[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody welcome to the trial of Agatha Harkness.

[SPEAKER_03]: I had to do that very lower register because zoom is bad at like high pitches So there's my like warlock laugh.

[SPEAKER_03]: I suppose we'll go a little lower register I'm Chad Anderson and you're host.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so excited to have everybody here.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's my favorite episode of the month The trial years ago I visited my favorite sister my gay sister Sherry the one that lives in while she lived near Salem, Massachusetts at the time Sherry has a thing for ghosts She loves to learn the history of a place [SPEAKER_03]: So she had been regaling me with like tales of how cool Salem is especially around Halloween and she drove us in and I found Salem Quaint so I don't know if you've ever seen the Disney movie Hocus Pocus.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like the ancient history of the evil Sanderson sisters [SPEAKER_03]: there's like the town museum where there's all the hokey artifacts that are put on display and nobody really believes in witches anymore.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's kind of how Salem feels.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's all these houses and like museums and there's some like old-timey graveyards in the middle which you're fun, but like every museum is just kind of the same stories about the same people and they're like mannequins that like you push a button and they talk to you and a light turns on and it's like [SPEAKER_03]: But like you're kind of like, why am I paying money to learn the same stories?

[SPEAKER_03]: But it's all revolving around like the Puritans accusing women of witchcraft, women for being weird, women for not having babies, or not conforming to standards, or having crazy fashion.

[SPEAKER_03]: We get burned at the stake as a result.

[SPEAKER_03]: They hump them down and burn them at the stake.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is the ancient kind of Salem, which trials that we're always talking about in between the rows of houses, though, are the old cemeteries.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the cool part for me.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're covered in moss and stone, and there's kind of a feeling of reverence there.

[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone's in a while, Holly would put out like a horror film that captures that kind of old Salem energy and like a very visceral surprising way, ranging from the crucible to the craft and there's so many, as many more.

[SPEAKER_03]: Something about the rule keeping Puritans and how anything different as seen as the devil, [SPEAKER_03]: And then we turn it into a crazy like a little thing we put in kids cartoons and like put on Halloween decorations all over the place now witches of course go back into ancient tradition, but there's so many things captured in these things and we all have very strong feelings about witches.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we've been celebrating Marvel Magic on the show this month.

[SPEAKER_03]: And today, ladies and gentlemen, we get to talk all about character Agatha Harkness who we're going to put on trial.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this character for many years was kind of just an odd trivia question.

[SPEAKER_03]: You might have thought of her as her connection to want to max them off or Franklin Richards, but then wand division happened and Catherine Hahn happened.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I got followed up in the queer amazing masterpiece that is Agatha all along.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we will talk about that a little bit later, [SPEAKER_03]: really fantastic.

[SPEAKER_03]: So for now, let me welcome my jury group of my dear friends, incredible people that I'm so happy to be hanging out with today.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me have you each introduce yourself, tell us your pronouns and a little about you, and I want to hear about some of your very favorite witches.

[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, so first of all, double, double, toilet and trouble.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's Kevin Canary back on a good lane.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, Kevin.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Chad.

[SPEAKER_02]: My name's Kevin Canary, and my pronouns are he, him.

[SPEAKER_02]: I worked for many years at DC Comics, but my love has always been with Marvel Comics and specifically old, secretive, powerful women.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so Agatha is right up my alley.

[SPEAKER_02]: from a witch point of view, I'm always fascinated by, you know, the secrets and the powers of kind of ancient worlds and growing up I read a lot of fairy tales and books of that sort and I was fascinated by the white witch and the narnia chronicles, especially she was such a badass in a way and dangerous but also kind of alluring and sexy.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then that was countered by witchy poo from the bugle who's no I am way too old to be making that reference, nobody knows who the hell witchy poo was.

[SPEAKER_02]: Go, go back, find out the search, the internet, which he poo, she's amazing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me also welcome.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'll get you my pretty and your little dog, too.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's Alicia Wilder.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yay!

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad I got that line.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Alicia Wilder.

[SPEAKER_00]: So excited to be here.

[SPEAKER_00]: You might know me from script readings or trials on Great Melkin Lane.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or the XY podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love all things which she.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really funny that you brought up [SPEAKER_00]: That's my go to Winifred is my girl.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's my first like real cosplay first costume that I really worked on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I dress up as her every Halloween and pass out candy to the kids in my neighborhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've just made an even more elaborate like every year it gets more and more elaborate last year I had all my sisters with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a really strong connection to that just as it being sort of like my entry into anything whichy in my life as a child.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also love the wicked witch of the West and I got to play her in a like middle school theater production and like just hide in my bedroom all summer long and practice my witch cackles.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Your knackle, your knackle was totally lost by the microphone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, it was, and I'm not doing it again because it's a thirsty, high pitch, sorry, zoom.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I just, I love the, the fictional witches in their outrageousness.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then I also love like just the essential connection to the world around you and nature, specifically in, like, witch practice.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm excited to do to talk agafits today.

[SPEAKER_03]: And ding dong, the witch's dead, but Taylor vessels here.

[SPEAKER_03]: High Taylor.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm alive.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm Taylor Russell.

[SPEAKER_06]: I use he him pronouns.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think one of the most impressionable witches on me is probably wicked when I was, oh, I think I was in middle school when he first came on the scene and you know, I was very much in the closet still at that age and so seeing a magical queer teen in comics.

[SPEAKER_06]: I just was automatically drawn to him and I'm super excited to have his solo series coming out later this year.

[SPEAKER_06]: him in Agatha all along was incredible even if they tried to pretend it wasn't him we all knew exactly who he was and had he not been Billy I think there would have been queer riots in the street.

[SPEAKER_03]: Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's number one.

[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, number one.

[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, everyone.

[SPEAKER_07]: It's um.

[SPEAKER_07]: I go by they them.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that if I had to choose a favorite witch, it would be really hard.

[SPEAKER_07]: I love Agatha.

[SPEAKER_07]: I love Wanda.

[SPEAKER_07]: I love like the Marvel sphere of magic.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that's been really interesting to read just like from side stories that I read.

[SPEAKER_07]: I have a favorite like witch and movie.

[SPEAKER_07]: It's parent Norman.

[SPEAKER_07]: because I don't know, I love the stop motion of it and everything in the story line is really great.

[SPEAKER_07]: But like tied to like Salem and Towns being very like, here's our witch story and like all of that.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that's what I always think about.

[SPEAKER_07]: I watch it every year for Halloween.

[SPEAKER_07]: So it's my favorite like witch movie.

[SPEAKER_07]: Or I would have to go with like something like the craft or something just like keeping it action packed.

[SPEAKER_03]: And last but not least, something wicked this way comes.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's Scotty Degies.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, everyone.

[SPEAKER_05]: I used to have pronouns.

[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like I watched a lot of which content when I was too young as a child.

[SPEAKER_05]: I remember watching um, which is an e-spoke, but I was like 8 or 9 and it was, it was too adult for me.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I had lots of quite inappropriate questions.

[SPEAKER_05]: The other one that I really remember was that was a big deal.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I was a kid, it was a role bit adapted to the witches, the world doll book and a jelly Houston with the witch.

[SPEAKER_05]: Well, they turned the kids into mice.

[SPEAKER_05]: That would give me nightmares.

[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, good.

[SPEAKER_05]: So good.

[SPEAKER_05]: Diagonal.

[SPEAKER_05]: That one was very stuck in my head.

[SPEAKER_05]: And again, I think I watched that one.

[SPEAKER_05]: I was like three or four.

[SPEAKER_05]: And it was too much.

[SPEAKER_03]: So lastly, I'm Chad Anderson.

[SPEAKER_03]: I use he, him pronouns.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting to consider this very specific genre like witches.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're not talking ghosts or monsters or zombies, but witches more specifically.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Wizard of Oz, for me, like really something that I've loved since I was a little kid.

[SPEAKER_03]: I remember reading the books from like 1900 when I was like six, seven years old and of course the movie really resonated long before I even knew to identify as queer.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the movie was always fun.

