Transcript
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.
Speaker: Hey everybody, I'm Matt Allcamp. And I'm Pat Reber. And say it with us, hello. welcome Welcome to Mute Menace.
Speaker: We have a hello on there? Oh yeah, I guess somebody just sent us an email with the word hello. Yeah, so that's what it is. That's who it is.
Speaker: Thank you, hello. Listen, Patrick. oh okay
Speaker: I'll try. This is going to be an interesting episode because this is ah this is not an X-Men comic. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Actually, by the time we got to the end of this, I said, why are we why are we reading this?
Speaker: Well, so, yeah, this is just a comic written in the mid 80s by our favorite editor. is ah Is she our favorite editor or second favorite editor?
Speaker: we We do love that Weezy Jones. We love Weezy Jones, but maybe Innocenti was a little bit better of an editor than Weezy Jones. I don't. it's It's tough to compare, right? Because it's it's two very different stories, and I i don't want to i don't want to pit them against each other. They're both better than Jim's stupid. I do. Give one a hammer and another one. And the other a dagger?
Speaker: dagger, and we'll see what happens. Okay. Listen, Pat. Yeah. Yeah. No, you've got me glued to my seat now.
Speaker: So this whole thing was just, and Ascenti was a writer. And at the time, the idea around Marvel was that they wanted, editors to understand every side of the business. So they wanted every editor to write some.
Speaker: And, Nusenti wasn't a comic book lady at all, which she continues saying in interviews all the way up until like the 2020s. She loves to tell people she wasn't into comic books before she got into the world of comic books. um But so when she was asked to come up with like a superhero,
Speaker: The way she puts it is she wasn't thinking in the way of like, okay, what's his powers and what's his secret identity or whatever. She was thinking of like, what's a concept of human character that I wanted to that i want to explore through a hero yeah that a classical hero would be, we you know.
Speaker: Would be explored. Yeah! So, um her idea was, like, ah she wants to strip away everything about this guy, his memories, his name, his backstory, everything that he knows, his world, and then leave only just, like, luck.
Speaker: And the other editors were like, what the fuck is this? What's luck as a power? And she was like, I don't know. He's lucky. what do What do you mean? He's got luck. What do you mean? um ah but This is crazy. This sounds just like the long shot miniseries that we just read.
Speaker: So she threw all that away and decided to write the long shot miniseries instead. No, so she, yes so yeah, So, yeah, so that's how she came up with Longshot. And apparently every artist said no.
Speaker: Like, every Marvel artist was like, mm, no thanks. Really? And so they went for Art Adams, who at this point was... Like a nobody.
Speaker: He had just started hanging out around the Marvel offices. And ah like he was just like a fan who ah like had some fan work published, but hadn't had. And I think he had done a few like layouts here and there at this point, but he hadn't really done a comic book.
Speaker: He was at a level where he wouldn't say no. Right. But why we're reading this, why we're reading the long shot miniseries.
Speaker: is because Ann Ossenti will go on to become Chris Claremont's editor on X-Men pretty much right after this. Of course. this is the miniseries that introduces Spiral, who Claremont immediately, after issue one, and we'll have to talk about this because I think in ways that don't quite make sense. After issue one, he snatches Spiral and he's like, she's in my book now.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. She's perfect. She's an X-Man. And about, what, like a year after Longshot ends, he brings Longshot into ah X-Men.
Speaker: What? And then Mojo, as we've seen a little bit, becomes like a recurring X-Men villain. So like. Oh, that's going be so scary.
Speaker: Mojo is scary, dude. i I'm sure we'll talk about this as this goes on, but like, yeesh. Yikes. Cripes. Cripes!
Speaker: So, yeah, so we're reading the infinitely bizarre... um What I think might be Ann Ossenti's maybe first written comic book work. because She might have done Daredevil before that, but, like, man, this is some weird stuff.
Speaker: It's wild. Long shot miniseries with Ann Ossenti and Art Adams. say, just at the top here, if you can...
Speaker: lean into it if you can really just dive into this miniseries and enjoy it for what it is yeah boy was this a lot of fun yes i think the very first time i read it i was just so confused by her writing style but this time kind of knowing what i was to expect I fucking loved it. And i love Longshot. I think he's a great character. za Yeah, yeah. He's a real... He's very well-defined.
Speaker: We love a well-defined character. Muscularly, you mean. he sure is. He's got well-defined muscles. muscles um let's Let's get this out of the way up top, though, Matt. The writing we should address, because we've talked about Anne Ducenti before, but yeah like she... I know I'm a little more tolerant of it, I think, than you are, but her writing style was definitely not...
Speaker: dialogue conscious. She's very it's it's very much meant to move things along. And it feels like and if you ever have like part of a conversation in your head and then you're around people and you just start talking about the thing that you were thinking about like yeah midway through the thought.
Speaker: That's kind of what it feel it feels like we're getting all the important parts of a conversation without any of the in-between stuff that that makes it make sense.
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like in this series, though, i agree. and i think But I think in this series, she kind of like goes back and forth between doing that. Yeah. Which she will continue to do for basically the rest of her career. like that is That, to me, is her signature. That's sure.
Speaker: um But also, way over explaining everything. like She'll go back and forth. like At one point, Longshot is running away from some people, and an explosion happens. Yeah.
Speaker: And he says out loud, but what's this blowing up in front of me? Well, he's got to say something, Matt.
Speaker: He's on the panel. Every time a character's on panel, they have to say something. This is the Stanley rule of writing.
Speaker: But she also does some subtlety, right? Like there are things that happen that she doesn't draw a circle around, that come back.
Speaker: Right. we'll get Even the, I think some of the stronger character elements of Longshot are established that way. of just's It's not people saying out loud, oh, look how heroic he is. It's just...
Speaker: Heroic is too general a term, but look at how selfless, how, you know, naively like he's got a heroism that's like naive and completely selfless. And he doesn't like utterly thoughtless without yeah without thinking a second thought. He's just like, oh, we have to save them.
Speaker: I must do the the heroic thing here. Which is funny sometimes, too, because sometimes he's just so clueless about the world around him that he doesn't know what the heroic thing is. And that, like, this that's other thing, this comic is funny.
Speaker: It sure is. scar Yeah, it's very funny. The other thing I want to address just before we get into it is the art which I think we have sort of an inverse perspective on from Nocenti because Art Adams, and i've I've said this before, you when it comes to like expressing emotion in faces, when it comes to getting weird and ugly, he's he's very good at it. But when it comes to just drawing people doing things, he overdoes it. He just draws too much. Every panel is so busy and has so many lines in it, and it hurts my eyes. And... ah
Speaker: I think it's fine for this weird series. I think it really again, if you're if you are leaning into the vibe of this comic, then this really strange, ugly art is great.
Speaker: He really does. works He really his his stuff is so busy. It's like extremely busy. Yes. Yeah. um Yeah. And Longshot being kind of the first glam rock hero, I think sort of it almost works.
Speaker: um But, Pat, I just had a thought before we start getting into issue one. Uh-oh, what's that?
Speaker: So what do you think? Never mind, Matt. No time for your thought. It's time for... I said it. Pat's email corner. Damn it. Get out that random number generator, Matt, because it is time for Daniel. Oh, no! ok
Speaker: but Okay. Okay, how many are in... Does he have an intro that you need to get? Daniel wrote in. Yeah, I'll go through the intro. But for now, there are 22 past comments and five future comments. I think we should do two from the past and one from the future. Okay. All right. I'm in.
Speaker: Daniel says... back again with more X-Men theories, questions, comments, and jokes. These next two emails actually got split up because I realized I was cramming four episodes into one email and I know you guys would have made fun of me if you saw the total count for comments at the end of the email.
Speaker: So 22 and 5 is the light version that we got. God. Okay. god okay I do have a semi-serious question for you guys and the fans of Mutant Menace. As a comic collector, I obviously use an app to categorize and track my collection so I know what I have and don't double buy comics.
Speaker: Within this app, you can also track what you have read as well as rate that comic and give reviews slash start discussions with others who have read it. My question is this. do you guys consider fans of the podcast who have read the issues recapped and narrated by you two, or is that stolen valor?
Speaker: We We had this question once before, like 60 episodes ago, didn't we? And I think the answer we came to was sort of. Yeah. it was it His name is Dusk, I think, that asked the question originally.
Speaker: What's his name now? He never said. um oh oh I remember. I remember our answer. Oh, okay. If we did a good job in recapping the issue...
Speaker: then you can say, then yes, you can tell people you read it. Right. If we did a bad job, you have to tell people, no, I didn't read it. So if you're somebody like Mikey Two Mails or a Weapon Jason who give us compliments all the time, yeah, you're allowed to say that you have read these issues.
Speaker: So when when, well, you know, so I think like it It's just based on your own sort of judgment.
Speaker: So read the issue, decide if we did a good job or a bad job. and If we did a bad job, then you can't say that you read it when we read it to you. And if we did a good job, then you can.
Speaker: I think that's a fair rule. Yeah. No, no. Just say yes. Yes. Yes. You've read it. You know everything about it. You've read it. All right, Matt. Number three. twenty two What do we got? Number three. Okay. The kid from No Hard Feelings is actually a really good pick for Nightcrawler. Good job, Pat.
Speaker: Hey. Hey. I was cast. I was trying to cast. I think too bad he's he's no Timmy Chalamet because that guy's... rumored already going to be playing nightcrawler but is that true or we said that it wait this is this podcast is where i heard that rumor first i think oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry yeah and then ah but i did like that kid from no hard feelings i thought he would be a good nightcrawler number 18 number 18 daniel says the brood use rifles i thought they were space roaches
Speaker: Yeah, they are space roaches who seem to also have guns. Oh, my God. Imagine roaches with guns. Whoa. you ever see Joe's apartment?
Speaker: No. It was. i've the I only ever saw the advertisements for it in comic books. It was only 60 minutes long. film That they could only squeeze an hour out of from built off of MTV shorts. But Jerry O'Connell, Jerry O'Connell starred as as Joe.
Speaker: All right. So the future. Five. One future question. ah Five. I got one. One. You guys are joking about how events in the comics feel like 30 years ago since you've been doing the podcast. But listening to future episodes feels like 30 years in the future.
Speaker: You're already at X Factor now.
Speaker: Yeah, that's just. yeah Yeah, thanks. Thanks. That's true. That's your true perspective. Yeah, that is your truth. And we're not going to steal it from you. there's There is one here that i I want to share with us, though. It's number three. It's, oh, there's a Canadian Dan now.
Speaker: We haven't heard from Canadian Dan in a while. Yeah, not since we recommended his wife divorce We didn't recommend his wife divorce him. We said that was another reason why his wife didn't have to be called Canadian wife, is that she also could and not be your wife at all anymore if she wanted.
Speaker: But I didn't i think ah my recommendation is that she doesn't.
Speaker: Marry him again. i just hope they're doing okay, you know?
Speaker: i All right. We got to keep moving that up next. It's sweet Douglas. Oh, what a sweet Douglas email subject. Kitty's pride. Hey, Pat, tell Matt that someone should have sat Kitty down and had her practice her speech before heading out that day. This is her speech at the end of the the new mutants episode.
Speaker: ah butger that they can perhaps most infamous that they continue letting her make these speeches like they've seen her do it two times before and they're like yeah kitty you go up there and make speech yeah were all like you're the best one for this they said it in the comic
Speaker: I keep having this scene in my head of Kitty hyping herself up, running through my head, and it makes me chuckle endlessly. Okay, Kitty, you've got this. Deep breath in and And then a list of...
Speaker: uh we're not gonna say that on this podcast doug it's sweet douglas he's not writing a list of slurs it's comic book censor try to picture it uh listeners s and try to picture it kitty just staring at herself in the mirror breathing really heavily and then saying a bunch of slurs and then smiling at herself like yeah ah Her speech could be just as impactful, if not even more so, without having to resort to the shock value of slurs. But sure, I guess the writers were trying to take it on headlong and make an impact.
Speaker: I can't blame them for wanting to do so, and I can't blame Marvel for then censoring it in their digital version. Oh, really? It's literally just a big black block in her speech bubble, which must be confusing to anyone who doesn't know.
Speaker: Holy shit. ah All the best, sweet Douglas. That's so funny. i mean, good but that's so funny.
Speaker: I mean, what if i redacted?
Speaker: but Oh, thank you. Sweet Douglas. Up next. That was very sweet. We have Mikey two males with three males. What the fuck? He's going off the rails.
Speaker: ah First, I believe this is his X-Men related email. He says episode. i don't remember which, but. Okay. He is referring to our conversation about Sam and Lila Shaney from the new mutants episode. He says, hi, Pat.
