[SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grimalk and Lane podcast, where queer friends and allies gather to review and discuss the original X-Men comics in continuity order.

[SPEAKER_02]: July on the show is going to be all about Piotr Rasputin.

[SPEAKER_02]: At the end of the month, we will have the trial of Colossus coming out.

[SPEAKER_02]: which is a part academic panel and part nerdy superhero court drama, which is going to be fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is a character that I've known of my whole X-Men history, read him in books a thousand times, but I've never given a lot of deep thought to his origins and really like delving into the history of Colossus and what it represents and how it matches like real world history is fascinating.

[SPEAKER_02]: So over here on the Patreon channel, we're going to be doing five episodes this month, all focused on different characters that tell kind of a part of Colossus's story.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're beginning with maybe the biggest one that could fit in a Patreon episode, and that is Colossus's older brother, Mikhail Rasputin.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail is an omega mutant.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a cosmonaut, and he's fucking crazy.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to have a good time delving into the complexity of this very interesting character.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm thrilled to be joined by two real-life friends who, as far as I know, have it spoken at some time, but have both put on the show at different times.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm extremely fond of you both.

[SPEAKER_02]: The incredible Michael Solice and the incredible Mike Serriaco.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll probably just call you Solice and Serriaco today for rather than doing like [SPEAKER_02]: Let me have you both introduce yourselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear a little about your name and pronouns, where we might know you from.

[SPEAKER_02]: What are your early thoughts on being a fan of Colossus himself?

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's begin with Michael Solis.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Michael.

[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the show.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Chad and Hi, Seriyako.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's really, really great to be here.

[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, my name is Michael so these, he, him, his pronouns.

[SPEAKER_03]: I am the queer author of the young adult super power novel, deficient, which has been very much inspired by my love for the X-Men and super powers in general.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm currently living in New York City, so really happy to be on this call with you both.

[SPEAKER_03]: Colossus, Colossus was always one of those characters who just didn't capture my attention as much.

[SPEAKER_03]: He absorbed space because he was so big and bulky, very masculine-seeming.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was just more interested in the stories of the other characters.

[SPEAKER_03]: So for me, it was really interesting to dig in and dive in a little bit more into Colossus's family background and actually see that there's much more depth there than I ever thought.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I really underestimated this character, I think, in my experience of Dexman over time.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus is the this-off boy whose power is to grow hard.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let me also welcome.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll go back to the show.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Mike.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, are you doing also love that you're referred to as a Seriaco and so least because that's what we did growing up in New Jersey You would because there's so many of these We know this like your last name.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it just it was a cultural thing, but yeah I'm living in Los Angeles now I'm a comedian.

[SPEAKER_04]: I just finished.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was just tell you guys before recording a sitcom in Kentucky Which will be coming out this summer so that is cool and similar to so least a [SPEAKER_04]: Because you got to remember Colossus wasn't in the cartoon a lot and we I think we are both exposed to the X-Men through the cartoon first of memory serves.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think that the video game.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think like basic exposure.

[SPEAKER_04]: There was two episodes of Colossus on the cartoon and then the video game and then growing up we were at that point where it's post Jim Lee and you had X-Men and uncanny X-Men.

[SPEAKER_04]: So he had the gold team and the blue team and I was like team blew it all the way.

[SPEAKER_04]: So whatever Colossus was doing with his brothers showing up and all the Hellfire club and all that that was that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because that's when we first see McColle Rasputin.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll get there in a little while, but that's where he first shows up.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, but yeah, I was reading the Ventures a Gambit and Rogue and all that.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I think get into, in fact, I don't think I've really gone to Colossus until they did ultimate X-Men and you find out, oh, he's gay.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, now he's way more interesting.

[SPEAKER_04]: So it took me a while to get into our Colossus.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I'm sure you've discovered that LA and Kentucky are basically the same place.

[SPEAKER_04]: Ha ha ha, I sure.

[SPEAKER_04]: Either way, just don't ask anybody about your politics because they will tell you about it and both in L.A.

and Kentucky.

[SPEAKER_04]: I just don't care.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had Seriyako on the show first.

[SPEAKER_02]: When Solis was publishing his book, Seriyako referred me to Solis who has now come back on the show a couple of times as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've done character episodes with you both.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've had you both on the main show.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I've never had the both of you here together.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear a little bit about your origin as a buddies in New Jersey.

[SPEAKER_02]: A little queer friends grow it up.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, neither of us were openly queer at that point.

[SPEAKER_04]: We were so young, we weren't anything yet.

[SPEAKER_03]: I know, so I think we first met at a pool club in Northern New Jersey, so yeah, we grew up in New Jersey, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Older swim club.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, and it's a pool.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and that was, yeah, there was an adult pool, there was a big pool.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was like very cold, I remember.

[SPEAKER_03]: We played volleyball and Newcomme.

[SPEAKER_03]: There was a lot of happening and we would run around and kind of just play all day.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think yeah, we obviously were not quite certain who we were, but I think we were, you know, the two queer kids at the pool.

[SPEAKER_04]: But if I'm not mistaken, that place was actually the origin of my speedo fetish.

[SPEAKER_04]: Do you remember they had the Swim team they had like the mean guys on the swim team that were always in their speedos?

[SPEAKER_04]: So like growing up my like mean jokes weren't football players.

[SPEAKER_04]: They were those kids [SPEAKER_03]: Do you remember them?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I do remember them.

[SPEAKER_03]: I remember the like lifeguard with the mustache.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think, oh Jim, yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, you can be daddy fetish.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: Fantastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's actually a awakening before we know we're gay, right?

[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the fun bit, like we would have lots of arguments about superpowers and X-Men.

[SPEAKER_03]: And like at one point, we started creating our own comic book.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think, like we started designing comic book characters.

[SPEAKER_01]: We did.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember Seriyako was a big fan of rogue, I was a big fan of storm, you were Team Blue, I was Team Gold, and we were being very creative around channeling our interests in this X-Men world into creating our own character.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I think there was a lot of creativity happening there.

[SPEAKER_04]: So that was a big thing too, because before we got into X-Men, I think our exposure was always like super friends and superiors, and you only really got Wonder Woman.

[SPEAKER_04]: You had Batman, Superman, Aquaman, but that you go and like some who were exposed to X-Men and all the women are amazing.

[SPEAKER_04]: Think about like, all the best characters of women you got wrong, you got Phoenix, you got Storm.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was this great, I guess it's like gay kids who didn't know we were gay.

[SPEAKER_04]: Suddenly we had this treasure trove of amazing like divas that we could kind of channel dig into.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're in my show, we're getting right to that era where Phoenix shows up.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's gonna happen kind of as 20, 25 is wrapping up.

[SPEAKER_02]: So storm is in the book being amazing now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Jeans about to get amazing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we start to grow into more powerful female characters because Claire must really push to that in his early years on the title, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It went from X-Men to, oh, the women are much more interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: As we get into characters like Kitty Pride and Rachel Summers, one of them being magic early on a Rasputin.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to open the show with discussion and we'll keep this super brief because a lot of my thoughts all share in other episodes and I want to keep this focused on Mikhail.

[SPEAKER_02]: But we first meet Peotr, Rasputin or Peter as they call him in his kind of English size name.

[SPEAKER_02]: In giant size X-Men number one in 1975, this is where he's out on the farm and the collective with his parents and his cute little sisters almost hit by the tractor.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he grows into a big metal man and smashes the tractor and his first thought [SPEAKER_02]: Oh no, what about my neighbors who have the tractor?

[SPEAKER_02]: What are they going to do to replace this?

[SPEAKER_02]: Charles Xavier shows up and he's like, you know, I want to bring you into America as a hero.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Peter says, I gotta go talk to my mom and dad first.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's this very cute, like, family oriented situation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus over the next several, or the next few years in comics, we discover he's an artist, he's the lover, he's like very into the idea of, like, I love love.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's kind of a reluctant superhero.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a super strong powerhouse, but it doesn't it doesn't really explore his connections to Russia for many more years.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's those stories come more in the 1980s, 90s, 2000s, where a ton is added to his early origin.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like the time the government tried to storm his house after discovering he was a mutant and they had armed guns and they tried to take him away.

[SPEAKER_02]: and the professor X had to like zap their brains and make them forget that Peter was there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or we learned at one point that there's a KGB guy named Alexey Vaughan who has an episode on my Patreon that has like covered for Colossus because he was best friends with Mikhail Rasputin in his youth.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's early on though and this is one of the earliest touches we get of this in Xmen 99.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's only like Colossus is like 6th [SPEAKER_02]: the appearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Where the X-Men are heading up into space, the very next issue is where Jean Grey re-crashes into orbit and turns into the fetix, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're right at that cusp.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in 1976, we get Claremont and Cockrum, giving us just kind of one scene.

[SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men are all climbing aboard a space shuttle.

[SPEAKER_02]: Peter Corbos Starkor, they're shooting up into space to save a captured X-Men.

[SPEAKER_02]: from the evil sentinels who have an orbital base.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when Colossus gets inside, he's in his little rocket suit and he has a full panic attack.

[SPEAKER_02]: He activates his power shreds out of his suit and cries out the word, Mikael.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I am not going to be doing a Russian accent for everyone today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have to go do a fact.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I'm happening today.

[SPEAKER_02]: That as he is on the rocket, we get something that we get his speech here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I sit here inside a rocket and all I can think of is my brother Mikhail, a test pilot, one of Russia's first cosmonauts, Mikhail dying, my friend burning to death on a bichenor launch pad when his rocket exploded.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were so close Mikhail and I, we were all we had and ever since that day, and Klaus descends up wondering how Mikhail felt as they are taken off into space.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now later interpretations of his origins will show that when Colossus learned that his brother died in the space shuttle explosion, that's the first time his powers activated.

[SPEAKER_02]: When he turned into this giant metal form and pounded the ground, and they had to keep him hidden his parents because they were afraid the government would take him away.

[SPEAKER_02]: into a Cosmonaut program that allowed him to traverse into other dimensions where he ended up getting trapped.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll get there in a minute.

[SPEAKER_02]: The context for that word, by the way, Bikonor.

[SPEAKER_02]: The Bikonor Cosmodrome is a real thing located in Bikonor, Kazakhstan.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was operated by Russia formed in 1955, and it's still under treaty until the year 2050.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was the launching point for Sputnik I, which was the 1957 kind of first satellite and those stock one in 1961, which is the first manned flight into outer space.

[SPEAKER_02]: The pilot of those stock one was a guy named Yuri Gagarin, who was the first human in outer space.

[SPEAKER_02]: We also have a history of animals being launched into space here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Stay tuned for my Patreon episode on Red Ghost and the Super apes and I will tell you more about Russia's history of sending monkeys dogs and cats into space, which also takes us into the early United States kind of space race right it's the Russia and the US trying to get to the moon first, which is literally the origin of fantastic for number one.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of really interesting things, but the mention of Mikhail back in 1976 is fascinating because we don't meet the character until 1992, 16 years later.

[SPEAKER_04]: My first thought is, what was the direct context going on at that point with the space race?

[SPEAKER_04]: So we're in 1976, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: With this panel, I'll have to ins correct.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, um, so it's really early on.

[SPEAKER_04]: Also, did they ever connect to Mikhail to isn't there a Russian dog in guardians of the galaxy?

[SPEAKER_04]: That was somewhere in the same kind of origin.

[SPEAKER_04]: Is it mo?

[SPEAKER_04]: He like he was shot to space, but he didn't come back terribly.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like Laka like it was a real like story like they sent the dog up and they were like, oh my god, we're gonna have the first space dog that you came back.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's like she died terribly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Stay tuned for the Super A's episode.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a dog that glanced into space and became telepathic.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a beloved character in the Guardians of the Galaxy both the film and the comics.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, you're absolutely right.

[SPEAKER_02]: As far as what was happening in relations, this is the Cold War.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is height of the Cold War.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a ton of protests going on in America.

