the pages in each writer and penciler.
00:16:19
Speaker
That's bonkers. And so Stephen King wrote on this. Harlan Ellison. ah Bernie Wrightson drew on this. Right. Alan Moore, who is mostly doing horror stuff at this time. Right. I mean, that's really it's really fascinating. i can't help but notice all those names are the lily whitest people I've ever heard of in my life, too.
00:16:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Kind kind of comes through. it's sigh It's pretty rare to find a black comic book writer in this day and age in the mid 80s. It's fairly rare still. But just to wrap the whole thing up, they did still donate all the funds to charity. This wasn't...
00:16:58
Speaker
This was not a profit project for them. It ended up going to the American Friends Service Committee, who is another reputable charity org. And at the time, they had a huge focus on African famine as well. So still went to a good cause, just...
00:17:14
Speaker
not very tactfully right um and and also just so classless to complain about it 30 years later and try and like sick a bunch of comic book fans on oxfam america um so because this comic isn't is in such a weird format and like pat said it's uh exquisite corpse style. So every ah two to three pages, the ah creative team shifts. And so what we're going to do is we are going to talk about, we're going to like give an overview of the entire comic just so you can follow what's going on a little better. And then we'll do our normal recap and, you know, break it down, break it break it down and our thoughts and and whatnot by, by each team. So every three pages or so we have a couple of sentences
00:18:10
Speaker
But first, let's talk about this overarching thing.
Character-Driven Narratives and Political Ties in Comics
00:18:14
Speaker
So the story was written by Chris Claremont, Ann Nocenti, Bernie Wrightson, Jim Starlin, and Jim Stupid, and edited by Ann Nocenti and Chris Claremont with assistant editors Pat Plevins and Terry Cavanaugh. So that's like the overarching thing. And then the dialogue and individual pages written by different people. So...
00:18:33
Speaker
Do one of you want to read this overview here up at the top? I would love to. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right, here we go. Heroes for Hope. Release date, September 3rd, 1985. Cover date, December 1985. You guys know what's special about that date?
00:18:49
Speaker
About September 3rd, 1985? Is that the challenger? Oh, no, no. It's my four-month birthday. Okay.
00:18:59
Speaker
I'm sorry that I didn't know that. I'll never for forget again. I just had to interrupt. ah but I'm so off track here. Oh, I have one question before we get started. Yeah, please. yeah Who is Rachel Summers? Okay. Okay.
00:19:17
Speaker
is she their Is she their daughter from the future? You got it exactly right. Oh, man. Gene Gray and Scott Summers. in okay In the ah comic book Days of Future Past, um she was like a supporting character. And yeah, again, daughter of Gene Gray and Scott Summers. And then somewhere in the early 80s, we're actually recording this a little out of order. So right pretty much right where me and Pat are in the series at this time. um Rachel Summers, she just comes back for good and she just she's stuck in the quote present time.
00:19:53
Speaker
yeah yeah so Does she have a superhero name? Because she just goes by Rachel for the entire comic. well She takes the name Phoenix ah like But that's weird, so most people just call her Rachel in every time. Exactly, to avoid confusion.
00:20:08
Speaker
All right. Okay, here we go. The X-Men are roused by a scream from Rachel Summers. When they run to find her at the front door of the mansion, they see nothing but barren desert in front of them, and Kitty in the middle of it, trying to drag a man inside. They both appear to be starving, as if they haven't eaten in weeks.
00:20:24
Speaker
Everything shifts back to normal when Wolverine kills the mailman. Okay. Over the next few hours, each X-Men, Colossus, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Magneto, Rachel Summers, Wolverine, and Storm, but not Rogue, find themselves attacked psychically by their worst fears and their greatest desires, punctuated by imagery of famine and extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.
00:20:48
Speaker
All efforts to find this entity that's attacking them using Cerebro or their senses or psychic abilities fails. So they decide to track the entity down to where Rachel last sensed it, the very vague location of Africa. of course They land in a desert surrounded by starving Africans as a rescue plane lands with food and supplies. The X-Men help unload the plane, feed the starving children, protect the African people from bumbling into the plane propeller, yeah and eventually grow exhausted as night falls.
00:21:19
Speaker
While they sleep, Rogue takes all the X-Men's power, turning herself into a kind of mutant chimera and heads off into the desert by using a combination of Magneto and Phoenix's powers and memories.
00:21:31
Speaker
She finds the Entity's temple. When she touches it though, it takes over her body. Storm has followed and fights it as it tells her it's existed since the beginning of humanity.
00:21:42
Speaker
It feeds off of human suffering and misery like a vulture, and it's fascinated by the ways in which her and Rogue are different from the humans it knows. One by one, the X-Men wake up and join the fight, ultimately defeating the entity and Rogue's body.
00:21:57
Speaker
As they return to the famine relief camp, they're all feeling dejected. They saved themselves, but didn't defeat defeat the entity. Storm tells them all that it's because the entity can't be beaten, but the fact that they tried matters.
00:22:11
Speaker
The only thing that can overcome suffering is hope. And as they get a stubborn, starving child to take a spoonful of soup, they avow that even though the entity will always be there torturing humanity, so will they be to fight it and save who they can.
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That's the overarching story. There's going to be a lot to dig into here. yeah yeah But we'll we'll break it down piece by piece. does anyone have any like overall thoughts before we get into it?
00:22:45
Speaker
ah Just that it feels like two different comics. Like the first half feels feels very ah sort of ah dreamlike and metaphysical. And then the second second part feels like ah um the entity just decided, he was like, you know what this you know what this fight needs? Some exposition. And starts telling them all about what's going on. And then um ah it comes to a very unceremonious and pretty offensive ending.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah I they have. You may have noticed a pretty tough time addressing the cause itself, too. There's there's a couple of scenes where they help out with famine relief. But other than that, and the villain naming itself Hungry,
00:23:31
Speaker
They don't really address the ah the starvation. I would say it is only only one chunk of the comic. Only one person's little um exquisite corp section addresses the idea of colonialism and you know the root causes here. But we're going to do with that when we get to it. You can probably guess who. yeah Who's the only writer here who has a ah very thoughtful stance on world politics and
00:24:02
Speaker
He's an incredible comic book writer. All right. Why don't I kick this thing off with the first two pages? They're by Stan Lee and John Romita Jr. kind of bringing the the beginning of the X-Men into the present, which John Romita Jr. at this time is drawing yeah Uncanny X-Men.
00:24:21
Speaker
Inker is Al Gordon. Letters by Tom Morzikowski and colors by Dana... Grazy Eunice. I don't know if I said that right. I'm glad you had to take the swing at that.
00:24:33
Speaker
ah We open on a screaming Rachel Summers standing at the door of the mansion wailing no at whatever she sees ahead of her. Her shout echoes through the mansion as the X-Men one by one run in to see what's wrong. Magneto, Rogue, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler.
00:24:48
Speaker
When they all join Rachel looking out from the mansion, the entire landscape has changed. They're looking at a vast empty desert except for a few dust clouds and two figures in the distance, Kitty Pryde and an unconscious postman who she seems to be trying to drag towards the mansion. The heat of the sun is beating down on them, unbearable.
00:25:06
Speaker
So do you guys think Stan Lee knew what the fuck was going on? like Do you think he wrote this? i would guarantee I would guarantee he doesn't know who Rachel Summers is He doesn't know who Rogue is, right?
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, and in the mid 80s, he hasn't seen a comic book in a pretty long time. You'd think, right? So maybe there's a person over his shoulder being like, okay, Stan, now you have to do this.
00:25:32
Speaker
But these are kind of wordy and kind of basic, but they don't read very they don't read as old fashioned as I would have expected. Yeah, it it sounds like somebody gave him a primer on current X-Men because this is very much like it's an artist driven story that somebody which Stanley famously did just went in and wrote the captions for. But it does not ring like the Stanley X-Men comics of old in any way.
00:26:03
Speaker
i I just found it. I found the opening to be incredibly confusing. I had to read it like three or four times. I was like, what's happening right now? What is who? We're in the desert.
00:26:14
Speaker
Also, he does do those Silver Age things where... Every person in if there's a person in the panel, they have to have dialogue. And if somebody uses their powers, they have to announce their powers and how they used them.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Pages three and four, also written by Stanley, but drawn by John Buscema. ah Inks by Klaus Janssen. Letters by Tom Orzakowski and colors by Marie Severin.