Speaker: Tell Matt I said that regarding teleportation and changing in an instant, being able to change your clothes when you teleport from one place to another. The way I always interpreted when someone teleports and appears a moment later in a different outfit is either they wear multiple sets like stage actors or they teleport into a wardrobe into the outfit they set up ahead of time. That is very good, right? That makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. You set up, you put you put like a clear mannequin or like a hollow mannequin with your clothes on it. You teleport into that.
Speaker: Inside that mannequin. And then you teleport out. No, you take the mannequin with you. i think what you would have to do is like put it all on a hanger and kind of connect it so that it's all hanging and then teleport into it.
Speaker: And then just rip the hangar out. That's like an extra second. It has to be your shape, though. It would have to be... It would have to have enough space for your body. Yeah, And you'd have to get an exact... What would happen... There's like a little bit of space in there. what If you teleport into it, the clothes just... No, they wont work themselves no you don't like...
Speaker: You don't grow out of no... You materialize in that space. So you would have clothes inside you. They would not be inside you. They would! You would be trying to occupy the same space as clothes, and you would be merging with the clothes. I disagree. I don't think that's how it works. So Your belief is that when you teleport, you...
Speaker: You pop into that space as a tiny little version of yourself and you just grow really rapidly. ah No, I don't think you're a tiny version of yourself. I think you just like you materialize from a point outward.
Speaker: no no that's why there's that's why there's always a cloud when he disappears because he materializes from these we're talking about kurt now but he he he dematerializes from one place the air kind of like has to fill in so a little cloud pops up and then he comes back fills in the space and there's like a puff of air coming out from around him that wouldn't be instant though
Speaker: it would be it's fast It's fast enough that it's instant to us. There would no longer be a concern about him materializing inside a wall or whatever because he would start to go in and be like, oh, it's full and then he'd go backwards.
Speaker: He'd be like, alright, never mind. No, that's ah that's too solid of a material for his body just to like force to conform. That's why it would be dangerous because he would just be like in a concrete wall.
Speaker: So here's what I think. I think you have to have, because you have to be touching the fabric, but there has to be space for your body. So you have to have, so it's not a full mannequin.
Speaker: It's like a mannequin with missing pieces all over it, but still it's shape. Like ah maybe like a wire mannequin. And you teleport into the wire mannequin. And then you teleport out because you you don't have to teleport with everything that's touching you.
Speaker: You can pick what is touching you that comes with you and what doesn't. o Because otherwise the floor would come with you all the time. Just to make it easier, just paint the wire mannequin flesh color.
Speaker: And then just always be walking around inside a wire mannequin. Yeah, yeah. yeah I guess that would work for the clear plastic mannequin, too. it like Why does Kurt never put his arms down?
Speaker: And then, of course, we have our non X-Men related email from Mikey Two Mails. Hey, Pat, tell Matt I was able to beat my personal record the other day and jogged 3.7 miles. Nice.
Speaker: why
Speaker: like It's a personal best, and though I am not in shape, it felt good to do so. The whole time I actually listened to your show, and it was a delight. There's three reasons why. not in shape. oh It felt good. Listen to our show. Listen to your show.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't think I could jog 3.7 miles. Oh, I definitely could. I can walk a billion trillion miles. I counted. um But...
Speaker: I can't jog for very long at all. I can walk for miles and miles, but not necessarily on hills.
Speaker: okay Well, we are proud of you, Mikey two males. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us. And that's how he got his second wind to write a three male. That's right. There is a third male here. Subject line, Mikey two males body parentheses for the opening. When you say, say it with us, disqualified those parentheses. Yeah, this is not the format. It's not the format.
Speaker: So sorry.
Speaker: Yeah, I was thinking about something today. What's that, Matt? I was thinking just wondering, just walking around wondering, God damn it, did Pat do anything X-Men related this week?
Speaker: In fact, Matt, I did. Oh, wow. In the sense that the X-Men love playing baseball. You play baseball? no No, no, no. Oh, let me ask you this, Matt. Are you familiar at all with video game culture?
Speaker: No, no, not really. ah Do they still make like playing Pac-Man in the arcades and you got to put, oh yeah, you got to put your pen, your penny. your pen you gotta put your penny up on the on the machine so that when the it's the next person when you finish your guy is they you know somebody's waiting their turn okay so you're you're up on it then great so you probably already know then playstation uh this month one of their free games is mlb the show uh the baseball video game
Speaker: The show. the show. The show. that' Making it to the majors is the the show. Okay. it's It's sort of an inside baseball term.
Speaker: Okay. But so I've been playing that a lot. There's a mode where you can create a player and then play your way up through like high school ball and the minors all the way to the major leagues.
Speaker: And you named you named your character. I created a character. No, that would be very cool. there was the Listen, the X-Men related thing is is just baseball. They love baseball. This is baseball. So there's not another connection here. But I did. it So there's a two tier naming system for this video game.
Speaker: ah There is the name that you can just like name your character in text. And then there's also the announcers, ah the people that are the announcers on the game recorded. it must be like 1500, 2000 different first and last names that you can choose from to have So of course where I had, I chose for the announcers to read my name is BJ butts. Very fun. ah But I named her. This is one of my favorite character names of all time.
Speaker: I named her Joanna stink.
Speaker: what What makes this your favorite? i don't know. It's just good. It rolls off the tongue. Joanna iss a Stink. It's a good character name, Joanna Stink. So there's always, there's people in the crowds holding up signs like, we love Stink. But but the announcers always refer to me as BJ Butts.
Speaker: That's pretty good. I've put a lot of hours into this game so far, but it still cracks me up. I just started playing a game today that lets you name your character. And I always just pick...
Speaker: The first couple absurd words that pop into my head and ah usually there's a Profane word in there, at least somewhat. sometimes it's just Sometimes the word's just like sloppy or garbage or um mud.
Speaker: Yeah. Stink. Or stink. Yeah, exactly. But, ah you know, a lot of times there's going to be a butt or ah or a wiener or something like that, right? So today, ah my character's name was Wet Penis Pie. And and it the game said...
Speaker: hmm are you sure that's interesting and i was like did that so i quickly closed the game and started over just to and i put like a normal name and it was like yeah what a fine name know it's it's definitely scanning for these words they programmed that in yeah if somebody say types penis we have to we have to let them know we know yeah we'll allow but but But they have to know that we are aware. so That's such a good name, though.
Speaker: We let it go to waste. Wet Penis Pie or Joanna Stink? Wet Penis Pie. i think both are good names. Look, let's just agree that both are very good names. Matt.
Speaker: Yeah. Did you do anything X-Men related this week? Why, yes, Pat, I did. Do you... did I don't know if you know much about video game culture.
Speaker: No, nothing. But have you been following the news of this? There's a new video game out that people have a lot to say about.
Speaker: Stardew Valley. It's called Wolverine. Oh. Do you know about this? I have seen that it's out and I've seen that some people are like, eh, it's just boring. Yeah, exactly. So I have not been playing it, but I i am i am aware.
Speaker: I've been following people's like conversations about it. And it's this yeah it's this this thing, right, that happens so often in nerd culture these days and drives me crazy every time which is something will be released usually to critics before to the public and critics will write reviews of of it right and those reviews will be so much and reviews will be
Speaker: usually often very thoughtful and moderated right um sure yeah yeah for example called they'll give wolverine a six out of ten not a zero out of ten not this game is garbage but this game was underwhelming and kind of boring and i didn't like it but it has these merits and some people might like it for this then this is when it starts to suck ass because that those hit the internet And there's these this wave of reactions where people are like gleeful about the negativity.
Speaker: And they're like, oh I fucking knew it would suck. I guess it fucking sucks and it sucks and fuck it for sucking. I told you it suck. Exactly. And those people might be right as far as their opinions go, right? Like those people, if they played it, probably know those reviewers well enough that...
Speaker: or share those shared similar opinions with those reviewers enough, or read things in those reviews that strike them in a way that if they played that game, they would hate it even more than the reviewer did, right?
Speaker: Because critics are, their job is to moderate their takes, right? Whereas us as consumers, we don't have to. But anyway, so that's that's the one obnoxious thing, right? Is like right afterwards, there's this wave of like,
Speaker: every well All the critics are saying this game fucking sucks. It's like, well, that's not quite what the critics are saying. But I understand that you now are no longer going to buy it. You've made that decision.
Speaker: Cool. Then, somehow I hate this second, this and latin this next wave even more. oh Which is the people who then the game comes out or the movie comes out or the TV show comes out.
Speaker: And general audiences get to see it. And they're like... All these fucking critics are full of shit, and I knew everybody was wrong, and I knew everyone was lying to me because this is the most fucking fun I've ever had. And number one, they're reacting to things that weren't said, right? They're reacting to shit that's not real, right? No one was lying to you. no one like Half the takes you're referring to didn't come out of any critic's mouth at all.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. This is a tweet you saw. Exactly. This is a tweet by somebody who saw a review that didn't say this stuff. um Or it's none of that. You just don't like that it got a 6 out of 10 and you read 6 out of 10 is 0 out of 10.
Speaker: Yeah. Right? So that's number one. Number two... You know they're lying about how much they enjoy it, right? Like, you know that they are playing this Wolverine game. They're not having fun, but they are so angry about the fact that people were mean to a Wolverine game that they're like, I love this! It's like people enjoying conservative comedians, right? Where it's like, you're not enjoying this. You don't find this funny.
Speaker: You're, like, forcing yourself. Yeah, sure. Because... I can be a little blind to bad experiences if it is built around licensed superhero characters. i think Right.
Speaker: Right. But you're not having an experience that's different than what the reviewers are saying. Right. You're enjoying the writing of Wolverine. You're enjoying watching him run around and stab stuff. But you are you're specifically ignoring the fact that you are bored walking around stabbing a thousand guys in the head in the head in a row.
Speaker: Right. You are feeling if you are feeling bored by that. Like, God, all I'm doing is pressing square over and over and over and over. But. You're choosing to ignore that to focus on the thing that you do like, which is it's Wolverine and he's calling people Bubb.
Speaker: Yeah, and stabbing people in the head a thousand times over and over. ah um So I've been thinking a lot about and video game criticism in relation to, and the internet's reaction to it in relation to the video game Wolverine, which seems like ah if I played it, I would say, this sucks.
Speaker: I think you're right, Matt. We need integrity in gaming journalism. and the other thing about it that's so fucking funny is that this was the first game released after playstation was like we are not releasing any of our games on the computer ever again we are only doing playstation exclusives from now on and they release what is a mediocre game ah
Speaker: that that to me is very funny so that's my x-men related thing That qualifies. Thank you. Both our things were video game related this week, Matt.
Speaker: Did you do that? ah Oh, boy. somebody's Somebody's catching on to my tricks. So, Pat.
Speaker: ah What is it now, Matt? Where did we last leave the character Longshot? i in god I don't even know what his world is called
Speaker: so no go ahead no no you had a funny I didn't it wasn't funny you had something so funny now I was so ready to laugh yeah I was going to talk about how it wasn't funny well that's funny
Speaker: So this whole series is a six-issue miniseries. It was released from June 4th, 1985 to October 29th, 1985. They call it a miniseries, but it's pretty big.
Speaker: It's a big mini. It's like a jumbo shrimp. Yeah, it is. a coveredate So is September 1985 February 1986.
Speaker: nineteen eighty five to february nineteen eighty six and Pat... yeah Since I read the dates, do you want to read who? I think it's the same people the whole way through. ah Yeah, it should be Anno Senti and Arthur Adams, writer, co-creators, and penciler, respectively.
Speaker: Wils Portacio, inker, Joe Rosen, letters, Christy Shield, colors, Louise Jones, editor, and... you want me to look it up? me look it up for you?
Speaker: Yeah, go ahead and look go ahead and look it up, and then let me let me say it. Okay, I'll just i'll move it into the... whisper it. Okay, I'll whisper it. I'll look it up, I'll whisper it to you, and you tell the people.
Speaker: Okay. Paddits. Nathan Clifford, 1803 to 1881. Jim Fuckass, editor-in-chief.
Speaker: Our first issue here today. Yeah. like Ladies and gentlemen. Matt. People of all genders and ages. And ah smells.
Speaker: There's all sorts of people, the people who smell all sorts of different ways listening to this podcast. And I accept you all. I feel like you wouldn't have to. Hmm.
Speaker: Specify that people smell different people of all smells. But I guess you wouldn't have to specify like gender. If you just say folks, it's like it kind of covers. Maybe we should just stick to the smells thing. You're right. you You make a good point. So maybe we should just stick to the smells thing from now on.
