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BONUS - Revenge of the Living Monolith
109 Plays14 days ago
The Bunkies are BACK, buddies!! Along with our favorite least favorite super-villain THE LIVING PHARAOH/MONOLITH! Matt and Pat read this graphic novel that has very little to do with the X-Men and we have a ton of fun absolutely savaging it.
Enjoy!
Topics Discussed:
Crazy Abdol. Getting suspended for being dumb. All humans are evil. Rutting males. All humans are good. "Let the nice men kill the woman, son." It's easy to infiltrate the Baxter Building. KBONK! The Juggernaut?? Oh, no. The spine of a pig. The Avengers are on vacation. Living Monolith crouching in wait. A tasteful upskirt. The big wire that supplies all of Manhattan with electricity. THOR, IRON MAN, WONDER MAN, STARFOX, HAWKEYE: The Five Mightiest Men on Earth! A mile of Adamantium rope. Another The Living Planet.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro and Breakfast
5:25 - Living Pharoah/Monolith Background
25:00 - Revenge of the Living Monolith
1:25:35 - Pat's Steals and Deals
1:28:45 - Goodbye!
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
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.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hey everybody, I'm Matt Aukamp. And I'm Pat Reber. And say it with us, nobody. It's a bonus, we can do whatever we want.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, get
Morning Routines and Breakfast Discussions
00:00:45
Speaker
wrecked. Welcome to Mutant Menace. we're not I didn't press the button because nobody's saying it with us this time. Yeah, sorry, you flew all this way and we're just... Patrick. Yo, hey, Matt. What's going on, man? I don't know, man. It's a Saturday morning.
00:01:03
Speaker
Well, afternoon technically, but. But it's morning for us because we're us. I'm doing wake up activities still. Yeah, exactly. I'm eating my breakfast. It's a, well, I'm drinking my breakfast.
00:01:15
Speaker
Ew. You blended up your scrambled eggs and with some milk and now you're sipping them through a straw. Yes. but ah Scrambled eggs. It's milk. It's veggie sausages. It is... You know, actually, it's a full English breakfast. So there's a tomato in here. There's some beans. Hot damn. There's two hash browns.
00:01:37
Speaker
Some mushrooms. Yeah, well, full English breakfast is... where it's at, honestly. I know. When I got back from Scotland a couple years ago, I had an English breakfast every single day. i was like, I'm going to buy beans and hash browns, and I'm just going to make an English breakfast every morning. What a great idea. You can't do it every morning. It's... um too much. It wouldn't be healthy. Yeah, it's like you know, breakfast sandwich every morning. It's the ideal breakfast, but that doesn't mean you can do it every day. My new thing and by new thing, I mean, I've been doing it for like a year and a half. It's just a big ass smoothie and it's got banana and protein powder and yogurt and it's got ah whatever. i just freeze a bunch of I just buy a ton of fruit in bulk and chop it up and freeze it.
00:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, hell yeah. that Spinach and carrots and Almonds.
00:02:30
Speaker
Almonds. Interesting. Like you, do you just put almonds in the blender and chop them up? Yeah. You have to get the right balance. I discovered. All right. Well, I have a newer one of these. It's not a bullet, but it's one of those kind of, kind of deals.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. This is not an endorsement. ah And cause I won't even say the brand cause I don't remember it. um But when I had the bullet,
00:02:56
Speaker
It was five almonds. I could do five. If more more than five almonds, I was going. it was getting caught in my throat. Oh, okay. i think you were I thought that was the noise of the blender you're saying. So no, no, no. It was getting caught in caught in my little throat. so But this new blender, I can throw more almonds in.
00:03:15
Speaker
So again, not an endorsement. It's just my health. This is my health potion that I drink every morning. well matt Oh, I have one more breakfast thing to talk about. Okay, yeah, yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
um yeah I'll talk breakfast all day. Did you ever hear thing about... This literally the first conversation my wife and I had. Did you ever hear that old um thing about how if you have stale coffee, you have coffee, like yesterday's coffee, and you want it to still taste fresh. You don't want it to have that stale coffee taste. Oh. um You can throw just a pinch of salt in.
00:03:53
Speaker
No, no, you can't hear that. So you can, and it really does work. but But I um made some coffees. i I'm drinking some stale coffee this morning, and I definitely put too much salt in.
00:04:07
Speaker
and It's salty coffee. So now you're just drinking salty coffee. I'm not really drinking it. I'm not really drinking. I got it here and I keep taking a sip and going, this is horrible. And then putting it as far away from as possible. And then like a couple of minutes later, I'm like, huh, coffee. Do do it all over again. So that reminds me why we're talking about breakfast and not hanging out together, getting smoothies.
00:04:39
Speaker
Did you hear that? did you hear me finish my smoothie? Yes. Pick it up on the mic. Very audibly. So, ah because today we're going to be talking about a graphic novel neither of us wanted to read, but we had to. We did. Some of us woke up at 6 a.m. to read it.
Living Monolith Graphic Novel Critique
00:05:00
Speaker
no! Well, actually, I read it at 2 a.m. last night. I got home from a thing. Get ready for some skewed perspective. Yeah. You know, we're we're talking about the Living Monolith graphic novel. um I think you hate the Living Monolith a little more than I do, but we both hate the Living Monolith.
00:05:21
Speaker
I don't know, man. You would shouted a good bit about it in each episode he's featured in. I think there's a thing. i think really mad. I think there's a thing about the Living Monolith where ah but the concept is stupid. Yeah.
00:05:37
Speaker
And is it racist? Like a little bit, right? yeah. So this book is a lot racist. It's like, it's very casual. It's not going out of its way to try to be racist. But one thing we should establish up top, everyone in the story is white.
00:05:56
Speaker
Everybody's white. takes place in Egypt with Egyptians. They are, i you know, pink as peach. Yeah. Yes, they are pink as a peach. That's true. and well, except for when he's the living monolith, then he's gray.
00:06:12
Speaker
Then he's just gray. Yeah. And he's got a new hat, a better hat. He does. He's got a better when he gets to the living monolith, a better. But we should talk about the fact that every one of his henchmen, if you don't remember, wears a skirt like a cross suspenders on a bare chest and then ah like a pharaoh's headdress, a bunch of bulky white men dressed as dressed as old pharaohs yeah as as an army of soldiers. I think you described it as like they're dressed like ah Steve Martin's King Tut.
00:06:47
Speaker
Yes, yeah that exactly. And i think that if you were to list, if you were to sit down and list like the 10 worst X-Men stories of all time,
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah. and ah I'll even say one of of them we haven't gotten to, but it's like well known. It's like one of the worst X-Men stories of all time. One of the worst, rate at at at least the worst X-Men era of all time.
00:07:17
Speaker
Okay. I think of those 10, like four of them involve the living model. Yeah, absolutely. So we do get the silver lining in his first appearance of Alex Summers, right? And finding out that he's a mutant and kicking off his whole story. Mm-hmm.
00:07:39
Speaker
I think that's good that's it. That's our silver lining to this guy. Is that his first appearance? Yes. Because he was he was created by Arnold Drake and Don Heck.
00:07:52
Speaker
Yes, that was. Oh, and then immediately Neil Adams yeah took over and had to finish it. Right, yes. Yeah.
00:08:03
Speaker
Oh, God damn. ah So the thing that we, I think, got most upset about, ah racism aside, of course, was... oh we should also say one more thing about his his lackeys. um in the first In his second appearance, I think, we and we'll talk we'll go through the history here, um it's the first time we saw the word bunkies used. Yes.
00:08:26
Speaker
And so ed Spider-Man was like, surprise, bunkies, or whatever the hell he says. i think probably Chris Claremont was writing it, right? if he's Yes, this was Chris Claremont writing Marvel team up.
00:08:38
Speaker
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we just started calling these guys bunkies. The henchmen of the Hellfire Club are always goons. The henchmen of the Living Pharaoh are always bunkies. Right. And then the Spider-Man and the X-Men got a little out of control with their use of that word. It seems to more generally apply to henchmen in anachronistic costumes these days. But... But...
00:09:01
Speaker
ah but but ah For our purposes, for this podcast purposes, these are bunkies. These are bunkies. we call them occasionally goons or henchmen.
00:09:14
Speaker
They're bunkies. And then I think the racism aside, of course, the thing that we were most upset about over the course of all of these stories is that he was never really given any sort of background, any motivation.
00:09:27
Speaker
ah He just seems to want power. he wants to be big and he wants to be mean. We didn't know how good we had it, Pat. Yeah, honestly. He was better when he didn't have any backstory.
00:09:43
Speaker
Because it's not a sympathetic one. No, it's not. And it's it's not good. It's so stupid. all right. Well, I think just a few other background pieces, right? We covered this, but first of all, when he captured Alex Summers, he put Alex into a glass coffin to siphon his cosmic energy.
00:10:01
Speaker
So it was established that Alex Summers got his mutant powers from... cosmic energy that was being filtered through him. Though I think that was a bit of a retcon. In his first appearance, if you remember, he was put in the coffin to block him from absorbing absorbing cosmic energy. Oh, yes. You're absolutely right. Because him and the living monolith were like...