00:26:43
Speaker
Nightcrawler tries to rescue Kitty, but is thrown back by an overwhelming sense of dread. Wolverine marches into the desert and begins to starve, but his healing factor keeps him alive. He reaches Kitty. She's starving too, but won't leave the mailman. So Logan shows her that she's more important to him by killing the mailman. That was a very weird decision. Wild. weird this set I knew that Stan Lee was writing this. Yeah, Stan Lee was like, oh, the ah superheroes can murder now. All right, let's do it.
00:27:15
Speaker
mr see ah Suddenly the mailman disappears and everything turns back to normal. I will say it is a very like this is like a such a character focused sort of even so like slow progression here of Wolverine fighting through this like starvation that's happening to him and pushing his way through the desert to get to Kitty. Like that's not the sort of way that Stanley ever writes.
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But stabbing something and suddenly ah nobody's dead, but everything's better is very Stanley. Well, what well you say nobody's dead, but what happened to the mailman? Was he he just disappears?
00:27:55
Speaker
just i'd I so I'm gathering he was an illusion. Yeah, the mailman was ah was was famine or misery or whatever it's supposed to be. Okay, all right. Just ah spooking them.
00:28:13
Speaker
Okay. my understanding. So, great when... nightcrawler is repelled by the like horror of the situation he's like it's like i looked through the gate of hades you're he's a catholic why is he talking about yeah what are you talking about you're allowed to say hell it's in the bible and hades is not There is a lot of ah a lot of Kurt Christian imagery in this in the larger grand scheme of this comic, though. And as a person who has not really engaged with the X-Men outside of the movies for the past 25 years, yeah ah i would I completely forgot that part of his character and how deeply religious he is. Yeah. I mean, in the what is it in the early 2000s, he becomes a priest? like
00:29:06
Speaker
they Some people really lean into... hurts catholicism And it's usually pretty boring. ah This is more than we're used to, though. Like we don't usually in the Claremont era see him turn this ah this heavily to his faith. Page five is by ed Bryant and Brent Anderson. ah The artists were Joe Sinnott, Phil Felix and Bob Sharon.
00:29:32
Speaker
And the recap is Logan and Storm carry Kitty inside while Kurt, Rachel, and Rogue scan for whatever caused this using their abilities. But there's no sign of a foreign presence anywhere.
00:29:43
Speaker
Logan can feel something. Call it instinct. An itch at the base of my skull. And assures everyone the entity is still here. Thank you for doing a Wolverine voice. Yeah, you got it.
00:29:56
Speaker
i Marvel, hire me. It's the next Wolverine. Yeah. This is, um, this is mostly, so we have ed Bryant here. ah he is a science fiction author of the seventies and eighties. He's mostly known for his short stories.
00:30:14
Speaker
he helped to usher in sort of the new wave of science fiction. He is a longtime friend and collaborator of Harlan Ellison. Um, he was a cool dude. He was a big deal at the time. And then Brent Anderson, uh, was the artist from God Loves Man Kills.
00:30:31
Speaker
Remember? Yeah. And he kind of helped start the arc of good guy Magneto. And now he gets to draw him here. Weird, though, that they're giving it seems like this was more of a sort of a transitional thing. Every time we see Ed Bryant, I think he gets three separate pages. But yeah it's all him just being like, OK, just so just so we're clear, let's let's recap where everybody's at right now. Yeah, he's table setting.
00:31:00
Speaker
Pages six to eight are Louise Simonson, drawn by John Byrne, and with Terry Austin, Mike Higgins, and Petra Skatis. Unsure of what to do next, Kurt and Peter relax by the pool. Peter is swimming laps when a towel wraps around his head, pulling him under and smothering him. He turns to Colossus and storms after Nightcrawler, who he assumes did it as a prank.
00:31:27
Speaker
Oh, man, my friends are always trying to drown me as a prick. Only to find the mansion, a towering metal, so metal citadel. The X-Men appear all metal as well. And they tell him that the metal protects them from feelings and pain and humanity.
00:31:42
Speaker
They cover him in metal plates as he and he feels free for of sorrow. Then it disappears and he collapses to the ground crying. I personally really enjoyed um the towel attacking him because I could not figure out what it was. i was like, is that a worm? is that?
00:31:59
Speaker
thought it was a monster. Yeah. It was two or three panels. And it was only when it was like, it was only when i think we got a thought bubble of, of him being like, The towel's attacking me. That I was like, oh, oh okay. ah And like I do like the idea of a world where anything can happen. And like the the sort of mechanized ah X-Men are somewhat unsettling.
00:32:22
Speaker
i just feel like there were so many other... ah Anything else could have attacked them yeah It's so bizarre. They're just it's the X-Men, but shiny. It's a pretty thin metaphor, I think. There's also so there's a moment when the tower shoots up in front of him over a matter of seconds, and the narrator compares it to what a time lapse video of wheat growing out of the ground. Apparently, Peter, who's a former wheat farmer. saw a video of this and he was, it says, excited and unsettled by it.
00:32:55
Speaker
okay he's He's disgusted by the idea of lapse wheat videos. the theres The metaphor that runs through this that Louise Simonson weaves in is that Kurt and Peter are for some reason talking about the Wizard of Oz.
00:33:12
Speaker
a Like, Kurt calls him Tin Man, and then they just kind of like bounce back and forth about how Kurt's been watching too much of Wizard and of And he's like, I wish I didn't have heart. As he say, I wish I didn't have a brain. He's like, i wish I wish I didn't have a brain or I wish I didn't have a heart. I think and I have to deal with all of this.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, right. And then that's what the theme of these couple pages ends up being. And he's like, no, I am a human. Oh, I don't want to be a tin man. But for the moment, it's like, why are they talking about fucking Wizard of Oz for five? this Again, it's the the metaphor is thin. yeah It's not going to get any thicker.
00:33:52
Speaker
No. i Let's keep going. Page nine. and We're back to. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I just want to I just want to add one thing. When he's turning metal, Storm says the world is a hard place and we got to be hard, too. And I just want to note that that is the theme of the X-Men at this time in 1985, too. That is what they're yeah yeah talking about. And it'll only get more after the mutant massacre.
00:34:19
Speaker
Sounds bleak. Yeah, pretty bleak. Let's keep going. Page nine. We're back to Ed Bryant and Brent Anderson. Missed these guys. Dan Green, Phil Felix and Bob Sharon.
00:34:30
Speaker
a Storm, the real Storm, lets us know that Peter has collapsed in tears. She lets Magneto know that Peter appears to be the second victim of this mysterious enemy.
00:34:41
Speaker
They both feel helpless. No time for that now, though, as the first victim, Kitty, is back to form and starving. welline This is such an odd couple of pages. Wolverine's scarfing down a banana.
00:34:57
Speaker
Nothing will make me feel better like my favorite soup. favorite soup and That's not your soup. There's a whole soup aside going on. And then Kurt's like, are you high? Because anybody who talks about her famous chicken soup that much is definitely high.
00:35:19
Speaker
Oh, man. I can't keep my eyes off this Wolverine just housing this banana. He doesn't even have dialogue in this whole sequence because he's just there like... He's just eating the banana. Incredible that it took us only nine pages to get to...
00:35:34
Speaker
a really inappropriate use of the word starving considering the context of this. Oh my God. Yes. ah Alex, you want to take us to the yeah next one? This one's a little treat.
00:35:47
Speaker
All right. So this one is ah Stephen King and Bernie Wrightson with Jeff Jones, Tom Orzakowski. How'd do? i do Yeah. And Purvis-D. Sheel. Kitty walks off to the fridge to get some food when a large cloaked man with withered hands stops her.
00:36:03
Speaker
He touches her face and she suddenly appears to be dying of starvation, begging the man for food. He hands her a delicious plate of corn, mashed potatoes, and steak, but when she touches it, it rots, maggots sprouting from its decay. He pulls his hood back to reveal a rotting skeletal face and tells her his name is Hungry.
00:36:23
Speaker
Really takes the edge off of it. And then she collapses in fear and starvation as Nightcrawler arrives to help. I didn't realize these were the Stephen King pages, but that's so on the nose. They were like, yeah you got to have a spooky part. Let's bring Stephen King in to do the good to do the guy that looks like death.
00:36:39
Speaker
And he just wants to do like he just wants this death guy to be making puns and goofy little, like he's he says, ah good food, good meat, good God, let's eat. like he's just like right It's so Stephen King to just do something so stupid and scary at the same time. I mean, Creepshow wasn't too far in the rearview mirror for him at this point. Yeah, yeah. He was like, well, I'm in the i'm in the comic milieu. I will do some Crypt Keeper jams right here. He's yeah he's doing his – he introduces himself as the miseries – as miseries maitre d', the chef of starvation, waiter to the waifs of the world, hash slinger to the homeless. Yeah.