Speaker: People of all smells. Smelly. We're not here to discriminate. Clean. Sour. Sweet smelling. People of all smells.
Speaker: this ah This issue is called Long Shot Number One, a Man Without a Past. Now, what the fuck? People would go walk into their comic book stores, they say, what is this? Who's this guy?
Speaker: a man without a past? How is that? it Was he just I don't know. So a blonde mulleted black leather clad man with one shiny eye. He's got a two eyes. Only one of them is shiny. Yeah. He's got two shiny. ah You know why he has a shiny eye?
Speaker: Because he's lucky. Because Ann Asenti had a one-eyed cat. And when she would like come down in the middle of the night to get like a drink or whatever, her cat's eye would shine in the dark. Her one eye would shine in the dark.
Speaker: So that's why he has one shiny eye. And apparently this made, again, other Marvel editors so mad. Like, why does he have a shiny eye? don't know. I don't know. I thought it'd be cool because my cat has one.
Speaker: ah He runs across an alien landscape trying to escape from a pack of big, hairy monsters, but with no memory of why.
Speaker: Suddenly, a portal opens in front of him and he hops through. His pursuers get caught in its energy and unbeknownst to this man are sent through with him. So this is Innocenti's first moment of subtlety. long This man...
Speaker: Why did I start saying that word? I don't know. I don't know. What word is that? I don't know. Longhots. It's a type of pepper. I do love them. When this man jumps through the portal, there's some sort of dog thing that seems to jump with him.
Speaker: And also as he falls out of the portal, there's some sort of dog thing that seems to fall out of the portal with him. And then we we don't see. he doesn't It's not referenced. And when we see this thing again, they don't mention that it came through the portal with him at the same time.
Speaker: It's just, if you saw it, you saw it. If you didn't, you don't. Yeah. Little dog, little is a little guy. I love a little guy, man.
Speaker: This man, he pops out of the portal in the middle of a busy Manhattan intersection, accidentally saving an old woman's life through dumb luck. He's mobbed by a crowd for it, demanding to know who he is, but he doesn't know. He runs off in a panic.
Speaker: Not only that, when he saves this woman's life... Yeah. Something happens that makes coins rain from the sky. something It seems like...
Speaker: Right. He knocks the lady out of the way. at The car that was driving towards her veers. Ralph driving the car. oh my gosh. Hits the building. And apparently there was a bag of coins stuffed behind a gargoyle that shook loose. Yes. Yes. And it all rained on ah on a little boy who's like, oh, I can buy comics and candy and comics. Yeah, yeah. Good kid.
Speaker: Yeah. Cars driven by Ralph. I guess it's a Honeymooners reference because he's it's like, ah she's like, Ralph, there's some kind of electrical storm.
Speaker: Ralph, the car's gone berserk. Ralph, we're going to kill that old lady. which I looked up nagging wife Ralph and I got honeymooners. ah Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: This is it. It's worth noting here. Ralph number one. Ralph number one. do you do you want to try and describe this man now that he's here?
Speaker: ah You did pretty well, I think, with blonde, mulleted, and black leather clad. He's also got a bandolier across his chest. He's got like a... I think he's supposed to be Ziggy Stardust.
Speaker: Okay. I can see why you would think that, but do me a favor. Can you open up Google?
Speaker: Can you type... on I've never heard of this man before.
Speaker: dot
Speaker: com. Okay. So, and I want to make sure you get the right image here. So type in them the 1985 and then don't hit enter. space. Space. And then type M H Lima and then don't trade enter solid space space and then hit type l i he ay n a h lymer l
Speaker: I've never heard of this man. His name is Limal, and he's from the band Kajagugu, who did that song Too Shy Shy. Anyway, if you type it in, you will see Longshot just appear on your screen.
Speaker: i thought you were just having me Google nonsense. This is a real guy, though. This is yeah a real guy, and it's Longshot. This is Longshot, for sure.
Speaker: But it does look like Labyrinth era of David Bowie a little bit. But i but her stated reference was Limal from Kajagoogoo. And then I looked up Limal from Kajagoogoo in the 1980s. And holy shit, it's just long gone. is 100% hit. like It looks like when they made 80s movies of Marvel characters. Yes! Yes! Or or like like somebody did an AI, like what would Longshot look like yeah for real. yeah
Speaker: um But it's a real photo of a real man with that real hair. He's also got like a so like a ah a cool looking star on his costume. He does have a star. He's got four fingers on his hand.
Speaker: On his hands. Oh, right. Yeah, he's only got four fingers. so Muscular. He's pretty muscular. like slim and muscular like he kind of like yeah yeah yeah wiry wiry disoriented by the bright sun and colors he stumbles into a man and calls himself elliot guys remember elliot you're gonna need to know elliot i'm glad we were discussing elliot the man elliot
Speaker: were you gonna say you had something about elliot Elliot. He's sporting a gas mask around his neck and various pouches and holsters on his body. ah He tries to help him escape the still pursuing crowd before splitting off.
Speaker: After acquiring a sick trench coat, this guy starts making his way to Elliot's home. It is a pretty cool trench coat. It's a good trench coat. On his way, he meets a little creature that seems to recognize him that he starts calling Pup.
Speaker: the despite it very clearly not being a dog. jesus This is also clearly what came with him through the portal.
Speaker: Yeah, this is the little guy that jumped through. yeah you And you can see why he's like a dog. Yes. But it's not a dog. It's like ah maybe a cartoon dog that was like...
Speaker: real mean and fucked up. It's kind of got the face of the beast from beauty and the beast, but like a dog bot, like a really weird yeah yeah like a many dog body. dog body.
Speaker: um The dog helps him find Elliot's home before disappearing. Elliot takes the man inside his fort where he's built a huge bunker and armory and starts ranting about bell telephone and con ed power preparing to nuke the planet.
Speaker: he is Sorry, this is this is a pretty funny setup. Yeah. It'll pay off. Don't worry. The man gets bored of this and finds a newspaper shocked to see a story where a baby has been kidnapped. Despite having bigger issues, eliliot agrees to help it ah Elliot agrees to help him save the missing baby. This is where the character's just like, a baby's missing. We have to find it.
Speaker: Just like... Yeah, yeah. not and Not a second between reading A Baby's Missing and going, we must get the baby back. Well, I'm off. I'm off to save the baby. The guy's like, what what are you doing? He's like, we have to get the baby?
Speaker: What do you mean? this is a another innocent-y writing thing, right? like So the crowd starts chasing Longshot.
Speaker: at the beginning, she saves a lady and the police want to arrest him for being a quote, punko junkie. And somehow, I guess the police officer enlists the help of the mob, like a mob of people on this in the street. And they're like, help me chase this man.
Speaker: And they chase him for a while, but then suddenly they're gone. And for hours, he's just wandering around town with nobody chasing him. He's just able to do whatever he wants.
Speaker: But then when he meets Elliot, suddenly they're there again and they have to run from the crowd. Yeah, yeah. i So i I think what's supposed to happen here is the crowd...
Speaker: is like, oh my god, a new superhero. We love superheroes. Who are you? And so he runs away. the cops turn on him and start thinking he's a punko junkie.
Speaker: And so I think the police are chasing him, but also there is a crowd of adoring fans chasing him. And they've kind of teamed up just because they all at least want to find him.
Speaker: And so anytime he's just wandering through town, he's ducked this combined mob of lovers and haters.
Speaker: Interesting. how do they keep finding him? i don't know. Why do they keep chasing him until like the middle of the night? Once he's at Elliot's, I think it's just the police that are showing trying to arrest him.
Speaker: I don't think so. I think because when you see what happens to them next, there's all sorts of people caught in this. All right. i guess guess we'll talk about it.
Speaker: They find the baby's mother, Hester, curled up in the corner of a torn up room. She explains that inhuman monsters stole her baby and killed her dog. And as a cruel joke, gave her an old beat up baby doll to take care of.
Speaker: That's pretty fucked up. It's pretty fucked up. This is where it starts to also be like, this is written like it's for children. Like the the reading level here is children age reading level. oh But then...
Speaker: The content is not. This happens and then you're like, oh, wait, this definitely isn't for kids because there's a dead dog and a missing baby and very weird. um some Yeah, some very clearly very cool monsters.
Speaker: The man grabs the doll and quote, reads it, sensing that the baby was indeed taken by monsters. Monsters from an alien world who needed an innocent to sacrifice to return to their home dimension.
Speaker: Huh.
Speaker: This is... Yeah. Do you remember when we read that issue of Power Pack an episode or two ago? And you so you told me that I needed to remember that Louise Jones had...
Speaker: a bunch of demons trying to get to their home world and they needed to steal a baby in order to to be able to do so. Is they this why you were asking me to remember? They weren't trying to get to their home world.
Speaker: They were trying to bring limbo into oh okay our world. And they needed a bunch of babies on the Empire State Building to do it.
Speaker: Okay, so this is nothing. This is nothing. This is nothing. Hey, man, this is just comic books. So at the end of page 12, there's a moment where they Elliot and this blonde man meet up with this meet up with Hester, right?
Speaker: And then there's some figure that watches them leave Hester's house and goes, so the mother's in on it too. Well, they should lead us right to the baby.
Speaker: Who is that and what are they doing?
Speaker: Mother's in on it too.
Speaker: Then he says, signals out to the rest of the boys. We'll follow them right to their accomplices. Like, these three kidnapped a baby together. The mom of the baby who's missing kidnapped a baby with a man who fell from the sky. and that guy we've known about for years and years and years who lives in town.
Speaker: Yeah. Who is this guy? This cowboy? I'm wondering it's the... Maybe a cowboy, but it looks like he has a revolver. Because we only see waist down. I'm wondering if it's the cop, but that...
Speaker: Is that a pretty flat, but pretty fucking bizarre.
Speaker: It's there's no reality in which this panel makes sense. Yeah, this is just they needed to fill the page, I guess. yes it's like it's Clearly, and he got this got this page and was like, I don't know what's happening in this. line I don't know who that guy is this guy. they arrive at an place.
Speaker: ah so they arrive at an old windmill apparently a rumored site of magic and warped reality exploding with a light show that the man somehow recognizes as a ritual to merge dimensions Yeah, he's like, oh, they're merging dimensions up there.
Speaker: I can tell by the the lights. um ah up at Up in the tower, several armored animal men and Spiral.
Speaker: Spiral. Spiral's here. Tell everyone who Spiral is real quick in case. Spiral is the six armed woman who is currently part of Freedom Force, formerly known as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. ah She weaves spells. She dances, weaves spells and teleports. And one of those things is a mutant power.
Speaker: Yeah, we It might be the six arms or the dancing. And and tell tell our audience the other important characteristic of her here in this com and this comic, her first appearance. She's nude. She's nude. She's very nude.
Speaker: First appearance. First appearance nude.
Speaker: They recognize the man is here and get psyched to kill him. Boldly, the man starts running through a crowd of these anime finding they're able to discorporate at will, but not letting that slow him down. Also, I don't get this. Because they are not in their home dimension, they can all turn into... They can become like vapor. Become like vapor, but he can't.
Speaker: The mullet man can't. This seems to be yeah a plot device. yeah
Speaker: There's no, because they don't employ it all the time. There are times where where you would think they would discorporate, but instead they die. Right.
Speaker: Oh, boy. um But one of them mentions they hate him. He becomes obsessed with finding out who he is. His luck runs out and he gets his ass kicked.
Speaker: It's so funny to be like, you hate me? Wait, that means you know who I am. ah they also referenced something called the spineless ones here.
Speaker: Yeah. in What's that? I have no eyes. would We would never. They don't really come back to it. I don't think. Oh, OK. He regroups with Elliot and Hester, coming to the conclusion that his mistake was selfishly trying to find out who he is.
Speaker: His eye starts to glow again, and he promises not to lose focus this time. Elliot calls him a show off and tells him his mission's mission is impossible. A long shot.
Speaker: So that must be why it's called that is because like... That's why they named the comic Longshot. This is like a mini series about people doing things that are like... You know, kind of like ah Impossible Little Missions, I'm guessing. Yeah, long shots. But the man doesn't care. He shoots a rope across to the top of a monster of the monster fortress and tightrope walks across it, getting a little help from Pup, who appears and disappears again.
Speaker: Then he stops Nude Spiral and a big pig man from completing the ritual, and they get the baby back. Nice. Yay, you did it. Nameless man.
Speaker: With a little extra luck, he escapes and returns the baby to Hester, and the demons fade away. Hester's grateful, but doesn't even know the man's name. He tells her to call him whatever she wants as he walks off and Elliot chimes in.
Speaker: I call him Longshot.