[SPEAKER_02]: People like Bob Dylan are writing songs about [SPEAKER_02]: You know, people in Russia are our parents and civilians too.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, we want to focus on what exists between us.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Colossus is a character that's created for an American audience, primarily that's kind of getting them to have an understanding that there are good people in Russia during a time when people were living an open fear of nuclear and atomic war.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that that's kind of the commentary, but Claremoff adding this panel about Mikael shows a little bit of history for Colossus in the country as they're understanding the space race context.

[SPEAKER_04]: I love about Claremoff because he was just, again, bringing the X-Men into the Bronze Age where I mean, it was such a different story to just him finding these details in this character development of something he could create in Colossus.

[SPEAKER_04]: Which also explained because he never had big brother energy.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that completely explains, like, he is a Peter Brady, not a Greg Brady, that was something that always kind of confused me as somebody who liked sequential family kind of things because it does affect like how character is Peter was always like, I don't know, when they found out that he was the middle child, it made a lot more sense about his personality.

[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it was a very clear mom thing to do to have this detail that we don't actually see like follow through until like what 20 years later.

[SPEAKER_04]: We actually finally, it's all to brother.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'll get very clear, Monk.

[SPEAKER_04]: Very what he was doing the X-Men.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely brilliant, brilliant writing and Cochrome 2, Cochrome with the designs on all this isn't.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think putting the history into context is really important there.

[SPEAKER_03]: I had no idea that Colossus was, yeah, you know, we're we're getting into kind of the Russian dynamic here.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I think it's interesting when it's so easy to sort of vilanize a state and enemy, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And people who come from a certain country.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I think there's a lot of work that's done here to humanize the characters and not just paint them as in the archetype of villain, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to explore this today, but just to add to that thought.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you think of it, Colossus is a defector.

[SPEAKER_02]: He left the Soviet Union and came to America as a defector, which is a piece of his character that is sometimes explored.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we obviously do get a villain with Mikhail, but I think there's a reason why he becomes a person or that he becomes.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I also like the idea that Cedar Yaco mentions, so I'm the middle child and my family.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I know that complex siblings relationships, you do build up armor as a defense mechanism and as a protective mechanism.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I kind of see that line of that pain that Colossus feels with the loss of the older brother.

[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't a bad relationship, it sounded like, he refers to Mikhailes as his friend, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And the death really impacts him and hurts him.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's that building up of armor to perhaps recuperate a recover from that loss.

[SPEAKER_03]: but then I think he needs that armor to also deal with the person that his brother has become once he does actually meet.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm really fascinated by that human piece of those dynamics between the three siblings, how they relate to one another.

[SPEAKER_03]: Why Colossus is power is so different from the two siblings as well, which are a bit more mystical, more magical, more ethereal, whereas this is very concrete, I become hard.

[SPEAKER_03]: I defend myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Two thoughts I'll toss out and we're not going to go in detail here because again, I'm doing multiple episodes.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to be exploring different dynamics.

[SPEAKER_02]: Over on the main show, we're going to be doing one of the characters, excuse me, one of the issue reviews and interviews, we're going to be focusing on the Rasputin family line.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in actual history, there's a, there's a deep history with the Rasputin family and its connection to kind of the fall of Russian royalty.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was a madman who like influenced the line.

[SPEAKER_02]: people.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you've ever seen the movie Anastasia, you see the big bad guys name as Rasputin.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a full series or a limited series that explores that that madness was kind of pre-programmed by Mr.

Sinister and this person's descendants have all carried a piece of that madness with them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so again, stay tuned for that episode or conversation on the main show.

[SPEAKER_02]: But one thing you'll notice in Colossus stories, magic, who is a child whose innocence was taken by a rapist demon who like turned her into a dark child, right, that's the Velasco story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Magic is always fighting her dark side.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail seems to have a madness that can take over.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Colossus, his madness is like, when I give into my rage, I can destroy, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a long arc of him being the juggernaut, for example.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's interesting to consider the ideas of madness.

[SPEAKER_02]: But so at least your thought here about Colossus has a very direct power.

[SPEAKER_02]: It still gets mystical connections sometimes, which is really interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the sinister of it all in their family line is also really fascinating.

[SPEAKER_02]: So let's jump in and Syriako, you mentioned this a bit ago.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot of fans were reading more X-Men blue, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: This was where the title relaunched with X-Men one.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there were a million covers and everybody bought the book.

[SPEAKER_02]: Over in the Uncanny X-Men line, we continued the main numbering, and this is where John Bern and Jim Lee and Will's Pratashio have a very different team of X-Men.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the character stories are really powerful, so we get stuff with Ice Man, we get stuff with Jean Grey.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is the era where she's going by just the name Jean Grey, and that suit that kind of makes her look naked.

[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: We get stuff with storm and forge and at archangel, but we get some really interesting stuff with Colossus early on here as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if we jump to uncanny xmen 285 286, this is a difficult couple of issues to read.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of densely packed and very wordy, and it's like in a weird dimension that you don't kind of understand, but this is where McCuyel shows up.

[SPEAKER_02]: So a portal has opened over Earth, Jean-Gray and Galossas get sucked into it, and unless the void is closed, all of Earth might get sucked in.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like a vacuum in space, basically.

[SPEAKER_02]: They end up getting violently attacked by the humanoid aliens who live on the other side, who call the humans or the mutants primates.

[SPEAKER_02]: But when Galossas changes feel back into flesh, they recognize him.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's him, they are.

[SPEAKER_02]: The prophecy has been fulfilled.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you guys remember, uh, Just Weedon's astonishing ex-men, all that stuff with the brain, it worked well, it got more colossus like prophecy as the great destroyer.

[SPEAKER_02]: Those are, that's another interesting component of this character.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus who's shouting things like, let's go.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, we'll talk more about that in the academic panel.

[SPEAKER_02]: He finds himself enjoying the adoration a little bit to his own embarrassment, but he soon escorted shirtless into a war room with five women.

[SPEAKER_02]: all of whom have different hair colors, and he is smiling and they all want to fuck him.

[SPEAKER_02]: During this time, Archangel is like evil apocalypse wings, activate, they have the mind of their own, and he slotters a whole battalion without meaning to, and then he gets taken over by like a witch lady named Shaharaz off, who is the worldly avatar of the triumvirate, and she names him like the protector general of the lands, because they've received word that an ancient foe [SPEAKER_02]: So Ice Man is here, Sunfire is here.

[SPEAKER_02]: By the way, this is the same year North Star came out, but it's still like another 20 years before Ice Man will come out.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Sunfire has never come out, but we still diggy's gay.

[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, Ice Man all are here.

[SPEAKER_02]: They fall through the roof of the tavern.

[SPEAKER_02]: They get in a bar fight, storm lands after getting sucked through the portal.

[SPEAKER_02]: She lands in a hot desert where she finds that the weather is too intense for her to control.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she gets found by a man dressed in red with a green cloak and a walking stick.

[SPEAKER_02]: He calls her a boundling and he carries her back to his desert dwelling.

[SPEAKER_02]: He makes her some food, gives her some wine.

[SPEAKER_02]: He has made all of this by himself.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna quickly learn Mikhail as a reality worker.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can grow shit and make shit happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can create homes out of nothing or even [SPEAKER_02]: like alternate realms for him to live in.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a big part of his power.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's given all this food he's grown himself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when Storm mentions that she fell through a portal, the man is suddenly angry.

[SPEAKER_02]: You breach the portal.

[SPEAKER_02]: Are you mad?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is it your wish to bring destruction on us all?

[SPEAKER_02]: Soon, a Storm makes a dress and a cape for herself out of her costume.

[SPEAKER_02]: This mysterious man says they must hurry back to civilization because that portal is expensive.

[SPEAKER_02]: standing and both this world and the earth are in danger.

[SPEAKER_02]: He settles a lizard's steed and storm finally is like, hey, who the fuck are you?

[SPEAKER_02]: And this man says quote, some say a legend, some say a curse.

[SPEAKER_02]: It will be for you to decide which you believe.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that basically sums up all of the Kyle psychology in one sentence if we melted it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Storm replies that I shall buy my time stranger since in my day I have been branded both myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Soon they're back in the city and they find Colossus and Jean Grey, Colossus says who are you and he says, if a familiar face peel turnic out a bit, the one most changed since you last saw it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But there's enough left under the scars I think that you will know the face of your own brother.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we got to talk about this because this is a crazy introduction.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have an alien land, we have the character kind of scattered everywhere.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have McIll being the alien prince for storm to flirt with, but that it turns out it is Fiona's brother.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's beautifully done.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's always great when there's just a portal that randomly opens up, and then people get sucked into it, and then all hell breaks loose, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: A random hole in space.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then you just get stuck up, you go right into that hole, you travel through, and then like, I mean, I mean, I just love Storm and all everything about Storm.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I love that she's the one who is able to have that first connection.

[SPEAKER_03]: Interesting that she's in a climate in a world where her her suddenly her power, she doesn't have any powers anymore.

[SPEAKER_03]: She can actually control the weather.

[SPEAKER_03]: So she's really stuck fending on her on her own without that relying on that incredible power that she does have.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I think also delving into sort of the characteristics what hold these two people in common that Storm has also been someone who's been granted as a legend or a curse, depending on who interpre her powers or her background or where she came from and her whole legacy.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I love that that was happening there.

[SPEAKER_03]: I thought there was gonna be something maybe a little bit more romantic evolving between the two of the characters, but that was not to be.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, given a minute, we'll get to the Storm Limited series and a little bit more.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think you got a lot of it more juicy in that one.

[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, yeah, curious to see where that goes.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then I think getting towards the big reveal, which is uniting these brothers together again.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Macau's initial statement, some say a legend, some say a curse.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's up to you to decide which.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's an interesting piece.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I want you to keep that theme in mind as we're moving forward.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we jumped to 286, Colossus, Misha, Storm says that it is true.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your colonel, Mikhail, Rasputin.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's a colonel, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a cosmoner.

[SPEAKER_02]: How is that possible?

[SPEAKER_02]: He says, there will be time later for explanation storm.

[SPEAKER_02]: For now, let my eyes and heart feast upon a site too long denied me.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's been years since I stood in the presence of my little brother.

[SPEAKER_02]: In truth, I had long ago abandoned any hope of reunion.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus is kind of B.

[SPEAKER_02]: Have you returned from the dead?

[SPEAKER_02]: On the contrary, I have yet to take leave of this life.

[SPEAKER_02]: Though the conviction through the conviction of your embrace, excuse me, though the conviction of your embrace may indeed be my end, come on.

[SPEAKER_02]: And as Mikhail states aloud that he will not close the portal that threatens the planet, they learn of his origin story.

[SPEAKER_04]: My story begins on Earth.

[SPEAKER_04]: Shortly after the state discovered their premier Russian cosmonaut was born a mutant.

[SPEAKER_04]: To keep my existence a secret from the capitalist in the US, [SPEAKER_04]: My service to the people could continue unaccombored by my ties to the path.

[SPEAKER_04]: My first assignment was the exploration of the Void on Sakwan Island.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was believed my energy-warping powers would provide us with a safe egress into the Void.

[SPEAKER_04]: All the rigors of space travel were as nothing compared to the breach of interventional barriers.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was by Lenin's grace I survived.

[SPEAKER_04]: There would be many days since then that I wished I had not.

[SPEAKER_04]: My sudden arrival did not go unnoticed.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was ordered, pulled from the wreckage by the worldly avatar of the triumvirate.

[SPEAKER_04]: It would be weeks before I regained consciousness to the sight of the most beautiful woman on any world.

[SPEAKER_04]: The lovely Trameia Xoth.

[SPEAKER_04]: I believe that's how it's pronounced.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, of course.

[SPEAKER_04]: Eldest daughter, her loving administration soon healed all manner of wounds, both heart and soul.

[SPEAKER_02]: Meaning they fucked.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they did.

[SPEAKER_04]: The rest few employees do very well with otherworldly and alien women.

[SPEAKER_04]: They always pull.