[SPEAKER_03]: It came out in the late 1930s based on the 1900 book, and the witch in the book is just kind of this odd lady with like a telescoping eye and like an army of bees and wolves, but then we have the film where Margaret Hamilton comes in and it's technicolor and it's Ruby slippers and green face paint and it's so great and I really think that this character who's considered [SPEAKER_03]: Like in the top 10 Hollywood villains of all time like right up next to like Hannibal Lecter in Freddy Kruger She's amazing and she's not even at the film that much, but she's just chewing the scenery with her unforgettable laugh That shrill voice.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the pointy fingers and the broom and the flying monkeys and the green guards shouting oh, shhh chanting Oh, yo, yo, oh, man all the all the great like one-line [SPEAKER_03]: I'm melting.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm melting what a world, what a world.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we have this incredible Billy Burke as Glinda the Good in that film as well in that massive pink dress in crown with her wand top to the little feminine star and she's floating around on a little pink bubble with her shrill little thing voice and it's just pure magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: No pun intended.

[SPEAKER_03]: So very clearly gay and long before we get to Judy Garland and Rainbow's but I was I loved these books and it was really incredible [SPEAKER_03]: So that green-skinned woman in the black dress and the pointy hat, with the thrones and the cauldrons and black cats hanging out around her, classic witch archetype likes to lure children in and like drain their life, like see Hansel and Gretale or my husband and I just saw the movie Weapons, which is kind of this trope.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was actually really fantastic.

[SPEAKER_03]: I really enjoyed that film.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then we get like the old Disney witches, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: We everything from the fairies, which is a slightly different genre and sleeping beauty, but Maleficent is on the other side of that.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the good versus evil.

[SPEAKER_03]: We have the witch in Snow White.

[SPEAKER_03]: We have Ursula the Sea Witch.

[SPEAKER_03]: Go it going on and on.

[SPEAKER_03]: This I kind of idea of the evil woman.

[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, and we've already mentioned some of our favorites, but then we get the odd kind of genre of witches as the heroic place to a Sabrina the Teenage Witch was always on television when I was growing up or there's lots of television shows about witches as protagonists are kind of cute archetypes.

[SPEAKER_03]: Then we have that brilliant writer, Gregory McGuire, who is gay, by the way, who wrote wicked the book version of like from the perspective of Alphabet and Glanda, by the way, Alphabet the name is based off of the name of the author of the, uh, the the Oz books, Elfrank Bound, so Alphabet.

[SPEAKER_03]: In this complicated world of Oz, where the wizard is really the villain, and he's trying to hoard magic for himself since he can't access it naturally.

[SPEAKER_03]: The tyrannical wizard turns the populace against talking animals, and against anyone who dares to be different.

[SPEAKER_03]: So now it's been adapted into the movie.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Broadway show that's been around for quite some time, but the film, I work with the queer community and the trans community here, and everybody's who saw that film came back going, like, oh, I felt so seen and understood, and like, [SPEAKER_03]: It was so wonderful to use time to try and define gravity, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm through accepting limits because someone else says they're so.

[SPEAKER_03]: So in this world that makes us as queer people feel small or tells us to contain our magic, not just queer people, but women, people of color, like we're supposed to just keep it contained.

[SPEAKER_03]: I've seen people kind of really gather into where we feel understood by which is in an odd way.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love Angela Lansbury in bed knobs and broomsticks and I love magic in the x-man and I love Angela Angelica Houston and which is there's so many examples of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Something that came to mind as you were talking about, bring it back to musicals for a second.

[SPEAKER_02]: In the musical into the woods, the witch is a fairy tale character that's kind of a major character throughout, but it's really [SPEAKER_02]: in the end.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I know how you love to get your root of bigger ravaged.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: First off she is the rapper.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's before Hamilton.

[SPEAKER_02]: She was rapping on stage, but other than that at the end, and she sings the last midnight when they're all blaming the witch.

[SPEAKER_02]: They want to have the the regular people of society are trying to find somebody to blame.

[SPEAKER_02]: And literally [SPEAKER_02]: she's willing to throw herself in front of them just to get the job done, just to solve the problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in it she says things like, you're just the world and I see how you treat me differently.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was so much of a feeling of the outside or whether it's queerness or women or anybody who is a minority group kind of being put as the scapegoat.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a it's a fascinating musical for many reasons, but the witch character specifically is so well rounded in a way that you've never got from fairy tales before.

[SPEAKER_07]: I also like when we're talking about stories like Cancel and Gradle, I'm of two kinds of minds when it comes to this.

[SPEAKER_07]: I love the protagonist like which is being good and which is being helpful and which is you know showing that they're not the stereotype showing that there's more to them [SPEAKER_07]: you know, not just binding acceptance in community, but also like building their own.

[SPEAKER_07]: But I also really love like that kind of villain version of them, where it is like, we're not gonna take any more violence against us.

[SPEAKER_07]: I always think back to like that movie, Haunts One, Greta, like the newer one with Jeremy Renner.

[SPEAKER_07]: And like in it, it's like his sister and his mother was like they were witches, but like they didn't really know.

[SPEAKER_07]: And so they learn throughout the film that there's two versions of this are good witches and then there are bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good point.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: oftentimes, which is our portrait as women who are on their own and the shifting of their narrative to be the protagonist and the story is another example of how like you can just connect to your own personal self as a woman and you don't need anyone else to help you get by or get through like which is don't often have like [SPEAKER_00]: partner that they're relying on are like a man that's coming to save them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're they're finding the strength within themselves and it's like cool to see how the juxtaposition of that being like villainized versus being, you know, looked at as the hero of the story and like who's perspective the story is being told from just like as a woman I always find which is to be like a source of powerful inspiration on top of being like creepy and fun and weird.

[SPEAKER_03]: But let me toss some kind of witch archetypes at each of you and just like kind of share your brief opinions on each one because witches represent a lot of different categories.

[SPEAKER_03]: A tailor, what are your thoughts on what I kind of mentioned at the beginning of the Salem legacy or the witch as the scapegoat, the thing for society to blame.

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I think it's men being threatened by women's power, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like I think in a lot of ways that is the way that that archetype is used in entertainment and storytelling is for magic and witchcraft to be a symbol of a woman's power, which is often portrayed in Mia as being very minsterial, typical power is muscle and strength and very brazen in your face.

[SPEAKER_06]: where a woman's power is a little more subdued.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's a little more patient, but it's just as strong.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, you know, at least we're talking about, like often, which is a portrayed as being on their own.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I would agree, but I think we have lots of instances in entertainment where covens are very strong and covens can accomplish.

[SPEAKER_06]: a lot, which I think is a great translation to the power behind community.

[SPEAKER_06]: And within the queer community about how much can be accomplished when we work together, I know that's kind of way off from the Salem sort of era.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I guess taking it back, you know, Salem saw a lot of, you know, people accused several were executed, obviously.

[SPEAKER_06]: But it very much, it was a community that was broken because it [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think you're that far off because I think the theme here really falls down to like religious extremism versus societal and societal paranoia versus individualism which very much falls into the trope.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's that movie from 2015 the witch, there's American horror story, the Coven season which is incredible which is very professor-exy at its way and there's the crystal really famously.

[SPEAKER_03]: Got to let me hear your thoughts on the second trope which is kind of the nature which we have which is that are tied to like the swamp or like the forest like there's this kind of example of I don't know fear of the wilderness almost entire into a particular figure in some of the things we've been talking about [SPEAKER_05]: There's a whole theme about that about people which square out in the wilderness to practice their rituals or whatever.

[SPEAKER_05]: And actually, you know, right, time to write what you were talking about earlier, this idea of the witch who lives in the forest, and we see this, and in the crucible, we also see this, that the girls go out and supposedly practice in the woods, their dark arts, and it's about a fear that, like, they're in the crucible, which is an American piece of literature, it really is about this fear of the unknown and the frontier, and what that means, and it kind of smacks a little bit of [SPEAKER_05]: Our Western Christian society is hoped with kind of colonial relationships and their relationships with the indigenous people that were there.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's a little bit buried in that, but I think too when we talk about that idea about nature and like how that's connected.

[SPEAKER_05]: There is this idea, probably, and it probably goes back to a lot of the other kind of things we talked about a little bit.

[SPEAKER_05]: Christianity, where there were lots of goals to wipe out the other kinds of indigenous faith, and folk faith traditions and folk traditions and pagan traditions that existed all over Western Europe before the rise of Christianity, that sort of where this nature which came came from and said, do you have people being connected to the earth and traveling out there, traveling into the forest to the earth?