Speaker: He does. Once he's alone, he runs into Pup again, who also starts calling him Longshot and implies he knows a great deal about him. But they don't really talk about it. The end...
Speaker: So,
Speaker: yeah. Reading this first one, i don't know that I would have picked up the second. but ah it's It's bizarre, and it doesn't seem to leave much like what's going to... do What am I holding on to here?
Speaker: Right. And it's so... Far out and detached from anything else ah that like I would have been reading at the time where I would have picked this up and said, oh, some sort of cosmic magic adventure. This guy got lucky a bunch of times. It's the only way that this comic worked.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't I don't know that I would have picked up. issue number two so at this point do you feel this man has powers i would so yeah i was trying to be cheeky but clearly he's got some sort of luck what power like it's it's okay alluded to without being directly explained so you think if you had read this back then you would have picked up on this that he has a luck power Yeah, that he has some sort of, i guess it it was a new thing at the time, so maybe not calling it a luck power, but he has some sort of ability to, much a lot like Scarlet Witch, right? To be able to manipulate... Probability. Probabilities. Yeah.
Speaker: And he seems to have this power where he can touch an object and kind of read a psychic imprint on ah on it. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. When you see him here, you're just kind of like, what power doesn't he have? ah He also seems very strong and fast and nimble.
Speaker: ah And he has four finger. And he has four fingers. And it's such a, it's like, a okay, that that feels like just a cheap attempt to make an alien. he also references the fact that he has multiple hearts.
Speaker: Yes. my hearts yeah it's and it's the text it's bolded in the in the speech bubble the word hearts i can feel my hearts pounding well the despite whatever a one-year-old pat reber would have done in 1980 whatever What do you a one month and one day when this was released on June 4th, 1985? I don't know. I thought I think you're older i think you're hand I think you're actually older than that. um
Speaker: Despite what oh you would have done at one month old, you did read the next issue and I want you to tell me about it, please. Yeah, you made me long shot. Number two.
Speaker: I'll wave to you from the top. Of the issue, you will. I guess. Yeah, yeah. it's This is clearly the second half of a sentence. So if we go, because it's it leads in with the ellipses. so So the first issue is called... First one, a man without a past, I'll wave to you from the top.
Speaker: Hey, a man from the past, or hey, a man without a past, I'll wave to you from the top. but you Like you're saying, you're talking to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, you don't know this guy. So he's clearly a stranger. So you guys are both sightseeing together, I imagine. So you're at like, you just like hiked up a mountain or something and there's a lookout tower.
Speaker: And you've had, you've stopped to have a brief conversation with somebody. he's tired to go up the steps, but I'm not. And you've just had a brief conversation with him and you're like, so where do you come from? And he's like, I don't know. You're like, all right.
Speaker: Man from Man Without Without a Past. I'll wave to you from the top. Man Without a Past. ah ah All right, tell me about... Longshot and Pup, who we can also call Gog, yeah find themselves accidentally stumbling onto a movie set where they meet a stuntwoman named Ricochet Rita.
Speaker: Longshot is growing. He outruns a train here. Yeah, he' just he does. It's a movie train. Those tend to be slower. We have to assume that it's not going full speed. Yeah. And he doesn't run faster than it. He just runs to the point where he can keep up with it. And then he leaps all the way to the top of the train.
Speaker: So now we know this man has incredible running and leaping skills. Yes, he can run and jump. Okay. Longshot is growing less concerned about his lack of memories as he's beginning to enjoy this world, but he's growing more suspicious of Pup as he sees Pup's body changing physically.
Speaker: Longshot gets hired as a stuntman alongside Rita, and they quickly become close friends. It's... This is nice and it kind of makes sense. Like I know hiring practices and legalities around stuntmen in Hollywood are a little shady, right? Yeah. ah But what's he doing on the set? Why is he? How did he get here? Where did he get here? why is he running after a train? There's there's no one in danger.
Speaker: Yeah, why is there nobody guarding the Just like, oh, I gotta kick this train's ass. Like, oh, sir, you can't run onto here. There's a... There's ah there's a train. um But then once he does it, the the director is like, you're hired. You're hired. You're you're my new stuntman.
Speaker: I've never seen someone stunt like that. Which I do... I really don't think stuntmen have... Like, stunt people have that level of, like... agency in Hollywood or not agency, but like cachet where somebody is like, Oh, we've got, we're going to have a good movie now that we've got this good stunt man.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. This kid's got talent. yeah yeah And, but, and and even like Ricochet Rita here seems to be like the linchpin of this movie before long shot comes around. Right. Like people would come to see it because it's got Ricochet Rita doing stunts. Yeah. What world is this in? Yeah.
Speaker: a Long shot gets higher. I already said that. So Rita, as it turns out, was raised in a rodeo and has been risk taking wild woman ever since. Yeah, me This is the only job she feels comfortable in.
Speaker: So she's she can keep up with long shot, but she's just a normal person. I don't know if we'd say normal. Pretty impressive. She's a human, but she's also she also seems like.
Speaker: absolutely insane but so does everybody in this comic she might be a mutant she might be a mutant could be oh no when she shows longshot how to use a jet pack his mind flashes back to his home world he sees a scene of himself jet pack jet packing alongside another man dressed like him who was then killed in a heated mid-air battle This guy's so funny. He's got, instead of the mullet, he's got like a jerry curl. And he just like... He looks like the Beyonder. You already kind of get used to how weird Longshot looks. But then when you see somebody else dressed like Longshot, it's like, oh, this guy looks so fucking insane.
Speaker: Longshot's eyes fill with tears as he rockets toward a spaceship full of people he calls spineless creeps. There's that spinelessness again. Cursing them for forcing him and his friends to fight and die in wars to make movies for their entertainment.
Speaker: What? This is really well done. And I think this is the only time they mention like the movies they side of it. But immediately you understand where he comes from. oh A planet where he's forced into slavery to fight wars for for movies. I mean, i think it's like pretty so heavy. hand Yes, it's well done as in like, oh, I get it. But it also is pretty heavy handed satire. i think oh this whole issue is wildly heavy handed satire.
Speaker: I think it's just, so this, yeah, start to finish this issue is Hollywood is evil and doesn't care about humans. It's like... yes Yeah. But they very concisely like give you a chunk of his past that gives you context to understand all the other stuff you learned from his past moving forward. like It's so essential to understanding who he is.
Speaker: And if you need help understanding the satire of this issue, know that this director, who you'll learn is just a complete scumbag creep, is wearing a Captain America shirt the whole time.
Speaker: Yeah. He's got a mustache too, right? but Yes. That's kind of a kind of a dig at maybe somebody we we know.
Speaker: He comes back realizing that he may have been an actor and a warrior and a slave. And lectures the star of the movie on the immorality of fame in general. That's that's really weird. That is a really weird moral because he's like... To pull away from it? like I hope movie stars are... Bad. Right. so It's a bad thing to be. Exactly. like The moral here should be...
Speaker: you know, whether you agree believe this or not, is that the end entertainment industry saps away people's life without any regard to their safety or their, you know, health or well-being and nurtures the worst, most sensational parts of, like, human nature, right?
Speaker: But what Longshot pulls away is... It's shameful to make the private public, you bad movie star, you. What? That's what, that's what Anosenti's problem with fame is, is that we should all more, we should be more private.
Speaker: and ah Keep it to yourself, artists. ah
Speaker: Oh boy. later And by saying that, her face falls off. When he says that to her, her face falls off. And that is another panel that I don't understand.
Speaker: I want to take her face off. Did you get this? Did you understand this? The last panel on page 11? Like, he's like, he's like He yells at her. She's like, hey that's not the way it is for me. And she he's like, how would you know? And then the next panel, she's like, my face, I'm losing my face. What?
Speaker: Wait, hang on a second. I think it once again just must not be, and no senti not quite understanding why Art Adams drew a panel that he drew.
Speaker: I guess, yeah, it's, it's, gotta be that because this here's this actress who we really haven't talked to until long shot is like you shouldn't be an actress it's morally wrong and then she's
Speaker: I don't know man I am I am If there was no dialogue. lost on what this is doing here. If there was no dialogue here, I would have assumed that she, they touched down on the ground.
Speaker: She came over to yell at him to say, hey, your stupid stunt got gunk all over me. And then Longshot said something pithy and clever because he doesn't understand anything.
Speaker: And then her last reaction isn't that her face is melting off. It's that she's like, really, is that true? Does he really think this about me? Or whatever. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You're absolutely right. This is just supposed to be like she got covered in mud when he fell to the ground because he passed out in his jetpack. He says something to her.
Speaker: That's something very glib to her, not realizing it was insulting. And it shakes her kind of like reality a little bit. Not he lectures her on how she should be a more private person. And then her face melts for no reason.
Speaker: Later, Rita kisses Longshot. And from the leatheriness of his skin, she starts to believe he's not human. New trait, leathery skin. Leathery skin.
Speaker: Then the bad guys attack and Pup reappears bigger and tougher than before to fight them all off. They have an argument and Pup runs off saying he hates Longshot.
Speaker: As Gog, he's been so he's been secretly absorbing the power of the planet to become strong enough to fight Longshot, apparently. Again, just one of these innocent-y about-face 180-degree turns. that you Yeah, yeah. What the fuck? What?
Speaker: he's he's pretending to be his friend and killing all his allies to do to keep the cover yeah and then all of a sudden he's just like he's like ah i like i'm sick of this i hate you i'm sick of this plan this is a bad plan i changed my mind i've actually hated you this whole time Anyway, losing his only friend, Longshot now worries he can't trust anyone.
Speaker: Okay. During his big jetpack stunt the next day, Longshot's luck runs out. He gets singed by a laser and nearly falls into a pit of armored wolves.
Speaker: This director, man. ah This makes him flashback to his own world where in a ritual, a bunch of hooded figures brand his face with a star reciting that pureness of motive will result in miracles. Interestingly, he doesn't have a scar on his face.
Speaker: Yeah. This never happened. This is just a dream. ah Yeah, sometimes flashbacks are just dreams. we all And we don't talk about that enough in media criticism.
Speaker: Also, we should note that every time he has one of these flashbacks, he passes out. He's unconscious, and it seems to be happening close to real time. These moments that he's reliving in his head. Right. And amount of time that passes in the real world. So so both times so far, he's been in a jetpack. Yeah. And then just passed out and fallen to the ground and production has had to stop.
Speaker: At this point, he's tangled up in a bunch of like wires hanging bloody upside down while armored wolves snap at his cape. This seems like a liability for a stuntman.
Speaker: Our stuntman is great, but he keeps passing out midair. ah But mean of course, the director's like, you know, oh it has to be, I don't care about the safety of these guys. It has to be real for the people won't buy, the people won't buy it.
Speaker: And like, okay, man. did I mean, as far as ah stunt people goes, that is not an uncommon experience.
Speaker: From what I understand, there's like a lot of directors out there that are like, no, we need the biggest stunt possible. i don't care how dangerous it is. Huh?
Speaker: OK. Yeah. But all with computers. in a In 1986, Matt. Yeah, I thought they did it all with computers.
Speaker: With an Apple to me.
Speaker: the The thing that I do like here is the pureness of motive, because we saw a hint of that in the first issue, right? He's going to rescue the baby. He's having all this luck when he's charging in. But then as soon as he's like, wait, who am I? Do you know something about me? He loses his luck. Things start going wrong for him. And then when he's like, oh, right, I'm here to save a baby. He starts getting lucky again.
Speaker: And now here's the explanation of that. Here's the... Yes. Again, pretty concisely explained. Just he needs to be focused in order to use his luck.
Speaker: lot of the logic later on isn't concisely explained. So it's nice that at least here. i will also say simple explanation. This these these ah fake movie scenes show the talent of our atoms. I think like the future talent is like he should be drawing space epics.
Speaker: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you that. Since Longshot's motive of here is money, his luck stops working. He falls from the sky again and fucking dies.
Speaker: The director knows that the contract Longshot signed and the stunt itself were illegal. He's afraid he'll go to jail for manslaughter, so he demands to take Longshot to the hospital alone.
Speaker: Instead, he dumps the body in a nearby lake to be continued. Again, there's if very heavy handed satire here.
Speaker: There's something they refer to on the movie set as jury rigged. You don't know that term? Is that the term? I always heard Jerry rigged.
Speaker: Which, huh. No, it's... I assume it soon is the... It's jury rigged? It's jury rigged as a sailing thing. That doesn't make any sense. Because when you rig a jury, you're not like... It has nothing to do with that.
Speaker: It has to do... it's it's it's a It's a sailing thing. um oh Because there's like a jury mast. um So...