[SPEAKER_04]: On the day we were wed, I realized this place had become my home.

[SPEAKER_04]: And still, something plagued me.

[SPEAKER_04]: The thoughts of the world I had left behind as a member of the Royal Family, I was granted access to the portal.

[SPEAKER_04]: There I discovered a veritable graveyard of vehicles, American submarines, European, commercial airliners, even a turn of the century selling vessel.

[SPEAKER_04]: all stripped of their cargos as surely as a vulture picked clean the bones of a corpse.

[SPEAKER_04]: How could it be I asked that I could only I survive the crash?

[SPEAKER_04]: I discovered it was not the case.

[SPEAKER_04]: My crewmen, those who entrusted me with their lies, must have woke before I.

[SPEAKER_04]: There had been a struggle.

[SPEAKER_04]: The Avatar had not even had the decency to fain ignorance.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was but one of many play things over the years to spring forth from the portal, or so I believed.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've led the castle that night, as the months passed, I gathered to meet the countrymen, native victims of the triumverance to spot a cruel eye, a son of Russia, fighting on behalf of the democracy.

[SPEAKER_04]: The rebel scientist, deduced the void, was the source of the Avatar's power.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was the ever-growing portal, was if the ever-growing portal was a close, it would be with a source of energy that paralleled the void.

[SPEAKER_04]: powerful source, my energy-wheeling talents proved capable of sealing the portal, but not without cost.

[SPEAKER_04]: The power released by the closing of the portal, I knew nothing of politics or bloodlines.

[SPEAKER_04]: The destructive force spared no one, the avatar, my countrymen.

[SPEAKER_04]: The wife I never stopped loving.

[SPEAKER_04]: Alone, I was left a savior standing amidst the sea of dead, knowing was by my hand, no matter how innocently this carnage had come to pass.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could not have known Misha as Colossus.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could not blame yourself.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, then tell me, Piotr, who else can I blame?

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so he's discovered to be a mutant by the Russian government.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the space race.

[SPEAKER_02]: He sent into space where they somehow through his powers activate a portal.

[SPEAKER_02]: Remember, Eliana's powers also are related to teleportation circles, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: But he activates a portal where he lands in this foreign land, and they are drawing upon power from Earth.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're killing people.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail is brought in.

[SPEAKER_02]: He marries one of the ruling daughters, but he soon discovers the government is corrupt.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he becomes almost a freedom fighter.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little John Carter of Mars in a certain way.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, wonder how much power he has, how much access to his power he has, but at a certain point, when he's trying to stabilize the portal, it results in a lot of people dying.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, he's been living out in the desert for all these years.

[SPEAKER_02]: If he wasn't mad before, he is now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now the portal to Earth is there.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the origin story he's giving, the X-Men have been pulled through.

[SPEAKER_02]: You almost wonder if he's behind it.

[SPEAKER_02]: You almost wonder if he's manipulating events just a little bit, because his brother got sucked through first thing, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, into the hole.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's an interesting origin story.

[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like Mihail kind of bitch slapped all the other women in the room because he's like, I met the most beautiful woman up anywhere else.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's none of the other ladies who were listening to the stories.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like you ugly bitches, so I thought that was kind of cruel in me.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he's a little bit, yeah, but it's really complicated.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like going through it, going through it.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is a really, uh, there's a lot happening here, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: But I did have that sensation also that there's a bit of what role did he play in this, what role did he play in the death of others, how exactly how powerful, because for for someone to be able to do this type of thing, this is Omega level power, you can superpowers that we're talking about right here, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're in the presence of someone who is exceptional, extraordinary and I think also incredibly dangerous.

[SPEAKER_02]: Some say a legend, some say a curse.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's up for you to decide which to believe.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the Kyle explains that if I close the void, this planet will die, but if I don't close the void, then earth will die.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus says, but surely there's another way, and he says, still the dreamer, echoed on, Colossus says, [SPEAKER_02]: says I will always cling to the dream if the alternative is cowardice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikaya, look around.

[SPEAKER_02]: We are far away from the weak fields of the Ustardinsky collective.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's time you learn that there are some problems which cannot be solved with poems and paintings.

[SPEAKER_02]: Piotr, at least I do not seek to escape my responsibilities in a rocket ship or drown my sorrows and self.

[SPEAKER_02]: Pity, McCyle, make no mistake.

[SPEAKER_02]: The dead will walk beside me every day of my life.

[SPEAKER_02]: I will never absolve myself of the sins I committed.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you are incapable of understanding that, then perhaps you should have stayed on the farm, pewter, do not speak down to me, McCyle.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm no longer the farm boy, the cavone you left behind, and he changes into a steel form, which this is the first time McCyle learns his brother.

[SPEAKER_02]: is a mutant.

[SPEAKER_02]: Peter says, until you dawn the uniform of an ex-man, you do not know the meaning of these words, you think because you cry, because you yield to the sorrows which envelop you, that you are more man than I, I struggle for a cause greater than myself, and I have more than once saved the lives of others.

[SPEAKER_02]: And though it shames me, I too have taken lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: The true difference between you and I is that I keep going and you had given up.

[SPEAKER_02]: He storms off.

[SPEAKER_02]: Gene's surprise, Mikael had never seen him act that way before, and Mikael replies, that's because I've never let him down before.

[SPEAKER_02]: This was Peter's hero growing up.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost as though Mikael was Peter's reason for choosing to be an ex-man, my brother's name, vice, and now what I'm learning.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Stormflies in, she says there are a few expectations of the dead after you died, Peter was free to canonize you as he wished.

[SPEAKER_02]: He did not have the truth staring him in the face.

[SPEAKER_02]: The truth being that his brother's a failure and Storm replies, I do not see [SPEAKER_02]: Please allow yourself the same luxury.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could not know this, but when Peter first joined the X-Men, he was the most innocent of Professor Xavier's recruits.

[SPEAKER_02]: He had none of the life experiences needed to prepare him for the conflict he would face.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he tried to see the world through the eyes of the most courageous man he'd ever known.

[SPEAKER_02]: A man not content to simply dream of a life among the stars, but visit there as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he replies, that man no longer exists.

[SPEAKER_02]: Seriaco, do you have thoughts on the Piotr Mikhail argument here because this is kind of the basis for Mikhail's stories in the future, particularly during the critical era, which we'll get to at the end of this episode.

[SPEAKER_04]: So question at this point, Colossus brings up the fact that he is killed somebody, killed people, at this point, who has he killed?

[SPEAKER_04]: Because we're very early on, oh wait, no, no, because now we're in the 90s.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I know he definitely killed one of the, um, morauders back there.

[SPEAKER_02]: most famous one.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus is only murdered people a few times of his own choice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Usually it's because he's being mined controlled.

[SPEAKER_02]: But he has killed when innocence are threatened.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, but ripped out of the marauders.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, remember that word?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the cure.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the most famous one.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_04]: This again, this is interesting to see the final play out or something that was seated back in the 70s.

[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, 100% I definitely think that when he decided to [SPEAKER_04]: I think, again, going back to just normal sibling psychology, a lot of times, often somebody will use their father as their template of what a man is, but for some of them, it's their older brother.

[SPEAKER_04]: It is very clear for Peter, his template of what a man should be was his brother.

[SPEAKER_04]: Then after his brother died, there was no, because there is a point where like, you're hero, you see them like, you know, become an actual person, his brother died, so he will always be idolized.

[SPEAKER_04]: or something is like, oh, now I see that you're flawed without any be in between happened.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, his brother gave his life for the state or for the cause, the dream, right, which is, which is an interesting thing, too.

[SPEAKER_02]: Glusus has a lot of history at this point with Xavier's dream and being immune to the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so Shahar's off of the triumvirate, who's controlling Archangel, who says she's a mutant from her world.

[SPEAKER_02]: She attacks with her group called the Pasi Komatatus.

[SPEAKER_02]: My Kyle says he's been hiding for years, but now he's alive in present.

[SPEAKER_02]: He ends up forming a mutant circuit where we combine our powers with Ice Man and Sunfire and uses that circuit to close the void, but the closure ends up killing a lot of the people who were following my Kyle.

[SPEAKER_02]: My Kyle collapses, he seems to be dead, and Colossus revives him and says, by the way, we now have a sister.

[SPEAKER_02]: Macassas, how old is she in?

[SPEAKER_02]: Peter says that's kind of complicated.

[SPEAKER_02]: as a kid and then she was a teen and now she's a kid again but also she's going to die soon.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll get there in a little while.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they end up taking Mikhail back with them to earth.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the conversations we should have early on is how Mikhail's powers were they've been kind of a little bit inconsistent.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's called an alpha mutant.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's called an amegam mutant.

[SPEAKER_02]: Storm is also an amegam mutant.

[SPEAKER_02]: Amegam being that your powers, the upper threshold of them has never quite been discovered.

[SPEAKER_02]: The potential can always be greater.

[SPEAKER_02]: But often he's listed as a [SPEAKER_02]: more realistically he's often called a spatial warbird.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one right up says he can manipulate subatomic matter and warp energy by altering wave lengths.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he can use this to teleport through space, but he's also created little pocket rounds where people can live and he can alter matter.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can create the wine bottle with the wine in it or make the wine disappear.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can grow the bush, create the house.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can alter time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it seems to be in the [SPEAKER_02]: but that power seems to be more limited on Earth.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit difficult to wrap your brain around.

[SPEAKER_02]: Often we just see him as a big sexy scarred guy with a beard, like blasting people.

[SPEAKER_02]: And like, you know, turned and turned and mattered to different forms sometimes.

[SPEAKER_04]: So when he was one of the 12, he represented a face, correct?

[SPEAKER_04]: That was his representation.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, yep.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: The 12 we won't, we'll talk about that in a minute.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a complicated one.

[SPEAKER_02]: So once he's back on earth, we see Colossus in a jacket, oddly featuring the Filipino flag in issue 290.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail's recovering in Salem Center.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's got headaches.

[SPEAKER_02]: He wants to see his family again.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's wrestling with deep guilt when he's walking a rollerblader crashes into him.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Mikhail, like in a moment of fury, turns this kid that crashed into him into a tree.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Colossus didn't notice.

[SPEAKER_02]: As far as I know, that skater is still a tree in New York [SPEAKER_02]: In 291, in the X mansion, we see Mikhail walking around shirtless.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's surrounded by the ghosts of those he lost in the void.

[SPEAKER_02]: They seem to talk to him.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's going a little bit crazy.

[SPEAKER_02]: You almost wonder if he's manifesting the ghosts.

[SPEAKER_02]: A colisto has shown up.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, colisto is the more lock leader who for a time was the girlfriend of Colossus in his painter era after the siege perilous.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she is fucked Colossus in that like supermodel form.

[SPEAKER_02]: Back when he used to paint her naked a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she shows up in the mansion because there's a bunch of fighting among the more locks, Xavier wants to intervene.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail thinks he's overreacting because he has tapped into Xavier's psychic speaking with his own power.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again, crazy powerful.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's supposed to go to Russia in the morning to see his family, but now he feels like he needs to intervene on behalf of the more locks.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's also reading Callisto's thoughts.

[SPEAKER_02]: They go into the more locked tunnels and Mikhail forces Iceman to release Callisto from her restraints.

[SPEAKER_02]: In 292 is when Iceman calls Mikhail Madd.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he changes Bobby from Ice into water and then reforms him into being made completely of Ice, which is kind of the first hint that Bobby is Omega Mutant.

[SPEAKER_02]: You remember how Emma Frost like to go over his brain later?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can be living Ice and like not die.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then he shatters him to pieces [SPEAKER_02]: Um, he says I didn't find it in myself to kill you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Calisto kisses the Kyle on the mouth.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, she wants she says I want to change that about you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you should kill in 1993, the X-Men rush into the more locked tunnels.

[SPEAKER_02]: My, my Kyle sitting on a chair made out of mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like twisted flash.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, casually informs the others that he's decided to be the more lock ruler now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, Colossus rips off his shirt.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have no idea why I good for him.