00:10:26
Speaker
quantumly entangled but yeah yeah yeah so if havoc had powers the living monolith didn't and i guess vice versa and that's i guess why it took i don't know is that why it took havoc so long to for his powers to manifest it's i don't know it's hard to tell ah maybe we haven't really touched the cosmic angle of havoc's powers again we haven't seen havoc in a good while but that is true i miss him But so he did all this as the living pharaoh. Once he shut off Alex Summers' access to cosmic energy and had it all for himself, he grew to like 60 feet tall, called himself the living monolith.
00:11:07
Speaker
It was defeated by the X-Men. They exposed him. he turns out he was just a crazy college professor yeah in Egypt named Professor Abdul. He also... Yeah, yeah He also said that ah he discovered all ancient Egyptian pharaohs are mutants. Yes.
00:11:26
Speaker
And end therefore, all mutants are descendants of the pharaohs. Right, right. Which isn't true. like this no it's the the None of this was other ever
Behind the Scenes of the Graphic Novel
00:11:40
Speaker
proven through his work. There was no evidence given for this. This is him rambling like a madman dressed up like a pharaoh in the year 1971. And anybody can be born a fucking mutant.
00:11:54
Speaker
And he's exactly. Yeah. He did. He clearly didn't know what he was talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Whether that's the writer's intention or not, that is again, for this podcast purposes.
00:12:05
Speaker
Uh, so they just kind of tied him up and left him from what I remember. yeah And then we next saw, and we just talked about it. It was the exact same story, but with Spider-Man and a Marvel team up. Uh, believe that was actually during the dark era.
00:12:22
Speaker
Um, Correct. And this was the this was one of the worst appearances of Spider-Man because Spider-Man was like, I don't want to. Yes. Right. He was like, I don't want to fight guys. I don't. This is this sucks. I don't want to be fighting bad guys.
00:12:38
Speaker
He's like he saw bad guys doing bad guy stuff and he was like, oh, I really don't want to stop them. Yeah, I got it. He was in college, right? He was like, I need to study. I need to study. Yeah. And he wasn't going to do anything, but they were bothering the.
00:12:53
Speaker
they should lab They should have killed one of his other uncles for that. Does Spider-Man have other uncles? Matt. Does Spider-Man other uncles? No, clearly he doesn't. so is So his mom was an only child and his dad or is one of his parents was an only child and the other one was.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah. And the the other one had one sister. One brother. May oh ma married into the May married into the fer family. But.
00:13:26
Speaker
But Richard Parker was way younger than Ben Parker. No, we just miss all the years. So Peter Parker's dad was like crazy old winning it when Peter was born.
00:13:41
Speaker
No, he was like be Uncle Ben was like 79.
00:13:47
Speaker
and Aunt May has been like 99 for. Yeah, that's true. Seven nine years That's kind of like shifted backwards as the years have gone on. But as we as we've gotten more and more disgusted by old folks as a as a as a society. Yeah.
00:14:04
Speaker
Anyway, we we saw Spider-Man dealing with him. We saw Power Man and Iron Fist deal with him. And to the I'm really scraping the memory banks here, Matt. But to the best of my recall, he we covered that because they ah called in Xavier. They were like, oh, I think the X-Men have dealt with this. And and ex Xavier showed up to help No, What happened was this was this was one of the times that the X-Men got home.
00:14:30
Speaker
From a from a global caper. Right. And instead of going to the mansion, they had to stop in New York to hang out with Iron Fist. And when they were doing that. Check in with Misty Knight.
00:14:42
Speaker
They stumbled like they they just like happened to know, like happened to stumble upon. Whatever was going on with Power Man and I. His henchmen disguising themselves as hospital workers, but still wearing their their bunkie outfit.
00:15:00
Speaker
yeah Yeah, their headdresses. Exactly. Yeah, they were like, you know, it that's how they got caught. They were like, hey, that yeah ambulance is being driven by bunkies. Yeah.
00:15:13
Speaker
That ambulance driver sure has a funny hat. We should follow him. and ah Yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit later. I want to remind I hope I hope you remember the funniest detail of that whole thing. But we'll we'll get to that.
00:15:29
Speaker
um But that was the first time I think he got like arrested, right? Yeah. As far as I e again, as far as I can remember, he just got defeated and then kind of left to wallow in his misery. Like made fun of by other scientists and stuff. Yes. So everybody was like, all right, his ego is diminished. He'll be he won't be a threat. Yeah.
00:15:53
Speaker
So Cage, though, Luke Cage was like, this guy's going away. In 1985, they decided to finally get back to this frickin living monolith. Why? Why did they decide this? Why were they like, we got to do it?
00:16:07
Speaker
That is the biggest lingering question. sorry to spoil the end. But after reading this is why did we read this? Why did we bring him back? He was just. Yeah. He had gone the way of ah Warhawk.
00:16:26
Speaker
Yeah, there there seems to be no reason. It's not like he is now a part of stuff, right? It appears that he then disappears for another 12 years.
00:16:39
Speaker
It's been six years
Character Dynamics and Plot Analysis
00:16:40
Speaker
since he's been in the Marvel Universe when this graphic novel comes out. He is gone for another fucking 12 years, dude. He comes back after this?
00:16:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. that's what That's what I was saying. He he plays a ah pivotal role in one of the worst X-Men stories all Oh, future X-Men story that you're referring to as the worst of all time also includes – one of the worst of all time also includes – The Living Monolith.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yes. I just thought it was like... So that's in 1999 and No. um But he's in a sensational Spider-Man story in ninety ninety seven and did he Why? Why did they bring him back? He has a perfectly good ending. this cap and And then he's gone for another 15 years until he shows up in Amazing X-Men in 2015.
00:17:39
Speaker
i'mkewe i'm You're just doing this to make me mad now. It's just like, why? Why why does he why do they let this guy disappear for 15 years at a time? And then somebody's like, I'm going to bring back this weird racist, dumb thing.
00:17:58
Speaker
Poorly thought through character. He's got... He's got nothing. I will say, he sticks in my fucking head, though. I i have... Long before I ever read a living a comic with the Living Monolith in it, I always knew who the Living Monolith was since I was a little kid. And I don't know why. i Can't explain that to you man I can't explain I can't explain it either Because I didn't I didn't read those books Maybe you read that one issue of Spider-Man in 1997 Nope Oh uh who may Hey maybe that that Maybe you could have been buying Spider-Man comics back then Alright listen This is Marvel graphic k novel This is part of the Marvel graphic novel series It's number 15 it's called Revenge of the Living Monolith Nice read
00:18:47
Speaker
It's written by David Michelini. It's drawn by Mark Silvestri. Who are these guys? Yeah, Matt. So David Michelini kind of bounced around Marvel for a long time. he has long runs on Iron Man. He introduced his alcoholism.
00:19:05
Speaker
to the character her as well as the iconic scene of Tony Stark being thrown from a shield helicarrier and having to summon his armor to fly off before he hits the ground. Oh, OK.
00:19:18
Speaker
He wrote that, not Druid. He had a long run on Amazing Spider-Man. He technically co-created Venom. So there's a there's a stretch of Spider-Man where he's being he's gotten rid of the black suit. He's being stalked by Venom, but we don't actually find out who Venom is. And David Michelini wrote those as well as some of the concepts as like Spider-Man can't sense Venom with his spider sense, stuff like that. But then when he was actually introduced as a whole character, Michelini had moved on.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. OK. And then he had a run on the Avengers where he co-created the Scott Lang Ant-Man. And then
Concluding Thoughts on the Graphic Novel
00:20:00
Speaker
also credited for co-creating War Machine, Carnage, Ghost and Taskmaster.
00:20:07
Speaker
So OK, man's got a resume. he's He's done some stuff. ah Mark Silvestri, we will see a good bit of him over the years. We're going to see him I think, coming up as we hit like the late eighty s early 90s in a couple of things. Yeah, he hasn't really made his name yet.
00:20:25
Speaker
yeah um And we'll see in this book, his his art style hasn't really coalesced yeah um into what it will become. It's not bad.
00:20:37
Speaker
You have to search pretty deep to find this book or in his list of credits. ah um ah But yeah, he's about to yeah he's about to join Uncanny X-Men. And that is his sort of career defining run until the ninety s and 2000s when, you know.
00:20:59
Speaker
There's sort of this people revisiting those 80s artists and being like, oh, some of these guys were really good. yeah yeah. And yeah, he. Yeah. He gets some pretty big stories in Morrison's X-Men and in a chunk of Fractions X-Men that we'll get to when we're 50. Yeah.
00:21:21
Speaker
i And then he was one of the original artists to break with Marvel and DC and form Image Comics. He currently serves as the CEO. um Apparently he and Liefeld bumped heads a little bit. So there's there's some story there, but not at all relevant to to the X-Men or Marvel.