Speaker: Both terms are correct. Apparently, Jerry rigged means organized or constructed in a crude or improvised manner. Jury rigged means constructed or arranged in a makeshift fashion.
Speaker: and So so jury rigged is like an 18th century term. And Jerry rigged was a misunderstanding of that term that came along later.
Speaker: But it's been in use since, like, jury rigs from the 1700s. Jerry rigged was a misunderstanding and a misspelling from the 1800s. So by now, yeah, they're both totally. Yeah, now it's canon. They're both totally usable. it always That's my favorite ah word origin is just, oh, somebody was mispronouncing this so much that. Yeah.
Speaker: It became the actual word. Yeah, and when it happened to like 200 years ago, it's like, oh, well, fuck it. Yeah, what are we going to do now? Just got to add it to the dictionary. All right, Pat, let me tell you about long shot number three.
Speaker: Just let me die. No, you have to read me long shot number three. Okay, I'll read you long shot number three. Just let me die. I'll just let it. I'm going to it happen.
Speaker: ah And this is... Hey, guys, good issue alert. Yeah, good issue. Good issue alert. Heads up. Heads up, folks. This one's going to be a good one.
Speaker: you if you but If you're looking for good issues, this guy, Theo. This one's going to be a little good. Theo. just wants to watch the damn game but his kids are running around and making so much damn noise and his damn wife stop won't stop nagging him about the damn bills and he forgot to brush his damn teeth today and he hates brushing his damn teeth he looks in the mirror and calls himself ugly and stupid and then gets quiet he emerges from the bathroom with a gun shoots his television set and silently walks out of the house
Speaker: I really, I thought we were getting a murder-suicide thing here. I was like, where? i i so think this is just her continuing her her, this is the way she does satire, right? It's as over the top as humanly possible. And so far, what she seems to be satirizing mostly, besides just like the entertainment industry is that she really hates getting bills yes everybody's so mad that utility companies charge money yeah
Speaker: Like, in the first... Remember, in the first issue, she was like... It was like, Con Ed and Bel Air is like, how dare they make us pay for phones and TV? And now he's like, I can't stand paying for phones and TV. I'd rather be dead.
Speaker: like Like... Like, What is her... I wonder what her philosophy on how the world should work would be at this time.
Speaker: It's so like, and you have to understand the world gets so much worse than paying your electric bill.
Speaker: He says one thing he says about his wife that I had to look up was he says, um listen to her roof brain chatter. Had you ever heard the term roof brain chatter? And No, i i feel like I can kind of figure it out from context clues, but what? Yeah. In in what way?
Speaker: what how does what does it say to you? It's just like mindless thoughts, like things that don't talking about things that don't matter. It's it's running off the slope of the roof like rain would.
Speaker: the yeah it's like incoherent idle thoughts that linger at the top of your brain it came from a ah book by Joseph Chilton Pierce in 1973 but I'd never heard of it I'd never heard of it so Theo he makes his way to the nearest bridge and after a few final thoughts he closes his eyes and he jumps
Speaker: no But the bridge isn't really very high and the water's not that deep, so he survives. know very but He jumps from a five foot bridge.
Speaker: Yeah. but
Speaker: um He also, as he's about to jump, he's like, I guess I should have some final thoughts. Yeah.
Speaker: My back hurts. ah Relatable. hey
Speaker: So ah he does find himself sitting on the unconscious body of Longshot. He pulls him from the river and wakes him up, jokingly introducing himself as Jinx in response to hearing Longshot's name.
Speaker: Longshot touches him and immediately reads that he just tried to commit suicide. So i guess Longshot gets... emotions from humans too right ah yeah whatever the psychic reading thing he does is he does it to as far as we know people and people shaped objects like a baby dog okay um he can't understand whats so why someone would want to do that when life is so great Jinx mentions the bills and long shots perks up when he hears about Con Ed, who Elliot also had some strong thoughts on. They must be villains to help Jinx get his lust for life back. They'll go on an adventure to steal Con Ed's riches. in group I'm sorry. Incredible.
Speaker: to call back to issue one for this specific thing your conspiracy theorist character from that we never see again from issue one yeah is just railing on con ed and how they like secretly run the world yeah and that's what we're coming back to in issue three He's like... Artful.
Speaker: He's like, my friend ah my friend told me they're thieves and they rip people off. And he's like, ah yeah, well. And Longshot's like, so let's get the money back. And it turns out they're sitting on a stash of diamonds that need for some sort of power experiment. Oh, my God. So...
Speaker: There's a very funny joke right here where Jinx fashions a noose to try to hang himself as Longshot rambles about how cool this will all be. But Longshot notices before the rub goes taut. and He says, hey, cut that out. So like, while Longshot is talking to himself...
Speaker: Theo walks away back to the bridge to try and fashion himself a noose and hang himself. And Longshot notices, is like, hey, cut that out and throws a knife and cuts through the thing.
Speaker: Theo, as he lands in the water, his first words are, i think my pen broke. so Look, if you're going to cover suicide and you're going to try to cover it funny, you need to go pretty wacky. with it The idea of him just continually trying to commit city suicide and long shot having to be like, hey, I said, knock it off. Stop that.
Speaker: Well, he just keeps saving and and just like, The random thoughts that Theo has like, oh man, my pen broke. My back hurts. It's so fucking funny.
Speaker: So they get to the Con Ed building. Jinx tries out believing in Longshot's zest for life. He watches and tries to keep up as Longshot hops the fence and disables the entire alarm system in one sick move. He actually, you know, luckily lands on the The generator or whatever, the transformer for the entire building. Yeah. And then he's like, um he's I'll just rip through some more wires, I guess, while you try to find way through the fence.
Speaker: Just in case. just Yeah. from the From the shadow's spiral, now wearing clothes. um No. She's wearing her whole armor that she wears in X-Men.
Speaker: Yeah, And the big pig man, they watch and prepare to attack but not kill Longshot. He's their only hope of returning.
Speaker: they're oh fuck this other part god damn there's just too many good jokes and we have to talk about all of them they're sneaking up to the con ed building and long shot's like keep your butt down and it cuts behind him theo is like so still with the noose around his neck by the way ah yeah yeah the rest of the issue is wearing it like a necktie He's crawling with his top half along the ground, like scooching on his elbows, but his butt is sticking way up in the air. And then when Longshot's like, we gotta jump over the fence, Theo's like, I'm still trying to get my butt down. That's so stupid.
Speaker: Did we write this? I know, and he's like, when he gets over the fence, he's like, hey, you did good, wasn't that fun? And Theo's like, no. And he's like, isn't this exciting? And Theo's like, no oh
Speaker: it's so fucking funny um uh all right we cut to a room full of circuitry with restrained humans adorning the walls what hooked up to all the machinery two blobs in chairs Talk about how strange and ugly these creatures are, crediting a man named a Arise with providing them with the technology to help build them as their personal slaves.
Speaker: When you saw these guys, do you want to describe these blob guys? Yeah, they're big blobs. Did do you recognize these guys? They're in like, you yeah, I mean, the one, they don't name him, but the one is clearly Mojo. He's a big blob with arms in a technical chair with wires to hooked all over him.
Speaker: um Two of those. So the one clearly in charge charge rants about how hideous their spines are, these slaves, and how much energy these humans must expend standing upright, making them far inferior.
Speaker: One wakes up and claims he's not a slave, and the lead blob promises to shut off his mind. ah Suddenly, Longshot wakes up from this flashback deep in the Con Ed building, and they find the secret stash of diamonds they came here for. what Just why? all right.
Speaker: Oh, but they're not alone. As Jinx explains his namesake, he trips on a dead guard, and suddenly the two are surrounded by demons. Pup jumps down from above to pull Jinx out of harm's way, and Longshot takes all the monsters on himself. He kicks serious ass, ending it by throwing four knives concurrently and hitting four different targets. As he celebrates his luck, Spiral sneaks up and bonks him on the head.
Speaker: yeah In Manhattan, we see the result of this big battle is a total electrical blackout. there's Here's Ralph number two, where somebody in the blackout is like, Ralph.
Speaker: ah ah um We've also another running thing here that we haven't been mentioning, um but I want to keep an eye out for is Gumby.
Speaker: So far, there's been a Gumby in every single issue. Oh, you're right. There's somebody mentioning Gumby or there is a picture of Gumby, a picture of Gumby or somebody named Gumby. Yeah. Or a figure of Gumby or somebody dressed in a Gumby outfit.
Speaker: my God. Um, did you, uh, do, were you finally able to calm down? Remember when we talked about Gumby being the only thing that could calm you down when you were a kid? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess they knew how excited I'd get reading this comic book. um He wakes up taped to a wall as Spiral dances to open a portal and the big pig man tells him they're going to leave without telling him all the things he wants to know about the past, but promises to kill all his friends and family when they get back home.
Speaker: As they fade away, they note that two monsters are missing. Quark. and the pig man's son. Longshot, helpless, begs them to come back and tell them who he is.
Speaker: Pup reappears. Yeah. Sorry. There's just something in this and it's like everything. it's It's written a little jarringly, but there's something so pure about Longshot that comes across here when they're like,
Speaker: we're not going to tell you who you are because they know how deeply that will eat at him. And it does. He's just like, yeah no, come back. And he's like, there's, I i guess it's his ambivalence to their villainy.
Speaker: Yeah. That makes him so like, pure but also a little naive where he'll not that those two things are in opposition but where he'll just be like oh you know something about my past can we can we stop fighting for a minute and like i would love to talk about that one yeah yeah so Pup reappears with Jinx, and the two get Longshot down from the wall. Pup explains that he wanted to kill Jinx, and still wants to kill Longshot, but Longshot points out that he hasn't killed either of them, and must still have still must have some good inside him.
Speaker: um he says He also says, that's the pup I love, so I guess Longshot loves Pup. Well, as far as he knows, yeah. They've just met. Outside, Longshot tries to give the diamonds to Jinx, but he doesn't want them. They're too hot.
Speaker: Besides, he might have been exaggerating about Con Ed being criminals. They just charge a lot of money for services. They can't bring them back. So Longshot settles on somehow giving the diamonds to the people of Manhattan for causing a blackout.
Speaker: Seeing that Jinx is no longer suicidal, he sets off to figure out exactly how to do that. This was my favorite joke of the issue. They get through all of this. They break into Con Ed. There's like insane flashbacks. They steal the diamonds. They have to fight off all these demons.
Speaker: At the end of all of it,
Speaker: Theo is like, okay, when I said they were crooks, I really just meant that like like they charge a lot of money, not not that they're actual villains. We shouldn't have done any of this. Longshot's like, oh, geez. Well, let's go give them back.
Speaker: And fucking Theo says, and listen, I don't want to hang out with you anymore. yeah I wouldn't either.
Speaker: ah so late That night ah at a diner, a couple of customers talk about a new supervillain, one that robbed Con ed made off with millions of diamonds and caused a citywide blackout.
Speaker: Luckily, they got him on camera because he's beautiful, they say, as we see Longshot's face on the front page of the Daily Bugle. To be continued. It's him fighting. They're like, who's he punching? There's nobody there. So like the demons aren't really there, but that's not followed up on ever.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah, yeah. There's an implication that only he can see them, but we know that that's not true. yeah's Yeah, it's yeah. It seems like he just stuck around for a while afterwards and punched to the air, maybe.
Speaker: and I bet he does that. i knowing Knowing what we did, like how we i did it. but boom I love punching. Hey, Theo, try this out.
Speaker: There's, uh, it's a, the dynamic, and I think this is why it works so well, but the way that I would describe the dynamic between Longshot and Theo here is Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore.
Speaker: okay Just one really ah naively enthusiastic man and one extremely depressed and reminding everybody about it, man.
Speaker: Yeah. I, They're such a good pair. I also think it's it's so funny that, like, so one of Longshot's powers becomes that he is just irresistible to women.
Speaker: And I feel like... Oh, yeah. I feel like part of that... is Chris Claremont trying to make sense of why women in this series keep falling in love with him like immediately. And he's like, oh, it must be a superpower.
Speaker: But it might just be that Anne Nocenti was reading this and just like, God, he's so hot. Yeah. Oh, man she's She's in love with that singer you made me Google. Limal or whatever. Was it Limal? Limal.
Speaker: right, Pat, why don't you read me in that another little comic book? Why don't you? Who, me? Yeah, read me a comic book. All right, I'll tell you what, Matt, why don't I read you long shot number four?
Speaker: Can't give it all away. Okay. Can't give it all away. Can't give it all away. I mean, that's our whole that's the whole point of the podcast, so you probably should.