00:37:19
Speaker
which is extremely Crypt Keeper. um Absolutely. So apparently they asked Stephen King to write three pages of a comic book and he returned with 5,000 words. So Chris Claremont and Ando Senti had to cut it down to the like 500 or so that we get. He wrote a New Yorker feature when they told him to write a collection things over there.
00:37:42
Speaker
I want to see that fucking script, though, so bad. Oh, God, it would be awesome. And the art of here is incredible. This is the first moment of this comic where the art is kind of breathtaking, where you're like, holy shit.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yep, art is Bernie Wrightson, who is the co-creator of Swamp Thing with Len Wein. Did some a lot of horror adaptations, some really cool adaptations of...
00:38:06
Speaker
Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft. He did the comic adaptations of the Creepshow movie. Oh. And about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Okay. so So him and Stephen King maybe already knew each other at this point. Yeah, I'm sure they at least shook hands.
00:38:21
Speaker
So pages 13 and 14, Bill Mantlo. Oh, no. ah And Charlie, Charles Vess. I guess he's going by Charlie Vest here. He's not quite the Charles Vest that we will eventually know. But Jahi Muth, Janice Chang, and Christy Scheel also work on this one. It's Kurt's turn to meet Hungry he's transported to the past when he tries to attend to Kitty. He finds himself living through his own painful memories, his parents abandoning him, being raised in the circus, having to kill his brother.
00:38:52
Speaker
His faith starts to falter when an angel appears to him, offering him redemption for the whole world. All he has to do is crucify himself. He rejects the idea as blasphemy, but the angel guilts him about living comfortably while so many go hungry.
00:39:07
Speaker
And besides, she asks, who would miss a demon like him? As the X-Men watch, he collapses.
00:39:16
Speaker
I'm a little confused about hungry's motivations here. Oh, can't understand why. but I'm sure we'll figure it out by the end of the Well, okay, yeah. What is your understanding at this point?
00:39:30
Speaker
I mean, it seems like what he's trying, like, if I were to take Hungry's behavior just on face value, yeah he's trying to reveal himself to them so they can go have a fight, right?
00:39:43
Speaker
Like, it seems like he's, like, right tormenting them a little bit so that they can figure out who he is and go fight him. But they don't pretty class. I don't. But like, I don't think that that hungry actually wants to fight the X-Men because the X-Men will inevitably kick it its butt.
00:40:01
Speaker
yeah And if like he is feeding off of famine and misery, why is he guilting the X-Men so much about not doing more for famine? Right.
00:40:12
Speaker
Like if they. Why is he talking to the X-Men in the first place? They're actually loaded with cash. Right. Yeah, this is a weird one. This is, I think, where, well, if the premise hadn't fallen fallen apart yet, this is this is definitely the moment like where as there's you can't read this and not start to go, wait what the fuck is happening? What is this, Amel?
00:40:36
Speaker
And of course, it's ah Bill Mantlo. It's quite a drop-off coming directly from Stephen King. It's okay. Bill Mantlo does not make fun of people with disabilities in these ah two pages. It's his only piece of writing where he ever hasn't.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, that had to be difficult. Okay, let's keep moving. We go back to Ed Bryant and Brent Anderson on page 15 with Tom Palmer, Phil Felix, and Bob Sharon.
00:41:03
Speaker
Magneto prepares to use Cerebro to find the entity as Rogue searches the air. Wolverine tries to scent the creature on the ground, and Phoenix scans psychically. Storm, meanwhile, tends to the victims in the medical wing.
00:41:17
Speaker
Just another checking in. Okay. not much to talk Nothing to say about here. But, you know, this next one is, I think we're going to have a lot to talk about. I'm getting all the good ones. I get all the good recaps. Yeah, you sure are.
00:41:32
Speaker
Pages 16 through 18 are Alan Moore ah with Richard Corbin, Jim Novak, and Michelle Wrightson. and the recap is Magneto irreverently dons the cerebral helmet, but can't sense the presence of an enemy.
00:41:44
Speaker
A grotesque monster appears in front of him anyway and punches him right in the brain. Suddenly he's lying on a battlefield while troops around him chant glory to Magneto. Toad and masterminds tell him he's victorious,
00:41:57
Speaker
that they've finally wiped out that they finally wiped out every human. He's joined and praised by the rest of the old brotherhood, Wolverine, the Morlocks, and even Hitler.
00:42:08
Speaker
I didn't know that he was part of the old brotherhood. I didn't know he was a mutant. They demand a victory speech and a dazed Magneto tries to deliver one. But as he speaks, hundreds of human corpses rise from the ground, overwhelming the army of mutants and surrounding Magneto.
00:42:24
Speaker
As they overwhelm him too, he reflects on all the innocent blood he shed. I did not even have the right to scream. He says, as the corpses tear him to pieces. Holy shit.
00:42:35
Speaker
Whew. So this was what I was talking about at the beginning, like the one place where they had Alan Moore is like, hey, rather than just patting ourselves on the back for caring about starving children in Africa, let's talk about the root causes here.
00:42:51
Speaker
This is our fault. This is all colonialism. This is exactly what we did to the African people um as Europeans conquered that continent.
00:43:03
Speaker
I think these pages are really effective, actually. It is extremely Alan Moore. And yeah, ah just a critique of colonialism in general and ah reminding folks that it's it's actually genocide.
00:43:19
Speaker
And Magneto like falters while he's giving a speech. He's like, and there's like even the dash. He's like, and even if it were otherwise, there are none left to accuse us. like That history is written by the victors thing.
00:43:32
Speaker
um that everyone's praising him but the truth is when you build even a glorious empire on suffering that's always going to come back to haunt you in some ways like and but he has blob say it like ah we had to zap most of their crops and animals but that's our kids problem they'll deal with it one day yeah yeah really haunting They give Alan Moore three pages and he fucking makes the comic good. But that doesn't last for very long. No. Yeah, what did you think of these pages, Alex?
00:44:09
Speaker
i One of the things I really liked about these pages in particular is how sort of ghoulish all of these semi-recognizable characters to me were. Yes. Like, they made Toad look so horrifying. And the blob looks really weird and gross, and he's, like, shirtless for some reason. Yeah, he's only shirtless. He's gulping down a ah burger.
00:44:32
Speaker
And... um And like everybody's faces are kind of like funhouse mirror distended and big and weird looking. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Richard Corbin at the time was doing a lot of illustrations for Heavy Metal magazine, the artist on these panels. So it it tracks that this is really like kind of gross and cartoony in a ah grotesque way.
00:44:56
Speaker
Also, what an extreme high seeing Toad for the first time in 10 years and then immediately seeing Hitler and getting to that extreme low. Yeah.
00:45:07
Speaker
um Yeah, I think this is the only time Alan Moore and Richard Corbin worked together, but Alan Moore praises Richard Corbin all like all the time. So it's interesting, I think.
00:45:19
Speaker
Yeah, very good. It's also... So this is one of the ones that Oxfam apparently specifically said was disgusting. And ha there were is You can see when corpses rise from the dead, they're clearly, for the most part, um African corpses. They're in Africa, so it's African people being raised.
00:45:45
Speaker
I can see there's some like exaggerated racial features, I guess. Yeah. There's also a lot of spears lying around, which has some implications. It's zam i I get it.
00:45:58
Speaker
It's ah just a shame because I think this was the most poignant, poignant take in the whole comic. And yeah, so yeah, it's a shame that there's this sort of imagery in it.
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right. So pages 19 and 21, we'll move on to Annosentia and Mike Kaluta, Al Milgram, Lois Buchalis, and Glynis Oliver.
00:46:21
Speaker
Work on this one. This is we know her very well as Glynis Ween. Unfortunately, the Glynis and lyn love story has come to an end. Aw. In her room, Phoenix is scanning for the entity when suddenly she feels the entire world's thoughts invade her head. As she struggles against it, she finds herself back in the future as a hound.
00:46:41
Speaker
She's overwhelmed by guilt and dozens of identical Rachels surround her, calling her a traitor, a Judas, a murderer. She begs for forgiveness when her mom, Jean Grey, appears as the Dark Phoenix.
00:46:52
Speaker
Rachel wants to make her mom proud and Phoenix says all she has to do is alleviate the world's suffering by killing everyone and then blasts Rachel in a burst of flame.
00:47:05
Speaker
yeah okay ah
00:47:11
Speaker
Yep. A couple interesting notes about the staff here. and they sent tv we know her as an ex-editor already. She does a lot of the ah the titles we're reading. She also has a great run on Daredevil as a writer in the 80s. She co-creates Longshot, Mojo, Tyson, and Mary, and puts like some of those stories into...