00:21:42
Speaker
Interesting. i didn't know that. Yeah, he left he left Image Comics until they bumped Rob Liefeld and then he came back and took over the company.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, so... Short version. He's... I mean, again, in this graphic novel, his his art is just fine. and there's some so There's some images that are great.
00:22:05
Speaker
Most of them are just sort of serviceable Marvel artwork. It's fine. there's There aren't really low points here, right? Art-wise. Right. But most of it is just fine. And there are high points. And it's very Neil Adams inspired, I would say. Yes. It's got that like it's very grounded and realistic. But the he allows faces to get like cartoony to overexpress emotion and yeah stuff like that.
00:22:33
Speaker
And again, this is not Mark Silvestri at his best. He what we will see Mark Silvestri at his best. And thanks. Actually, pretty soon. hell I'm excited about that. All right. So David Michelini, Mark Silvestri, Jeff Isherwood.
00:22:48
Speaker
I sure was worth mentioning for that guy. He did comics for a little while. I think he did inks here, but he's more of just like a an artist in general. Yeah. And then ah it's so it's edited by James Owsley, who is Christopher Priest, ah the villain, the owl from.
00:23:06
Speaker
ah That's it's a it's a it's a name for ah Christopher Priest, who is one of the first major black comic book writers. um Wait, James Owsley is a a pseudonym for Christopher Priest. Yeah, I did not know that.
00:23:26
Speaker
i I knew it. You know how I learned this? I take a lot of those Sporkle quizzes. And sometimes if you are, if it's like, oh, every writer of, i don't know, the Avengers or something or Spider-Man and you type in James Owsley or Jim Owsley.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah. Christopher Priest's credits come up. It'll give you correct and then it'll show him. It'll show, yeah it'll like it'll if it's like a list, it'll fill in either James Owsley or Christopher Priest if you type in one or the other.
00:24:00
Speaker
Okay, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how I learned that. But yeah, then there's a bunch of, quote, inkers. Six of them.
00:24:11
Speaker
There's a ton of colorists. Ten of them. Five letterers on this. say Five different letterers. Janice, yeah that we know Janice Chiang and Joe Rosen, but... than just a bunch of other just folks. Randos, yeah. And then there's six different consulting or assistant editors.
00:24:32
Speaker
So it this is an era of Marvel. I believe this is a Jim Stupid initiative where every character or team has their own... yeah editor and they have to each get credited for even in the cent he gets credited for the x-men here even though it's just the x-men there's one frame to flash back to when the x-men fought but a whole big staff on this i also want to say this is also that era of printing where it could be in it was in some of these ish images are hard to look at
00:25:07
Speaker
Because the colors are just slightly good. they're Well, they're not good. they're They're that kind of like trying to be watercolor or painterly, but not very good at it yet. And they are just slightly misaligned. So you'll be trying to read the text and it'll be like you have double vision while you're reading it.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's also just like there's we don't give a ton of credit to colorists, but there's sort of a a language, a story being told in like Glynis Ween's colors or another colorist that we've seen a lot. But this doesn't have any there's no cohesion from page to page on the colors like you can really see. That's what made it hard to read for me is I was like, why is everything
00:26:04
Speaker
in different shades of red and orange for this part of the story and then shifting to shades of blue and green mid-sentence. It's not thematic. It's just they had switched. Yeah, like, I don't know if you read an original copy. I have. Matt. I have an original.
00:26:25
Speaker
I don't know if you read an original copy or if you read a, uh... Yeah, but you might have spent you might have bought the one of like a reprint of this or something. All originals, man.
00:26:37
Speaker
I have an original copy. and so what I'm saying is I don't know if you are getting the same effect as me of the colors being just slightly misaligned and things just looking like... A little messy. Yeah, like almost impossible to look at. Like like you're looking at um a Like an old school 3D image without 3D glasses on.
00:26:59
Speaker
Oh, no. minor are ah Mine are pretty clean. All right. So anyway, this was released on July 16th, 1985. Let me – we broke it up into big chapter into like chapters. It's not broken up into chapters. It's one long story. what is one We'll talk about this at the end. too
00:27:17
Speaker
ah We broke it up into chapters just for the sake of recapping. that the The story, our story begins in Al-Jaza. Oh, okay. It is Giza. Giza is also known as Al-Jaza. Okay.
00:27:32
Speaker
Who calls it a suburb of Cairo? Huh. I don't know enough about it.
00:27:39
Speaker
i know I don't know enough about Egypt. But begins there in 1950, a preteen Ahmed Abdul wears a paper crown and holds a homemade scepter, declaring himself a descendant of Horus and Osiris and the ruler of all of Egypt.
00:27:58
Speaker
So I just want to note here, yeah this is a little kid who's just deciding this. Yes, he ah it looks like he's playing pretend, but there is a character explaining to us that he believes all of this. This is what he really thinks. Yeah, he's just making this up as ah as a child. um There's a small group of his friends who so who are standing around notice it notably a young girl named Feline.
00:28:23
Speaker
hi a group of A group of older boys approach laughing at him and and his claims of being royal. They call him Crazy Abdul and throw mud in his eye.
00:28:34
Speaker
Feline comforts him as he fights off tears. do you feel Do you feel bad for him, Pat? no The last thing I need for this guy is a sympathetic backstory. but you you feel But you feel bad for him, right? No, this is the extent of his oppression. guy threw mud at him once. This moment, this child throwing mud in his eye drives everything that he does moving forward.
00:29:00
Speaker
cut to college where abdul buries himself in books feline ever by his side he makes a discovery and shares it with his class he is indeed descended from ancient pharaohs the thing that he made up as a kid hey turns out he was absolutely right for his research per his research Per his research, no one else has seen it. No one has confirmed it. He just says this. um His class is unimpressed. They mock him as his professor outrage suspends him from school. All right. This I feel a little bad for him because he just makes a presentation.
00:29:37
Speaker
Everybody in the class makes fun of him for saying, hey, I am descended from, I'm actually descended from Pharaoh's. I looked it up and I have this genealogy to prove it. And the class is like, you're a piece of shit. And the professor's like, you're suspended for making the students call you a piece of shit. Well, the way that I'm reading this, I think we have maybe an unreliable narrator here because okay yeah yeah he got in front of his whole class and was like, I have a scientific discovery.
00:30:06
Speaker
that everyone needs to hear about. He takes over, you know how particular college professors are about their, their syllabus. ah He takes over an entire class to show them absolute horseshit
00:30:22
Speaker
Because all of it turns out to be ah completely untrue. He's he's spent. This is his thesis that he was that he was never assigned. he sunk months, maybe years of work into this. And it turns out that he was just making facts up all along.
00:30:39
Speaker
So his professor probably wanted to expel him. And the the agreement they reached with the board was like, let's give him a short suspension. Give him one more chance. Yeah.
00:30:52
Speaker
But life goes on. Abdul and Feline get married and have a baby. He graduates college. He continues working in science. Science. But when he shares his life ah but he shares his latest discovery with the science community, the ancient pharaohs were all actually mutants.
00:31:13
Speaker
They revolt and accuse him of blasphemy. They form a mob and chase him out of the building. They form a mob. Like, pitchforks, they're throwing rocks. I had this idea once a long time ago for a dumb short story where it was just like, like...
00:31:30
Speaker
What if what if you had and I didn't know where the story was going. It's just a concept. And it's like, what if you had what if you're you're say your car was dented in this very specific way where for some reason, like just that that shape set off something in like the primal brain of everybody.
00:31:50
Speaker
ah That saw it and they just instantly felt enraged, right? There is something to this guy, Abdul, that when he tries to present anything, there's something in the timbre of his voice. There's something in the words that he chooses. There's just something that makes everybody go fucking nuts. No,
00:32:13
Speaker
Kill him! Suspend him! Throw mud at him! I would posit, once again, is called the Egyptian Science Community together for a conference where he stands up in front of a group of people, presents what he calls conclusive proof that all ancient pharaohs were mutants, which...
00:32:42
Speaker
Isn't true. And as far as we know from the story so far, he not based in fact. Yeah. And he's presenting this like he is equating himself with, ah the The best scientific minds on Earth.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, this crowd is going to upset about that. And I think the forming a mob and calling him a blasphemer is mostly just racism. But. Right, right. That's what people in Egypt do when they're angry. The only time in the book where people actually look like they're from Egypt or that area.
00:33:18
Speaker
When they're like, this is again, they specifically say this is against our God Allah. the yeah Get him the blasphemer. But my takeaway from this is that his research was so atrocious that a room full of scientists formed a violent mob.
00:33:36
Speaker
So ah in a panic. He shoves Philean and the baby Salome. Salome. Salome.
00:33:48
Speaker
ah into the car and races away from the mob of angry scientists. He loses control and flips the car, being thrown free in the process. The baby is also thrown free. Again, a thing that only fucking happens in comic book.
00:34:02
Speaker
um The baby is also... thought It was thrown through a fucking window and it's perfectly fine? What? Yeah, just skid it along and it's it's swaddled. or is Or is the idea that when the car crashes...