[SPEAKER_02]: He reminds Mikhail to be a little bit insane, and Mikhail invites Peter to join the Moirlox quote, to the hear after, of course, as it not obvious.

[SPEAKER_02]: My mutin' ability is to channel all manner of energy.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's only been useful in the taking of lives, and then he floods the Moirlox tunnels.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did you think I would pass from this life into the next without my newfound kindred spirit?

[SPEAKER_02]: I had hoped you Xavier above all others would have supported me in my bid for salvation.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wanna put these poor, pitiful creatures out of their misery.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's no place in the world for monsters, like Calisto and the Morlocks, for monsters like me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let's pause here for just a minute.

[SPEAKER_02]: I covered a bunch, my Kyle's back on earth, he's going crazy, he's doing crazy shit with his powers, and now he wants to wipe out the Morlocks because he's declared himself their ruler.

[SPEAKER_03]: There is nothing good about this.

[SPEAKER_03]: The red flags are all there and they've been there from the start and I think we start to see that playing out.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love the image of the mutant throne.

[SPEAKER_03]: It reminds me of the iron throne of Game of Thrones where you've actually made the throne head of your enemy swords, but this one you've actually made it out of people.

[SPEAKER_03]: just so bizarre to sit on that.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I think the way it builds up and I think that's the issue here like you know it's very rare that you like as it can happen where you have someone who's pure pure evil or pure pure good, but oftentimes there's this moral greatness in between here.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think with what Mikhail has been through, the very act of bringing him back to Earth, to this reality, to this timeful.

[SPEAKER_03]: It just seems like [SPEAKER_03]: He set up for failure.

[SPEAKER_03]: This has set up to turn into a disaster from the very start, to try to reconcile with the old life, to try to reconnect.

[SPEAKER_03]: After everything he's been through, it seems and feels like it's going to be impossible.

[SPEAKER_03]: Add on top of that, the crazy destructive chaotic powers that he has, it just seems like it's a recipe for absolute disaster.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it seems like it's building up towards that.

[SPEAKER_03]: So it's one of the things I'm asking myself is how many red flags do we have to see as he's tapping into Xavier's mind or powers, tapping into colistos, how much has to happen where people realize that this is a disaster that needs to be avoided at all costs.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna offer my big theory on this character, but let's finish this story arc very quickly.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the X-Men attack, Mikhail holds them off, and he says, the more locks are choosing to go with me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I wanna kill us all.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, we're all gonna drink the poison together, basically.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're tired of suffering in this place.

[SPEAKER_02]: He says, quote, I offer these people freedom from the burden that has plagued them every waking moment of their lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: You and your comrades hope for fight for a better tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_02]: My people know that the day will never come.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus, brother, please, it doesn't have to end this way.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're wrong, Convon says Mikhail.

[SPEAKER_02]: It ended the day I killed my followers, every last one of them.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're only sin that they believed in me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Death Peter is the only thing I do well.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus, then I shall die at your side if that's the way it must be.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, this is still your world.

[SPEAKER_02]: Still much you must accomplish before we can once again be united.

[SPEAKER_02]: Peter says, Misha, this is an act of cowardice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Could you go to your grave knowing I will never forgive.

[SPEAKER_02]: But Mikhail throws the X-Men out.

[SPEAKER_02]: He hijacks their powers.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want an alternative.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just want an end to the voices.

[SPEAKER_02]: The water's closing, Mikhail is cradling, clistos, bodies, our body, the mutants around him look like zombies.

[SPEAKER_02]: He says, pray with me, my people, my brethren, that if there is a father who watches over the wretched and deformed, he can forgive us for what we now do.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Piotr has to call to tell Eliana, the Mikhail won't be coming home after all.

[SPEAKER_02]: The more lux disappear, they are all believed dead.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, it doesn't last very long.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll get to what happened in a minute because he has actually opened another dimension.

[SPEAKER_02]: One that he's created this time where he gets to be the king again.

[SPEAKER_02]: So here's my theory and I want to toss this at Serriaco here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is material crazy or is he crazy with power?

[SPEAKER_02]: You, it's almost as though he sees himself as Lenin.

[SPEAKER_02]: On earth, I would have to hurt people to become like the king.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if I go to another realm, I can do whatever the fuck I want.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can starve the peasants.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can sit on the throne, I can take from everyone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Does he see himself as some sort of crazy Lenin, but he has like the ethical decision to do it in other realms?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or is he insane in trying to distance himself from his family?

[SPEAKER_02]: It might just be that he's evil too.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not quite sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts, Seriako?

[SPEAKER_04]: When Stank Shakespeare, they always bring up the concept of a vice-character whether a character is just bad, just dramaturgically bad, or you want to actually investigate what the psychology behind it is.

[SPEAKER_04]: I definitely don't think the Kail recipe and is just a vice-character.

[SPEAKER_04]: There's definitely a lot psychologically going on.

[SPEAKER_04]: A question I would have is, do what extent does he know what this point that the Soviet Empire has failed?

[SPEAKER_04]: When he left this planet, he was a Soviet hero [SPEAKER_04]: one of two of the greatest superpowers and possibly going to become the greatest.

[SPEAKER_04]: If his space launch does go well, does he actually know that all of that over the past like I think 20 years at that point just completely failed?

[SPEAKER_04]: Because I think that on top of losing his family, all of that again, because he wants to now make an empire of his people.

[SPEAKER_04]: He'd do a long-rass Soviets, but he has mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is he aware of that at this point?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to remember.

[SPEAKER_02]: You, I don't know that it states it on the page, but we also have to make the crazy, like Marvel has a sliding time skill, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: So like, where decades have passed for the readers, it's only been like 10 years for the characters.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you don't know quite where that fits, but that's an interesting theory.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like he says I wanna see my family, but maybe the vulnerability or the idea of returning to a fallen Soviet Union is too much for him.

[SPEAKER_04]: And at this point, wait, is Iliana dead or she's about to die from the legacy virus?

[SPEAKER_02]: So Colossus loses Mikhail, loses his parents, and then loses Iliana all in a row.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's when he joins Magneto with the echo.

[SPEAKER_04]: I remember that because Magneto brings up the fact that, hey, rogue, remember you kissed me at that few girls funeral.

[SPEAKER_04]: He brings it up to her a bunch of times.

[SPEAKER_04]: This also reminds me of him doing this for the more locks.

[SPEAKER_04]: I assume both of you saw X-Men 97 when Magneto inherits everything.

[SPEAKER_04]: It brings up the fact that, yeah, I used Xavier's massive wealth to relocate all the more locks that were living at a sewer to a nicer place.

[SPEAKER_04]: I assumed you guys were going to get it round to that at some point.

[SPEAKER_04]: I do like the idea of like, hey, here are all these mutants that you say that you're going to protect.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're living the sewers.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm at least going to give them another option.

[SPEAKER_04]: The X-Men never really did that.

[SPEAKER_04]: They did have it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like, is there a reason why the more likes never moved into the mansion with them when they had all that room?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a commentary for another time, but I do think we can see it.

[SPEAKER_02]: You think we can see it?

[SPEAKER_04]: Remember, you make a Christmas special.

[SPEAKER_04]: They look like, are they going to celebrate?

[SPEAKER_04]: The schoolers just bring them to the mansion, okay?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they go celebrate in the sewers with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: But there is the parallel of the more locks as the least of us, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Which in our allegory people who fall at the bottom of our pecking order as a society trans people disabled people people of color people who are refugees Let's put them in the tunnels because we can't do anything else and the world is the way that it is And this is Mikhail kind of taking them all to another place while letting the world believe there.

[SPEAKER_02]: dead.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's there's an odd nobility.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you look at it, in that line in a strange way, uh, at least what are your thoughts here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I part of me is also wondering how much did Mikhail know about what he was capable of doing when he first entered the first time he entered this portal or dimension.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think he had a lot of time to sit around and think, and a lot of isolation in that desert realm, and perhaps the bandists descended with that time.

[SPEAKER_03]: We don't know the time lapse, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that isolation, the period of time away, the time to think, but also connect with and realize exactly how powerful he was.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I think maybe by at his heart, I don't think he was mad to begin with, but I think the circumstances led to that and kind of this mad king complex where once he realized the power that he had and that he could wield it across dimensions, then there was really no limits.

[SPEAKER_02]: It may be that his power drives him, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like the power can alter the brain.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like rogue has like emotional relationships to her powers that caused her to react in certain ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: It may be that his powers drive him slightly mad.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they also be that once his wife died over on that weird planet that he, I don't know, something broke in here.

[SPEAKER_02]: So here's the interesting thing, because we now have in the comics a group called the gene nation running around.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the most famous thing, the most famous thing to come out of this like flooding the more like tunnel story is the character Maro.

[SPEAKER_02]: She was a child, she gets taken to another dimension and comes back as this kind of bone warrior who joins the X-Men.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, she's kind of a fan favorite.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not until the storm-limited series in the 90s, which is a book I picked up off the shelves along with these issues, where we learned what happened.

[SPEAKER_02]: He didn't kill the more locks.

[SPEAKER_02]: He took them all to like a harsh, barren dimension, where time-fest passes in a faster rate.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's called the Hill, and he's built a giant hill where the more locks live entire generations, trying to ascend to the top of the hill.

[SPEAKER_02]: The higher up on the hill you are, the greater you are at the pecking order.

[SPEAKER_02]: And at the very top is Mikhail living in a castle, where he's given himself armor and a cape, and he's living in comfort while the mutants serve him basically.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a new generation of mutants children.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's two parallels here that are really interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's take these characters out of the human world and put them in a world where they have to fight for survival and see what develops.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see what warriors become.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there could be a nobility there or an insanity.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's either being super cruel, which is again very Lenin, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in the castle at the top of the Hill, while the peasant is screwing me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or he's crafting a society, because the parallel between this dimension and for those of you that have read X-Men read during Cricola, there's the planet of Arako or the society where the most powerful among us, we fight for ourselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a nobility to it, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Al-Uman gives us a bunch of really powerful stories about that type of society.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in this one, a madman is in charge, but he's also the most powerful among them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Calistos here, she has aged up a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: She gets like an armor and she becomes like a hot mom with an eye patch where she's like grazing this generation of children who are becoming warriors.

[SPEAKER_02]: We also have that thing, the ceremony of light.

[SPEAKER_02]: Where we go to the more locked tunnels, they shine a bunch of mirrors, they light things up.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's like the signal to open a portal into the hill.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where the gene nation and marrow comes from.

[SPEAKER_02]: So storm ends up going into the hill and fighting the Kyle in this series.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think, I mean, any time you build a castle on top of a hill and start, like, that's another red flag, I think that we see here.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we see that complex, I think, manifesting now.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then what does this person who has, or mutant who has placed himself in this position of, of what looks like King Lee power?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's not, yeah, it's not going in any positive direction here from this frame.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I just want to point out, too, for a man that was, like, raised in a communist society who firmly believes being Soviet, [SPEAKER_02]: Well, but I'm gonna know, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like he sees himself as a greater than, because here's the other part of the hill that we haven't talked about, time moves faster, like you don't die there.

[SPEAKER_02]: When you get wounded, your wounds will heal faster.

[SPEAKER_02]: The only way people die is from old age.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's weirdly kind of created this utopian society where mutants are living by mutant rules, but also he's living at the top of the food chain.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's an interesting view of communism, like because people aren't dying, Lenin was starving peasants, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: but like he's almost formed an oddly idyllic society.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Storm just to finish this series, Storm ends up there and he wants Storm to be his wife.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like very Peter Pan and Wendy.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, you can be the mother to all of my children.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be mother.

[SPEAKER_02]: He describes this world as quote, a world of eternal pain and death is too easy and end to the struggle.

[SPEAKER_02]: Something here heals our wounds, but we are left with honest scars.

[SPEAKER_02]: We meet his famous children, some of them are members of the gene nation.

[SPEAKER_02]: He keeps sending them back to earth.