[SPEAKER_05]: Things, but you know, like lots of major cultures had traditions that were around, oh, but let's go celebrate things in the forest or in the woods or [SPEAKER_03]: go to like Baba Yaga is like one of those that she kind of shows up in my brain.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me go to Alicia for this one.

[SPEAKER_03]: And you kind of referenced this earlier in your answer, but we have kind of the wicked woman parallel.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like female power is a threat.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's something for men to control and any variability on what they say you should do, represent something different.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think we see this and everything from once upon a time to particularly Hocus-Pocus, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And always they're like a threat to your children specifically.

[SPEAKER_03]: Because they'll eat them up.

[SPEAKER_00]: there's so much to the central idea of like the idea of belittling a woman's power.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if a woman can survive on her own and like can make her own way and like doesn't need a man doesn't get married doesn't produce children then she must be evil and she must be like [SPEAKER_00]: anti-children in some way that is horrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why she's going to eat your children and like all of these things of just like making the idea of if you are a woman and you decide that you don't want to, you want to be on your own.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what you will, you are in danger of becoming, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like creating something to be afraid of.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like I think oftentimes those are the witches that are in like children's bedtime stories because it's sort of like implanting these ideas of like, these are the wrong ways to be a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: So don't you?

[SPEAKER_03]: Another that we see often and none, let me have you comments on this is the kind of the idea of the generational which it's the mother passing down to daughter very specifically, unless you're a queer kid like wick and then you can also do it, gave ways are a lot to be which is to, but we see this you reference the craft earlier or even like a practical magic there's a lot of versions.

[SPEAKER_07]: I left seeing that because to it like if they'll kind of the familiar relationship, I was thinking about it too like in like shows like vampire diaries and things like that where it's a very big portion of that show where these women who are which is having immense power and it is a familiar thing that's passed down through generations, I think it's really important for us to see stories where it's like these bonds that are formed.

[SPEAKER_07]: are formed in opposition to the norm.

[SPEAKER_07]: So what's going on around them.

[SPEAKER_07]: And it also gives an access to their ancestors and it gives an access to history that way, which is really grounding, especially for like people of color, where it's like a lot of that is lost.

[SPEAKER_07]: So like when we see, you know, and we talked a little bit about like the religious aspect of things so much of, you know, [SPEAKER_07]: Christian Lee is opposed to other religions that are more based in nature and we'll call that witchcraft.

[SPEAKER_07]: So I think it's really interesting that we see some of that like passed down generationally and they ask us that they have to that because of their family and their historical religious backgrounds.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then the last one I'll toss your way.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is one that we don't think of, but it fits.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Kevin, I'll have you comment here.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the idea of the modern witch.

[SPEAKER_03]: Sabrina, the teenage witch, a bewitched.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the, it's charmed, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the witch living in modern society.

[SPEAKER_03]: And she has to keep her power secret.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the same throat, but like put in the modern age.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think there's something fun about this.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is where we get more comic bookie.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think as we come along here of the secret wish, I wish I had powers.

[SPEAKER_02]: What would be like to have powers in the real world?

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a little bit of that kind of wish fulfillment that happens.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think when you think of, I could also have a secret power or there's a secret, you know, there's a power welling up inside of me as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: But how would it work in the real world?

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it shows there's a willingness for women to have more of a voice and they kind of have a place in the world now And then it's trying to fit it in with still keeping the power that we represent with all that you know feminine energy But then putting it into Challenging the patriarchy a little bit when you're putting them into situations where they have to be in a workplace Or they have to be in the home and how do they juggle all this stuff when we've never seen that before but then also trying to see men's reaction [SPEAKER_02]: to this power in a lot of these situations, especially when the woman's the protagonist of the story, which I think is fascinating.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think people need because that's where the conversations come out and that's where these characters become fully rounded.

[SPEAKER_03]: We first meet Agatha Harkness in 1970.

[SPEAKER_03]: Fantastic Four has been around for several years at this point.

[SPEAKER_03]: So it's fantastic Four number 94.

[SPEAKER_03]: Because we need a nanny for Franklin.

[SPEAKER_03]: If we want to put Sue back in the fantastic Four, there we got to have someone to watch the kid at home, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: The name Agatha itself means good or kind or honorable.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the name Harkness just kind of means the son of Harkon.

[SPEAKER_03]: Harkon is like a name referencing like a high son or a noble heir.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we have this kind of name representing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now Agatha of course is like just an old lady name that we often think of, you know, like it's something that's of a previous generation.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they go to interview her in her home on Whisper Hill.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a massive estate that gives major Halloween vibes.

[SPEAKER_03]: She is wise and wrinkled and practically ancient.

[SPEAKER_03]: The only person we see in comics looking like this in the same era is Aunt May.

[SPEAKER_03]: So she's that when the thing beats Agatha Harkness, he goes, she reminds me of that name and the fairy tale who invited kids into her college and made cookies out of them.

[SPEAKER_03]: The decor of Agatha's house is startling.

[SPEAKER_03]: There are monster statues and paintings of men burning or worshiping a devil in bonfire.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha has a very mysterious cat, her familiar his name is Ebony, and the thing wonders when out loud when Vincent Price is going to show up.

[SPEAKER_03]: The frightful for attack and Agatha uses spells to aid in defeating the villains, and Ebony, who is kind of demonic ends up growing to the size of a panther during the story.

[SPEAKER_03]: As the thing leaves the house, he notices a book called the Tales of Old Salem, and he looks at Agatha with suspicion and said, and she says, [SPEAKER_03]: is something wrong, Mr.

Grimm, you're looking at me so strangely, one would almost think that I were a witch, and the thing goes running down the sidewalk like Donald Duck's style, he's all scared.

[SPEAKER_03]: So it takes a lot of time to get to the origins of Ag at the hardness.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's really interesting to consider the archetypes of maiden mother-crowned that we often [SPEAKER_03]: and see reference for women in magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if you look at Agatha's history in comic books, we see that in reverse.

[SPEAKER_03]: She starts as the Cron, and then eventually we learn she's the mother of Nicholas Scratch, who has the children who make up Salem seven, and then in the more modern era, because of WandaVision and Agatha all along, she's been kind of de-aged.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now she's like in her like Hot Milfera, as she runs around as like a chaos agent in her maiden form.

[SPEAKER_03]: Her child, Nicholas scratch, who will be talking about no while, describes the origins thus.

[SPEAKER_03]: In centuries ago, we, who were witches, led lives of great persecution.

[SPEAKER_03]: In Old Salem, our fellows were slain for their beliefs, and thus, we, who remained left humanity behind and founded our own community.

[SPEAKER_03]: We called this city New Salem so that we would never forget our years of suffering and swore never to involve ourselves with mortal men again.

[SPEAKER_03]: But Agatha Harkness has defied our laws.

[SPEAKER_03]: The reasons yet unexplained, she who is once our leader departed New Salem and committed the unparadable sin of revealing our existence to those of the outside world.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now she must pay for her crime.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Old Salem is of course the witch hunts, but New Salem is a Marvel playable and where a lot of witches get together and just live in peace.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is also the place where Wanda takes all the magic [SPEAKER_03]: like she wants to have a babies with the synthesoid and so the energy of the devil and the energy of New Salem is what happens there.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is kind of a very brief origin of Agatha, who eventually we learn does connect to the old Salem times, which is again very much played on in the modern Agatha all along series where Catherine Hans character is a mother who is kind of a really terrible person, constantly stealing the power of other witches and consuming them.

[SPEAKER_03]: doing this for centuries, the down-down down the witches' road, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: I love old lady Agatha more than anything.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this character doesn't have a lot of extensive history at Marble, which is surprising.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had no other choice but to make her like an old lady to start, but the concept that you brought up of her reversing the man-mother-crowned in the other way, like, it's interesting thinking about, like, well, that's just where she started, but each of those women represent like a different [SPEAKER_00]: phase in a different type of knowledge or, you know, like, what's their strong suit?

[SPEAKER_00]: How are they leading you in that way?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like when you're in each phase?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so to think about her just personal journey being the reverse of that and does that actually align with where she is as a character?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think what does be fun for us to kind of like keep in mind as we see her throughout like she's maturing in a different way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that you brought that point up.

[SPEAKER_07]: I always felt like reading and like watching her, like in Marvel's other various forms.

[SPEAKER_07]: She always felt very mysterious to me and more of like this figure that everyone goes to because she has like such intense magical knowledge.