00:47:33
Speaker
Have we talked about? Okay, so since we're recording this out of order, i have to check. Have we talked about Longshot yet? No, we're about to talk about her Longshot miniseries. And man, is it fucking weird. Awesome. i And then Mike Kaluta, the artist, wow pretty generic comic book artist, but he is the godfather of Brennan Lee Mulligan.
00:47:52
Speaker
What? the yeah The host of Dimension 20 on Dropout TV. Yeah, one those Dropout comedians. Oh, Nepo baby. Yeah,
00:48:06
Speaker
yeah there's not much to say about this one either. It's it's it's pretty much what Rachel Summers is always going through um in most of her appearances up to this point. And it's it's functional.
00:48:19
Speaker
It's my turn to get a good one. Oh, yeah. Like my two least favorite people together at last. harlanm frank miller ah i Page 22 to 24 is, yes, Harlan Ellison and Frank Miller inks by Bill Kincinkevich, which is ah is very cool.
00:48:39
Speaker
And that is very cool. But it doesn't I mean, it does not come through. Really? no The trademark Bill Sienkiewicz style does not does not come through in in ah these particular panels. Not at all. to inform it I think, not to be a full nerd, but I think it does put a little extra detail into Frank Miller's art, which he isn't always great with. Like, he he seems to be doing a lot of broad strokes here. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But, yeah, it's ah it's definitely Frank Miller's work. Yeah.
00:49:10
Speaker
ah Wolverine stalks the property, only able to sense the enemy through his instinct. Things go dark and cold and he can smell his own fear. He finds himself suddenly nude and powerless, vulnerable and human.
00:49:25
Speaker
There's a schism in the narration blocks alternating from normal and yellow to red and menacing as he finds himself confronted with a faceless demonic form of the Wolverine, his id personified.
00:49:39
Speaker
The two fight, Logan finding himself no match for the might and sharp claws of his inner animal. But that all changes when Logan pulls a unicorn trap maneuver, unicorn trap getting the Wolverine's claws stuck in a tree and then using his leverage to turn its own claws against itself. The animal is defeated and Wolverine stands victorious and psychically intact.
00:50:02
Speaker
Was Wolverine at this point, just like Wolverine, as we know him today, like the the hottest shit in the X-Men, uh, franchise. And so they had to make him do cool stuff. Like yeah let him get his ass kicked.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yes. And like Rachel Summers, almost all of his stories are about this exact thing, the animal versus the man. And am I really an animal or, or am I really a man or I'm an, am I an animal?
00:50:27
Speaker
Um, There's some funny captions here as he's transforming where if they say, ah they just they do specify here, a naked Logan. Yeah, yeah.
00:50:41
Speaker
And this is a talks about all the things that made him a mutant changing to human. They say, hair normal. no That fucked up hair is a mutant power, actually. Yeah, it's like, I don't think Marvel wanted us to think of his hair as super weird. yeah i think they but ah according to this, yeah, as soon as he's not a mutant anymore, his hair's just fucking normal.
00:51:08
Speaker
um Unicorn trap is so funny because when i think of when I think of unicorn used anywhere outside of like, you know, children's fantasy, I think of um ah the its use in the kink community, which is meant to denote ah a person ah who is willing to engage a couple in a threesome. Yes.
00:51:31
Speaker
I was like, huh. Unicorn trap. He's going to capture for himself and then he's going get it down. i guess he's already found an alternate version of himself. He just needs one more.
00:51:45
Speaker
This is it. This was a conversation we were having Amityvilleville the other day. Like, what would you would you be sexually attracted to your clone? My co-host Caroline Thompson said yes, incredibly. And I called her a big nasty freak.
00:51:59
Speaker
You know, interesting. I think yes, mildly. I don't think I would. Not like a lot, but mildly. I would be interested in kind of hanging out with me. Kind of. Kind of. Like, well, a novelty. I tired me real fast. But I would be like, oh, this guy's fucking insufferable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When's he going to stop complaining?
00:52:25
Speaker
ah ah But like if I were going to have if i were to have a threesome... i My, the ideal third would be a genetic, an exact clone of myself. I just don't think I'd interact that much.
00:52:41
Speaker
Okay. I can get down with that. That makes sense. That's fair. um That's what we've decided to talk about here. That's a very fair and rational way to look at it, Matt. So, this is such a weird, the other weird thing about this is it's all done in captions, um but there's dialogue, and Yeah, the narrator is like telling us what the dialogue, which might be a symptom of having an actual writer to writing this instead of a comic book writer. Yeah. um And clearly trying to mimic like the the caption heavy internal dialogue stuff that Frank Miller does with Wolverine. Frank Miller and Chris Claremont do with Wolverine. But um it's just weird that then there's dialogue in quotes and not in word balloons. Yeah.
00:53:31
Speaker
kind of just I felt it was strange. And I think the question that Harlan Ellison is asking here is so I was making fun of that. It's like the idea that every Wolverine appearance at this point is the beast versus the man. But the other thing he's asking here is a little bit more interesting, which is, is Logan really a tough guy?
00:53:52
Speaker
is he just got powers? Yeah. And I think it would have been more interesting if the answer was, no, he's not. And if Wolverine had beat Logan's ass, I think that would have been a more interesting little sequence. I don't know what you guys think.
00:54:06
Speaker
I wasn't smart enough to catch the subtext, so. Well, I think he's so, so much. ah That would be interesting, but I don't think editorial would ever allow something like that.
00:54:21
Speaker
Because he's like the, everything we've seen of Wolverine so far is like the Clint Eastwood, stoic locked jaw. Yeah. This would be a good death type.
00:54:33
Speaker
Harlan Ellison, by the way, if you don't know, i' I would say just read up on the guy. He's very influential in fifties and sixties sci-fi credited as a leader of that new wave science fiction or speculative fiction movement. Right. Uh,
00:54:49
Speaker
like him or dislike him, his personal life is fascinating. He's kind of known as one of the biggest assholes in the literary world and has been for like 30 to 50 years. He's a, he's notoriously litigious. He's but held onto people's people's, uh, um,
00:55:07
Speaker
unpublished short stories for decades, refusing to publish them. um But he is also, his hands are literally on everything. He wrote for Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, everything. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. he What's largely considered the best episode of Star Trek, right?
00:55:25
Speaker
ah Yes, yes. I'm forgetting the name of it. too. I'm not following Star Trek. Yeah. one of the one of the star trek
00:55:34
Speaker
I think he wrote ah he also wrote some Next Generation stuff. And, of course, he wrote I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, which is like an incredibly famous short story. Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:55:45
Speaker
And a mediocre point-and-click graphic adventure game. Oh, right. Doesn't it have like H.R. Giger style? Yes. is definite another Yeah, yes. Yeah, yeah. No, I think you're right. It's it's very – I don't know.
00:55:59
Speaker
H.R. Giger have something to do with it? It's got H.R. Giger style art for sure, but –
00:56:05
Speaker
um ah Anyway. Anyway. He also fought Frank Sinatra. but Physically? i think it was I think it was strictly verbal and maybe a little pushing, but apparently Frank Sinatra commented on his shoes and he was like, fuck you.
00:56:25
Speaker
ah Wild guy. That's like the kind of thing that will get you murdered by the mafia. I don't know why. i was a like All right. Pages 25 and 26, Chris Claremont and Brian Boland.
00:56:43
Speaker
And this says Craig Russell. And then in parentheses, is this P Craig Russell? And you guys are going to fill me in on that one. sorry So, yeah. Yeah. Pat filled in all these credits and I saw Craig Russell and I didn't know Pete Craig Russell is like an incredible incredible artist he does all sorts of cool stuff like later like like in the 80s into the 90s and I didn't I didn't realize that he started as just an inker Hmm.
00:57:13
Speaker
Anyway, sorry. And then also Lois Buhalis and Glynis Oliver. And ah Storm is in some kind of carnival funhouse as a tall carnival barker dressed in white shouts at her to follow him into the House of Mirrors.
00:57:28
Speaker
As she does, he taunts her for being powerless and unable to lead the X-Men. In the distorted funhouse mirrors, she sees various images of herself, a pregnant earth mother with curlers in her hair, an all-American cheerleader dancing with pom-poms, a happy homemaker baking a cake with horn-rodened glasses, a free spirit in the form of a literal a literal pixie, a wanton laying on a bed in a red lace negligee.
00:57:53
Speaker
yeah And she yells stop as she's suddenly in bondage gear. She's not a toy or a plaything, she tells him, returning to normal. It's then that she gets hit in the face with a pie.