[SPEAKER_02]: to kill people.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's the geneation where they slaughter all the humans in the night club if you remember.

[SPEAKER_02]: He sends them to destroy ex-factors, headquarters, because forge is working for the government.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's also Storm's ex.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we also learn from Calisto that Mikhail has killed a woman named Mara Lou and left her on earth so that they will think that Storm is dead.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a corpse on earth meant to look like Storm.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Mikael cries out, Storm puts a knife to his throat, where she realizes that his power is somewhat involuntary, and she forces him to take the gene nation back to Earth along with all of the surviving more locks.

[SPEAKER_02]: A big group of these more locks end up moving into a city in Africa, there's some weird stories from the late 90s about the surviving more locks that never really picked up on.

[SPEAKER_02]: But then Mechelle, when they're back on earth, teleports away, he's crazy, and the dark beast is there, and he is afraid of the dark beast.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's never really followed up on, we will really go there.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the biggest question for me is the issue of the power, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So what does it mean by the power being somewhat involuntary?

[SPEAKER_03]: I guess that's, we assume that Mikael doesn't have complete absolute control.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then is it the power within him that's essentially corrupting him or corroding him over time?

[SPEAKER_03]: Is it a mixture of his personality or those power aspirations?

[SPEAKER_03]: And then the other question I had was that issue of, you know, why flee from the dark beast?

[SPEAKER_03]: What exactly about the dark beast is he afraid of or, you know, that he's not powerful enough to address himself.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the dark beast is the evil version of Hank McCoy from the Age of Apocalypse.

[SPEAKER_02]: Legion went back in time and killed Xavier on accident and then this whole world formed, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: The Dark Beast is a crazy geneticist who ends up in our world.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things that's often forgotten about both the Dark Beast and Sugarman, who's the other guy from that world that ends up here, is they landed like 20 years in the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: They've been here like 20 years before the X-Men formed.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the Dark Beast is a counter to Mr.

Sinister.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's highly suggested that he is responsible for the society or creation of the society of the more locks.

[SPEAKER_02]: where sugar man is directly tied to the gene gene year and all of the nation of genosia where mutants become like brainwash mutate slaves.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a really interesting X-Men history that's not often picked up on.

[SPEAKER_02]: We don't quite know what they're exploring here.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know everything.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no [SPEAKER_02]: So, Eliana Rasputin is dead at this point.

[SPEAKER_02]: Magic is not a character being used, and we have a limited series called New Mutants Truth or Death.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is maybe Mikhail's worst story.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's really rough for me to read this one.

[SPEAKER_02]: Not that he's a good guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna cover this kind of quickly, but it's complex, it's worth a read.

[SPEAKER_02]: The New Mutants from the early years, like the younger version of the New Mutants, have arrived in the present to like have dealings with the present day New Mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're not gonna go character by character here, but all of them have been through some crazy shit.

[SPEAKER_02]: And magic from the past, who's now in the present, realizes that she is dead in the present.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh, I became a little girl got the legacy virus and died.

[SPEAKER_02]: While she's here, the time-traveling magic gets approached by Mikhail Rasputin, and this is his first time meeting the sister who was born after he died or went into space.

[SPEAKER_02]: Your brother once told me, he says, referring to Colossus.

[SPEAKER_02]: The future is but a blank canvas upon which we paint the portrait of our destiny.

[SPEAKER_02]: Though I am not as adept and artist as dear peot or I do believe I can help you create a portrait more to your liking.

[SPEAKER_02]: Little snowflake.

[SPEAKER_02]: A Hikals her Ilian Inka.

[SPEAKER_02]: She calls him Mickey and the two groups of new mutants are all involved.

[SPEAKER_02]: The basic plot here, Mikhail says he wants to be a hero.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wish I was the hero you children make me out to be, but I am not more than a humble farm boy, a servant of the state lucky enough to be given the chance to walk among the stars.

[SPEAKER_02]: Though now, I sometimes question if my meager achievement was worth it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder, might little Aliyana yet live if I had been here on earth to watch over her?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, she and Piotr.

[SPEAKER_02]: I too possess astounding powers, powers that make the matter in my hands as malleable as clay, as in those in an expert potter.

[SPEAKER_02]: Powers that I recently realized could perhaps save my sister if only I could reach her in time.

[SPEAKER_02]: The present was too late.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had to somehow reach out to her at the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: I took an insane chance by hurling my consciousness.

[SPEAKER_02]: into the unpredictable vortex of time, but seeing you all here now, rallying to her, and I realize my gambit paid off.

[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you say children?

[SPEAKER_02]: Will you help me save my hour sister?

[SPEAKER_02]: So the mutants are all disagreeing because this guy is crazy, and Eliana's picturing a world where her family can all be together again.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she submits, he removes some cells in Iliana that will quote, one day contract the legacy virus.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he has set up some sort of experiment.

[SPEAKER_02]: He straps her into a machine.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the experiment results in Iliana crying out an extreme pain.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's saying, let me take the legacy virus potential out of you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then I'll send you back to the past so that you never get this.

[SPEAKER_02]: really uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_02]: He rushes the experiment.

[SPEAKER_02]: She gets taken to the ICU and they know they end up learning here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail actually got the legacy virus himself and transferred it into the time-traveling Iliana and then tried to cure himself thinking that her body might find a way to like bite it off and then she ends up back in the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the allegory for AIDS with the legacy virus, which, so least this is weirdly parallel to our last character episode where we talked about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: But he gets the legacy virus.

[SPEAKER_02]: He pulls his sister forward to the present, transfers it into her, like, then since her back to the past without it, but it's kind of hinted that that's why she eventually got the legacy virus in the first place in the past stories.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, blah, blah, blah.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a crazy story to wrap your brain around.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is awful, and I think any time you get strapped to a chair in the comic book, you know something wrong is going to happen, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: This is not a good situation to be in.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I feel free Aliana because I think there's this real, I mean that idea of being a little snowflake, there's innocence in Aliana, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And this idea of family reuniting, bringing things back together, everything being okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think Mikhail sees that taps into it and [SPEAKER_03]: It's difficult to know.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the worst case scenario is that he's planned this, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: This is a way to transfer to keep himself safe.

[SPEAKER_03]: Regardless, whatever happens to her, she might live, she might die.

[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't really care, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Or was there one little glimmer of hope in his mind or body that was saying, okay, let's, you know, this might be a solution for us all.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm viewing more towards the more sinister aspect of things that it was really self preservation at this point.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's just so deluded.

[SPEAKER_04]: I honestly think he thought he was doing something good.

[SPEAKER_04]: Again, remember that two of the Phoenix five were Rasputans.

[SPEAKER_04]: They genuinely thought when they get all that power, they were doing, I hated that series.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was a train wreck, but I thought one of the beautiful moments was Peter talking to Ilyana.

[SPEAKER_04]: He braided some kind of creature that like I'm gonna give it gills and all that and he could understand why this amazing thing he made just wasn't enjoying this weird life it had.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's the same thing with Mikhail I honestly think when he does this shit he thinks he's doing something better for his people for his family.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's just so a unhinged from reality that he just doesn't quite understood.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think he actually was trying to do something good but he just messed it up.

[SPEAKER_02]: in his own warped way, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what if I could do this thing I'd capable of?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or if I give the virus to someone else, then I get to keep being God, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's some odd parallels, but it's a rough story.

[SPEAKER_02]: The fun part of Truth or Death is watching the kid new mutants, like a debt react to the adult do mutants, that part of the story is really fun, I think.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we are going to jump to uncanny X-Men 373 and 374.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail has moved back to the hill where he is now the ruler.

[SPEAKER_02]: He thinks of himself as a god.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like phasing into our reality where he sees Colossus putting up a series of portraits in like an amateur showcase, including one of Colossus, of Eliana, who's still dead.

[SPEAKER_02]: He observes it and then he ends up pulling Colossus and Merro into the hill where he's bragging that he's a god and he's wondering if he might be able to recreate Iliana from scratch as like a god being.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in order to showcase his powers, he changes the chair into a dinosaur.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then Jurassic Park.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then he tries accessing Peter's memories of Eliana, so he can give that form of Eliana a life of its own.

[SPEAKER_02]: Which wouldn't be Eliana, obviously, it would just be Peter's memories given a human form.

[SPEAKER_02]: Peter's wondering if Mikhail's increasing powers are affecting his [SPEAKER_02]: Sanity, Mikhail traps him in the rubble.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maro is visiting her own memories of growing up on the hill and how Calisto took care of her in the castle.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then she's thrown out to fight for her life after her powers manifest.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she has to fight her way all the way to the top and then keep fighting to stay there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, Maro confronts Mikhail.

[SPEAKER_02]: She says, you're a mad man, you've proclaimed yourself a savior, you've gone mad, your powers are raging out of control.

[SPEAKER_02]: And suddenly we see a big green psychic entity manifest itself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Mikhail's like, oh, this entity has been living in my brain ever since I first disappeared through the cosmonaut.

[SPEAKER_02]: And void, it's making me make all these terrible decisions, but now that it's out of my brain, I'm okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he collapses and they take him back to Earth where he lands in Akoma and then becomes part of the 12, [SPEAKER_02]: I was hate when they do those cop outs.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was like going back to the Phoenix Force.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Jean didn't do any of this.

[SPEAKER_04]: She was actually safely in a shell and it was just this entity.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, don't cop out on it.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's this person.

[SPEAKER_04]: He does the crazy things.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like when they give him an out like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think he was bored and wanted attention and manifested an entity as a convenient excuse for his past actions.

[SPEAKER_03]: I know what like Harvey Weinstein did when he first went to prison when like you go in and then they suddenly come really like feeble and sick and they don't want to go through with the legal process and think it reminds me of that of finding an excuse once you've been caught because Marrow is actually finally the it seems like the first person who's actually said this is what you are and we've hit the point of no return here with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god it's it's the Twinkie defense, uh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, [SPEAKER_02]: Blame the Twinkies.

[SPEAKER_02]: He committed suicide later.

[SPEAKER_02]: Look up the Twinkie defense folks.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm how worse than the gay panic defense, which is also terrible.

[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, we're going to very briefly cover Colossus Bloodline.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is the Rasputin story where I said sinister had experiments and on an ancestor who now has like genetic potential to create mutants in their progeny.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in the present, we see Mr.

Sinister teeming up with Mikhail and they're hunting down the descendants of the Rasputin line and [SPEAKER_02]: which leads to a bunch of murders and a huge fight with Colossus at the end.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is the first time we've seen Mikhail versus Colossus since the more luck tunnels.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail seems to want to sacrifice himself so that the madness of Rasputin can take over him, but it turns out it's sinister controlling him instead, and then Colossus spares his life, and Mikhail pretends his madness is only due to their bloodline, which is again, how could be it?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then he teleports himself to another dimension called Kaplan, and he says, [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to leave you alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Never, never call me again, Peter.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's, it's a rough story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Again, we're trying to justify his madness.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, he's becoming a diva, as well, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Of, I will, I will, I will remove myself from the situation that you will miss me.

[SPEAKER_03]: But then I think, yeah, the bloodline is a tricky one because if you are talking about the familial bloodline because it really seems like both Iliana and Colossus are at their core and at their heart, beautiful, wonderful, artistic, creative, grounded characters, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And then here we have this bunker's bizarre older brother who is of the same bloodline but completely in a different dimension mentally and oftentimes actually.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think, I mean, at this stage, you know, this is a character that's got to go and I think no one really knows what to do [SPEAKER_02]: And before he's come back to Earth, his parents have been killed, Eliana's been brought back to life.

[SPEAKER_02]: Colossus is going through all kinds of shit, but now he, I don't know, the 12, it's crazy.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's often this other dimension, and the we don't see him again until Krakowah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he's a long, slow burn plotline through Benjamin Percy's X-Force and Wolverine.