[SPEAKER_07]: Learning that like ties to her origins this way, and it's been a really interesting kind of perspective where it's like it's very vague, but also it allows for so many different stories to be told in like different versions of her.

[SPEAKER_07]: So I really, it makes me excited to read more about her.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think it's interesting, the parallels to Greek mythology, like with the maiden mother Crone, Hekatei, the Greek goddess of magic.

[SPEAKER_06]: If I remember incorrectly from my intensive college course, you know, she is a maiden in the morning, a mother midday, and then a night turns into a Crone.

[SPEAKER_06]: And so it is interesting for Agatha to be kind of experiencing this Benjamin button effect essentially of that she's kind of aged in reverse through her times in Marvel comics, which is really a truly an Agatha thing of like, okay, I've lived my life normally.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's not good enough for me.

[SPEAKER_06]: Now I want to go back and see how this is going to go.

[SPEAKER_06]: You know, she's very opportunistic.

[SPEAKER_06]: I always see her as being several steps ahead of everyone else.

[SPEAKER_03]: the first hundred or so issues of fantastic for our Stanley and Jack Kirby, almost universally all the way through.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I love that every character they take time to introduce is kind of a new genre, a new trope, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: We're in fantastic for 94.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if we've got to create an Annie, let's make her a crazy witch.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then we're slowly hinting, go back to the trial of Franklin Richards that I did last year.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like Franklin has these kind of god powers, which is of course why Agatha ends up becoming kind of obsessed.

[SPEAKER_03]: So as we slowly get to the version of Agatha, that is maybe not so benevolent and we have the trope of the witch who wants to feed on the child, Agatha's initially kind of drawn to Franklin and then eventually to Wanda, [SPEAKER_03]: who's going to go on to have Billy and Tommy, Billy who is then this witch of ultimate potential himself, and eventually might become the demi-erge, which is like the elder god, then we get agatha connected to Chathan or the chaos god who's also connected.

[SPEAKER_03]: So she's got this kind of obsession with power that's later played up in agatha all along more specifically, but you kind of kind of look for it in between the lines and those early appearances.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the whole month of September on my show we've been talking about Marvel Magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: We opened the month with different interviews about lovecraft and about Marvel Tarot and like these different kind of eldritch or universal concepts of magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: The rules of Marvel Magic can be really tricky to follow.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I hope you all really enjoyed my interview with David Sexton in particular on the Marvel Magic Rules, which we'll be coming out tomorrow for those of us recording this today.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's really fantastic.

[SPEAKER_03]: Marvel has always had spellbooks and magic artifacts and magic sigilus and pentagrams, there's forms of magic where you draw on energy from universal sources, there's ones where you draw from your own power or from the life force of others, but magic always has a cost.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's different ways that works and it's again, the rules have been interpreted wildly.

[SPEAKER_03]: But if you go back to the early versions where you have Dr.

Strange and Agatha Harkness, there's like these rhyming stanzas and flowery words, it's very Shakespearean and Agatha gets some like bangers spells.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me read just a few of them to you.

[SPEAKER_03]: In Fantastic 410, let candle glow, let shadows grow.

[SPEAKER_03]: Higher, higher mystic fire.

[SPEAKER_03]: I cry the name no ear can hear.

[SPEAKER_03]: I call the source of timeless fear.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now blow you wind, I stand on bowed.

[SPEAKER_03]: for I am clocked in shade and shroud in Fantastic Four 114 we get.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let earthly barriers now be gone, let flame and sin you be as one fire burn.

[SPEAKER_03]: Power grow, fire set the world aglow.

[SPEAKER_03]: Matchless strength now fuel the fire ever further.

[SPEAKER_03]: higher, higher, in the name of hex and shade.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let my mortal image fade, let all distance turn to dust, let my will supply the thrust, let the rock become as air, let the here become the [SPEAKER_03]: Power of science cannot stand when a sorceress plays her hand, Warlock's magic, which is curse.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let Yon force field now disperse, air appears the glow of dawn, let us to be now begun.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now there's always kind of an energy of the Faustian bargain when you're doing magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you're drawing entities into you use the right words, do you make the right deal?

[SPEAKER_03]: How much is taking back?

[SPEAKER_03]: Because if you give too much, they'll take you over.

[SPEAKER_03]: So there's always this kind of playing with the devil energy for her just a little bit.

[SPEAKER_03]: But let's jump to trial of Magdito number two by our dear friend Leo Williams.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Scarlet Witch says that this here's what I've learned about magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: Magic knows no master.

[SPEAKER_03]: It belongs to neither God's nor man.

[SPEAKER_03]: It is the in-between.

[SPEAKER_03]: fraying edge between reality and unreality.

[SPEAKER_03]: A hidden string secretly linking all things that only the adroit may tug free.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a threshold crossed only by rote, or by rites.

[SPEAKER_03]: A clandestine path choosing who among the ceaseless, quest-spumbling toward divinity are the truly worthy.

[SPEAKER_03]: It is the moon's gentle glissando of tides and all the liminal pools of life that leaves [SPEAKER_03]: even one glimmering in small and infinitely lonely.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the place non-confollow, an implication luring between words, the coil of rope before it cinches in purpose to rescue or ruin, there's the magic even in the intent driving a dagger.

[SPEAKER_03]: One may become a dept in magic's navigations, but never in its dominion, because magic rules itself and morality simply bears witness.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, when we think of witches, we think of spells, but often the spells are a cauldron.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm tossing these mystical kind of forbidden, even gross ingredients, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: The warp of toe, the hair off the back of a dog and heats neck, the essence of a man drained from the version of the black flame candle, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: I'll just toss it up to shit out.

[SPEAKER_03]: there's all these like words and then you have to have a particular order.

[SPEAKER_03]: So magic is science misunderstood.

[SPEAKER_03]: And what do you see characters like Iron Man and Reed Richards like really struggling to grasp it?

[SPEAKER_03]: We're like very innocent kids at Stranger Academy just learn a few spells like they're at Hogwarts.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're like are able to do the thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, if I recount Agatha's history at super speed, we've got the ancient witch on Whisperhill, Franklin's Nanny, Wanda's tutor, mother of Nicholas Scratch and thus grand mother of the Salem seven who we'll talk about in a while.

[SPEAKER_03]: She's burned at the stake.

[SPEAKER_03]: Then she comes back from the dead as a ghost initially and then Wanda revives her and kills her again.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then she's turned into a hot young mom who is very invested in chaos.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's a very good idea.

[SPEAKER_03]: very simple, like very vastly oversimplified, and we'll be exploring her journey in the trial today.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I get this interest focuses on key agents of massive power, Franklin, Wanda, Wicken, and then her most recent appearance is the Darkhold itself, which she manifests into a human child who then wants nothing to do with her afterward.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like how actually in Agatha all along they start kind of really using any it's sort of in the MCU in general they start using a color story to make it a very simple based thing where people may be pulling their magic from so it gives it a little bit of order so there's a little bit of a red blue a green kind of world and maybe they're not 100% clear as to what that means but it's starting to get a little bit of [SPEAKER_02]: clarity because I do think there's a randomness on how magic shows up.

[SPEAKER_02]: I prefer old school when they were having to use objects and then use a spell like an actual rhyming spell to kind of pull the power from it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It gave it a little bit more of a challenge and kind of a sense of there being some communing with nature.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think I prefer old school.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think two to bounce off that, what's most appealing about language is that it's so accessible.

[SPEAKER_06]: So even for us as fans and as normal, non-magical humans, there's that like when you're reading any sort of magical story, whether it's the magical school that everyone knows that I'm not going to name or, you know, written by that woman.

[SPEAKER_06]: Sorry, I won't get on my tangent.

[SPEAKER_03]: as a generation really love a lot of Harry Potter and what it represented the author has gone on to be kind of a shitbag.

[SPEAKER_03]: Love a lot of the Harry Potter.

[SPEAKER_06]: I do too.

[SPEAKER_06]: I do too.

[SPEAKER_06]: But and so what I won't mention her.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yes we won't mention her but what's really interesting I think about that series and what really appealed to me as a kid and I think appealed to a lot of readers as kids is just that if I learn the words is magic and it happened like I try casting spells in my bedroom.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_06]: And so I think within Marvel, it's a similar sort of thing.

[SPEAKER_06]: And also within DC, when you think about as a Tana of just, you know, how can you use words to access magic?