00:58:04
Speaker
ah It's a weird one, but that's a good ending gag. Yeah, was. So this is one of the ones where ah Oxfam also got on them. um There's i think every picture of Storm here is like a a fetish picture. There's Well, yeah, Chris Claremont is so horned up for Storm at all times. Yeah, yeah.
00:58:34
Speaker
But like she's in a cheerleader outfit. She's got the one image where she's got a real big belly and breasts. She's ah baking a cake in like cat eye glasses. She's nude as a pixie. She's dressed as a harlot. She's dressed in bondage gear like it's I want to say harlot literal harlot like when they used to call them harlots. That's that's this is the imagery that they used. Yeah, yeah.
00:58:58
Speaker
It's wild that they gave Chris Claremont only two pages, but if this is what he was going to do with them, maybe was for the best. Yeah. And granted, he did he did plot the whole thing. But yeah, I mean, this is just Claremont's horniness for Storm all over the page.
00:59:16
Speaker
This was an odd couple of pages. I was um every time I see something like this, and especially in this particular sort of era of comics where they don't really ah interrogate the sort of horniness that ah appears on the page. It's just like, yeah, oh, yeah, it's horniness for horniness sake. I'm like, come on, come on, guys. There's there's always the the one.
00:59:40
Speaker
I wouldn't say redeeming attribute, but the the one consistent attribute with Chris Claremont is that he gives them a story reason to be mostly nude. So in this case, it's just the villain is making her nude. Yeah, yeah it's a very thin story reason, but it is. Okay.
00:59:58
Speaker
Pages 27 and 28 are Joe Duffy and John Bolton ah with Ron Zalm. Oh, yeah. John Bolton does his own inks here. He also does his own lettering, which is fascinating. That's like, that's indie comics shit. ah a Storm chases the pie thrower down a hallway into a big circus tent where she finds a mountain of pies. Another pie hits her square in the face and her enemy reveals itself to be a clown, taunting her, daring her to join the food fight.
01:00:28
Speaker
In a rage, she picks up a pie herself and prepares to get violent. but is suddenly surrounded by images of starving people drawn in stark contrasting black and white inks. She realizes her mistake, this food can help people, but she's only been seeing it as a weapon. The clown demands war, but Aurora starts giving the pies to the starving people instead.
01:00:48
Speaker
Interesting. I loved this because this is written exquisite corpse style. And if you're Joe Duffy, what are you given to work with here? The last thing you saw was storm getting hit in the face with a pie.
01:01:02
Speaker
You have to figure out how to write a way out of this. I think saying like, Oh yeah, we're using food as a weapon when we should be using it to feed people is like, it's a pretty apt and ah one level deeper metaphor than most of this comic goes for.
01:01:19
Speaker
Also, this was a sort of the gaunt people in these illustrations did not hit the same way as once we actually get to Africa in this comic, which feels ah orders of magnitude more more tasteless. Right. Here. Yeah. Yeah.
01:01:37
Speaker
They kind of, they're more like, they're like less, they're less, they're less meant to look, represent starving African children than they are to represent sort of ghostly withering figures. Right. And it feels a lot.
01:01:51
Speaker
And like, I really liked the actual art of that, that character. Yeah. best character It's very like stark black and white. It's inks only. I think um giving giving the story to Storm is also kind of poignant because, right, like her powers, her powers specifically can be used as a weapon or used to bring literal life, right? So that must be something she actually struggles with internally. Like, I think this was a very thoughtful little piece. Yeah.
01:02:22
Speaker
Also very funny to see Storm wielding a pie in a rage. So angry too. Yeah. Moving along, we'll talk about pages 29 to 30 by Mike Barron and Steve Rood. ah Also Carl Potts, Diana Albers and Maurice Everin. Storm comes to in the medical bay.
01:02:44
Speaker
shaken but full of resolve. She wakes the X-Men and lectures them out of their feelings of hopelessness. They must resist this entity which twists their innermost selves. While Rogue wonders why it hasn't hit her yet, Storm and Wolverine stir everyone into action. They're going after the entity and Rachel thinks she knows where it is.
01:03:05
Speaker
I think it's it's interesting to note, I didn't when it was their segments, but it's interesting to note that Storm and Wolverine are the only two who overcome the entity in there right in their stories. Yeah, yeah.
01:03:17
Speaker
The favorite characters. Yeah. ah ah The thing that i felt when i during this particular segment was just like... You know, I feel like a good version of Exquisite Corpse is kind of doing a yes and and building on top of a thing. ok But, you know, we've got all these traumatized characters and and then we're just and then the and then Wolverine and Storm just go, cut it out. And they're like, all right, trauma over. Let's solve a problem. It's time for part two of the comic, guys.
01:03:45
Speaker
Well, you might be delighted to know that ah Mike Barron, the writer, absolutely sucks. We can dunk on this guy a bunch if we want to. He and Steve Rude, the artist, worked together on a series called Nexus at the time, which was fairly popular, and they were kind of borrowed from that. But Mike Barron went on to ah start making and crowdfunding a bunch of right-wing comics in the early 2020s. He, like, joined that side of Comicsgate and made a bunch of, like, ah Blue Lives Matter comics.
01:04:19
Speaker
Really fucking sucks. that's A gripping novel, a gripping and explosive graphic novel from Mike Barron and artist Richard Bonk called The Private American. I'm all Yeah. Yeah. He's got one called Florida Man. Also, like, man.
01:04:34
Speaker
i only try Private American, it seems, is a vigilante who is killing the Mexican drug cartel. Great. Yeah. There's a lot of like human traffickers that pop up in that one, too. I think it's cheese great. Great.
01:04:48
Speaker
Great. I only know Mike Barron as like ah the Punisher guy. He was like the main Punisher guy in the, I guess, late 80s, around this time, probably. Yeah, a little later than this, I think. Oh, OK. Not not too far out. Which tracks when when Punisher was before Punisher was ever interesting in any way. It was just a guy who shot, quote unquote, criminals.
01:05:15
Speaker
Page 31 and 32, Denny O'Neill with Brett Blevins, Al Williamson, Janice Chang, and Dinah Grzyunas. That was the best I'm going to do on that one.
01:05:26
Speaker
um The Blackbird shoots eastward through the sky as all the X-Men on board quietly reflect on their fear of the psychic entity. Rogue especially. She's the only one that hasn't had to face it yet and imagines it's because it has something even worse in store for her.
01:05:41
Speaker
The plane comes to a landing in the precise location of Africa where the X-Men wearing desert robes and kiffy is find a village of hundreds of starving people.
01:05:53
Speaker
They're torn on whether they should stay and try and help these people, despite there being so little they can do or continue pursuing the entity.
01:06:03
Speaker
Goes way off the rails here. We're here, guys. Africa. This is really tough one. this is I think this is maybe the most racist one, right?
01:06:13
Speaker
Yes. um There's a bunch of starving, quote, Africans. They are either nude or wrapped in just rags. Yeah, yeah. it's And, like, there's nothing...
01:06:28
Speaker
On any horizon, it is just a vast desert with one hut built in the middle. Yeah, as if that's where people live, as if people live in the middle of a desert with nothing around them in one hut, which has like 19 people crowded into it I did like that they drew Wolverine wearing like a Bedouin like ah like ah head covering, and you can see the points of his mask poking it up. I thought that was a really funny touch. Yeah, um he does look like Batman. It's great.
01:07:04
Speaker
But really, there's not much to recommend for this particular... This entire scene, which goes on for a few more pages, is really just... It's like poverty porn for middle-class Americans. That's a great word for it. Yeah, 100%.
01:07:21
Speaker
Speaking of the next couple pages, they're written by George R.R. Martin. It's 33 to 35. And drawn by Herb Trimpe. Yeah. Plus Sal Buscema, John Costanza, and Glynis Oliver.
01:07:32
Speaker
A carrier plane arrives with supplies for the starving Africans and lands close to the mass of people. They're moving too fast, though, and the blades are likely to cut the crowd to ribbons. So the X-Men spring into action to save everyone.
01:07:45
Speaker
Then they begin unloading supplies, feeding the hungry, comforting the dying, burying the dead, and entertaining the children, whatever they can do to help. What to introduce superhero conflict. They're just like, oh, the plane is moving too fast and the crowd is pushing its way towards the the the blade crowd is running into a jet engine. We have to help them.
01:08:11
Speaker
And so ah what's his name? Nightcrawler tries to teleport them, but it's too many people to teleport. um He says, I've never tried to teleport this many people, which seems weird. Like he's been around for a minute. Seems like he would have done that by now. and then And then ah and then ah Rachel comes along and is like, I can use my psychic abilities to keep these people away from this ah plane propeller. Yeah. um So that's kind of how it goes. it She builds.