00:34:17
Speaker
As it's like full as it's like crunching up. Yeah. It creates a hole in the side of the car. and so The baby goes flying through the hole and so it doesn't actually get hurt in any way. Here's what happened.
00:34:33
Speaker
Abdul yeah rushed in, took off. He didn't put his seatbelt in seatbelt on. Feline did put her seatbelt on, but it's just holding the baby in her arms. So they get, okay they crash head on into an object.
00:34:48
Speaker
yeah Abdul goes flying forward through the windshield, probably hurts himself a bit, but in ah I guess at an angle that he doesn't really sustain any serious injuries. The baby follows because she's not secured to anything, but the windshield's already cleared and she's swaddled heavily enough to just kind of land safely. And Feline gets trapped inside the car because she was wearing her seatbelt.
00:35:15
Speaker
I love but so ah moral the story never wear your seat belt and I love your theory however the front of the car is completely smashed I have no idea how and he's behind it i have no idea how well it all happened so fast man so
00:35:34
Speaker
um so
00:35:40
Speaker
The science mob, they catch up to them and they see the wreckage, but they refuse to help Abdul. The car explodes. The car explodes. This is the inciting thing. this is This is the thing that turns him into a villain. He's like, people are so selfish. They don't help anybody. He's like yelling, help me. And everybody's just standing stone-faced watching a woman burn to death. That would never happen. There's no group of people in the entire earth.
00:36:10
Speaker
Who there would be more than three people and they would all just stand and watch a woman burn to death rather than anyone trying to help her.
00:36:22
Speaker
So a couple of things here. First of all, He is begging for their help as the flames rage above the car and seconds before it explodes and drives him backwards. Like there's nothing anybody here could do to help.
00:36:39
Speaker
They.
00:36:42
Speaker
The door is stuck like she's trapped in a car that ah that's fully on fire. Okay, four people could have ripped this car open. Yeah, but not without burning themselves significantly. Like, she's already dead at that point. he's fine. He's not getting burnt.
00:37:00
Speaker
No, she's not dead. She's yelling, I'm help. No, I mean, like, and then for me, she's practically dead at that point. i think that I don't think there's enough time for those folks to have even run in there and gotten to it before the... Even in that case, people would have helped. This is just, like, how humans work. Humans don't work the way this comic shows up. The other thing that he does is he...
00:37:22
Speaker
The mob starts to turn on him in the science hall. He gets into the car. He drives frantically away. His wife is like, they're all on foot. You can probably drive slower. And he says, no, you don't understand. When people get like this, they get nasty. They will kill us. And then he flashes back to the inciting memory, which is child throwing mud in his eye once when he was 10. And he...
00:37:47
Speaker
He's like, you're so, you've lived such a sheltered life. You have no idea how people could be. She was there. By your side since that incident. You guys grew up together. She was, she was there when they threw the mud. The thing you're flashing back to that you're like, you don't understand. She was there.
00:38:06
Speaker
this is all your fault. Yeah, professor and he almost kills some kids. Yeah, he almost runs over some children, too, just ah and to put the cherry on top. It's also funny that he was right, though, that she was like, they're on foot. They can't possibly catch you. And yet, as soon as the car crashes, they're all there.
00:38:24
Speaker
is like He was right. They all ran so fast. They were determined.
00:38:31
Speaker
Enraged with grief, Abdel fires a blast from his hand at the indifferent scientists. He questions if he's mad. he is. But in the lowest moment, his lowest moment, a man in a fez extends his hand and calls him master. oh We watch the rise of the living pharaoh through a montage. A cult had been waiting for centuries for him to emerge, giving him the power he needed to rule the world, only to see it come crashing down at the hands Of the X-Men.
00:39:04
Speaker
Remember? That's their only appearance. Yeah, this is their appearance.
00:39:09
Speaker
He awakens in a maximum security prison in Egypt. ah so This is after all of... every every This is now. This is after everything we've seen of his story.
00:39:22
Speaker
um He's ironically guarded by Hassan, the boy that threw the mud in his eye. What? yeah ah He's like, you should have, if you cared craved power, you should have done what I did and followed and gone through the system. Should have gotten a real job, nerd.
00:39:43
Speaker
He's bided his time long enough, he decides, as he blasts his way out of the power-dampening handcuffs and right through Hassan. encasing him in the prison I don't get this so what it's like he smacked he he blasts Hassan Hassan goes flying backwards crashes into the wall so hard that it leaves like an imprint in the wall and he's like he's kind of like suspended there in the hole yeah in like a crucifixion pose too but you reading this you'd be like oh man he got blasted so hard he cracked the wall yeah his insides must and he cracked the wall so hard smashed
00:40:19
Speaker
Yes. You would not be like, he's stuck in the wall, and if you needed to move him, you would have to cut out a section of the wall and bring it with you. You'd be like, oh, just pull him out of the little hole. Yeah, yeah. But no, he hits the wall with such impact that it creates a Hassan-shaped hole in the wall that he...
00:40:40
Speaker
He's stuck it. fused to. yeah And in the next... Okay, so I'll get to it in a second. He blasts a hole in the ceiling when an army of bunkies are waiting for him. Turns out they were hiding in the sky for months, ready to rescue him when he made his move. They were just...
00:40:56
Speaker
Why didn't they just rescue him? They were like, thank God you blasted through the ceiling because we have been hanging out immediately above in the sky. With a lot of guns. With a lot of guns. There's hundreds of us waiting for you. More than that. We find out later there's thousands of them.
00:41:18
Speaker
Abdel has all of his henchmen kill all of the prison guards, which apparently, again, they could have just done. With the exception, they don't kill Hassan, who he brings along. And again, they cho they cut out the piece of the wall that he was- to slab a rock with him, hanging from it.
00:41:37
Speaker
So insane. I don't understand. Just take him out of the wall. who he brings along as he and his cult fly away to take over the world.
00:41:51
Speaker
Man, these fucking prison guards, dude, they, they've got you make a note of it here. They've got Brooklyn accents. Yeah, ah they're like, what do you think you're doing there, punk? Look at him waltzing along like he was strolling through his own living room. Like everything's, yeah, it's all written in that, and they're Egyptian.
00:42:13
Speaker
Yeah, why why are these guys all white to begin with? Everybody is white. Everybody is so, so, so white. but yeah Except for like except for like the people who called him an infidel are the only people who look have darker skin and are wearing pheasants.
00:42:33
Speaker
Should we dwell on that for a while or should we move right on to the next ah chapter that we perceived in this book? yeah don't know if we need to I don't know if we need to verbally break it up into chapters in this way. i don't know we need to be like a next chapter because we made that Yeah, there's no distinguish. There's no break in this story. I can't hold it back any longer, Matt. It's just like.
00:42:59
Speaker
There's no moment for you to take a breath, like fill your fill your coffee while you're reading. it's It's Every page leads directly to the moment on the next page. It is There's yeah there's no break in activity here.
00:43:16
Speaker
That being said. We cut back in time and across the Atlantic to Manhattan, where a young woman named Faya Saeed is making her way to the Baxter Building when some bunkies surround her, accusing her of being a traitor.
00:43:31
Speaker
Book makes it very clear that we should consider her extremely beautiful. Yes, they talk about her beauty a lot and how everybody on the street notices. Mrs. is Yeah, it's so gross. They they refer to them as rutting males taking notice of her. Come on. Come on, dude.
00:43:48
Speaker
Michelinie. While most of the citizens gawk or ignore her peril, the human torch flies into her rescue. Just thank God she's right in front of the Baxter building. And fucking, it's like there's a dad who is like escort. Like this is part of the point this book is making and then yeah undermines. Yeah.
00:44:08
Speaker
And then under ultimately undermines. But there's a man who's like, come along, Billy. This is none of our affair. Again, this isn't how humans behave. Stop it. That's not true. That man is trying to get his child to shelter because an army of men with guns just showed up.
00:44:25
Speaker
But that's not how he's acting. He's not like, oh he's not like, let's get away. He's not like, oh my God, we have to run away. He's like, that's none of our business. Let them let them kill the woman, Billy. and he has Because Billy goes, oh gee. It's like, it's not done with like like, out of fear or in any sort of hurry. It's like, let them kill the woman.
00:44:47
Speaker
it's so stupid. These men have a woman to kill. Please. You know, that's not my business. People don't act like that. So she gets rescued by the human torch. She tells him she must speak with the Fantastic Four or the world will be destroyed.
00:45:06
Speaker
So Johnny takes her right to the Baxter building where she tells her story. Oh my God. Johnny is really passive aggressive. Johnny introduces.
00:45:18
Speaker
Sue Reed himself and Jen Walters, who's filling in for the thing right now, comes in and has to be like, and I'm She-Hulk. He forgot me.
00:45:30
Speaker
right Remember, ah this is still post-Secret War, the thing stayed on Battleworld. I don't know what the thing is doing right now. i don't know. I'm not following the thing.
00:45:41
Speaker
But that last we saw him, he decided, I'm not coming back to Earth. I'm staying on Battleworld. And so She-Hulk stepped in for him to fulfill the the muscle role. Strong guy role.