[SPEAKER_06]: How can I learn to use words in this way?

[SPEAKER_03]: This takes me to me as a kid.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, Mormons are crazy.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there's like all this belief in like weird evil spirits.

[SPEAKER_03]: But like Mormons also like the religious authorities can do certain things if they channel God correctly.

[SPEAKER_03]: They can they can heal if you have enough faith.

[SPEAKER_03]: right, but you never want to delve into like the dark magic Satan's always right there waiting.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I remember him as like a kid channeling like Ouija boards and there's this kind of feeling of like who's something for Bidden's gonna happen, but also if you don't believe in it, nothing's gonna happen.

[SPEAKER_03]: And you are expecting to be tricked all the time too, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it was just something they tricked us with like learning magic tricks.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like the illusion of magic But then there's that kind of tapping into dark forces or good forces the good versus evil version of it and the way that's viewed Because as a kid the the whole year the divine was good and then the satanic was bad But now that I'm kind of an out queer woke person.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of reversed [SPEAKER_07]: I think that I've been thinking about this a lot more as I've been like diving into like the other magical characters like brother Voodoo, I think is a really great example of like where his magic sometimes he makes deals and tying to like the spiritual or to like you know evil spirits like making deals not just for [SPEAKER_07]: for good purposes, but with demons, I think it's such an interesting perspective or how magic in the X-Men has ties to limbo and all of the things that are there, I think that that's such an interesting way of looking at how, while they're using magic for heroism, it's still coming from possibly dangerous place.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also really appreciate the consistency with the idea that magic comes at a price and like continuously referencing that like as an entity of how they tell the story of magic of that like it takes a part of you with it and how that affects characters who wield magic and what they're using their magic for.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's like a rule in Marvel magic that I like because I think it adds more depth to the stories for the characters and like makes them have to think more about the choices they're making when they wield their magic just because they have access to it like should they use it how do they use it like throwing that as a region storytelling I think is fun.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting to when we consider magic characters, and I talked about this earlier in the month, but there's a lot of magic used in X-Men very specifically.

[SPEAKER_03]: The concepts of mutant magic, but we've got a lot of villains who represent these tropes, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Margolly Shardos and Blasco, and then these entities like Citerac, there's this kind of obsession with childhood innocence, because that's what we're so worried about something being corrupted in the wrong way.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the evil entity always wants to get the child, to take the child, to trade me your first born for this, you know, you can turn strata gold but give me your first born as a result.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's always that kind of that kind of obsession with innocence or virginity, that we're worried about.

[SPEAKER_03]: No tropes of evil women who are gonna steal the essence of men or take your children.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is its own kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: But again, it's Hansel and Gretel.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the witch with the candy house because then the kid wants to come inside and she'll toss them in the oven.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's always very that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Who are some of your favorite marble magic characters?

[SPEAKER_03]: Any that you'd love to toss out that you're just kind of particularly fond of in a certain way?

[SPEAKER_03]: I love Nicol Menoru from The Ronald Ways.

[SPEAKER_03]: Is it a top favorite mind or sister grim?

[SPEAKER_03]: I love Eliana Rasputin.

[SPEAKER_07]: I was always drawn to Brother Voodoo, I think he's so great and he has ties to, you know, Dr.

Strange and Scarlett Witch and, you know, the sources are preem in that kind of stuff.

[SPEAKER_07]: So that's what I always lean more towards just because like he's also doing crazy stuff and he's got his brother as a go spirit kind of egging him on.

[SPEAKER_05]: I still ship one and, and Dr.

video.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think it's to happen.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like she did to see me in a nice man.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's interesting too because a lot of times we view magic as like, it's something from another culture that we don't understand.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like cultural traditions that white writers will latch on to.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I think when you tell it right, it's beautiful, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: I like Amanda Scepton just because she wasn't used nearly enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I like to when she kind of started getting a little magical.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Clea, I love Clea.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, absolutely, Eliana is a huge one for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not maybe I sound obvious, but I'm just everybody here together right now on this recording.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's a stained glass magic sword in your window behind you.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's something.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's also one right there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, at least because I heard them slow swords.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was it?

[SPEAKER_00]: I have more soul sword pieces of merch or strategies than any one person should own.

[SPEAKER_00]: And including three soul swords I've made anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also really like Nico.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think Nico is a really fun character.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just really don't think I know enough about the magic elements of the Marvel universe like there's probably so many characters that are so dope that I just don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: literally literally hundreds.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was fun stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was some really fun stuff in iron hard actually where they brought some more magic into that like story so the mini series of iron hard used some of it pretty well.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yes, I've been staffed making deals.

[SPEAKER_07]: I've finished that.

[SPEAKER_06]: I've been a while since I've read the series but midnight sends I mean there's a whole magic marvel video game which was I think it's kind of underrated.

[SPEAKER_06]: I really enjoyed it.

[SPEAKER_06]: Scottie's disagreeing with me.

[SPEAKER_05]: We gotta get into it.

[SPEAKER_03]: But Dr.

Strange and Ghost Strider in man's things, these characters that are like deep in these realms and worlds.

[SPEAKER_03]: But even Dracula is magic associated.

[SPEAKER_03]: So there's always the evil entity right, Dormamu just had a big thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Dr.

Doom is always channeling magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like all these characters kind of connect.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's like the weird realms from like around.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love the really obscure shit.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like I love one Dr.

Strange goes to the purple dimension.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's still always really makes me happy.

[SPEAKER_03]: Magic is loaded with colors and motherhood.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like there's all these different tropes that we just can't delve into too deeply.

[SPEAKER_03]: We need Shimagaraff to come back.

[SPEAKER_03]: You need to bother people again.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're gonna delve into the trial of Agatha Harkness today.

[SPEAKER_03]: Again, there's not a lot to this character.

[SPEAKER_03]: So this trial's a little bit easier because we don't have to delve into hundreds of appearances.

[SPEAKER_03]: She doesn't have a ton of marble history.

[SPEAKER_03]: But Agatha O'Log, again, Katherine Hahn, if you ever listen to my show, I would, I would kill her in an interview.

[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it's so joyful to see this like team of witches and these like high stakes, uh, so queer, so wonderful.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to launch into the trial of Agatha Harkness.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now as always, each of my jury members has taken a specific section of Agatha's history and will be writing a prosecution and a defense.

[SPEAKER_03]: We will vote at the end of each and take a full score.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the trial votes, we can go anywhere from zero, which is completely innocent to five, which is completely evil, and you get to put those numbers wherever you choose.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, trial point one, we are simply calling Franklin's Nanny.

[SPEAKER_03]: The key issues here are, Frank Fantastic Four, 94, 123, 129, and 141, that the assigned jury member here is Kevin Connect.

[SPEAKER_03]: Living for years in isolation on Whisper Hill, Agatha Hardness chose to become the nanny for the newborn Franklin Richards and the child was left with her for extended periods of time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha often used her magic to chaotic effect during times while protecting Franklin, or while eating the fantastic foreign various missions.

[SPEAKER_03]: When the fright before attacked her home, she summoned a shadowy demon to defeat the trapster.

[SPEAKER_03]: She turned sad, sandman, solid, and then she sent her cat Ebony in a monstrous panther form to chase away the wizard.

[SPEAKER_03]: Months later, when the fantastic four-faced the deadly threat of the overmind and alien being from another planet containing the consciousnesses of billions of mines, he was a threat to Earth himself.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha cast a spell that halted time and traded night for day, and she even altered spaces [SPEAKER_03]: self wielding magic at an insane degree to help save Earth.

[SPEAKER_03]: In time sensing dangerous threats from her past, Agatha abruptly quit being Franklin's nanny, but she was never quite honest about her intentions in the first place because it turned out Franklin has got powers that you almost wonder if she was draining his energy during this time.

[SPEAKER_03]: She has the ability to manipulate reality and even create universes.

[SPEAKER_03]: She seemingly only watched him in order to study him.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe?

[SPEAKER_03]: Despite her abrupt resignation, Agatha returned months later when Franklin was kidnapped by Anilus into the negative zone, and she wielded power once again to massive degree to save the boy from the extra-dimensional warlord.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me turn it over to Kevin Canary here on his very own witch hunt.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, speaking of a witch hunt, my friends, the jury.

[SPEAKER_02]: Please disregard some of the slanderous words our narrator has used about Ms.