Speaker: Okay. Even though Longshot is a wanted criminal, he's still determined to give away his diamonds. He gives a bunch to a gang of little kids playing pretend in an alleyway.
Speaker: they all They're all completely enamored of him. And then catch a quick glimpse of Gog before he disappears. Oh, interesting. These are clearly the... They're arguing about whether their name is the Star Rammers or the Star Slammers. Sick. And nick they are...
Speaker: clearly the little rascals yeah yeah they even call the one Alfie and he's got like a hair he's got the alfalfa hair the cowlick m As Longshot wanders his way through the city with his sack of diamonds, he has run-ins with both She-Hulk and Spider-Man, who each recognizes face from the news.
Speaker: In both cases, they attack him while he tries to explain himself to no avail. They're surprised by his luck and agility and speed, and then he disappears, leaving them confused and, in She-Hulk's case, horned up.
Speaker: Yeah, she's so horned for him. yeah It really is just Andosenti being like, he's so hot, she would find him hot. ah
Speaker: Meanwhile, in Longshot's home dimension, one of the spineless ones named Mojo speaks to his slave, Major Domo. and The look of the spineless ones, Mojo part in particular, is really cemented here. They look a lot different than they did in their last.
Speaker: Yes. In the last issue. ah Yeah, yeah. They're a lot more grotesque here. Yeah. Mojo is a self-obsessed green blob of a creature with long spindly fingers and wires extending out of the scalp into a mechanical throne that walks on spider legs with a scorpion with a scorpion tail extending off of it.
Speaker: Boy, that's way better than the description I gave last year. ah Additionally, he has a giant smile and bright yellow eyes. Additionally, he has a giant smile. it's a It is a scary smile. It's terrifying. Yeah, it's like the the smile movie smile.
Speaker: And bright yellow eyes held open by devices like Clockwork Orange. As Major Domo tells him, Mojo owns all he sees. He finds the human slaves hideous and demands they all wear masks of his face. And for a moment, and you're like, oh, is this guy funny?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. ah This guy looks kind of terrifying, but maybe he's kind of funny. Yeah, he's he's he's joking around. He's making everybody wear his own face. Yeah.
Speaker: After some therapy, which is just him staring at images of himself, he meets with all those monsters we saw chasing Longshot in the last three issues, all wearing mojo masks now.
Speaker: They tell him them a strange portal opened, warping them to a dimension where all creatures look like the human slaves the Spineless Ones genetically engineer, and that they decided to come home rather than capture Longshot because he was too dangerous.
Speaker: Mojo confers with Spiral. Her dancing magic and his mojo magic combine to open a portal, taking them back to the world of humans. So he also at some point forgets he told all the...
Speaker: everybody to wear masks of his face. And he's like, why are you wearing my face? Take off my face. You're mocking me. And he ah uses some sort of powers out of his hands to it disintegrate one of these guys.
Speaker: ah Yeah. Yeah. So it goes very quickly from this guy's funny to, Oh, this guy's fucking nuts. Yes. Yeah. Because it is, it is, it's clearly like a,
Speaker: ah some sort of mania, some sort of, it's not just that he forgets, it's that a moment later he's incensed by the fact that they're doing what he asked them to. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. but
Speaker: Back on Earth, Ricochet Rita. Remember her? Hey, it's Ricochet Rita. She's back. Is bounding around her apartment, wondering what happened to Longshot. When her dog starts growling, her plants shrivel and her parrot falls over dead. Dick and balls.
Speaker: They show the dog's dick and balls. They do show the dog's dick and balls. I gotta say, you shouldn't own a parrot. Yes. I agree.
Speaker: Mojo and Spiral are here, demanding she take them to Longshot. So Mojo is like surrounded by this like aura of death.
Speaker: So like plants and parrots and shit just like die when he's near them. Yes. Also another Gumby. There's another Gumby here. There is a Gumby right here. Yeah. In Manhattan, Longshot stumbles back across the gang of kids from earlier.
Speaker: They're hunting the monster they saw, Gog, and somehow they have a revolver now. Fucking what? When Longshot takes the gun, he gets a psychic imprint of its history. And when she sees it and when he sees it being used to kill other humans, he flashes back to his life among the spineless ones. He led a slave revolt, which failed.
Speaker: And in response, the spineless ones wiped his mind. OK, now we know. The kids take long shot to the cloisters where they saw Gog last. Is this a place people know about or is this just made up for the it's in like Brooklyn? It seems like. Yeah, no. I know. I think that that's that's real. Is it real? OK. Yeah. The the the met cloisters, I believe.
Speaker: All right. So they take him the cloisters where they saw Gog last. They follow him inside where they see Gog bigger than ever. yeah He's just killed and eaten part of a policeman.
Speaker: jesus christs They all question whether Gog is real or imaginary until Gog smacks Longshot across the room to be continued. hoof
Speaker: We do get a Reagan watch. Reagan watch. Ronald Reagan appearance here. He hates comics. He's the parent. He's the father of all the little kids. And he seems to be the one who gave the one little kid a gun.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. But also, it's clearly Ronald Reagan. It's clearly Ronald Reagan. And i yeah, so I guess all these kids... who are all roughly the same age and one is a different race than the other. No, two are different races than the others are all siblings and all their dad is Ronald Reagan.
Speaker: i guess if they could have all been adopted. that yeah I was like, how could these have all come from the same person? They could have all been adopted. I forgot that people adopt people. I forgot. Yeah. Or, you you know, a guy could get around.
Speaker: And oh, and there's just a lot of mommies and one Reagan dad. Yeah, true. True. Which one do you think it is? um
Speaker: Pat. think I think Ronald Reagan was sleeping his way around Brooklyn for a while in the late 70s. Pat, do you want me to tell you about Longshot number five?
Speaker: i do. It's called Deadly Lies. Now, how do I know that's true?
Speaker: I guess I don't need a joke after every title. Longshot stands between the group of kids and pup who reminds him his actual name is Gog and Magog.
Speaker: Gog and Magog Gog and Magog Gog and Magog the worst the worst name of it's terrible Gog and Magog Gog and Magog two people's names that's two different characters names Like, we we met his dad earlier in the series, and his dad's name was Magog.
Speaker: So it made a little bit of sense for him to be named Gog. But now his name is Gog and Magog. so There's got to be some sort of naming convention to this, right? Like, Numagog is indicating that he's the son of Magog.
Speaker: so His name is Gog. His son... would be Og in Gog and Magog. Or maybe just Og og and Gog.
Speaker: Og and Gog.
Speaker: All right. Well, he monologues about his insatiable hunger for magic and revenge, but Logshot doesn't want to fight his old buddy. But when Magog and Gog hits one of the kids,
Speaker: Longshot has no choice. He jumps at N'gog and immediately starts getting his ass kicked. The kids urge him on, but he's not sure he deserves to win. After all, he dragged N'gog here in the first place.
Speaker: This is one of those moments I was talking about where, like... They did a great job of building his character, so he makes kind of a strange choice here, but it makes sense where as he's fighting Gog, Gog is like, I know all about your past, including the point where you zapped me here, and I hate you for it, and I want to kill you for it. And...
Speaker: Longshot's like, oh yeah, I guess that was a pretty dick move of me. Of course this guy wants to kill me. Maybe I should let him. Maybe the the heroic thing to do here is let him kill me.
Speaker: Plus he's got a dumb name. Yeah. Elsewhere, Mojo and Spiral torture Ricochet Rita. But she refuses to reveal where Longshot's gone. Also because she doesn't fucking know. What?
Speaker: They turn her to an old lady and back and then pop her into a portal for a dimension hopping jaunt. They. Is this? Yeah, they strap her to the front of like a dimension to the mast of a or the to figurehead of a tra a dimension traversing ship.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. It looks like an old pirate ship, but it's it's floating from dimension to dimension. And it's funny. Yeah. They say, you we just want to take her for a, we're going to take her for a quick dimension hopping jaunt, which is clearly spiral. Just being a smart ass being like, this is going to be a terrifying experience. So I'll refer to it as a jaunt.
Speaker: ah But later when long shot Caesar again, he's like, there's no way she could survive a dimension hopping jaunt. Pat. Yeah. ah hey pat yeah Spiral got so many arms, but only one set of shoulders.
Speaker: ah She only got one set of shoulders, but she's got so many arms. I got to say, i don't know of a multi-armed person, like a a person with more than two arms that's had an extra set of shoulders.
Speaker: Right? Usually it just kind of grows out of their ribs or their their sides. But this all seems to grow out of the same spot and just depending on what angle you're viewing her from. Which, like... Maybe that's her mutant power, that her shoulders shift around her body. Shift around between her fifteen or six arms.
Speaker: um so Back at the Cloisters, Longshot is barely even trying and getting smacked around, but when the kids start to turn on him, his focus returns, and his eyes start glowing.
Speaker: He restrains Gog, but Gog distracts him with little bits of info about his past, and Longshot finds himself getting smacked around again.
Speaker: That's when a goat man shows up and demands that Longshot get up. He's here to help him kill Gog, but he can't do it alone. The Goatman hops into action, but Longshot refuses to get up.
Speaker: This is all hes fault his fault, he thinks to himself. Why should he kill someone who's mad at him for screwing up? The kids take note and start referring to Longshot as a chump, a chicken.
Speaker: They start cheering for the Goatman, who's actually doing pretty well. We find out he's able to discorporate and fly around as a detached head. Yeah. these there's It makes no sense, just like the rest of them being able to discorporate makes no sense. But it is funny that...
Speaker: For this goat man, it's just his goat head that goes flying around. It's just like a ah head being shot, being rocketed around. There's another confusing panel here where Quark is fighting Gog. Who?
Speaker: The goat-headed man is fighting Gog. No, we know his name is Quark here because Gog calls him Quark. Oh. The fight's between me and Longshot Quark.
Speaker: um And ah one of the kids says, oh, no, he's got the goat headed guy. He's choking him. and you look at the panel. No, he's not.
Speaker: Well, that was just happening before we cut to them. Oh, OK. He was choking him.
Speaker: Uh, interlude. Doctor Strange and Wong notice there's been some very unusual and unusual magic interdimensional activity. They've got to check it out.
Speaker: Longshot, meanwhile, moats around in the park park alone, sulking about his spotty past and having upset so many. But just as he's about to give up, he snaps into another flashback. He's back on a strange alien planet, running to find his creator. And he does. He meets Arise, a tall, lanky, bearded man with metal legs.
Speaker: Just before that, he starts going through his satchel where he keeps all the diamonds. His bag of stuff, yeah, yeah. And I guess he's a fucking kleptomaniac because he just has bunch of shit we've seen in other issues.
Speaker: So much stuff. Including a Gumby, but... A Gumby doll, a Eurythmics cassette tape. The toothpaste that, um, that what's-his-name didn't want to use.
Speaker: Yeah. you didn't want to use Theo's toothpaste. He's got a hammer, a golf ball, some block. Like, he's just stealing shit from people. Long shot.
Speaker: um All right So so a Arise. Arise explains who he is. He's a very old man. He was a builder, a creator. So he gave, he built himself a spine and then he gave many people spines and allowed them to walk and build and see the sky.
Speaker: But the tyrant... He said all the all they could see was the muck. Because they had no spine, so they all had to look down the whole time. Did you ever see the Vincent D'Onofrio pigs can't look up tweet?
Speaker: No. it's It's beautiful. i And it also... It happened on 420, but he's just... It's a tweet where he's saying, like, pigs can't look up.
Speaker: They're not able to... like their necks aren't built for them to look up towards the sky. And if I could ever do one thing for a pig, it would be to pick him up at night and hold his head towards the sky. So he could finally see the stars.
Speaker: it's Beautiful. And then he released a children's picture book called pigs. Can't look. ah Yes. Yeah. He cashed in on it. Jesus Christ, Vincent D'Onofrio.
Speaker: So, um... The tyrants in power chose to remain spineless and conquered the spinels as an army of slaves requiring Arise to build a whole slave race for them.
Speaker: In an act of malicious compliance, a Arise created Longshot's race in the image of devils from their myth, and unbeknownst to them, left a quirk in the code that would give them some penchant for rebellion and also special powers.
Speaker: So... This is confusing to me. Did.
Speaker: Do all the slaves have these powers or is Longshot just. The only is Longshot the one with the powers or is Longshot just the first one to wake up and he's like, you got tell everybody else to wake up because they all have powers too.
Speaker: ah It seems like not everybody gets powers. It's it is programmed to just occasionally give people powers and a sense of rebellion. Maybe he's the first one that got both the sense of rebellion and some superpowers. Like it was it had to be. Yeah.