00:45:55
Speaker
Faya says she was a former follower of Amet Abdul who grew worried about his mental state. So she stole some MacGuffin and brought it here for them to analyze. Since her life had been in danger, they assigned Johnny Storm to stay back and guard her.
00:46:09
Speaker
But she insists that She-Hulk do it instead.
00:46:14
Speaker
Again, they're like, okay, Johnny, you go do what we were going to have She-Hulk do since she's going to stay back in guard. And he's like, I have to do She-Hulk work? That's gross. Like, it's...
00:46:29
Speaker
He does. he They just they don't respect her is what I'm gathering from. Apparently. Apparently. Yeah. Back in Egypt, the living Pharaoh returns to his followers in his weird technological mountain fortress. His bully, Hassan, is still stuck in the wall for some reason. And he demands that his followers bring him along to watch this plan unfold.
00:46:50
Speaker
But Hassan is not impressed. He addresses the crowd, telling them that his plan is underway and phase two is going according to plan in America as they speak.
00:47:01
Speaker
So, of course, Faye Saheed is a plant. Yeah. Four hovercrafts fly in formation above the Baxter building and she activates some machine in her purse, the very gadget that she said she needed to show Richards. No, Reed Richards has a gadget that he says, this doesn't seem to be anything. This seems to be just a bunch of stuff thrown a thrown together at random. And then she puts her purse on the table and presses a button.
00:47:30
Speaker
And it forms the fifth point of an upside down pyramid with the with the with the ships. All five points connect into an upside down pyramid that captures all of the Fantastic Four except She-Hulk and suddenly teleports them across the world to the living Pharaoh's base.
00:47:50
Speaker
He orders his bunkies to kill them. he okay boy This is the easiest infiltration of the Baxter building that I've yeah ever seen. This person just pretends to be threatened right in front of the Baxter building. She gets brought right inside so that she can place a device ah that destroys the Fantastic Four. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, hey, I need to be inside your building.
00:48:16
Speaker
And they're like, OK, we won't ask anything else. We will just bring you into our building. Yeah. Yeah. And then they get teleported over to Living Pharaoh's base and there it's it goes deep underground. There are stories and stories of computer servers holding you know holding valuable bits of information. They're essentially describing what an iPhone can do. Yeah. Having but it's a hundred story underground base to to hold all that computing power. And they actually refer to the hallways lined with conduits.
00:48:51
Speaker
Like they actually refer to the techno, but it's like nonsense all over the walls. This is what they needed all those background inkers for. drawing all that circuitry.
00:49:04
Speaker
um Also, i guess to draw all of this whole army of bunkies who all look identical to one. Yes. A bunch of fucking young John Travolta's wearing Pharaoh headdresses.
00:49:19
Speaker
Back in New York, She-Hulk is able to use the Baxter Building's defense systems to disable the transport beam and turns to Faya to get some answers. Faya's got a plan, though. She grabs a chair and tosses it at a window. That's her plan. That's the big plan. that It worked out She's gonna bust out.
00:49:38
Speaker
Where a rope ladder is lowered into the frame only for that chair to bounce off the window with a firm kabonk! Kabonk. She's defeated by plexiglass. For like three pages here we get a lot of terrific onomatopoeia and then it ceases for the rest of the graphic novel. ah ah Like they say ah windows are as thick as steel dummy it's time to talk but like They don't need to be as thick as steel.
00:50:10
Speaker
We... Plexiglass exists. If these windows had been plastic, the chair also would have bounced off of them. This is... This this is the worst plan that I've ever seen.
00:50:20
Speaker
I think... plexiglass is more of a product of like this age. It's starting to come. All right. They don't have, there's still a lot of real glass in, uh, in buildings in these days.
00:50:32
Speaker
Oh boy. To be fair. Back in Egypt. Wait. So are like airplane windows made of glass in this era? Yeah. I have no idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:50:44
Speaker
I'm I am speculating here. I also have to imagine on like the space shuttle like space shuttles. Those windows aren't made of glass in this era.
00:50:57
Speaker
Well, yeah, but they're not building houses out of space shuttle material, but they they could be building the Baxter building out of space shuttle material. all right, back in Egypt, Johnny, Sue, and Reed wipe the fucking floor with Abdul's goons and machines until Abdul calls for it all to halt. He... Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you there. No, no, you should.
00:51:20
Speaker
ah He fucking... says ah so they are the fantastic three are kicking ass huh and the zo and the living pharaoh pops up and says just wait till you see what i've got in store for you the juggernaut and then it just cuts to a robot he built that's not the juggernaut
00:51:46
Speaker
Ironically, i think Abdul or Ahmed Abdul turns into the juggernaut in some future story. What the fuck, man? The actual juggernaut. All right.
00:51:57
Speaker
Not this juggernaut, the real juggernaut. This was all a ruse. He only needed to fight them long enough to study their cosmic auras and program a counter... to program a counter wavelength into the circuits of his on projector to nullify them and but no but to nullify their consciousness nullify their consciousness as well as their powers i believe so they just pass out is the thing yeah reed goes nullify our consciousness that sounds bad yeah He zaps them with his Ankh and all three collapse in front of them. Back in Manhattan, the team sent to rescue Fayah is hesitating on what to do. Typically, if they can't rescue a soldier, they kill them to prevent any questioning. But for some reason unknown to them, this woman has an order to not kill without Abdul's explicit permission.
00:52:44
Speaker
They call him and interrupt his gloating over Reed, who is now secured in a glass coffin to siphon his cosmic energy, as are Sue and Johnny. Abdul too hesitates when confronted to this as it's revealed to him that Faya is actually his daughter.
00:53:01
Speaker
Faya Salome. Who secretly left college to join the bunkies. And now if questioned, she could bring down his whole operation. But it's his daughter.
00:53:14
Speaker
The only thing he has outside his quest for world domination. As he wrestles with the decision, Hassan, fully conscious, but still encased at the prison wall, taunts him for not being strong enough.
00:53:26
Speaker
Jesus Christ, dude. Oh, I knew you were a wimp. You couldn't ah murder your daughter. Yeah, you're not you're not doing much good for anyone at this moment.
00:53:38
Speaker
he says He says you always did have the spine of a pig.
00:53:44
Speaker
pigsco Pigs got a foots have Pigs have spines. Pigs have... They're vertebrates. Is he thinking of a snake? I don't know. And they're pretty heavy animals. They must have pretty strong spines.
00:54:01
Speaker
Oh, God. So, in defiance, Abdel slams his fist down on the button. And in New York, Salome is electrocuted into dust.
00:54:13
Speaker
Yes, they have. i guess she had an electric collar that she agreed to wear can electrocute her so intensely that she turns into a pile of ash on the floor. This is my getting dead collar.
00:54:28
Speaker
With tears in his eyes, Abdul declares that he's not a wimp. And to prove it, he gets into his device and activates it. Oh, no. The Fantastic Four cringe and squirm in pain. do In their car.
00:54:44
Speaker
In their coffins, power crackling off of them. As the living Pharaoh suddenly grows 30 feet tall and declares himself once again the living monolith.
00:54:55
Speaker
Whoa. Enraged by his daughter's death, he lashes out at Reed and promises to take his home New York City first. Ooh. I should kill you, but I'm going to kill New York instead. Now, I will say definitively, this is where it switches from...
00:55:15
Speaker
a Fantastic Four story, ah a just fine Fantastic Four story into a just fine Marvel team up with Spider-Man. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Do you think that that's what these were?
00:55:32
Speaker
i Yes, I think like the first half of this was a single issue of Fantastic Four stretched to about 35, 40 pages and end including ah Abdul's origins in there.
00:55:48
Speaker
Right. And then this next one, it would probably be about two issues worth of Spider-Man team up issues. Yeah. What happens next, Patrick?
00:56:00
Speaker
ah Well, at a loss for what to do now, She-Hulk calls her good pals the Avengers. But Captain America regretfully informs her that actually the Avengers are on vacation right now. Sorry. Sorry. Instead.
00:56:13
Speaker
They'll have to find some super scientist elsewhere. Cap peruses the Avengers files for scientist and finds an entry for Spider-Man. He's a scientist.
00:56:24
Speaker
Pat, there were no scientists that aren't superheroes in all of New York. but Not in S.H.I.E.L.D.' 's files, at least. Okay, we're we're goingnna we'll get back to this in a second, but yeah. Okay.
00:56:37
Speaker
But how do they find Spider-Man? Of course, you go straight to the Daily Bugle and ask for Peter Parker, who is always photographing him. yeah Cap bursts into J. Jonah Jameson's office and demands to see Parker. But Parker, who was just here a moment ago, seems to have disappeared.
00:56:56
Speaker
Dejected, Captain America walks out of the building right into Spider-Man. He heard that the captain was looking for him and he's in. oh are you Peter Parker?
00:57:07
Speaker
Fuck. no No, no, no, no, no. They were shouting it out the window. oh they were shouting it out the window when they were. I was looking. Yeah, because I was looking for Peter Parker and then he disappeared. And then you're you're here.