[SPEAKER_02]: Agatha in her early days.

[SPEAKER_02]: Calling out the judge, oh, I will just say I'm just saying that we will prove without a shadow of any doubt.

[SPEAKER_02]: Agatha's innocence.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, you have heard from our witness, Mr.

Benjamin J.

Grimm, of some of his claims against Agatha, and the fact that she is incompetent.

[SPEAKER_02]: Her old age, making her a bad choice as a nanny, she has neglect where she's no longer paying attention to the child.

[SPEAKER_02]: Lots of criticism of her bad interior design from her paintings to her furniture and just to general overall spukiness.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you've heard those claims from Benjamin J.

Grimm, as well as in one section, the silver surfer.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I am here to tell you that there is a different story and it is the truth.

[SPEAKER_02]: So let us go point by point and hear how Agatha came into it being and working with the fantastic for.

[SPEAKER_02]: She was approached by Mr.

Fantastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have no doubt, Mr.

Fantastic, one of the most intelligent people in the entire universe.

[SPEAKER_02]: Did his research and check to see her credentials, making her an excellent choice as a nanny?

[SPEAKER_02]: So she had an online resume clearly.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was able to find that out, checked with her, got good references, because as he's driving, the Fantastic Hard to drop Franklin off, says that he has full faith in her ability.

[SPEAKER_02]: She came out of retirement for this job showing her care and her interest in helping children.

[SPEAKER_02]: She does reference briefly that because she knows that the parents are famous, this was of interest to her and to her to come out of retirement.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I will say she is a humble character.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's very unassuming about her abilities or powers, just is very sure of herself and how she will take care of Franklin, but doesn't go into long descriptions of what she can do.

[SPEAKER_02]: She has a wonderfully beautiful, we're native painting of the Salem Witch Burning trials in her house showing she honors the past and that she is aware of where she came from, so she is very much connected to generational knowledge.

[SPEAKER_02]: The frightful four comes in attacks her very own home.

[SPEAKER_02]: Does she hold it against the fantastic for that they have brought this to her doorstep?

[SPEAKER_02]: No, what does she do?

[SPEAKER_02]: She takes care of the problem herself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then doesn't make a big deal about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: She basically just brushes it off and been like, hey, the baby has to go to sleep.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think you all need to just go to your rooms.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again, she shows great skill.

[SPEAKER_02]: She shows knowledge.

[SPEAKER_02]: She shows care.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now Ben, ultimately, I'm going to put him out here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe he should be the one on trial.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's clearly ages in a corporate America setting.

[SPEAKER_02]: This would be she's clearly in a protected characteristics.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I do think there's a problem here that he should be looked at.

[SPEAKER_02]: She mentions that she is aware of the powers of Franklin Richard, but at no time do we see her siphoning energy off.

[SPEAKER_02]: There is no time we'll receive that she is manipulating the situations so she can at private time if anything.

[SPEAKER_02]: Knowing that a nihilist is coming back from the negative zone, causing trouble, she sends Franklin away.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she calls the parents.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now abruptly, I will say it could be, you know, taken the fact that maybe she needed to give more warning to the parents so they could handle child care that did not happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was urgent.

[SPEAKER_02]: She shows the need.

[SPEAKER_02]: She gets the child back to the parents who she knows are capable of handling this food with a nihilist.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, did later, she get in bed with a nihilis and basically kidnapped Sue in the child.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, but it was because she knew that the child was becoming possibly very dangerous with the power that was building up in Franklin Richards.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again, very careful, very thoughtful, protecting the universe, not just the child.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's a very caring kind of nanny of the universe.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could even say, not just a Franklin Richards.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I bring all that to you so that you can disregard the statements from Mr.

Benjamin J.

Grimm, the silver surfer, and potentially even our judge.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's very lovely, except for the part where you insulted me personally.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I will be finding your firm, but for the purpose of today.

[SPEAKER_03]: What was it like for you, Kevin, to jump into these old FF comics?

[SPEAKER_03]: There's fun, they're really fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're fun, they're so fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what I love about it is it's her first appearances and it's when she's still mysterious and maybe a little plot devicey, not a full character yet, but there's something about a fun character who people aren't sure about yet, especially when you're following your main characters or a little unsure of what secrets are there.

[SPEAKER_02]: But when she, in her first appearance, Handily, takes out the frightful for, without even telling the fantastic for, they're still like, wait, something's going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: And by the time they get there, she's gotten rid of three of them her and Ebony.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, Ebony did have a great Scooby-Doo with, like, they're so scary, like, she thinks.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's so funny.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's what feels very 70s about the whole thing to everything about it and then just her popping up and and it adds to that whole secret and power of Franklin to so she's kind of always going to be tied to that because she's kind of introduced at the same time there's meanwhile like marital problems going on and she seems like the the sure kind of foundation weirdly enough.

[SPEAKER_07]: I would say that her efforts to protect not just frankly, but like the whole world, I think speaks volumes to what she's doing in her earlier appearances.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think it's very heroic, but she's willing to, you know, handle business and also make sure that everyone is safe even if, you know, she's channeling a lot of magic.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that she's doing it for the right reasons.

[SPEAKER_05]: I have a related question, Mr.

Canary, as the prosecutor and defense for Agatha, who like my question is who knew what when?

[SPEAKER_05]: Like did we know that she was a witch but he hired her?

[SPEAKER_05]: Because there are additional questions here that I think of.

[SPEAKER_02]: There are claims.

[SPEAKER_02]: I will say there is proof of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Read claims in a statement to Mr.

Grim later, that he was not aware of her witch-like abilities when he first dropped the child off.

[SPEAKER_02]: But he does not seem to have a problem with it, and this is like almost in the very second time that they dropped a child off.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he is aware of it now continues to send the child for today care.

[SPEAKER_02]: And basically tells his best friend at the time to shut the hell up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Excuse me, I would just like to point out that we, we have not made any kinds of statements that say that being a witch is inherently a bad thing therefore shouldn't matter almost everyone voting zero Like she kind of did nothing wrong, and I'd love to hear any of your thoughts on that, but she's fighting super villains She's aiding superheroes.

[SPEAKER_03]: Scottie is kind of our outlier.

[SPEAKER_03]: Scottie tell me your thoughts here.

[SPEAKER_05]: She has a long history of reckless and dangerous men This is just the first step happy to have to put a child in a harm's way if it serves her own hands [SPEAKER_02]: I claim that it is the read and sue problem, not agophist.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're welcome to do that.

[SPEAKER_03]: There is a certain amount of deception there, but I don't think it's that problematic.

[SPEAKER_03]: Scuddy, what's your vote?

[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's like a two.

[SPEAKER_03]: That gives us a two out of thirty.

[SPEAKER_03]: And now we have to have a job to trial point two.

[SPEAKER_03]: Called one does tutor the key issues here are Avengers 128 and 33.

[SPEAKER_03]: Scarlet which annual number one from 2023.

[SPEAKER_03]: Same year Avengers annual number one.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then Scarlet which volume four number six.

[SPEAKER_03]: The assigned jury member here is Taylor Vessel.

[SPEAKER_03]: Moving on from Franklin Richards, Agatha focused her attention on Wanda Maximoff, the mutant with the hex spheres.

[SPEAKER_03]: agreeing to tutor the girl in magic, not being forced right with Wanda.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha sealed her in a contained space, just as the sorcerer, a necronomus attack.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love this weird guy, he's terrible, he's such a weirdo.

[SPEAKER_03]: A bulking himself to a massively frightening creature.

[SPEAKER_03]: Ebony grew to giant size to combat him, and [SPEAKER_03]: Agatha Thene defeats of the Scarlet Witch would have to defeat Necridamus herself.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it all seemed to be an elaborate test of Wanda's abilities.

[SPEAKER_03]: In time, it would come to be known that Wanda is adept at controlling and wielding chaos magic.

[SPEAKER_03]: And she's also a nexus being able to alter reality around her, but that's for a future time.

[SPEAKER_03]: We see the weeks later, when Wanda has learned how to focus her hexes, and she animates a chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: A good Lord Wanda says in surprise, and Agatha replies, If you wish to retain my service as child, you will not use that phrase in this room again.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's most counterproductive, I'm realizing a really one-day Maggie Smith from Downton Abbey to play Agatha.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha blasts the chair down.

[SPEAKER_03]: When one summons both fear that four forces from the on-one must never relinquish control my deists.