Speaker: ah Such a trace amount that nobody would notice it was actually built into the machinery. Because. Longshot can sense emotions and read psychic imprints on objects and apparently future imprints on objects because he can touch an object and tell if somebody will never touch that object again.
Speaker: Yes. Which is weird. um Strange. and he's like extra strong and fast and agile, like faster and more agile than Spider-Man apparently, or as fast or surprisingly fast to Spider-Man. like Can keep up with Spider-Man.
Speaker: But then his luck powers he got from some cult that branded him with something. Right? that i was Either that or this cult just understood that Arise had built this into the slave race and was, like, kind of activating it for him.
Speaker: Hmm. Unclear. Unclear. I'm going to tell you some other things I know about Longshot, though, really quick, because I don't think they're covered in this series, and I don't know when or where they're covered. um And I don't think they're like a big plot. why would I ever need to know them?
Speaker: ah He has hollow bones like a bird? oh Okay. um But they're extra. They're super strong, too, somehow. I don't know. But they're hollow like a bird. That is downfall of bird bones. So he's super light. um and he has, i guess, like an indestructible spine, I think, like bullseye. He has something something special about his spine. I think it's indestructible.
Speaker: or not okay Or at least like super, super strong, like an extra strong spine. My back hurts.
Speaker: ah One more thing I absolutely, this is the shit that i eat up, just like where you can throw align in and change ah the entire world that you're writing. where And it was brought up once before, just like mentioned in a ah previous issue in this miniseries. But the idea that these slaves were actually built to be terrifying to the spineless ones because in their myths, humans are some sort of devil. Like there's a level to this where,
Speaker: Somehow the spineless ones from this dimension met humans from another, not necessarily our dimension, but from another dimension. Right. And those humans rained hell on them.
Speaker: Right. Which doesn't seem to fit into Arise's story of how that planet came to be, but he must've just left some parts out. Yeah. yeah Yes, there's a it's it's all even to his understanding. Those are just creatures of myth. But yeah, that myth must have turns out to be would be like if we just discovered there was a planet full of dragons or right. And we'd be like, we'd be like, oh, then we must have fucking.
Speaker: met them somewhere. Yeah, that's crazy. This is the exact thing that we write ah hundreds of stories about, yeah except you have you have six fingers. ah
Speaker: One, two, three, four, five. um
Speaker: Longshot wakes up with fresh clarity in his mission and charges back into town to find Rita. But all he finds is a battle-torn apartment and Doctor Strange hanging out and investigating the damage.
Speaker: Longshot explains the whole deal to him and Strange says it looks like Rita was kidnapped and taken through an interdimensional portal. Longshot, of course, wants to go rescue her, but Strange is like, didn't you just say you summoned a bunch of demons here? We should go deal with that.
Speaker: And Longshot reluctantly agrees. They teleport back to the cloisters only to find Gog alone, stuffed to the gills with magic, but somehow still hungry. He's thrown at the chance to kill Longshot, but Strange points out how bloated he is from eating all that magic.
Speaker: Plus, everything he says about Longshot's past is probably a lie. Longshot understands, and a strange blast scog with more magic to keep filling him up. Longshot throws a single blade and pops him like ah open like a balloon. He's...
Speaker: ah just fucking gone i i don't understand the physics of any of this but well he was eating magic bat you have to understand if you you're doing the physics you have to account for the magic that he was eating but even from the realist even thinking about whatever it shouldn't have had a physical whatever In the aftermath, the goat man stumbles back in, proud to have survived his fight with Gog, despite Longshot leaving himself to die.
Speaker: He introduces himself as Quark and sheds some light on the situation. They're both part of the slave race Mojo created, and also he has the same luck power.
Speaker: But there's a flip side to the luck. Like Gog said, the probability is inversely adjusted somewhere else when they use it. It must be used carefully. Hmm. Longshot explains everything he knows. He was a slave with powers and rebelled, but had his mind wiped for it, and if his old race could see a whole planet of humans living free, they'd surely all be in for rebellion. But first, they need to go rescue Rita.
Speaker: Oh, and Mojo and Spiral drove Rita insane by sailing her through several dimensions. Now she's locked into an endless silent scream to be continued! The silent scream thing is so...
Speaker: strange so i'm gonna like yeah fits in with everything else i think i'm gonna spoil something that i think might happen in the ninety s
Speaker: they make and i'm gonna spoil it because it sucks and it's wrong but okay they they make ricochet they make spiral ricochet rita where like ricochet rita when she was traveling through dimension she traveled like back in time and turned herself into spiral in the future or whatever Oh, so like after this at some point, Ricochet Rita does a series of things. No, he comes during this, Ricochet Rita creates Spiral.
Speaker: Out of herself or some some weird shit like that. But yes, that sounds interesting. I think it's not. And I think it sucks. And I think that that was absolutely not okay what Annosenti was intending here, right? Sure. Yeah, no, no, no. It doesn't make sense in know the context of the story. I just think it could be interesting.
Speaker: ah You might find interesting. But i guess i'm a fucking idiot. You probably are, because I thought it sucked. <unk> you might You might enjoy it when we get there. When we get there, you might be like, Matt, this rules.
Speaker: You've been wrong about things before. don't remember that.
Speaker: All right, Pat, bring us fucking home. ah Okay, Matt, I'm going to read you our double size finale. Okay. Long shot number six, a snake coils. Oh, and it's got the dot dot dot at the end. and So, okay. all right.
Speaker: A snake coils. I'll wave to you from the top. No, fuck. No, that's worse than the one we thought it was. Maybe issue seven. We'll we'll finish this one.
Speaker: Mojo and Spiral walk through a suburban earth town invisible thanks to a magic spell they cast together. As they walk, Mojo's death powers kill plants and small animals and make humans sick.
Speaker: Mojo is growing enamored with the planet and decides to manipulate the minds of a bunch of humans to make them worship him and transform a church into a tower of worship.
Speaker: This is pretty funny. It's just like, well, these guys are already you ah being pretty reverent. What if we just switch Jesus to me?
Speaker: Yeah. He also implies a past romance between Spiral and Longshot, whom he no longer cares about because this is his new planet. I think that's where the Ricochet Rita thing, Ricochet Rita being spiral thing comes in, which is like, right. It's written down right here in front of me. It's the most base understanding of that yeah that is sentence that Mojo said that one can have. And that's why I think, I think it may be, it might be like fucking Rob Liefeld that writes it or something.
Speaker: So he's staying on earth. Mojo is after this town and his tower His next step is to control the airwaves. Here comes the satire again. it comes his coming back.
Speaker: There's a good way. They have to kind of explain who he is and what he's doing here. ah And so they just use his insanity to do it, which turns out to be a great exposition device because he can just be like, what the fuck are we doing here? And then Spyro will be like, don't you remember? And then explain the last five issues. And then he's delighted by his own plan that he came up with last episode. Yeah, he's like, wonderful! I'm making a voice for Mojo, because he's fascinating and terrifying. He is terrifying. Like, we'll get into it maybe at the end of this, but because this is, I think, the issue where he does the most terrifying shit. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Rita now hangs from the ceiling of her apartment by vines wrapped around her arms. Her eyes are blank and her face is locked in that soundless scream. It's fucking so scary looking.
Speaker: It is. Yeah, yeah. Silent scream is not doing it justice because that sounds like a like a cheesy horror movie. Yeah, it looks like the thing that I would... ah agree the thing that I would equate it to most closely is probably the bent neck lady from, um, haunting of Hill house.
Speaker: Yeah. but with a straight neck, Google that. Ooh. Longshot finds her here and tries desperately to revive her, but nothing works. Dr. Strange agrees to take her and try to heal her, freeing long shot up to join cork and go after Mojo. He does. It takes a little convincing. He's like, okay.
Speaker: If this means that you're going to go help deal with all that stuff you brought to my planet, then I'll go try to take care of Rita. Okay. That's true. He does have to really push him into it.
Speaker: Mojo's power is growing as a new religion is forming on earth around him. That's it's so cool. Yeah. His tower grows and more flock to him as their new God.
Speaker: Quark and long shot are able to follow the trail of anti-natural rot that Mojo leaves behind before they find him though. He finds them, but he finds he's weak when he's away from his new tower. Also, Spiral seems to have some personal grudge against Longshot. Oh, no. See, wouldn't it have been great to explore that without her being Ricochet Rita? Like, where was the relationship between Spiral and Longshot that wasn't just they kissed once because she was Ricochet Rita?
Speaker: Yes, I guess. I don't know. It still sounds interesting to me. i want to read it now. Okay. Longshot gets the drop on Mojo, but finds he can't kill him, allowing Mojo and Spiral to retreat.
Speaker: Quark is having trouble conjuring the will in himself to even continue, weighted down by a sudden depression, and Longshot is now sure he can't kill Mojo or Spiral, but he still wants to banish them back to their own dimension.
Speaker: Yeah, this is another nocenty... Suddenly Quark is just really depressed about being a cow or whatever. Hang on now. He was not depressed last issue. He wasn't depressed last issue. What I guess I neglected to mention in this recap, because it's really honestly a boring detail is they pass by a field of, I guess like mountain goats or rams or something.
Speaker: And Quark is like, Oh, I see it you were modeled after the humans on this planet. I was was modeled after the livestock.
Speaker: And so from then on he's depressed about his origins. He's like. ah That. Yes, that does happen, but he is a little bit mopey before we even get there. But you're right, that does like plummet him even further. But he plummets him to the point where he's just like, I just want to die now. And it's like, Quark, that's too much.
Speaker: He becomes the Eeyore to Longshot's weaning the pain. Apparently, Longshot just needs to keep getting Eeyores. It's the key a Longshot story. There's also...
Speaker: i' As far as I could tell, there's not like a technical issue that keeps him from killing Mojo. It's just that he was like, wait a second. I'm a hero. i don't want to kill this. I don't want to kill anybody. Correct. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. So they call Dr. Strange and he tells them the key to to defeating Mojo is to destroy his tower. Also, the voice of Longshot seems to stir something in the catatonic Rita. She says Longshot and tears begin to fall from her eyes, which finally close.
Speaker: Oh, my God. Quark and Longshot must have been so dry.
Speaker: Quark and Logshot trying to figure out how to use a telephone is also super fucking funny. They're like, he's like, there's a little Doctor Strange in here. He's talking to me.
Speaker: Back at Mojo's tower, his brainwashed followers are working themselves literally to death to build statues of Mojo all over on his orders. Though he soon forgets and he thinks they're building the statues to mock him.
Speaker: So he kills them all. It's so this is where it's terrifying again. He enslaved these people with his like mind control powers or whatever. To make them work themselves to death.
Speaker: Like, people are just falling over because he's like, yeah, just keep working. Why don't stop working? Why would you stop working? ah Yeah, it is this, like, it is so, joe it's so perfect for Nocenti's sort of, like, jagged writing style because it defines him. Him just...
Speaker: constantly changing his demeanor, sort of like picking up conversations in the middle of them. he's He's just he's out of his mind. And it's it would be funny if he weren't so powerful, I think, is like we keep looking at this is like, well, that's kind of funny. He just made a whole church worship him instead. And then, yeah, he's like, why are you worshiping me? And just with a snap of his fingers kills all of them. And that's when it becomes. Yeah, like. ah real. If there wasn't so much death and him driving people into insanity, like that's what makes him so terrifying.
Speaker: Cork and Longshot ready their plan and weapons when Longshot sees a horse.
Speaker: yes It brings him back more memories of meeting Arise. or Arise once told him that he programmed special genetics into the slave's genetic code and Longshot is just the first to wake up.
Speaker: He's destined to wake them all up and lead them against the spineless ones, man. So I guess ah your theory was a little more right here than Matt, right? That, uh, right. They've all got the powers. It was just, his were awakened somehow.
Speaker: Um, maybe by that cold long shot might be an alien, but he's just like humans in that he has a, a magical out of body experience. The moment he touches a horse,
Speaker: he sees him He sees a horse and he's just like transported to another another world. Horses are just so powerful in this era. Just their're their general aura makes people do crazy things.
Speaker: Back in the present, Longshot glides towards Mojo's tower on a hang glider, dropping Molotov cocktails as he goes to destroy the tower's antenna. He's just got like arms full of of Molotov cocktails as he flies through the sky and drops them. What have what a fucking hillbilly war tactic. Yeah.
Speaker: It works immediately, too. Yeah, it's gets very effective. Using catapults and more Molotov cocktails and an automatic rifle, Quark peppers the tower in bullets and explosions from a nearby roof.
Speaker: Mojo sends Spiral to take out the army he assumes is attacking him, and when he's alone, Longshot drops onto his belly with a big kick. Yeah, Longshot's plan was to make it feel like an army was attacking, and it works and it instantly. Yeah. Mojo's like, go kill that army!