[SPEAKER_02]: So to cover the premise of this quickly, before we focus on the specifics, [SPEAKER_02]: Cricula is a mutant nation living by mutant rules, which we have seen, Nikail tried to do a couple of times, especially with the hill.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, Nikail wants to create a counter-mutant nation in Russia.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in order to do so, he recruits and isolates a reality-mult or altering mutant called the chronicler.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Ben Percy has a lot of fun comparing chronicler to all of the, like, tragic Russian writers that have written famous books over the years.

[SPEAKER_02]: The chronicler is severely addicted to alcohol, and what he does is basically right reality through, like, focused attention.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he has the chronicler isolated in, like, a little pocket dimension.

[SPEAKER_02]: and promises him booze basically if you do, as I say, and the chronicler slowly influences people to give Mikhail a position of power as a sovereign Russian nation that's related to Putin, like so it's almost as though he's been given permission.

[SPEAKER_02]: Russia has a complicated history with mutants, we won't get into it all here.

[SPEAKER_02]: We also have the chronicler taking slow control over Colossus so that Mikhail can slowly influence events in Krakola and kind of take over or manipulate the nation for his own gain.

[SPEAKER_02]: So Colossus ends up killing his girlfriend.

[SPEAKER_02]: Kayla, he ends up on the quiet.

[SPEAKER_02]: Council where he manipulates a bunch of events.

[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing we see Mikhail doing is he's partnered with a man called the man with the peacock tattoo, who is a clone of the gene-genier, the like mutant slave guy from Genoja, terrible person.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the man with the peacock tattoo is running Zeno, who are creating all kinds of biological weapons that Mikhail is ordering Zeno's testing these weapons out in Krikoa to kill a bunch of people.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then Mikhail takes all these weapons and plans to create like an invading army to go into Krikoa at a certain point during the Hellfire Gaila.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm summing up a bunch of stuff all at once.

[SPEAKER_02]: But Aceriyaka, what are your thoughts on the idea of Mikhail forming his kind of sovereign mutination on earth?

[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't go well.

[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't end well, by the way.

[SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, I think there actually is a logic to it.

[SPEAKER_04]: That I think most psychologically of anything that he's done over his hot where we have to 40 years of him, like existing as a character, creating all these worlds.

[SPEAKER_04]: That one actually makes sense.

[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, we're going to, again, because he comes from a Cold War era where you have the West and you have Soviet power.

[SPEAKER_04]: This makes so much sense of, like, he sees Krakow as the Western version, the Amu-Nutopia.

[SPEAKER_04]: So it does make sense.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's like, okay, let's do whatever the Soviet version of that.

[SPEAKER_04]: Obviously it blows up his face, says everything that he does.

[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing that Mikhail does, and he's fully insane here, it's hard to even know what his motivation is.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mikhail's the driving force behind that insane limited series, [SPEAKER_02]: ex-lives of Wolverine, ex-deutsible Wolverine.

[SPEAKER_02]: He stole in the Ceribro unit that's been turned to a sword, and he's using his powers through the Ceribro sword, and through mind-controlling, again, the chroniclers involved.

[SPEAKER_02]: Omega Red is here, who's another Russian mutant who got conscripted by the government and to being an agent that sacrificed his life.

[SPEAKER_02]: Lots of crazy content here.

[SPEAKER_02]: But Omega Red has his mind projected into host bodies in the past with the effort to try to kill Charles Xavier as a baby and then he goes farther back in past and tries to kill Charles Xavier's ancestors in order to counter that the X-Men have to send Wolverine back as in various host bodies to continue fighting Omega Red through various timelines.

[SPEAKER_02]: And McKell Rasputin is the one behind all of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's creating weapons through like a evil anti-mutant geneticist.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like crazy time travel adventures and mind-controlling people and ordering them to murder people in the present and in the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: While also invading a foreign government of mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: crazy, crazy, crazy to us.

[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, he's juggling a lot.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think we have to admire the ability to multitask at that level.

[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I mean even if one of those things, if you can pull them off, you know, if you can get rid of Charles Xavier's ancestors, I mean that's that's a pretty ambitious mission to undertake.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's really odd.

[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of assume that you specifically, if you read all the appearances, had fun with the chronicleer, like all of Jason Airens, like deep thoughts about Russian tragic artists, are really interesting with that character.

[SPEAKER_03]: And bringing in weaving in the different writers, and just the idea of what their chronicleer can do, and yeah, I thought that was actually beautifully done, you know, as a writer.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then that [SPEAKER_03]: The total stereotypical writer or archetype, right, who's just, you know, drinking his whiskey, drinking his booze, and then, uh, but somehow has this magical ability to weave reality and create things and bend reality, doing something for the purposes of Mikhail, which way I was warning what kind of chronicler do that that Mikhail cannot do himself.

[SPEAKER_03]: So where do they miss of those powers?

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bleeding there, I think, that I wanted to know.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because we've seen McIle telepathic, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's interesting kind of odd thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the chronicler's more subtle.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost a McIle's way of getting around the telepaths because they don't know to look for this guy from this pocket division.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: Two quotes from McIle during this era.

[SPEAKER_02]: At one point, he tells the chronicler, you must recognize your superiority and use it to celebrate the superiority of your country.

[SPEAKER_02]: And at another point, when the man with the peacock tattoo is like, oh my god, why would you live in Siberia?

[SPEAKER_02]: frigid and terrible, and he says on the contrary, when you live in the cold, the fire inside you bird's brighter, and that fire is the red of Russia.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so McCyle's big plan is to wait until the Hellfire Gala, and then take this army of weapons he's created and invade Cricola, because he's made them super weak through his influence of Colossus, like stripping the quiet council of power, go read a mortal X men, and all the craziness going on with like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Day of judgment story, there's a lot of crazy shit happening.

[SPEAKER_02]: He does say at one point, Moscow embraces us.

[SPEAKER_02]: The mutant nation grows inside mother Russia like it's favored child.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is why we are the superior vision of what the world could be, human and mutant.

[SPEAKER_02]: The cracones are selfish, silipsistic, xenophobic, capitalistic.

[SPEAKER_02]: The Russian mutants on the other hand, are communistic in their role.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were conservous to country for the benefit of all.

[SPEAKER_02]: Each and every one of us is a worker, workers with different tools that are disposal.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's very focused on this kind of odd mutant power structure related to communism, which is a recurring theme for this character.

[SPEAKER_02]: The chronicle gives a lot of poetic, flowery words about Mikhail's words, bringing up, like, Ivan, the terrible and the KGB, and how everything is changing, but he's trying to do something incredible.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the big plan is that the Hellfire Gala, they're going to invade Krikoa with this army of mutates.

[SPEAKER_02]: but Orcas gets their first.

[SPEAKER_02]: They got everyone down and all the mutants through portals and Macau was like, wow, no, what the fuck?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, Colossus briefly ends up in another time period as well, which is the only time his thoughts have ever been allowed to not be under the chronicler's control.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he's able to give some hints to Domino, like go to the savage land where I'd buried my dead girlfriend and like left some secret paintings about the madness inside me.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's actually just getting completely bonkers at this point, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So, and I think what we're trying to see is, you know, what is the counter to this?

[SPEAKER_03]: What is the counter to this power?

[SPEAKER_03]: What is the counter to this agency, this mutant ability?

[SPEAKER_03]: What is the counter to this madness?

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think we're all rooting for, you know, will someone like Colossus step in to just put an end to all of this?

[SPEAKER_02]: There's an odd Putin parallel to here, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, Mikhail has been playing the long game.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get against the government from within.

[SPEAKER_02]: But when it all goes wrong, Mikhail suddenly gets very impatient.

[SPEAKER_02]: He tells the chronicler like ignoring all the warnings.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like forget Colossus.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to have you take over the mind of an orchist agent instead.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we're going to like develop power through her.

[SPEAKER_02]: We got to do this fast.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I want power now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where it takes it too far.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they take over the mind of a very bigoted Asian woman named June Way and they like four sort of spill of their secrets.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's like a lot of sexual assault like allegory here with the the raping of her mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the chronicle wants to get away from the Kyle.

[SPEAKER_02]: So instead of taking over June, he forces June to shoot McIllabunch of times with a gun and then this like little pocket reality starts kidding in.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Mikhail, who's now seemingly like mortally wounded, is confronting Colossus, who he has been for like controlling and manipulating all this time.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a huge fight, and Mikhail's like, look, you can be my servant still.

[SPEAKER_02]: For a long time, I was the one whose future was stolen from him, says Colossus.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you were, excuse me, says Mikhail.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you were the one who was adored and heralded, but that's changed.

[SPEAKER_02]: which should have been mine all along is now within reach.

[SPEAKER_02]: He also says, your skin might be strong, brother, but you're hard in mind or weak.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we get the big final confrontation between these two, at least until now.

[SPEAKER_04]: A theme between all of the rest of the few and you brought up to get up the savage land dead girlfriend that Colossus had.

[SPEAKER_04]: Colossus is a savage land girlfriend.

[SPEAKER_04]: His battle-world girlfriend during the whole Beyond Earth thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Aussie, yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: And you got all Mikhail's interdimensional queen.

[SPEAKER_04]: Those boys do very, very well.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to all die in their arms.

[SPEAKER_04]: Kelly's either are, but they're always hot.

[SPEAKER_03]: He reaches in and rips out Mikhail's hearts.

[SPEAKER_03]: He just tears it away and then I guess Mikhail kind of fades away and blips out of reality But the class rips his brother's heart out of his chest, which is crazy.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like that character from Mortal Kombat Who does that okay?

[SPEAKER_03]: We're seeing Jones, Kalima or Arcad.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, but Storm also did that to marijuana.

[SPEAKER_04]: Do you remember you have it in moral have two hearts?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, she had a second heart [SPEAKER_04]: Um, Katie Pride does that a lot too.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think she threatened Emma with ripping out her heart one time because you could just snatch into chest and pull it out.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one more thing I want to read and then let's share final thoughts.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get through it today, guys.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, please, we get a text page from Jason Aaron that's one of Dr.

[SPEAKER_02]: Strange's journal pages writing about the powers of my Kyle.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is where I want to close today.

[SPEAKER_02]: Dr.

[SPEAKER_02]: Strange says, [SPEAKER_02]: Little is now of Macau Rasputin in his powers.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've consulted the book of hidden educations and lesser-known curiosities, and made some brief queries into some elder biomancy scrolls, and I'm flirting with the following.

[SPEAKER_02]: There is a kind of subatomic literacy to what he does.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is equitable, but not equivalent to magic.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you know the deep composition of something, then you know its name.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you call to it by its name, it will answer.

[SPEAKER_02]: This allows one to manipulate matter, but also to redefine or reorganize it with you, reorganize it like you would letters in a sentence, so that stone could become water, wood could become flesh, glass could become fire, and on and on.

[SPEAKER_02]: could call this a tunement, and though it could potentially be learned as a craft for a talented few, I'd say it more often is ingrained in the very core of a person, so that even as an infant they might exhibit a dangerous fluency.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would hate to be the parent or sibling, [SPEAKER_02]: of a tantruming child who could change a rattle into a hammer or blade.

[SPEAKER_02]: Furthermore, Macayal seems to exhibit the rare talent for shoving matter aside entirely and creating places between places.

[SPEAKER_02]: What you might call a rift or void, the authors of such voids are said to control their physics, making them nowhere environments a playground, or torture chamber limited only by their imagination.

[SPEAKER_02]: The Macau's void belongs entirely to Macau.

[SPEAKER_02]: He is the god of this geography, or absence of geography.

[SPEAKER_02]: He can provide ways in, doors, gates, portals, keys, which I believe is what we're finding in this ring.

[SPEAKER_02]: While this all seems rather daunting, how does one fight a being and a space charged with such unlimited power?

[SPEAKER_02]: I will note that voids require concentration to maintain.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if the creator is injured or I dare say killed, then the inhabitants of it will be expelled.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or I suppose crushed in a vice of atoms, crashing suddenly back together.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's McCall rescued.

[SPEAKER_02]: Respeared in everybody.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the madness and the God powers and the reality warping and the cause may not and the rest butan stuff and this is great.