[SPEAKER_03]: Still I'm quite pleased with your progress, soon you shall do more than move furniture, much [SPEAKER_03]: many years later in New Salem, I get to stab the sorcerer Neckerdamus when he saw an alliance with her and then she sent zombies to devour him.

[SPEAKER_03]: I get the suit meets with Wanda and Dallas knowing that the Scarlet Witch is now completely imprisoning Jethan within her.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Agatha warns that Wanda is growing too fragile.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is Milf Agatha, by the way, a lot of time has passed between the two time periods.

[SPEAKER_03]: To test her Agatha attacks Wanda with brood eggs, and then spirals her through several dimensions, including that of the witch's road.

[SPEAKER_03]: So this is post Agatha all along.

[SPEAKER_03]: Then while pretending to make peace with Wanda, she stole the heart of Jethan.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha then proceeded to manipulate many superheroes into fighting each other so that she could feed off their [SPEAKER_03]: The battles culminated in the Bermuda Triangle where Agatha controlled several heroes into fighting the others, while they were distracted, she used the magic build up to give the darkhold a new form that of a human child.

[SPEAKER_03]: She later showed up at Wanda's shop, the Emporium, bringing the character Amaranth Hallet to train with Wanda, and she had an eliminator robot built on the planet Amana and sent it to attack Amaranth to test her abilities.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'll let me turn it over to Taylor.

[SPEAKER_06]: What is the purpose of a teacher, but to educate and challenge their pupils?

[SPEAKER_06]: Teachers mold the next generation of leaders of those who will change the world.

[SPEAKER_06]: My client, the altruistic Agatha Marine Heartness is a true teacher.

[SPEAKER_06]: She offered guidance to a wayward witch with little control of her powers.

[SPEAKER_06]: When Agatha Lydia Heartness met one to maximum off the young witch could cast just two spells, a meek image of the spellcaster that she would one day become.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, Agatha has challenged the Scarlet Witch, even from their first encounter when she presented Wanda with the task of overcoming Necredamus, a formidable but overcompensating foe as the Scarlet Witch's tutor, Agatha Esther Harkness gave up herself.

[SPEAKER_06]: She put herself in her beloved cat Ebony in harm's way because she believed in the Scarlet Witch.

[SPEAKER_06]: A nexus being with a power to accomplish literally anything.

[SPEAKER_06]: Agatha Elizabeth Harkness empowered Wanda, training her, and preparing her for all her heroic feats to come.

[SPEAKER_06]: Think about what could have happened if Wanda had not been trained by my client.

[SPEAKER_06]: Could she have called upon the elements to contain the flesh-eating red zone?

[SPEAKER_06]: Could she have sacrificed her own life, who stopped the corrupt onslaught?

[SPEAKER_06]: Do you think Wanda could have controlled the chaotic god Kathan and the legendary Darkhold in her own soul without the help of Agatha?

[SPEAKER_06]: The Supreme Heart, one of Agatha's greatest examples of compassion, is when she rid her people of the burden of Kathan.

[SPEAKER_06]: She always knew Wanda's limits, always never giving her more than she could handle.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, Agatha challenged the Scarlet Way, but not as an adversary, but as her tutor, eventually interesting wanted to take on a mysterious pupil of her own, because she believes in her student.

[SPEAKER_06]: You must vote for her to be found innocent of all wrongdoing in her role as guide [SPEAKER_06]: Now, for the prosecution, it is responsible, manipulative, sadistic, and self-serving.

[SPEAKER_06]: Those are all words to describe the vile Agatha Heart Miss, a witch who has lived for centuries only to do so by always being several steps ahead of everyone.

[SPEAKER_06]: the machinations of manipulation of her pupil, wand and maximum off the scarlet witch, were put into motion from the moment they met.

[SPEAKER_06]: Agatha prayed on a young inexperience desperate witch, a woman who struggled with a shrenuous, unpredictable power.

[SPEAKER_06]: Agatha saw an opportunity to create a weapon of magical mass destruction.

[SPEAKER_06]: Agatha began teaching Wanda in the ways of witchcraft.

[SPEAKER_06]: She offered Wanda answers, only to provide her with half true, who's trust she gained by offering Wanda control, but then she longed for the defense, who obviously doesn't know his own client's name, says Agatha never gave Wanda something she couldn't handle, prove it.

[SPEAKER_06]: He is widely speculating as to the untrained abilities of a desperate witch.

[SPEAKER_06]: Agatha prayed on Wanda, time and time again, taking advantage of her optimism, her compassion, and her heroic duty.

[SPEAKER_06]: Perhaps the most heinous and violating act of this so-called teacher, came when Agatha tricked Wanda into drinking a part of Agatha's own self, giving her access to invade Wanda's soul without the witch's permission.

[SPEAKER_06]: She hid her true desires and a fight across the multiverse.

[SPEAKER_06]: pretending as if the two women were simply taking measure of each other and the way is only beings of such mystical power can.

[SPEAKER_06]: She lays want to see with brood eggs.

[SPEAKER_06]: Brood eggs!

[SPEAKER_06]: She turned her pupil into a blood-firsting alien.

[SPEAKER_06]: Is that something a good teacher would do?

[SPEAKER_06]: Then she broke into Wanda's soul, shattering her sense of security, breaking into the prison that Wanda tirelessly created to contain the God of Chaos Cethan, cheapening her pupils' sacrifice.

[SPEAKER_06]: She did all of this for her own desires.

[SPEAKER_06]: She aimed to recreate the Dark Hold, an evil object of power that Wanda had desperately worked so hard to defeat, continuing her habits of manipulation.

[SPEAKER_06]: She controlled multiple heroes in her so-called contest of chaos all to create a new Dark Hold.

[SPEAKER_06]: She never, I repeat, never cared for Wanda Maximoff.

[SPEAKER_06]: She used the Scarlet Witch, gaining her trust when she was hopeful and optimistic, wanting to get ahead in life.

[SPEAKER_06]: I got the carelessly abused her role as a tutor and that of a spellcaster.

[SPEAKER_06]: The truest villain of the Scarlet Witch is not her doubt for her emotional instability.

[SPEAKER_06]: No, the true villain was Agatha all along.

[SPEAKER_06]: You, the jury must convict her guilty on all charges.

[SPEAKER_06]: The jaw drops from the jury.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that was smooth.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love your Edgar man voice.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I did not deliver on the Southern.

[SPEAKER_06]: I started on the first word.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I was like, no, this isn't going to come through.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_03]: And again, a lot of it's retrospective.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I get the recognizes, the nexus being the chaos god.

[SPEAKER_03]: And when Wanda is unrestrained, suddenly no more mutants happens, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, so Wanda putting the dark hole in your soul, you kind of wonder.

[SPEAKER_03]: Is Agatha's motivation altruistic here clearly not, but where is she at this kind of ranking on morality?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, Agatha is one of those characters that creators could easily be like, you know, she's been planning this for centuries.

[SPEAKER_06]: I would believe any sort of plan has been in motion for any sort of time with Agatha because she's so it's partly the way she's drawn.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think she always kind of has like a smirk on her face.

[SPEAKER_06]: Um, but it's also the way she carries herself now, now that she's kind of been deaged and is, you know, a milk like she's confident.

[SPEAKER_06]: And she, you can tell that there's always like, cogs turning the way she killed Necredomus, you know, and then it's like, oh, I protected you Scarlet Witch, like, I kept all these bad things from happening to you, like, I'm taking care of you.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then she invades one to soul.

[SPEAKER_06]: I kind of really struggled with my two points because I, I think I convinced myself on both sides.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm really not sure how I want people to vote.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a question.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to talk about this dark-old child situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Was the child formation like Ace?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh no, we don't know what to do with all this power.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to put it somewhere, throw it in a child, or was it always like, this is what I'm going to do with the dark-old.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's...

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me let me mean a piece just for a moment first.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Darkhold has its own very complex history.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's ancient writings that are like connected to like demonic forces, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like it's the evil version of magic that's going to corrupt and harm.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now when the Darkhold gets destroyed, it kind of always returns and one has locked it in her brain so that no one else can access it in a way.

[SPEAKER_03]: so it has to go somewhere.

[SPEAKER_03]: You almost think like there has to be a point when it is placed somewhere.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Agatha sees the option to put it in this child, but also to manipulate and use the child, either for her personal gain or in the name of the greater good.