Speaker: And then Longshot does a big belly click. Again, this is all very Red Dawn. Like, it's very a bunch of woodsy, folksy people stopping an invasion of their hometown.
Speaker: When Spiral finds Quark, she attempts to behead him with her sword, only to find that he's still between dimensions and can make himself intangible. Remember? yeah. Remember that? He that? Why was he even impressed? four up tussling until... I love the idea that they got to here and were like, oh, shit, we should go back and write something about him being intangible because I don't know how he gets out of this. Ha ha ha ha ha.
Speaker: The four end up tussling until Mojo uses his magic to drop Longshot and Quark to the ground. But then, suddenly, a gunshot strikes Spiral in the arm. A revived Ricochet Rita and Doctor Strange have arrived to help, along with Rita's revived parrot.
Speaker: Yeah, the parrot comes back to life. I didn't need that. I didn't need that parrot.
Speaker: Longshot, elated to see Rita again, distracts Mojo by pretending he knows a secret of his. It works long enough for Strange to open a dimensional portal and Longshot to kick him through it.
Speaker: such a simple plan but it works because mojo is so fucking insane i know you believe it at this point where he's he's like where everything stops because this is this is also the reason long shot tries it is because this would work on him if somebody was like we saw it multiple times somebody was like i have i know all your secrets and he stopped fighting and he was like would you like to grab a cup of coffee and talk about it But this but in for Mojo, it just makes him furious. Right. yeah He's like, have to tell me you can't have a secret about me. How dare you have a secret about me that I don't know.
Speaker: So he goes through the portal when Spiral follows him. Longshot knows he must follow, too, because with their magics combined, the two can still dimension hop. Quark joins him and so does Rita. She survived the horrors of space time once and she can serve as proof to long shot slave race that an entire planet of free humans exists.
Speaker: They thank Dr. Strange and disappear into the portal. The end.
Speaker: Okay, so.
Speaker: Longshot fucking rules. he there's a There's a scene in one of the fights where um he's just being so sweet, even to Mojo and Spiral, right? Like, he is... He leaps off of Spiral's back to, like, to to to to leap towards Mojo.
Speaker: Yeah. over her head and he's like watch your head because he doesn't want airs and he doesn't want her to accidentally get kicked in the head as he's jumping over her. He doesn't even care that she's trying to kill him. but He's just being sweet.
Speaker: He's just a little sweetheart. sweet boy. That's the thing. Yeah. yeah So this is the other thing I want to just i like Okay, so after this series, after like this wasn't supposed to be a miniseries. This was supposed to be an ongoing. That's the way that she conceived it. And each arc was supposed to be long shot, like visiting a new dimension.
Speaker: um Oh, And the just the first one was the Marvel dimension. But, of course, the series didn't really get picked up. Yeah. I don't know if it sold well or not, but Longshot became a fan favorite and fucking Chris Claremont loved it.
Speaker: So he really starts putting all this shit in his books. And that's where we see Longshot next and spiral and Mojo and everyone. But he, it seems like Claremont was way too excited to put spiral in the books because as you can see here, when would spiral of fucking joined freedom force?
Speaker: Right. what Why was she there? what was What was she doing there? She was by Mojo's side this entire time. it was supposed to yeah It was supposed to be while she was looking for long shots, so I guess when she was with all the demons. But that doesn't make fucking sense. They weren't there for very long at all.
Speaker: And they were doing so much shit. She was so heavily involved in all of that. Yeah. like the the dimension merging rituals and the yeah attacks. She was like the general.
Speaker: But this wasn't supposed to be like, obviously Mojo and Longshot and Spiral all become X-Men shit, right? Like all of them, they are, they are, if you bring up any of those words, any of those characters, people are going to be like, oh, like an X-Men, right? Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker: but They weren't supposed to be. He was not supposed to be, he did he was not supposed to have anything to do with the X-Men whatsoever or mutants or any of that. um He was just supposed to be his own like solo hero. It's interesting.
Speaker: that Yeah, that's so weird because he seems i like seems like he just fits here in a miniseries. This was such a good self-contained story yeah that you can build off of out of anything that you want. Like you plug any hero in And you could start retelling the story Longshot. Right, right.
Speaker: But, you know, I don't know. We'll see how successful it is when um when he makes his way to the pages when he gets to the The X-Men. Yeah. Yeah. what how would Yeah. Go ahead.
Speaker: Real quick. I just I have to mention we do get Ralph number three. I believe it's one of the cult members when the towers are blowing up. Yeah. There's another there's another Ralph. We got to go.
Speaker: ah
Speaker: I wish Anna Senti had done more like comedy stuff. She is fucking funny. She is very funny. She she like has it She has that comedy thing that, Not everybody has, and especially not comic book writers. So many comic book writers try to be funny and absolutely with all the time. and she seems like she's barely trying and just utterly succeeding. She's got this very natural. It might just be that she shares our sense of humor. but Right, right. That's true. We got like 100 listeners. so
Speaker: how do you appeal this So tell me how you felt about this thing as a whole. I mean, I really enjoy, like I said at the top, it just the this strange writing and strange art come together on a strange story and it all just works together. I think the, the entire creative team is vibing here.
Speaker: The, characters are fun and so much deeper than you kind of expect because a lot of it is happening through their their choices and their actions rather than exposition i and yeah mojo's fucking terrifying he's like yeah i know that we're gonna start to see him uh just from general x-men knowledge like i know who he is i didn't realize he was this threatening and this like
Speaker: terrifying fuck Fucked up. and Yeah, fucking twist du twisted. So I think Longshot rules. I think he's got a lot of potential as a character.
Speaker: But I found it interesting to read today that Claremont liked Longshot and wanted him in the X-Men. Because as we'll see, Longshot's like a fucking background character when he joins the team. and oh yeah.
Speaker: ah Yeah, he it almost sometimes seems like Claremont even forgets he's there. And when he puts him in the forefront, we get like the most like the most bizarre story in ma an X-Men history is the long shot centric story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um There's even, there's moments where it's like, Longshot shows up as like, the the the critical like, fulcrum point of a story. And then in the, v like, and like the to be continued moment. And then in the next issue, as it opens up, it's like, somebody's like, move aside, Longshot, I'll handle this. It's so so, it's so weird. He's just always constantly undermined.
Speaker: and for beyond that when claremont introduces gambit it's almost like you know who gambit is stop it it's almost like he's trying to do a be like a long shot but more badass you know what i mean yeah sure ah like he's like here's a ah instead of an innocent kind of like boyish figure, here's a wise beyond his years, slick, dark brooding figure, but also so extremely fast and agile with throwing projectiles. And even though Gambit doesn't have luck powers, he's got that like kind of like extremely lucky. He's extremely lucky lucky and extremely competent in most situations because he's like a thief and he's like a con man. yeah Right. So like he, he, even when he's not,
Speaker: His powers sort of simulate luck, or his ah abilities to sort of simulate luck the way, like, a gambler's does. He's a true rogue. Yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah, it's like trading out one rogue for the other, and Gambit gets introduced as soon as Longshot leaves. So it's like... Anyway, so I just, I find it so strange that...
Speaker: I don't know. Maybe it's almost as if it's like a favor to a friend to be like, hey, I will keep your character alive just in case they want to pick a series back Like maybe maybe we generate enough interest together, which is how what I thought I was thinking when I was rereading this the other day. Right.
Speaker: But then today when I was doing the background research, to find out Claremont loved the Longshot miniseries. But then again, maybe that's just what he said in interviews. You know what i mean?
Speaker: Maybe he's a liar and we are right.
Speaker: You're doing research for this? He's got an eye out of stuff that you could buy out. If you had time machine that you would like to try out.
Speaker: It can't feel, feel...
Speaker: Ooh, Matt, that was the long shot series. And now it is time for Pat's deals and deals. ah Correct. Hey, both those long shot edition. Okay. Is this something this something long shot would use?
Speaker: no, no, no. no It's just this is the long shot episode. And now this is our our little tag on the end of it. Matt. Yes. Micro bugs.
Speaker: No, thanks. Advanced, advanced bugging equipment. Oh, transmitters, telephone bugs, concrete mics, pen bugs, and much more. Send $2 to microcom for catalog refundable, unbeatable prices.
Speaker: Huh? The bugs, Matt, little bugs and not the gross kind, the kind that allow you to, it's got a half mile range. Apparently. to To listen in on people's conversation. They had these just like commercially available that long ago?
Speaker: I guess. you Do you remember? it's happened more than once on this podcast where like there were children who were... bugging rooms and we were like where are these kids getting this technology but apparently buddy i do not remember a single one of those don't remember a single moment like that it's created some strange situations that like spider-man or wolverine or kitty pride or someone had to deal with I believe you, man. do not remember at all
Speaker: But apparently, yeah, these are these are pretty easy to pick up. Jesus Christ. Okay. I imagine being able to record is a little more complicated. right because it says here they have a half mile range.
Speaker: and So it's more it's working more like a walkie talkie. Okay, I could see that. But you have shortwave radio transmitters. Okay.
Speaker: That's pretty cool. How much? $2 for the catalog. But here's what I really like about this, Matt. That $2 for the catalog is refundable.
Speaker: Is it refundable if you buy something from the catalog that will knock $2 off of it Oh, no, I doubt it. that would That would be more like a rebate. This seems like if you're dissatisfied with the catalog, you can send it back and get your $2 back. I don't want anything here. ah Can I have my $2 back? Yeah. But it seems like a good way to kill time.
Speaker: All right. Well, what is this in today's money? i I'm interested in this one. So we have taken a little trip back to 1985, Matt. Yeah.
Speaker: Which means that we are looking at about $3.11, which make again.
Speaker: this catalog six dollars and twenty two cents but that's just for the catalog again so Yes, but you could get that money back. But refundable. If you didn't choose to buy anything from the catalog. All right. Here's what I'll say.
Speaker: Yes. If I'm going in on this catalog with with some buddies, like we're all going to – You're each putting in a quarter. A quarter, yeah. And then it's because we might all buy – because wait if I don't buy anything, what's – I'm still spending money on a stamp and an envelope and everything. ah Yeah, I suppose you are.
Speaker: And I have a feeling going to get this frigging catalog and these bugs are going to be like $700. Ooh,
Speaker: that could be an issue. It seems like ah it seems like it's technology. so i'm I'm interested, but i I got to, it's going to depend. It's going to depend.
Speaker: Can I steal an envelope and a stamp?
Speaker: Yes. and but All right. So you've decided you're going to help me steal an envelope and a stamp. Yeah, I'm all in on this. Okay. Then it's a heist. If you help me steal an envelope and a stamp ah and both me and you are going to look at this catalog together, we're not going to buy separate ones. We're going to buy one together.
Speaker: And then we can bug each other's rooms and it would just be like talking to each other. We should record it and then let other people listen to it. Let's let's use it to talk about the X-Men. Okay, that sounds good. All right, I'm in. All right, we did it.
Speaker: na out does by us time
Speaker: Heyo, folks! Thank you so much for listening and thank you for being here. And you know what? It was a real long shot that we would get any of your listenership, but we got all of you.
Speaker: Yeah. yes yeah Do you agree? i Yeah, I didn't believe we would get ah listeners at all. Did you believe that everybody who's listening right now is listening?
Speaker: And... We appreciate it. If you want to do more than just listen, you can go to our links in the show notes and you can join our Patreon. You can join for free and get our reading lists. And you want to throw us a little bit of money, maybe a tiny little bit more, not much more. There's not a lot of extra content on there, but the satisfaction of giving us money ah just to say, just to say, Hey, I like what you do.
Speaker: um have a dollar also. Hmm. If you want to our discord, there's a link in the show notes there. There's a lot of people talking about some real fun stuff in that discord. There's a lot of funny people being fun and cool. um What, what else do we want to tell them, Pat?
Speaker: I definitely want to throw out some thanks. Two of them to be exact. One to Julia Selly for the voice of Trish Tilde and the other to Krils Wilson for the music.
Speaker: um well so We have a, you can email if you want to be on Pat's email corner, you can email mutant menace pod at gmail.com. And if you want to follow us on Instagram, it's a mutant menace pod on Instagram.
Speaker: Also true. ah That just leaves our signature catchphrase that we say at the end of every single episode. You want to lead us off, Pat?
Speaker: Yeah, our famous sign-off, Matt. As always, good thing there's nothing dumb about it. And remember, come back, I gotta to arrest you!
Speaker: god, there were so many good ones, though. Or, gag yourself, pretty boy. Or, oh mama, don't let me pee in my pants.