[SPEAKER_04]: fires me to do a two what if pitches about this man because we've uh what if uh um the Calvars viewing ended up being the source for a supreme he has connections to magic we've seen what ifs were illegal in his that way or a what if what if the Calvars viewing ended up being omega red he already with connections to Soviet they knew he was a mutant I don't know that was the first thing that popped my hand like those would be interesting stories to explore [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it seems like it seems like he went out a bit too easily for the amount of power that's described by Dr.

[SPEAKER_03]: Strange there, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: From the gunshots to the physical act of ripping out the heart.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I feel like there must be something else under Mikhail's sleeve that we're not quite seeing yet because I think what that hints at is just that tremendous power within the idea that he was able to control it all this time from infancy.

[SPEAKER_03]: Really dark, really sinister and I think, yeah, I don't think we've seen the last of of this character.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's several stories I want to write.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like the X-Men prehistory expert.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have major aspirations to write X-Men stories.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the stories I would love to write is a Charles Xavier story in Russia pre X-Men number one.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it very easily involves Russia's history of mutants, but McIolfe, it's very firmly into that because it's the years before classes joins the X-Men as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I won't say more there, but I do have thoughts on how to make the early days of this character work.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think he has some really interesting psychology.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think the Lenin comparison is fascinating.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't love an overpowered character, but this character's weakness seems to be his madness and his need for attention.

[SPEAKER_02]: He thinks he's very reasonable, but does a lot of cool things to get there.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think some of his stories ranging from the hill to his kind of Russian nation, most recently, are super interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: And his usual trickle, I was [SPEAKER_02]: was brilliant.

[SPEAKER_04]: We know the first mention of Mikael back during the whole uh phoenix preamble.

[SPEAKER_04]: Do we know when the first use of his power was when that moment that cerebral would have blipped for Xavier?

[SPEAKER_04]: Because most likely it would have blipped before Colossus ever at it and the reason you might have known about Colossus is because they knew about the older brother.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe, but I don't know that Saribro necessarily existed at the time, but we do have dealings with Charles Xavier in the Lexi version, who was the KGB guy that covered Colossus existence from the government, so they were watching their Rasputin family the whole time, but Vaussian covered it up, so there's again, there's a story to be told that.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is the guy, yes.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's complicated, and again, when they're that powerful, [SPEAKER_04]: There's only two ways you can really write them.

[SPEAKER_04]: You either nerf them, like any time Jelgarna becomes a superhero, you have to nerf the fuck out of him.

[SPEAKER_04]: Or he's just so powerful, he can only be too crazy with power.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like any, any Phoenix story ends up going that direction.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it is a character that could end now, I guess, but what I want to know is if you've taken out a character like this, going back to Dr.

[SPEAKER_03]: Strange's definition of the power, [SPEAKER_03]: what happens to all these dimensions, what happens to everything that all the bad things that he's done in the past, what will be undone by removing this character from from life, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So I think the ripple effects that this super overpowered character can have could be devastating.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I think wanting to see what that would impact that has beyond if that will be played into it all.

[SPEAKER_03]: But then again, I think, you know, I'm curious to see, you know, is there a reckoning for this kind of character?

[SPEAKER_03]: Is there any way that they can, can they come back?

[SPEAKER_03]: Can they learn?

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe not?

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm always hopeful for some of these villains.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, two kind of final thoughts, Mikael's jealousy of Colossus as the hero.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like he doesn't want his brother to be happy.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's an interesting thought there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Another thing is, if this man can alter reality, when we first meet him, he's still bearing scars all over his face.

[SPEAKER_02]: When he gets back to earth, he manifests the ghosts around him.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a certain level of psychological complexity to him that I think is interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like him least when he's like, I'm God, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like a storm shall be my queen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like those are my least favorite pieces.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the hummus and mutant or as like a noble person in his own brain, that part is really interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to see this character fight the Scarlet, which written by Steve Ramirez, fascinating actually.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: I loved this conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: All of my thoughts are solidified in one place.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I love hearing you share your thoughts about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: episodes like this take homework and time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I super appreciate you both taking this journey with me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hope like myself, I know you're both creative that you're feeling kind of fired up and like sparked up after we talk about stuff like this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It makes me want to go read and research and write after word.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to put this up the first week in June on the Patreon channel.

[SPEAKER_02]: It'll come out on the main show five months later.

[SPEAKER_02]: Where can people find you both online?

[SPEAKER_02]: And is there anything you'd like to plug?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything you'd like to plug?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is there anything you'd like to plug?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is there [SPEAKER_03]: Oh cool, yes, so for me, you can find more about me.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm at Michael Sodys' author on Most Socials.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Instagram, Substack, TikTok, Blue Sky.

[SPEAKER_03]: I also have my website.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm actively writing new stories and books at the moment.

[SPEAKER_03]: So hoping to share those with the world soon.

[SPEAKER_04]: And you can find me on Instagram at Mike Serioco2099.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'll be having stand-up shows coming up regularly.

[SPEAKER_04]: So you can find info about that there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then I have a sitcom, day viewing this summer.

[SPEAKER_04]: So once that drops, I'll be promoting the fuck out of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So watch for all Colossus content this month.

[SPEAKER_02]: The next episode of the Patreon channel after this we're taking another mutant Russian character whose name is Ursa Major.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had that turns into a bear that works for the Russian military.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's fascinating.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited for that conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Over on the main show it's all Colossus content as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: The next episode I'll coming out immediately after this on July 14th will be a review of the series X-Men liberators, which is written by Joe Harris.

[SPEAKER_02]: My guest on that episode is Joe Harris as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll be talking about Colossus and Russia in extreme detail from the purview of that particular series.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you everybody so much for listening.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you to both of my friends, Michael here.

[SPEAKER_02]: We will see you all back here next time on Grimalketland.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and its modern applications.

[SPEAKER_02]: Werner Goldberg's life story is one of cruel ironing, a man once held up as the embodiment of the Nazi ideal who would later be cast aside and live to see the regime that betrayed him destroyed.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was born in Noin Berlin in 1919 and Goldberg was the son of a German Christian mother and had a father of Jewish descent who had converted to Christianity.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like many young men at his time, he was proud to be German, and he joined the right labor service, and then the German army when Hitler came to power.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and Goldberg fit the Nazi-art racial ideal so perfectly then in 1939 a photo of him appeared in the Berliner-Tagablot with the caption, The Ideal German Soldier, but if you haven't heard his last name was Goldberg.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for a brief time, his image became propaganda, a living example of Hitler's vision and Aryan strengthened purity.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that illusion shattered when officials discovered his Jewish ancestry.

[SPEAKER_02]: In 1940, Goldberg was expelled from the vermarked, under new racial laws forbidding men of Jewish descent from military service.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again, his father was a Jewish descendant [SPEAKER_02]: The same government that had praised him now declared him unfit to fight for it.

[SPEAKER_02]: After his discharging, Goldberg devotes himself to protecting his father, who had faced deportation as Nazi persecution of Jews intensified.

[SPEAKER_02]: Using his connections and reputation as a soldier, Werner repeatedly intervened to delay his father's arrest, sheltering him in hospitals, and helping him to evade capture.

[SPEAKER_02]: But despite his efforts, his father was eventually taken, [SPEAKER_02]: and then died in 1943.

[SPEAKER_02]: Very survived the war in Berlin, avoiding the Gestapo through a mixture of caution, contacts, and luck.

[SPEAKER_02]: After Germany's defeat, he built a quiet life frame, self in the post-war years, working in business and the whole politics, he lived long enough to see the story of his photograph, once a tool of Nazi propaganda become an emblem of the regime's hypocrisy.

[SPEAKER_02]: He lived until 2004 and died at the age of 84.

[SPEAKER_02]: And his life remains a haunting testament to the absurdity of Nazi racial ideology.

[SPEAKER_02]: The man once called the ideal German soldier was by its own laws, not quite German enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna jump to Captain America volume three, number four.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the skeleton of the red skull has reformed itself, using cosmic cube energy.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like interfaceed with the cube itself.

[SPEAKER_02]: and it lashes out at some men on a beach and kills them.

[SPEAKER_02]: In Captain America Volume 3, number 10, the Red Skull struggles to reform on Skull Island and then Kang the Conqueror shows up offering him a deal.

[SPEAKER_02]: Which brings us to the issue we're gonna spend our time on today.

[SPEAKER_02]: Captain America Volume 3, number 14.

[SPEAKER_02]: The Red Skull is getting major dirt face on a cover that tells us that evil is back!

[SPEAKER_02]: Remember that scene in Schindler's list where everything is in black and white, but that little girl in the red coat comes inessantly among them.

[SPEAKER_02]: We open on that kind of where the red skull is trapped in this odd version of hell, and it's all black and white, and he's a bellhop, but the only thing in color is his bright red head.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's really twisted.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's stuck endlessly shining shoes, washing dishes, doing laundry.

[SPEAKER_02]: Captain America in this weird dream world is the leader of Germany.

[SPEAKER_02]: Jewish businesses are thriving.

[SPEAKER_02]: How far am I proud, homeland has fallen?

[SPEAKER_02]: Once we were the keepers of truth, that the Aryan race is the master race, that not see them as a white light, bright and pure enough to burn away all the blacks and the yellows and the reds and the browns which darken the world, their faces all look the same to us.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now the lie called democracy, foisted upon us by the non-Arian Caucasians, has polluted our virtue, thanks to our leader Germany has become invested with strange cultures, inferior people, they eat bread that's rightfully mine, they sip my wine, they wear my clothes, inferior people, [SPEAKER_02]: They won themselves in my blankets, they take, and they take, and they take, all the while sneering at me, leading me to whatever pitiful shelter I can find, only when I sleep and my the man I wish to be, only when I dream.

[SPEAKER_02]: He dreamed a dream of time gone by, poor guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: He sleeps in a dumpster, and dreams of that time that Hitler noticed him.

[SPEAKER_02]: He dreams of you surfing Hitler, of lording over all the foreigners who failed to notice him, of triumphing over Captain America, [SPEAKER_02]: I awake through the fettered stench of the foreigners from the east, of which other accursed minority has chosen to pretend it has any right to lay its hands upon one who would uphold the Nazi principles, animals, in time a woman notices him, her name is Eve, at her touch the beatings the hunger become memories dim.

[SPEAKER_02]: Had I but one drop of water for each dance we danced, we could sail on an ocean of joy.

[SPEAKER_02]: God, he's awful.

[SPEAKER_02]: Finally, I have found someone who will understand my world as it should be, a fellow pure blood who would realize our mutual superiority, someone who would treat me as an equal, who would see me for everything I truly am, he really hates muggles.

[SPEAKER_02]: But to the Red Skull, every foreigner looks the same, interchangeable faceless ugly, he eventually beats Eve to death, and then he is beat in return.

[SPEAKER_02]: With no recourse in his dream, the Red Skull serves Captain America, the leader, himself in the role of Hitler, which is very twisted.

[SPEAKER_02]: Captain notices him, offers to mold him into something great if the Red Skull will just kill one mad, and so the Red Skull shoots Cap in his dream, which breaks the dream and its trap, and the Skull emerges from the cube in his old familiar golden armor.

[SPEAKER_02]: the power to reshape reality itself at his fingertips once again, enough to startle Kang the conqueror himself to be continued in our next review.

[SPEAKER_02]: But first, let me welcome my dear friend, my grossy back to the show.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mike, how are you and are you a red skull fan, my friend?

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, hey, thanks for having me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing pretty good.

[SPEAKER_00]: All things considered.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I am not a red skull fan, and this issue did not end your him to me any more than anything else has.

[SPEAKER_02]: So weird anytime they make him the focal point of an issue, he's not even the background villain.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like we're looking at his rich interior world.

[SPEAKER_02]: Boo.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know you had a moment halfway through this issue thinking what the fuck did Chad make me read.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, 100% was the best thing about this issue is sort of the the color.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just that pop of red on those gray pages and then cap kind of in full color towards end.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, definitely halfway through.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, Chad, what did I ever do to you to cause you to throw this Republican propaganda at me?