01:08:42
Speaker
Now I'm no scientist, but okay she builds a force field in front of the jet engine while it's still the propellers are spinning at full speed. That's going to cause some issues, isn't it?
01:08:54
Speaker
Yeah. That's going to break some shit. That's going to cause a vacuum. Oh, I see what you're saying. George R.R. Martin. Number one, name Stan Lee is one of his greatest influences. interesting Interesting. He says more than Shakespeare, Stan Lee inspired him. He had several letters published in 60s Fantastic Four issues. You can find those online. They're great.
01:09:19
Speaker
At this time, he was mostly just a short story writer and TV writer. He was writing for the Twilight Zone revival. he wrote for the short-lived Max Headroom series. I loved that show. yeah I never saw it, but i this was doing this research, I was like, oh, they made a show out of that? It's really odd. It's like super dark. And it's set in this like this like dystopian future. That's very Robocopy. Okay. And the folks that were doing most of the creation and design of it were the people who went on to make the ill-fated Super Mario Brothers movie in like 92. Oh, wow. Yes.
01:10:00
Speaker
So they they wanted they were they wanted to make so like they made this like dark dystopian world with Max Hedrum. And then they wanted to do something similar with Super Mario. And then of course, ah Nintendo did not want them to do that. course, he like yeah. So it was constant fighting and they were rewriting on the fly. There is a lot of very well-documented, interesting stuff about how that production not only fucked up the movie, but also like totally destroyed their careers. I had no idea. That's fascinating. Yeah. So if you ever get a chance, I think there's a BuzzFeed feature from like 10 years ago. That's them interviewing the directors. They were a husband and wife and they completely ruined their careers trying to make this fiasco of a Super Mario Brothers movie. That's that's amazing.
01:10:49
Speaker
But they started on the on the ah Max Hedrum show, which I loved. heard I'm going to find it. In that show, it wasn't like Max Hedrum was the silly guy who sells coke. He was the consciousness of a reporter that was uploaded to a to like the globally connected internet and is now just like causing trouble for this mega corporation that's trying to rule the world.
01:11:14
Speaker
very interesting yeah and yeah okay i'm 100 sold oh the other thing i think we we should say about this is that um herb trimpey actually gives people like real clothes like actual clothes maybe a little stereotypical still but it's better than the fucking rags that brett blevens drew yeah that's true And there's an interesting thing here where um Colossus almost gives up because he's like, this is never ending. We're never going to save. We're never going to like defeat the idea of hunger. And Wolverine is like, hey, glory can wait, bub. This is more important.
01:11:58
Speaker
so Glory can wait, bub. This is more important. Excellent. Which is an interesting sort of philosophical concept, right? Like, hey, success, like triumphing over the thing that you are fighting is for you, right? That's that's about you and your glory and your ego actually doing the helping, the process of it.
01:12:21
Speaker
is what we're here for. That's about them. And that's about the people you're helping. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's an interesting, don't little philosophical bit. It's George R.R. Martin is hell. That's true. You're right.
01:12:35
Speaker
All right. Let's get into pages 36 and 37 by Bruce Jones and Gray Morrow. Gray Morrow also inked. We have Joe Rosen and Annusenti doing colors, which I just got to say stands out there. She's not a natural colorist.
01:12:50
Speaker
yeah After days of effort, the X-Men are finding that they've barely made a dent on the starvation problem. Rogue tries to feed a boy soup, but he's too weak to even eat and dies in her arms.
01:13:03
Speaker
That's not your soup. That's not your soup. It's too much for her. It's too much for her. She remembers why they came here in the first place. If she can't solve world hunger, she can at least take down the entity.
01:13:17
Speaker
While the rest of the X-Men sleep, she absorbs each of their powers in preparation for battle. I hated that kid dying. I thought it was like the, probably my least favorite part of this comic. Right. Did you, yeah.
01:13:31
Speaker
Did you actually need that? Did you need to go that far? He died before he even touched. He was like going to touch her face. And we all know what happens if you touch rogue skin. But he died before he even touched me is what she says. And then she breaks down. um It's a it feels to me like it's like the most moral grandstanding bullshit I've ever read. Right. It's really just awful.
01:13:55
Speaker
Also, the artist clearly meant for Rogue to have accidentally killed this kid. And it was clearly like an editorial thing. Like, no. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. All right. Hold on.
01:14:09
Speaker
You have to write a line of dialogue that says he died before he touched your face. Yeah. This one's not... It's strange. Also, they go back to with the idea of rogue kissing people to absorb their powers, which was her origin.
01:14:24
Speaker
ah But they say through a combination of kissing and touching her teammates because she's not allowed to kiss the girls. It's 1985. Also, when she she absorbs the little boy's memories, she's like, all I saw in his in his brain was a lifeless, empty void.
01:14:43
Speaker
that That's so fucking dehumanizing. Like, wouldn't the better point there have been to talk about, like, oh, his his thoughts are just like mine, only he Like, this is what I would have thought and felt had I been here dying my whole life, rather than, like, oh, he's he's he's just a nothing. Oh.
01:15:04
Speaker
I thought it was because he was dead already that she was like, oh, I didn't get memories. I just got a black void. I thought, okay, maybe. And that would be better. But I thought it was saying something a little more problematic, which is just like, oh, because his life has just been starvation. He he doesn't have an inner life. Yeah, could be.
01:15:23
Speaker
I don't know which one it is. wouldn't put it past. Hopefully I'm wrong. But it sucks that I even would have to worry that they would do that. yeah hu And then Gray Morrow, the artist on this, is the co-creator of Man-Thing. There's our interesting fact.
01:15:41
Speaker
We got the co-creator Swamp-Thing and the co-creator of Man-Thing. Do you think that they they were unhappy to have to work together because of the blatant similarities between the two? Yes, yeah there is there's a lot of history there. There's so much. Yeah, the the controversy and the fighting about Man Thing and Swamp Thing is is wild.
01:16:03
Speaker
The two writers were roommates. Oh, No, that's bonkers. Yeah. throughout their life, both of them went back and forth about who stole. Whether they stole or whether it was just parallel thought. And it's clearly stole. They're 100% the same. Yeah, they're the same thing.
01:16:23
Speaker
I mean, they they differentiate themselves very quickly, like in terms of the characterization, but they're clearly the same thing. Yeah, yeah. yeah The same seed. Yeah. um This is me, right?
01:16:37
Speaker
Oh, no, this is Alex. I think this is Alex. Yeah, yeah. Every time. I'm the only person who can handle this. that the show I can't count to three. Pages 38 39. Steve Englehart with Paul.
01:16:53
Speaker
Can you guys, can I get a pronouncer on this? google i say Goulacy. Goulacy. Bob Layton, Ron Zalmy, and George Russo's. Rogue, full of all the X-Men's powers, flies off against Storm's protestations.
01:17:08
Speaker
She finds a temple buried in the sand, and when she enters it, a green scaly creature attacks her. It grabs her skin, and she begins absorbing it, but it's too much. Um...
01:17:21
Speaker
I, I, I thought that the rogue, the rogue that has every X-Man's powers and is basically like each limb is its own X-Man. It looked pretty good. I thought that looked pretty cool.
01:17:35
Speaker
She's got like the blue fuzzy face. She's got the Colossus arm and the the other arm is Wolverine's arm. Okay, guys, but why did it change her clothes?
01:17:46
Speaker
um that's that's my only question here because that's because she's she's only got five limbs to change because it's fucking cool i guess yeah okay that's none of my business i just it's private maybe she stole all their costumes too and then sewed them together into just real quick yeah yeah this is just a just just a fight just a little i think it It is very rogue to be like, everybody's forgotten that there's a bad guy here, so I'm just going to go and take care of him.
01:18:20
Speaker
Right, yeah, very headstrong, very, what's the word? ah Impetuous. Yeah, impetuous. That's a good one. yeah She's also the only person who has not faced this thing's wrath yet. Right, right. She doesn't necessarily know what she's getting into.
01:18:38
Speaker
That's true. Right. This one written by Steve Englehart, you remember this guy? He had Richard Nixon in a Klan outfit shoot himself in the head in the Oval Office. Yes! That was so good.
01:18:50
Speaker
He is one of the keystones of like the 70s Mary Marvel bullpen era. And probably he and Steve Gerber are the most outspoken. The ones that ah that had a lot of a lot of fun weaving politics into their comics. And didn't he have to like promise whoever the edit was? Like Len Wein was the editor in chief at the time. and he had to promise that it wasn't actually Richard Nixon.