00:57:21
Speaker
Yeah, i I heard you. these These windows are made of glass, so it's easy to to hear things through. OK, well, I think you might be Peter Parker, but. I'll let it go for now.
00:57:34
Speaker
We do get a great, and I don't know if this is where, this can't be where this was initially established, but we do get a very good interaction between a cranky joe J. Jonah Jameson and Captain America when he barges into his office and then Jonah being immediately humbled by it. Being like, oh, ah Cap! I'm always big fan of you. you want some of these? greatest hero! Do you want you do you want these cigars? ah They're from Hawaii. I mean, um Georgia.
00:58:01
Speaker
That is a funny joke that actually makes there. Yeah.
00:58:06
Speaker
I... Okay, they head back to the Baxter building and Spidey starts dissecting the machines from Salome's purse. It takes a while, but Cap and She-Hulk just lounge around until Spider-Man is able to recreate the device and match its frequencies or whatever. We'll fucking revisit that in a second. But like, what the? Why? All right.
00:58:27
Speaker
Why Spider-Man? Isn't he like a molecular biologist or something? Like, why? How does he suddenly understand this quantum energy and transfer technology? Like, this is this Marvel thing where scientists are just scientists. And again, why the fuck do they need a superhero scientist? Just grab Eddie's scientist.
00:58:51
Speaker
Well, so when it comes to great minds... in the marvel universe spider-man is up there he's like top 25 okay okay sure on but earth at least but nobody can be an expert in all things he is though and so is every other person who has scientists in their things well yeah Remember when Tony Stark invented a new element?
00:59:20
Speaker
yeah um and And also, Spider-Man doesn't seem to remember the Bunkies at all, this entire story. Yeah, what the hell, man? this was He really didn't want to be there back in that team up. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't he wasn't even making new memories.
00:59:36
Speaker
Yeah, it didn't even register for him. Yeah. So they they're able to match its frequencies. They're about to send She-Hulk through the portal when the alert system goes off. The living monolith has just arrived by plane and is smashing up Manhattan. And he's bigger than ever, seemingly like 60 feet tall. And there's no time to call any other superheroes. The three have to take this behemoth on themselves.
01:00:00
Speaker
ah So all that time they were just standing around. They couldn't have, like, contacted the X-Men or gotten the Avengers back from vacation or... The Avengers aren't coming back from vacation. They've made that very clear, Matt. Or the Defenders, or any of the thousands of fucking superheroes in New York who aren't Avengers.
01:00:25
Speaker
they didn't so They didn't start scanning the S.H.I.E.L.D. files for people in town that can fight. Yeah. There's also what so what Abdul, the living Pharaoh, the living monolith arrives from Egypt via private plane and they just appear on a tarmac all of a sudden having landed and everybody's rightfully freaked out. They're like plane just landed here unauthorized. There's no communication about it.
01:00:52
Speaker
We got to go check this out. And they do. And they're looking at this like slim private jet, really sleek. And then a fist. Bursts out of the top of the plane and then the rest of the living monolith emerges. But the the maximum height of the cabin of this plane has to be like eight feet.
01:01:12
Speaker
Was he just lying down in the plane that whole time? So do you remember in the in the Power Man and Iron Fist story when they found him in an apartment and he was full size and he was just crouching there for weeks and he was like, i've been waiting for you. And it took him like a week to find him. So for like a week, he's just crouching in an apartment.
01:01:35
Speaker
That's That's like a 12 hour flight, man. He's just like, move in there Oh, this is going to be great. He's like, ah this is going to be so great when I get there. got him Now his face is turning all red. He's like, Oh yes.
01:01:52
Speaker
but ah Cap and Spidey give it their all, but they're barely even noticed by the living monolith. She-Hulk, however, gets his attention by throwing cars at him.
01:02:03
Speaker
He's smashing up every building in sight and yelling about how they all killed his wife and kid. Spider-Man, feeling useless, decides to head back to the Baxter building and put himself through the rebuilt energy pyramid.
01:02:18
Speaker
Now, here's Spider-Man's moment to just stand around and do absolutely just stare. He yeah kicks him in the face once it doesn't have an impact. And then three minutes of action go by and we see him standing in the same place just going, what could I even do here? Oh,
01:02:40
Speaker
And then they're like, why is he running away? he doesn't even tell anybody. He just runs away. He beats the hell out of some bunkies and finds the machine where the FF are being kept in glass coffins. He's about to smash it when a bunkie in a lab coat is like, don't.
01:02:59
Speaker
He's got the whole bunkie outfit on, but a lab coat. Why would you don a lab coat? Because he's the scientist. This is just so the there so living monolith can be like, oh, you're one of the scientists. ah i But this bunkie in a lab coat says, don't.
01:03:17
Speaker
It's hooked up to a nuclear bomb and we're right below Cairo. If you destroy it, it'll kill us all and all of Cairo. but Jesus Christ.
01:03:28
Speaker
What was that weird mountain they showed us earlier with the statues of pharaohs on it? If that wasn't where we were. Right?
01:03:39
Speaker
Like if that's how they were just like, oh, hey, here's something cool to look at. Anyway, we're under
01:03:45
Speaker
Anyway, we're not there. We're under Cairo. Things are about to get really unpleasant.
01:03:54
Speaker
Spider-Man is torn. Does he save New York and destroy Cairo, himself, and the Fantastic Four? Or Does not do it? Should do or not do it?
01:04:06
Speaker
me should i do it or not do it Meanwhile, in New York, Captain America begins to get through to the living monolith. He starts to tell him that he's wrong about people being inherently bad. And for every bad guy, there's dozens of caring citizens.
01:04:22
Speaker
All the while, he's smashing up New York. He's doing to everyone else the exact thing that was done to him, killing wives and daughters. Unbeknownst to Cap, though, as he's starting to sway the monolith, the U.S. Army is loading up some rocket launchers and fires one at monolith's face.
01:04:39
Speaker
He feels betrayed. He feels betrayed, and he's about to kill Cap when he falls over on his ass. She-Hulk did it by grabbing his foot. Oh, that's all you had to do the whole time is grab his whole foot.
01:04:53
Speaker
it's um i It's judo. This is so, this is very, you know, i I'm having actually like weirdly I'm having trouble thinking of this is of this.
01:05:06
Speaker
I remember seeing this in cartoons all the time as I was a kid when I was a kid. Right. Here's the thing that's going to destroy the city. Oh, we've lulled it into like it's calming down. Maybe we played it a lullaby and it's falling asleep or maybe. Yeah. yeah Or maybe it's a mean guy and we've convinced him to stop. And then the army secretly shoots a thing at the guy. And then he's like, no, I'm going to kill you all.
01:05:28
Speaker
I feel like there's some like King Kong pastiches that were like... and Did that even... happen Maybe it even happened in King Kong? I think, right? Isn't... Faye Ray getting...
01:05:41
Speaker
carried up to the top and like manages to soothe him a bit before the planes come in. It's been so long since I've seen. i don't. Yeah. i A King Kong movie that is in New York.
01:05:54
Speaker
I don't remember. Yeah. It's I think I did see the original King Kong and it's been so long, but on top of that, um
01:06:05
Speaker
I saw so many King Kong pastiches. in Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. Yeah, sure. That, like, they've all blended together. And I'm i'm i'm definitely sure, like, it might have been in fucking Rugrats or Muppet Babies or could have been in anything.
01:06:21
Speaker
if you've grew If you grew up watching cartoons in the 80s and 90s, you don't have to see King Kong. ah We get a real weird shot straight up skirt of Abdul behind standard or collapsed behind She-Hulk after she knocks him over. And tastefully, the anchors just make it all black. But, you know, yeah they shade in his big, old big old dong hanging his dong in balls yeah um and And She-Hulk is looking right at it.
01:06:57
Speaker
and The Air Force. She-Hulk would comment on it. We know She-Hulk. She would be like, look at his big jong and balls. Yeah. She's facing away from it. Maybe she didn't. Maybe she shouldn't she'd be like, I'm going go kick him.
01:07:12
Speaker
The Air Force starts dropping bombs on the monolith, but he picks himself back up and gets back to knocking over towers when Cap and She-Hulk notice an exposed power cable.
01:07:23
Speaker
A power cable that carries all of the electricity that powers Manhattan. that cable. Thank God we found the wire that supplies all of Manhattan's electricity and that wire has been exposed.
01:07:40
Speaker
You know, I think they shouldn't have just one wire that supplies all the electricity to Manhattan. i Yeah, it seems like a bad plan. They should probably have multiple sources of power feeding a city that that big and that complex. and the And even if it's all coming from the same place, probably should have multiple feeds coming and going to different things. For efficiency's sake, right? Yeah. You wouldn't just feed it all into one big wire.
01:08:09
Speaker
Mm-hmm. On the and then you'd have to banks of the Hudson River, I guess. And then you'd have to get other wires to go backwards to get the houses that the big wire passed by. Right. there's see
01:08:23
Speaker
But, hey, only in New York, right? Only in New York. Long story short, they zap Monolith with it and he falls over, seemingly dead. The city celebrates as our heroes regroup and reflect. Spider-Man, Johnny, Reed, and Sue all reunite with Cap and She-Hulk, but there's no time for celebration as buildings still seem to be collapsing. Hang on a second. This is so weird.