[SPEAKER_02]: Every person who has signed up for one of these episodes has had a similar experience, but it's crazy how much the Red Skull is in Marvel Comics.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's everywhere.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's really well written and it's really beautifully drawn.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's Kubert Art.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's gorgeous.

[SPEAKER_02]: But wow, it is this, I mean, we write him the pathetic and awful.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's the point, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's Voldemort.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is artistically, it is a beautiful issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, like the palette, the color, the drawing style is really great.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think this starts to fall into that category of like, you know, art imitating life and sort of that approach of like it's easy to hate red skull because he doesn't have any redeeming qualities.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this issue tries to sort of like humanize him a little bit in the beginning, like showing before he jumps into his, you know, white supremacy area and bullshit.

[SPEAKER_00]: where you maybe kind of sort of feel like you need to feel bad for him because he's like shining shoes and he's like the loser of the world or whatever the case is but it's easy to slide back into like oh yeah this guy's a fucking asshole and it's okay to just hate him right like there's no redeeming qualities or anything about this guy it is [SPEAKER_00]: hard.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just been like a rough few weeks, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a little bit hard to try to put yourself like in that mindset, so even want to be in his head, to want to, to kind of quote, unquote, hear what he's thinking or whatever the case is.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the kind of issue where I think it would have been nice if there were no, if there was no dialogue.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would have loved to just look at this issue and not read the terrible hateful things with him.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's been a nice part of the portrayal here, though, is that they're not trying to make him any kind of protagonist.

[SPEAKER_02]: I really hate when the writer tries to make a sympathize with the Nazi.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's painting him as an awful terrible person.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the slight of the story, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: He's an awful person who's awful things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a weird obsession that he has with Captain America to the point that he views him as Hitler.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's really queer and weird and odd.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's the only woman who ever understood me, but I beat her to death.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, he's just terrible.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's a really awful, reprehensible character.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I give him a little bit of a Hans and Franz voice because it like, lightens it up a little bit, but holy shit, he's the worst.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's his very rich interior world where he's, I don't know, he's calling people animals and inferior and like saying they all look the same and like the art is showing that he just sees everyone as faceless, that he'll get really poetic for a little while.

[SPEAKER_02]: Had I bought a one drop of water for each dance, [SPEAKER_02]: Like it's sad on an ocean of joy and then he calls her a fellow pure blood right afterward.

[SPEAKER_02]: You fuck you man, gross gross gross gross.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like like you said, there's no sort of attempt to make us like him or sympathize with him, which I mean, very I would like to say very obviously that would be a negative kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it does, yeah, I guess it just helps me hate him a little bit more than I did, you know, on Monday before I read this issue that you said.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've discovered, as I read these, even though I read all these comics, reading them comprehensively and having these conversations has like really solidified some themes in the comic books that I read over the years, especially if you're a Captain America fan, but every evil person in Marvel Comics is like, reprehensible evil is the Nazi character.

[SPEAKER_02]: We sympathize with Magneto and Mystique, we do not sympathize with the Red Skull, and if you do, there's a problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he's always the character Captain America has to fight against, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Which is crazy because we see this like obsession with fascism in America these days.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you get this like image of the Red School constantly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like he lives in Captain America's clone body.

[SPEAKER_02]: creates an evil Captain America to like lead the Nazi party.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's envisioning Cap as Hitler, but you have to remember and this has been a fascinating experiment for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Captain America's origins back in the 30s, he was created from the Super Soldier Serum, which was created by a Jewish defector from Germany that ran to the States and then a Nazi killed that guy after he's the Aryan dream, like he's what the Red Skull wants to be.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was the moment in the issue that like shocked you the most perhaps?

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I was expecting him to kill Eve.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it seemed, I mean, I guess that sort of ax sort of as the catalyst to keep the story kind of moving along.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, he was so miserable and then he got so poetic, he was happy to find another pure blood and someone who kind of [SPEAKER_02]: You know, coalesce with his way of thinking and then he just killed her and then and her family and that was just maybe I don't know, like I need allies in the comics he also has a history of raping and killing women like it's a it's a story that has been brought up by more than one writer, which is deeply unfortunate.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, the immigration piece, the, the inferior race piece, obviously, fuck all of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: The, the pure blood Aryan nonsense of it all, the white supremacy of it all is just, it just makes me angry anytime, even when it's a story device.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I hate so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Great.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's why, you know, especially in the beginning when he's spouting all that, it, it makes it a little bit hard to kind of slug through.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I don't know, but he's also the kind of guy I feel like, you know, three weeks from now you'd read the headline that he was arrested for, you know, child molestation or something like that for, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: There's a, there's a lot of painful components to this and then there's just the real silliness of it, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: The, the, the Schindler's list comparison with the girl in the red coat for that to be the, like, you kind of get the vision that the red skull watched that movie before he died and then it was just in his brain.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am laughing at that, but it's, it's funny to me as a character, but I think.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, not I think you need to have like your son kind of those those sort of lighthearted moments and something at the end of the day right this is still like a comic it still needs to be enjoyable if it was all just like you know dark world work to not see kind of fantasy comics think that's not what it's not what we signed up for right like we need to have a little bit of something even if it is just sort of a bridge issue to to lead the story forward or to get to sort of a climax or whatever the cases.

[SPEAKER_02]: We've been driving the comparison for the X-Men stuff, you know, the friends of humanity and Orcas and whatever else.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's always that.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's always the evil Oregon crazy that's like fighting against mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: Were you surprised to see Kang the Conqueror at the end?

[SPEAKER_02]: I was, yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And interesting, I'm not as an necessarily familiar with these characters, but interesting that like Kang's clutching his pearls a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh my, what did I do?

[SPEAKER_00]: People thought I was evil, but they haven't like seen this guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Statue for the next time, Kang's actually using him.

[SPEAKER_02]: The red skull is going to end up eating his just desserts because Kang wants the power.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll get there next time in my next review.

[SPEAKER_02]: I opened with the story of Werner Goldberg, who was, I put an image in the chat if you want to see.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like the Nazi propaganda photo that was used but then later they found out this guy's Jewish and quickly recanted just truly horrifying story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing to me how many of those types of stories kind of exist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm actually, I think another reason why it was a little bit hard to read this issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just started listening to this book, The Escape Artist, which is about Rudolph Verba.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was in Auschwitz, was essentially in turn, he was a teenager, like 1718 years old, but he escaped from Auschwitz with another prisoner and essentially tried to tell everybody [SPEAKER_00]: And it was just kind of fascinating.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd never heard of them before and not really too far into this, uh, into this biography yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there, you know, I'm not like a young guy anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went to school when we still learned about, you know, the Holocaust and World War II.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I had never heard of this guy before, um, just like sort of the anecdote in the beginning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there are so many.

[SPEAKER_00]: of those sort of rich types of stories that are kind of, I don't want to say necessarily hard to find if you don't know where to look for them, though.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, the history is available, and that's what I don't know the value in doing these conversations for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm devoting a significant amount of my time to this, but it's been really healing for me, oddly, to learn this history, because it helps me make sense of the world around me and know where to draw my lines.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we are both queer men, and you are married to an immigrant.

[SPEAKER_02]: How are you doing in 2025?

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, if you want me to edit that out, [SPEAKER_00]: That is a, that is a heavy question.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, I am not doing real great in in 2020, five really just to kind of put it lightly like I every day sort of brings like fresh new horrors to a certain extent being married to an immigrant is even more concerning just because of everything that's going on, you know, I I live in my head sometimes which I think is something that we all do or at least a lot of us creatives or comic quick geeks kind of do and I there are times when I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, should I be with him at all times when we're outside or, you know, if I, we don't do everything together, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But if he leaves to run errands or whatever the case is here, you know, you don't hear from him or he doesn't come back in every single amount of time or something, I get worried.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know, I don't know, you must have been well, but he is the happiest, most joyful, laid-back person.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like he's so amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, he is very laid back and very joyful, but that doesn't seem to matter to the people who have power right now, who are all married to immigrants, which is what makes me fucking crazy, like, oh, yeah, but it's really scary, you know, we've kind of talked about what our sort of red line is to really kind of take a hard look at decisions for our future and [SPEAKER_00]: Right, the Supreme Court this week or next week is supposed to look at discussing or to decide if they're going to discuss getting rid of game average and whatnot and it's well, and we're recording this on a day at this will come out in a few weeks, but we're recording this on a day when they just released news that the Supreme Court is backed up like the the passport.

[SPEAKER_02]: stuff for the anti-trans passport rules that have been put into place, so like you can't travel on your chosen quote-unquote gender.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's I mean it's concerning, it's really concerning.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know I think as you and I are both creators, we are joyful people, we can create the joy on a daily basis and create community where you go and it's balanced by like holy shit what is happening all around us.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're all in it, but I know you're someone who feels very deeply.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I appreciate you answering that question.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not trying to capsize your morale.

[SPEAKER_02]: I promise.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, you're right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is difficult.

[SPEAKER_00]: I find, I mean, as I've joked around before, and we'll probably joked around again.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm an infrequent poster on Instagram.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sort of social media averse or whatnot, but even as I try to create and put my stuff out there, [SPEAKER_00]: um, because my artwork typically is not a little cool sort of right off the bat.

[SPEAKER_00]: I find it hard when I am posting something, you know, to be like, oh, look at this illustration I made.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, look, look at this page for my comic or whatever the case is.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is so not sort of connected to what's going on day to day.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's so much pain in her and worry and fear and depression and uncertainty and I'm not specifically addressing that in my art and that has made it even more challenging to like try to put my stuff out there.

[SPEAKER_02]: But we need stories like yours.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've read your book.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know you.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think you're an excellent storyteller and an excellent artist.

[SPEAKER_02]: So keep doing what you're doing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, take breaks from you too.

[SPEAKER_02]: But be an excellent human because you are an excellent human.

[SPEAKER_02]: So just be like my life mantra right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I, you know, this sits on a lot of levels because I work with the trans community as a therapist and the immigrant community.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I also work with like little mug of kids when I'm doing the crisis response work.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I have a queer child.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like my like mantra right now is like creating joy is an act of defiance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I'm not I'm not going to not be me and I'm not going to not find my solace, but God or there's some days I'm like Jesus is a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there are days like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and it's you know, like you had mentioned earlier, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like these the anecdotes and doing these kinds of like little quick stories at the end of larger episodes and what not are important.

[SPEAKER_00]: one of your previous guests reiterated the importance of learning history and understanding history so we don't repeat things and how we are repeating things right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: In a place that if I want to say even 10 years ago, I feel like if you had talked to people who lived through World War II or people who grew up in the 70s and the 80s, if America would ever be the place that it is today, I don't think anyone would have said, like oh yeah, I see it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think speaking truth is valuable because then it helps me really solidify my hope, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to see things as very realistic and for what they are.

[SPEAKER_02]: I grew up in a home with a lot of trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's important for me to say exactly what's happening and then figure out what I'm going to do to get through it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Pretending it's not there, it doesn't work well for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: So these conversations where I get to build community and hang with friends really ease a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to share on this very inspiring cosmic cube?

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, maybe you just really like the Red Skulls [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, got to make a fashion statement when you're having your wet dreams about Captain America.

[SPEAKER_02]: I guess this is a throwback to the first time in the 1960s the first time the Red Skull got the Cosmic Cube he the first wish he made was for a suit of gold armor and then cap like kicked him in the ocean and he like sank to the bottom because his armor was so nice [SPEAKER_00]: Think these connections between this fascination and draw to gold and wearing gold.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.

[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody look at the photos of Trump's new bathroom.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look at that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, Michael Rossi, I think you're fantastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for hanging out with me today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for bringing me on this journey.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, it was, it was definitely a journey, but I'm glad we were we got to at that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, everybody, take care of yourselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: Stay safe.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Mr.

Rossi.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you all back here next week.