01:19:17
Speaker
yes yeah they don't they don't say the words president or richard nixon it's just there's a guy on in an oval shaped office wearing a clan outfit who shoots himself in the head and then like two years later in an interview he was like oh yeah that was richard nixon obviously it was richard nixon yeah Pages 40 and 41, Jim Stupid and Alan Weiss with Joe Rubenstein, John Morelli, and Christy Sheel. Jim Stupid finally puts pen to paper in this one. Oh, my God.
01:19:48
Speaker
ah Storm finds Rogue all fucked up looking in an ancient tomb, completely possessed by the entity, still with all of the X-Men's powers, too. The entity senses her also, and the two fight. Storm demands her friend Rogue back, but the entity has finally found a physical form and has no intention of going back.
01:20:07
Speaker
Storm runs from the entity, finding the tomb strangely familiar. She's able to navigate it with ease. The entity seems to recognize her too as one of the kind that tried to destroy her in ancient days. no.
01:20:20
Speaker
Storm wonders if this could be a genetic memory from her African ancestors.
01:20:29
Speaker
Catch her breaths. Yeah.
01:20:33
Speaker
But the entity eventually catches up to her and prepares to destroy her. Aurora reveals her plan through a thought bubble she's been stalling long enough, hopefully, for the X-Men to start waking up and regaining their powers.
01:20:45
Speaker
God damn it. He's just the absolute... This is why we don't say his name on the podcast. um ah Immediately, characters just start saying the metaphors out loud, too, as soon as he starts writing it.
01:20:59
Speaker
Uh... There's no subtlety here. right I want her body. It is a chore to manifest and maintain a physical body of my own. I do have to say, though, there there is a panel on page 41 of Possessed Rogue that is so cool looking. yeah she's like She's like bloated and she's got like sores all over her face and she's got fangs. She looks so good. It's really good.
01:21:27
Speaker
All the X-Men powers, but also two green tentacles waving out of her back. Yeah. The art here, yeah, is great. And... Even the action here is great. Storm lands a really awesome kick. I mean, it gets deflected, but like at least the artist could hear.
01:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's animated. They also Alan Weiss leans into her cat eyes feature to even at one point drawing them as like glowing in the dark.
01:21:55
Speaker
Oh, right, right. That's what that was. i I hadn't thought about why. I thought that was just a coloring mistake, but you're right. Yeah, it looks like she has laser eyes a little bit, but he's trying.
01:22:06
Speaker
He's also the co-creator of Calypso. okay Craven's on-again, off-again lover. oh and i youve This is one of my favorite ah Marvel facts is when they were doing Kiss comics, he was he was one of the artists.
01:22:21
Speaker
Very few people have penciled Kiss for Marvel.
01:22:27
Speaker
ah And they put their blood in the ink. that's the That's the old ah rumor that they that they spread. And I don't know if it's true or not. All right, we are in the homestretch, folks. Should I? yeah I also want to talk about the metaphor here is just like the point.
01:22:45
Speaker
Is that this is an ancient god who makes, quote, Africans starve. Like, that's who this guy is. That's who the villain's been. I'm like an ancient god mutant entity thing. And they, the Africans, again, fought him once and failed and then tried to appease him by creating this temple to him. And that didn't work.
01:23:07
Speaker
So he's just he's the one who's been making them starve all this time, which is first ridiculous, like oh absolutely absurd. But second of all, sort of like absolving the colonizers of any guilt and placing that guilt then on ah either a faceless non-existent entity or the African people themselves.
01:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, for having tried to banish it. Sucks. Well, yeah pretty gros not much more to say about that. yeah Yeah, let's get back to having fun. I think there's a fight next.
01:23:43
Speaker
Page 42 to 44. Mike Grell and Jackson Guichi, Steve Lealoha, Rick Parker and George Rousseau helping out. One by one, the X-Men awaken and begin to attack the creature inhabiting Rogue's body.
01:23:57
Speaker
With each one that awakes, the creature loses that X-Man's power. They eventually subdue it and free Rogue from its influence, but they can't defeat the entity itself. The entity is an ultimate primal mutant on the psychic plane who feeds off of human misery. Yeah.
01:24:14
Speaker
Just keep chucking more and more words in until somebody's like, okay, now it makes sense. Ultimate, primal, mutant on the psychic plane. Conclusion is that it will never go away.
01:24:29
Speaker
Yeah. I have a complaint and Matt yeah in a a fairly recent issue we got into this a bit. This is just a a blatant misunderstanding of how rogue's powers work.
01:24:41
Speaker
It is not like the power transfers ah collaboratively from the person she's absorbing from to her and then returns in proportion. like the the Right, that's how they're interpreting it here.
01:24:59
Speaker
The amount of time it takes, which I think one of the listeners argued with us about, should be proportional, right? So you would see somebody getting their powers back around the same time that Rogue lost hers. But across these last two chunks, she's very explicitly been like, oh When they wake up from being unconscious. When they wake up, I'll get my power back.
01:25:21
Speaker
They get their power back, and I lose Yeah, it's a very weird way to understand how Rogue's powers work. Right. It's not it's not just it's not an exchange.
01:25:32
Speaker
Right. It's not. Yeah, you're not you're not siphoning it from them while they're because they're asleep. um Yeah, not super exciting, but we do have a couple of big names here. We've met Jackson Butch Guichy before. He's been in new moot New Mutants. We debated the pronunciation of his name.
01:25:54
Speaker
i still say geese. It's he's also the co-creator of Resurrection Man in DC, which is interesting. Okay. i And then Mike Grell, our writer, actually in the 70s, worked with Denny O'Neill to relaunch the Green Arrow Green Lantern title. Absolutely legendary. He was drawing. He's writing here, but was drawing that. He's also responsible for the long Batman family title.
01:26:20
Speaker
That was the Longbow Hunters series, right? I think so. Yeah. Okay. but yeah this is this some yeah high quality comic folk on this one yeah and they just get a a weird fight scene okay let's see 40 pages 45 we're at the yeah end folks uh archie goodwin with howard chaykin walt simonson ken brusenak and leslie zoller The X-Men return to the starving village and relief flights continue pouring in. Despite their continued efforts, this village still starves and hunger kind of blending the entity in the real world. Problem here still exists all over the world.
01:27:03
Speaker
What was the point of even coming here? Storm tries to clarify, but Kitty has the winning argument here. Maybe if you're like Mother Teresa, you could spend your life here saving as many people as possible, but most of us aren't saints. I don't know if there is a way of winning.
01:27:16
Speaker
So maybe I'll just keep unloading these planes and try not to think about it. Not everyone's sold until they're gathered around the fire that evening when the metaphor comes together. After a few desperate attempts, a starving child in rogues arms finally gathers the strength to eat.
01:27:30
Speaker
He will live. All anyone can do is try to help one person at a time and hopefully inspire some hope.
01:27:39
Speaker
What do we think? What do we think about this? What do we think about this idea that it's like, well, this is a never ending problem. Unless we want to dedicate all our time to it, the best we can do is help when we can and then hope that it gets better one day.
01:27:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, through... now I was only four months old at this time, as we talked about, so this is... To the best of my memory... Yeah, what was your understanding when you read this comic at four months old?
01:28:08
Speaker
A big push in the 80s for like improving the world was ah collective individual action, right? It was like... if everybody starts recycling or if everybody stops using aerosol cans, we can save the environment, that sort of stuff. Maybe that was more like and late eighties, early nineties, but, and you know, we did eliminate, and we did reduce littering by like an an insane amount. We did ah reduce chlorofluorocarbons from aerosols to such an extent that the ozone layer isn't as big of a deal anymore.
01:28:45
Speaker
um we like The collective action in the 80s actually did a lot of good, to be honest. And to me, this is that's what they're applying here. They're saying like, hey, if everybody just does what they can ah around the world, we can solve world hunger, which isn't true. I think it's a lot more systemic than that. but Yes.
01:29:06
Speaker
um but Right, because there's not a shortage of food in the world. there is an unequal distribution of resources. Yeah, yeah. And it tends to happen in places that have been pretty heavily colonized.
01:29:23
Speaker
um Right. this this is a this a the The fault of this is colonization, which happened 100 years ago and continues to affect these places in myriad ways and probably will for generations ah to come. yeah And it is a solvable problem. It's not just, ah well, we should just keep unloading these aid trucks or these aid planes ah situation. but Yeah.
01:29:51
Speaker
ah that's a very pat pat ending to put on a thing that, uh, that could not be resolved by, um, the collective brilliance of all of these comic book artists. yeah ah Um, yeah. And again, the only one who really had the courage to say that out loud was Alan Moore. um But given that they're not going to call for global redistribution of resources or decolonization efforts or um reparations, right? they This is the only ending. thing i fucking This is the only fucking ending that they they have any ability to give. Well, not ability. That's wrong. No, they could have done the other thing. is that they They have the courage to do.