01:08:51
Speaker
the Spider-Man, Johnny, Reed, and Sue show up in the Fantasticar, the actual Fantasticar. Oh, yeah. But She-Hulk... When she arrives with Cap and Spider-Man to initially confront the living monoloth monolith, she's in, like, essentially a giant sardine can with the Fantastic Four's logo on the side of it. Did they not let her drive the Fantastic Car when they're out of town?
01:09:19
Speaker
How deep does this disrespect go? If they got there and the Fantastic Car was already there, and then it's this like, She-Hulk, did you drive the Fantastic Car? And...
01:09:31
Speaker
No, I let Spider-Man do it. Spider-Man, is that true? No, she drove it. She-Hulk! You know the punishment. And Spider-Man explains, he takes a moment to explain exactly what he did to prevent blowing up Kyra, which was to...
01:09:51
Speaker
Push the living monolith powers up to their full levels. He he gets to that device when he goes through the portal. He pulls all the levers all the way up and he's like, we'll probably overpower him and just tire him out.
01:10:05
Speaker
One, that doesn't work. Two, that caused countless more deaths. He just grew bigger and bigger and bigger, and it will continue to. Sorry to spoil that he's not actually dead here, but it will continue to cause more and more deaths as he grows and grows. What's wrong with you?
01:10:23
Speaker
This is the weirdest. What's about to happen is the weirdest fucking thing in the world. How are the buildings still collapsing, Pat? Well, the living monolith is dead, but he's still growing. His limbs continue pushing through buildings and amidst the chaos, his eyes open. He grins. So gravity is working on him so hard, he's not able to pick himself up.
01:10:45
Speaker
Yeah. He's lying face down on the ground. He's planking. Yes, but his body keeps growing and knocking shit over because it just keeps expanding. yeah. yeah He's just laying there, face half buried in the ground, like... He's loving it.
01:11:06
Speaker
but
01:11:09
Speaker
Twinget arrives. He brings the Avengers onto the scene. Finally. Your favorite Avengers. ah Star Fox, Wonder Man. God.
01:11:20
Speaker
Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Thor. ah this is This has got to be the worst Avengers lineup. What a bunch of dorks. The narrator says, five of the mightiest men on Earth. Hawkeye! Star Fox!
01:11:35
Speaker
I guess Star Fox is like Thanos's brother or something, but like. Yeah, I don't know if I would call him a man on Earth. But ah Hawkeye, one of the five mightiest men on Earth. um Okay, so they tie an him adamantium rope around his waist.
01:11:56
Speaker
A literal mile of adamantium rope. what ah What a waste of adamantium. And Thor attempts to toss him into space via Mjolnir.
01:12:07
Speaker
But he doesn't budge. Sorry, Thor. Alive but still paralyzed, the living monolith monologues from the ground about how about his inevitable victory as his bunkies start descending from the sky by the thousands. By the thousands. And he's just, he's still planking on the ground. He's like, fight my bunkies. Fight my bunkies, idiots. I will still win. He's just fully paralyzed but continuing to grow. Such a bizarre scene.
01:12:39
Speaker
But when he sees the people of New York aren't running in fear, but instead running in to help the heroes fight the bunkies, he's moved. He sees a normal man throw himself in front of a blast to save a child and has a full identity crisis. Ooh.
01:12:56
Speaker
it's It's cute. Cap wraps with him in um a minute. cap he They brat for a minute. Cap pulls up a ah a chair, sits backwards. Turns it around backwards.
01:13:08
Speaker
The world is made up of mostly good people like that man. Not bullies like Hassan or all the people that watched your wife fucking die.
01:13:19
Speaker
but Again, like this first half of this comic seemed to be making the point that like, hey, people are evil and they don't care enough about other people. And that's what causes villains. Yeah. Is that nobody cares about people anymore. And the second half of this comic is like what I said earlier isn't true. Like what does David Michelini believe?
01:13:42
Speaker
He believes that in the Fantastic Four, people are inherently bad, and in Spider-Man stories, the people are inherently good. Abdel reflects and then commands the battle to halt.
01:13:54
Speaker
He asks Thor to fling Mjolnir into space once again, and this time pushes himself to his feet and jumps to assist. It works! have so many questions and we're going to the hammer pulls the adamantium rope into space, flinging the living monolith beyond Earth's orbit before disconnecting because the leather thong. Because yeah they they make it very clear, which I appreciated because I would have been like, how the fuck does it disconnect from adamantium rope? But it is. It's the little leather piece that we'll talk about so that Thor can attach it to his key chain.
01:14:35
Speaker
ah Okay, as he as he drifts through space, Abdul finally feels at peace. Over an indeterminate amount of time, the stars cause physical changes in his organic form, sprouting life from his skin.
01:14:50
Speaker
and as he finds himself fully transformed transformed into Ahmed Abdul, the living planet, he smiles.
01:15:01
Speaker
oh Aww.
01:15:04
Speaker
Why does everyone always have more adamantium? i thought like The whole point of adamantium is that it's incredibly rare and people like fight wars over. yeah yeah Why didn't the leather... a mile of it. A mile of rope of it.
01:15:18
Speaker
To throw into space and lose forever. Why didn't the leather thong snap immediately?
01:15:27
Speaker
yeah
01:15:30
Speaker
It probably... hu
01:15:36
Speaker
why didn' it Why wasn't it not till gravity stopped being a pressure on it that it finally snapped?
01:15:44
Speaker
Maybe that's like Thor can throw it. He can call it back and he can snap the little leather loop on the on the bottom of it when he needs to.
01:15:56
Speaker
Why didn't the eight people with super strength standing right there just lift the guy up rather than making him... struggle to his feet and like leap in the air you had she-hulk captain america wonder man star fox iron man thor spider-man and let's say uh um fucking invisible woman's telekinetic shields right yeah yeah that should have been enough that's
01:16:30
Speaker
That's enough people to lift like. To give them like a little boost if they all jump at the same time while they're holding. Oh my God. theyre they're are These are the strongest people on fucking earth besides the Hulk.
01:16:41
Speaker
not the smartest people on earth yeah i guess not all right why did he have so much fungal growth in his body that when he was out in space it turned into a forest so you said physical change here i think it's i think the word you were looking for was chemical change oh sorry sorry it's enough radiation from the stars to turn his normal yeah in chemicall chemical composition of his skin into trees ah trees yeah ah or maybe just moss you know maybe like i think he had fungus on it i think that this is david the nice way of trying not to point out to us that he was covered in fungus covered in fungus like he hadn't showered in a while and that when he was left out in space for an indeterminate amount of time that fungus just grew and grew is yeah yeah into an entire planet's worth of life
01:17:33
Speaker
The living planet. Isn't there already a character in Marvel called the living planet, Pat? Yes. Yeah. Ego, the living planet. So we needed a second one? I guess. Do we ever come across this, the living planet?
01:17:47
Speaker
Ever again? i don't know. I don't know. i don't know. I guess we'll have to read... um sensational Spider-Man 18, 19, and 20 in 1997 to find out. I don't think we have to. Oh,
01:18:04
Speaker
oh remember? Sorry, I was looking at his um wiki. Remember the thing that made him become the living monolith with Luke Cage and Iron Fist was called the Cheops Crystal?
01:18:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. Cheops. Cheops. Somebody wrote in and corrected our pronunciation of that. They did? Yeah. It's funnier to say Cheops like it's chip like it's a bag of chips and you have an accent. Yeah.
01:18:31
Speaker
That's what you missed. Whoever corrected us missed the joke. um
01:18:38
Speaker
I'm still, I'm reading the wiki. Return to Earth in a small fragment. Oh, his essence returns to Earth in a small fragment that breaks off of the living planet. Don't spoil it for me, Matt.
01:18:50
Speaker
We're not going to read Sensational Spider-Man. Next time we'll see him, he'll just, like, be there. He'll just be around. He'll just have already returned.
01:19:02
Speaker
Here's my last question. Okay. What happened to Hassan? well Wall boy.
01:19:10
Speaker
Yeah, he is still just encased in a wall in deep underneath Cairo. Yeah. Maybe somebody will write a story about that in the future. Maybe we'll get a your resolution to Wallboy. He comes out for revenge on Manhattan for some reason.
01:19:31
Speaker
Oh my god. Alright. So that's... so we Now we know the origin of the living pharaoh. And now we know the ultimate fate. we Actually not. He comes back. But the ultimate fate for now. Yeah. What seems to be the ultimate fate. For the next...
01:19:48
Speaker
15 years. The exact same ultimate fate, correct me if I'm wrong, as Alpha, the ultimate mutant, right? They just flung him out into space as he continued to grow larger and larger.
01:20:03
Speaker
That's true. i forgot. Now I have to look at Alpha the Ultimate. Alpha the Ultimate Mutant appears in two Quasar stories in 1990.