01:30:44
Speaker
i think. They make it's actually really interesting who they chose to end this year, especially considering that they chose Stan Lee to open it. ah Archie Goodwin has been with Marvel Comics for forever. At this point, he yeah was the writer on the original Iron Man series. So he doesn't get the creator credit, but he is the one that made the character as well as co-creating luke Cage, Spider Woman, Rachel Van Helsing, Right before Jim Stupid, he was editor in chief for a year when they he was like the last of that carousel of. event Yeah, when they had a different editor every few months. hum
01:31:24
Speaker
And so they chose him to be like, hey, we don't know what's going to happen. We're going to need you to find a way to end this based on. through everything that comes before.
01:31:36
Speaker
Just sort of their anchor to make sure that this does wrap up neatly. And then Howard Chaikin is like the opposite. He was he was mentored by Gil Kane and Neil Adams, which is awesome. Yeah. i But he didn't do a ton of work for Marvel. He did pencil Roy Thomas's comic adaptation of Star Wars, which is awesome. But at this time, he was doing indie comics. He was writing and drawing American Flag, which was a futuristic...
01:32:11
Speaker
consumerism satire that also had plenty of like cool action but it was mainly about like here's what the world is going to become because we are such gluttonous consumers So they grabbed like a a political indie guy to end it alongside Archie Goodwin.
01:32:32
Speaker
Right. Their hearts were in the right place, I think, but they were a couple of bumble. They were a bunch of bumble. Like this is a very of all the ideas to do a exquisite exquisite corpse style idea, ah like a premise with probably the worst one. yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. You could you could do a little less experimentation.
01:32:53
Speaker
I mean, this is just a bunch of white liberal, like capitalist neoliberals, right? I'm sure maybe that's not how all of them saw themselves entirely. But that's kind of what that's how this this whole thing reads. And um overall, so i think the the approach to it is fascinating, maybe misplaced, but it is.
01:33:14
Speaker
I love that they're trying something interesting here. And they also, part of the reason they did it was so, every piece of work here is donated. ah Nobody got paid for the work. So having people do like two to three pages at a time for free rather than 50 pages, i think makes sense.
01:33:36
Speaker
ah And everyone, it's I'm trying to pull the seeds of good out of here. Everybody is doing their best work here. Like people are clearly excited about this. I think the artists and the writers are both doing what they consider to be their best work, whether or not we consider it to be their best work is a different story, but like they're putting everything they have into this. It's just,
01:34:01
Speaker
it comes out as sort of a a pile of mashed potatoes. That's exquisite corpse, baby. and that's heroes for hope. Marvel's heroes for hope featuring the X-Men starring the X-Men. I'm sorry. i got the title. um Also, there's a cool front cover by Art Adams and a cool back cover by Jim Starlin. Those are those are rad too, but you know, we don't we can't we don't have much to say about those. The Jim Starlin moment never happened in the comics. He just draws a cool picture of the X-Men.
01:34:31
Speaker
ah Fighting vines and like a weird. Yeah, I noticed that that that doesn't really happen in the comic at all. It doesn't look like anything that happened. It's cool though.
01:34:43
Speaker
It's cool. I want to see that comic. All right. Well, man, how do we how do we how do we how do we deplane here? It's it's it's hard to it's hard to spin out of this thing because it's like there's some goofy moments here, but it ends in such of a bummer.
01:34:59
Speaker
both in the story and a bummer for us as people who understand what's problematic about the story. Right. So good news is that, uh, Marvel was able to send more than half a million dollars to, uh,
01:35:14
Speaker
To the American Friends Service Committee. i It did. It raised awareness to the degree that anything else raised awareness, but it it raised actual impactful money at the time just for the sales. so And as we said, this is a little less racist than um Do They Know It's Christmas?
01:35:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:36
Speaker
Well, perfect. Alex Goldman. On that note, bye guys. you Thank you for being here. My pleasure. This was
Podcast Recommendations and Listener Engagement
01:35:45
Speaker
a lot of fun. I really, next time there's a ah culturally insensitive X-Men comic, you need to have me on. You got it.
01:35:54
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's always fun to have you here, man. Thank you. i We can... podcasts love to call people friends of the show. we Can we officially call you friend of the show? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. i yes I am a friend of the show. Yay! I'm honored to be a friend of the show. Telling everybody.
01:36:11
Speaker
I haven't... I've been listening to Hyperfixed, which is always great, but I have not checked out your Amityville podcast yet, and now i will. I've been listening to both, and I highly recommend, especially for our listeners. I think Amityville has a...
01:36:28
Speaker
a lot of common stuff, common stuff. If you're into like, ah you know, this American life, he kind of reported journalism stuff. Hyperfixed is right up your alley. great And if you're into um a couple of idiots watching a bunch of idiots do idiotic stuff, love that too. Amityvilleville is very much, amity very much. Amityvilleville is such a good name. Damn it. You know, I have never once named one of my podcasts. It's always been someone else who comes up with it. And Amityvilleville was the first time where i was like, oh, this has got to be it. this is this is this That was all me. And I'm so proud of it. yes. Wow, one for one. And now I want to, like, do other... Once we get done, I want to do other podcasts. But I simply...
01:37:19
Speaker
I'm like, how could, or do other movie series yeah if we get through the 90s some that we're going to watch. But I'm just like, how could I possibly one up Amityvilleville? Like, how do I change the name to something as good as that?
01:37:33
Speaker
yeah before um Before we did Mutant Menace, ah I made pat Pat and my other comedy friend, Ashley, do a podcast with me about watching all the Pokemon movies. Oh! of which there were 25 at the time. And we thought that was pretty intimidating. I thought there was like the Mewtwo one and then Detective Pikachu. I had no idea. By the time we finished, there was roughly 30. And i want my the joke, the thing I wanted to do was when we got to the end of them is make everybody watch them again and just keep doing the same thing. re-analysis.
01:38:11
Speaker
But ah they they both said no and quit. But that podcast, I was pretty proud of that name too. The very worst episode Like, ah I want to be the very best at the beginning of the Pokemon song.
01:38:22
Speaker
What is the name of um what's the name of that series that ah is like Amityville and my I'm like old now and I can't remember things off the top of my head with the Warrens?
01:38:34
Speaker
Oh, the conjuring. Yeah. Like I've got to come up with a great conjuring style pun so we can do those next. Yeah. we Yeah. We actually, we actually try because it's coming soon, but we actually watched a documentary called my Amityville horror, which is about one of the sons of the Lutzes, the family again, who said that they were, they were haunted in the house and Basically, the story of it is he absolutely believes that something supernatural happened, but he believes it's because of his stepdad, George Lutz, who was like into black magic. That's his belief. Wild. What a wild layer.
01:39:11
Speaker
And halfway through the the documentary, he spends like a half an hour in with ah Elaine Warren, like in her basement, just talking about the haunting because she like visited the house once. And she's yeah, it was definitely haunted. And I'm like, well, yeah, of course you would say that.
01:39:29
Speaker
that's amazing it's a really it's a very gripping but incredibly depressing uh uh movie the it's on tubi for free though if you to check it out i am so excited and afraid for you alex dude no one could be more excited or more afraid than i am what i'm doing here
01:39:55
Speaker
All right, folks, thank you so much for listening. ah Please write in to Pat's email corner, mutantmenacepod at gmail.com. Like, rate, review, subscribe, comment, tell a friend.
01:40:09
Speaker
You can check us out at MutantMenacePod on Instagram. You can check us out at, ah you can check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash MutantMenace, where ah Patreon listeners, you can you can subscribe for free and you get our reading list or you can pay any amount of money you want, as low as a dollar, and you get all our bonus content and you get episodes like this just a week early.
01:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, you're listening to this one early. If you're yeah, if you've done it, um you can find alex Goldman. Where where's the best place for everyone to find you?
01:40:43
Speaker
ah I'm the only Hyperfixed and I'm the only Amityvilleville. So I'm very easy to find. Hyperfixed pod everywhere. Amityvilleville everywhere. Very easy to find.
01:40:54
Speaker
also i want to thank Julia Selle for the voice of Trish Tilby that you hear at the beginning of every episode. And then Krils Wilson for the amazing music that we have. ah That leaves only one thing, which is our the sign off that we give at the end of every single episode.
01:41:11
Speaker
That's right, folks. As always, we could always try telling jokes. And remember, my one and only bouncing baby Coochie Coo.
01:41:23
Speaker
It's like I always say, he's taken it. He's eaten.