01:20:14
Speaker
That's so bizarre. That is really bizarre. What? yeah
01:20:23
Speaker
Well, i guess we have to read Quasar now. Okay.
01:20:28
Speaker
Wow. So,
Fantastic Four Story Discussion
01:20:30
Speaker
okay. You basically already told us your thoughts. it's You think it is a perfectly fine Fantastic Four story and then a perfectly fine Marvel team-up story.
01:20:40
Speaker
Exactly. it's the Even when they bring the Fantastic Four back together in the end, it's still clearly Spider-Man-led story and then Captain America-led america led story ed then a Fantastic Four story. So...
01:20:56
Speaker
It's serviceable right back in the mid to late seventy s which is when this feels like it's from. yes It was just two very popular titles. The Fantastic Four approach it in a very Fantastic Four way until they're subjugated. And then...
01:21:13
Speaker
Spider-Man and whoever teams up with him treats it in a very Spider-Man from the Marvel team up stories way. And we get like half a resolution. Classic end of the Silver Age.
01:21:26
Speaker
I just don't know why David Michelini and Mark Silvestri were like, they we gotta tell this story. i know. what are What is it?
01:21:37
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Hold on. I, here's, I, okay. You give your, you give your theory because it'll be funny. And then actually I think I, I, I have an X, I have an answer. It's in the graphic novel.
The Creation of 'The Revenge of the Living Monolith'
01:21:48
Speaker
Okay. I have pure speculation again, but pretty sure this is true. They, they took forever to actually come out with the secret wars toys.
01:21:59
Speaker
And when they did, when they finally did and they weren't selling well, Marvel said, all right, I guess we need to create another comic that just brings in as many heroes as we can. And the result is this graphic novel.
01:22:15
Speaker
Okay. Here's an alternate. Okay. David Michelini in the graphic novel says that Jim Owsley had the concept, I want to do the monster that trashed New York. Something on a big scale like those old 50s monster movies. We're going to call it.
01:22:31
Speaker
Are you ready for this? The Revenge of the Living Monolith. And apparently, so he was like, who's biggest bad guy? like The bullpen started... Size-wise. Yeah, started to laugh. um Weeks of hammering out fall of plot details, Jim and I decided the action would indeed take place on a grand scale that drama should unfold on a much smaller stage, the tormented soul of an obsessively driven man. And so he plucked at Ahmet Abdul, taking the slivers of his known existence and fleshing them out, balancing his...
01:23:04
Speaker
Okay, there's yeah, the slivers. Yes, you're right. Balancing his vision for the future with glimpses of his past countering his super normal, super normal, supra, supra, like the Toyota, super normal power with is all too human needs and frailties. We made him whole. We gave him life and the Snickers turned to jokes.
01:23:24
Speaker
More weeks passed. Mark Silvestri and Geoff Isherwood were pegged for the art team. Pages were drawn. Words were written. We had fun. And then something strange started to happen. Snickers began turning into raised eyebrows and nods of approval. Jokesters began poking their heads through the door and timidly asking, could I get a copy of that when it comes out?
01:23:44
Speaker
And it was that's how David Michelini would voice that character. Yeah, yeah. That's the that's the that's how he described the Marvel bullpen. And it was time for Jim, Mark, Jeff and I to smile. People were starting to realize what we had known all along, that we had a winner on our hands, which brings us here to wit. My job is to have a great time writing stories.
01:24:04
Speaker
I've done that. Your job, on the other hand, is having great time reading stories, get to work already. No, our job is to make fun of the things you wrote 20 years. Failed at my job. 50 years ago. 40 years ago, I guess. um Yeah, so that is it.
01:24:18
Speaker
And I guess, yeah, a lot of the Marvel bullpen thought this was dumb and they were right. Yeah. Yeah, no, they were right. And i don't know why they started rescinding those opinions. It seems like this probably should have just been derided into not existing.
01:24:35
Speaker
One last thing I want to mention before we start closing things out here, Matt.
Controversial Comic Cover and Humor
01:24:40
Speaker
The cover this book. Oh, okay. yeah And we get this enough to a point where it's not a jump scare anymore, but the Twin Towers are standing tall on the cover as the living monolith smashes through them. He's knocking one of the towers over. and believe that's the North Tower.
01:25:00
Speaker
What shocks me... Is the placement of his fist on that tower as he takes it down, because this is identical.
01:25:15
Speaker
to where the plane hit it, this is like I'm looking at what looks like an image of the news that day with the living monolith superimposed on it.
01:25:27
Speaker
It is yeah shocking. It's wild. All right. Anything else to say about the revenge of the living monolith? No, that was my last thing. He's got an eye out. Stuff that could buy out.
01:25:37
Speaker
If you had time machine that you would like try out. It's Anne Fields.
01:25:44
Speaker
Oh, right, Matt. It is a bonus episode, so you know what that means. We don't do... What did we do this week that's X-Men related, right? We don't dip into the mailbag, but we do still cover ads. And in this graphic novel, there aren't any ads. are no ads. It's a graphic novel, so I don't even have a fantastical story behind it. It's illegal. It's against the law. I could be arrested for finding ads in this comic. So...
01:26:12
Speaker
What I've done is I've grabbed ah an ad from a more recent comic or from a comic that we've read a little less recently. in ad for the I should say a series of ads for the GI Jason Club.
01:26:29
Speaker
This is to be ah a proud American. Join the GI Jason Club, the club for the few proud American boys of today. Oh, red flag. Immediate. Yeah. Yeah.
01:26:41
Speaker
Receive free charter membership certificate ID card, plus a bonus of two authentic U.S. Army patches upon membership. Red flag. Yeah.
01:26:54
Speaker
For free details and catalog, red flag.
01:27:00
Speaker
Wait to the GI Jason Club. So, okay. So this is this is nothing immediate. Like immediately you would write and you get nothing back. They send you a catalog to teach to show you what you can pay to get.
01:27:12
Speaker
They will send you a free membership certificate ID card as well as two authentic US Army patches. Upon membership. So you may still have to. Yeah. Just the membership. It seems it seems as if they send you free details and a catalog.
01:27:29
Speaker
And there's there's a second ad here that kind of goes into a little more detail about the catalog and the products they sell. It is exclusively camouflage clothing.
01:27:39
Speaker
yeah
01:27:43
Speaker
Red flag. i Red flag. i did a little research here. There's nothing on the GI Jason club that I could find anywhere. But from what i can piece together here, they're building a small militia. ah Yeah. did yeah ah or Children.
01:28:04
Speaker
ah A child's army. yeah A child's army of proud boys. Wonder whatever happened to these guys. Oh, God. um It says right to... And that little boy grew up to be Donald Trump.
01:28:22
Speaker
It says here, yeah, right to Jonestown, Pennsylvania. Oof. No, I don't want to buy that.
Audience Engagement and Podcast Conclusion
01:28:31
Speaker
Okay. Your loss. Child army. He's got an eye out.
01:28:35
Speaker
Stuff that you could buy out. If you had a time machine that you would like try out. It's Edfield's.
01:28:44
Speaker
Okay, folks, thank you so much for tuning into this bonus episode and ah learning all about the fucking living living monolith with us. Glad we put put an end to that chapter of our minds. Yeah. Huge thanks to Weapon Jason for...
01:29:03
Speaker
letting us know this it exists and thus burdening us with having to read it. And if you are part of Patreon, patreon You got this episode a week early. So thank you for early.
01:29:18
Speaker
Thank you for your support. um If anyone else wants, if you want to join the Patreon, that's one of the benefits at any, at any paid donation level. But if you want to just join for free to get, you know, updates and our reading lists, you can you can do that. You can do that too. Yeah. ah As always, please like, like our posts, subscribe to our feeds, share, rate, review, share, tell a friend, tell it, tell you a damn friend already. Tell a freaking friend. You have friends. We know you have friends. Tell one of them. We've been waiting. We can see that guilty little cringe on your face. Now that you've said it.
01:30:00
Speaker
Just do it. Just do it. There's no reason not to. The worst that will happen is your friend says, i don't really like the X-Men. And you can say, but these guys are funny. And they say, well, I'm actually really boring. And then you say, all right, nothing I can do to help you.
01:30:13
Speaker
But then maybe they listen to it and they don't like it and they judge you a little bit about it. But they'll still be your friend. if they're or they friend Or they won't. They'll still be your friend. Yeah, or you'll find out that they're not your true friend. So, I mean, you could suggest it to them. They listen. They don't like it. You find out they're not your true friend. You find out now you don't have any friends. And, uh-oh, that was your wife.
01:30:37
Speaker
So, like, that's the worst that could happen. And you know who's still here after all that? Me and Pat. The Mutant Menace Podcast. We're here for you, pal. so with mentionching yeah Thank you to Chris Wilson for the music and Julia Selle for the voice of Trish Tilby. And Pat, that means we only got one thing to say left.
01:31:04
Speaker
That's right, Matt. The catchphrase we say at the end of every episode, folks, please remember, this isn't Mikey Milk Toast you're talking to. And as always, what reason?