[SPEAKER_03]: I suppose that's the question here.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a darkhold.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's the darkhold kid.

[SPEAKER_08]: He was just like a party for the darkhold.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, no man kind of with a hat on.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the darkhold given.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's Olaf.

[SPEAKER_00]: a child's pluck from the street.

[SPEAKER_06]: No, I mean, it's so essentially what happens at the end of contest to chaos is everything explodes like it usually does in these store lines and then Agatha suddenly wakes up on a beach and there's this kid and she's like, oh, where are your parents?

[SPEAKER_06]: And he's like, I have no parents.

[SPEAKER_06]: I am what you wanted.

[SPEAKER_06]: You wanted a new dark cold.

[SPEAKER_06]: It is me.

[SPEAKER_06]: But what's interesting about want to taking in the dark cold, as I think it was really creative how she takes the dark cold contains it in herself and then uses the dark cold as a prison for the greater fat threat of kathan.

[SPEAKER_06]: So she kind of like twisted it and used its powers in a way.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_06]: I just think that's a really cool sort of detail.

[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell me more about the roofy that was dropped in her tea?

[SPEAKER_02]: How much of it was she aware of?

[SPEAKER_02]: Was it served up?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is like, just have some tea?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or was there something bigger about that moment?

[SPEAKER_06]: No, so it was very much just like, let's have some tea.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like Agatha was suddenly young again.

[SPEAKER_06]: It was the first time she was meeting Wanda.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it was like, let's sit down and talk through what's been going on in your life.

[SPEAKER_06]: How I've been protecting you and deflecting all of these threats.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, by the way, your tea's laced with brood eggs.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then Wanda starts to turn into a brood.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she did come clean with the information is what you're saying.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she didn't hide it, maybe she waited.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I have to be different.

[SPEAKER_06]: This is the thing with Agatha is it's a half truth.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_06]: So she came clean with saying there were brood eggs.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then they do this whole mystical fight across the universe crashing into the living tribunal like all these things.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then suddenly it's like they're back there just finishing their tea and you know Agatha is like, [SPEAKER_06]: You handled everything just like I knew you would you know convince me that you you are powerful you can handle everything and then she walks away and she's like You didn't notice that I actually slip a piece of my own soul in there because I layered it you know hit it with the brood eggs right like it's essentially putting like two poisons in there and like hiding one within another and and that's how she was able to access one to soul and [SPEAKER_03]: The, the part we're skipping over here a little bit as well is Agatha's also manipulating a lot of heroes into chaotic battles so that she can drain the energy and then she does mind control the heroes into fighting each other, which is very unhinged wand of a very important.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're all decked out in purple, which I love and then there's this wonderful line with Wolverine being like, I fucking hate purple.

[SPEAKER_06]: Why am I wearing purple.

[SPEAKER_05]: how unflattering as she had a purple and Wolverine.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like is it not good?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not a good purple.

[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, you know, as the son of an Italian mother, tough love is something that happens.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going with a one.

[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I'm gonna go three here.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, she's not, I think her motivations are interesting enough to not call her full evil.

[SPEAKER_03]: And again, what was the harm in the long run, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a good story to like, but she's certainly not innocent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm also going to three.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's definitely some tough love there, but there's a little little manipulation in deceit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll find a middle ground.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'm going to go with it too.

[SPEAKER_07]: Mostly because I think I generally don't like the manipulation portion of this, but I feel like there's she's her intentions might still be kind of good in a weird twisted way.

[SPEAKER_07]: So I'm going with a tip.

[SPEAKER_05]: What do you think, Miss Secret Destiny would do in this situation?

[SPEAKER_05]: The question you get to is is something that one of them would do and the higher you go up in the scale.

[SPEAKER_05]: So we're at three because yeah, like let's talk about how many people she like literally mind-controlled together to do something she wanted them to do.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think I'm going to go with a three as well.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I don't think her intentions were all bad, but I think impact is something that very much has to be considered in that level of manipulation is not innocent.

[SPEAKER_03]: delicious.

[SPEAKER_03]: These were fun comics three.

[SPEAKER_03]: I hope you had a blast that gives us a 15 out of 30 in this section and that takes us to trial point three, which we are calling Nicholas's mom.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is she's got it going on.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is the key issues here are fantastic for 181, 185 and 86 fantastic for annual fort.

[SPEAKER_03]: and then again, FF-2223.

[SPEAKER_03]: The assigned jury member here is number one, sensing grave danger to herself.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha broke into the backster building with magic and kidnapped Franklin Richards without explanation, but it does a little good.

[SPEAKER_03]: For she is soon captured by the witches of the community of New Salem.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha's son, Nicholas Scratch, has become the mayor, and he's fathered seven children.

[SPEAKER_03]: The grand children of Agatha Harkness called Salem-Sepad, and this is a cast of crazy, designed characters.

[SPEAKER_03]: I would love to see people cause by all of these characters that like one group one day.

[SPEAKER_03]: Scratch keeps his mother and Franklin hostage, using the powerful Satan staff to maintain control the fantastic four attack, and they are quickly overwhelmed, allowing Scratch to put Agatha on trial before the witches.

[SPEAKER_03]: You have been doing it tried by the very people you once dwelt among and they have found you guilty of betraying a secret that they have struggled so hard.

[SPEAKER_03]: These many years to maintain the secret of our very existence.

[SPEAKER_03]: When you left New Salem years ago, you knew the penalty for anyone convicted of fraturizing with humanity was death, yet still you defy our wishes, and now the time has come for you to lip-sing for your life.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean for you to answer a question with crime.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha, this is the law, you speak as an archaic law, Nicholas One, which has not been employed for many years before I left here.

[SPEAKER_03]: This so-called trial you say I have received is a blatant mockery of justice, perhaps old woman, but when the sentence passed upon you by this kangaroo court has it last been carried out, mockery or not, you will be just as dead.

[SPEAKER_03]: In time, scratches are posed as the big villain, and the fantastic fork to feet agat those evil grandkids, agat the joins with the witches of New Salem and banishes her son from among them.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha starts visiting New Salem weekly and on one such trip she took the fantastic four in Franklin Richards with her, the city is concealed from mortals, but the FF are allowed to visit.

[SPEAKER_03]: Donning a purple robe, we're back in purple.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha glows with eldritch energy, standing before a demonic carving and lit brazers.

[SPEAKER_03]: Once each year, we gather to remember our centuries long persecution to remember the want and slaughter of our brothers and sisters to remember our exodus from mankind and our finding of this promised land of New Salem.

[SPEAKER_03]: Once each year, we gather to remember and renew our strength.

[SPEAKER_03]: In time beneath the full moon to come together and to cast away our sins, a city of witches droop on the power of their ancestors for an honorary ritual, but it seized by Salem [SPEAKER_03]: But Franklin Richards broke them free, and the seven spread a mystic plague over Earth.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha realized her son was behind it and did battle with him in the next realm because he's dead, and he sought to kill her with every attack he could conjure.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha ended up vanishing Salem seven in the end.

[SPEAKER_03]: Finally, from his exile in the dark realm, Nicolas Scratch managed to open a portal to Earth, and he managed to take over the mine to Franklin Richards, who had his god powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the FF go to whisper hill and Agatha conducted a saons over a pentagram.

[SPEAKER_03]: By the power of darkness and the bells midnight toll, I besieged the aid of all agents in freeing the child's soul.

[SPEAKER_03]: Gabriel, the devil hunter, shows up, and the FF had to return to New Salem to fix everything, Salem 7 gets involved again, and of course, scratch was defeated again, and this time Agatha left him alive, but stripped him of all his powers effectively making him human.

[SPEAKER_03]: He comes back again later, it's fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha chose to remain among the witches in New Salem at the end.

[SPEAKER_07]: So I've only prepared a defense for this portion of our trial as I see our Agatha as a victim in a lot of ways here, but also as a hero in the stance that she is willing to stand against her family in order to protect Earth and those that live here.

[SPEAKER_07]: Wow, her methods may be a little bit questionable.

[SPEAKER_07]: I believe that my client has [SPEAKER_07]: maintain her integrity and has maintained the fact that she is willing to do whatever is necessary to protect those around her as much as herself I believe that her endeavors to reconnect with her home and those that will rely on her.

[SPEAKER_07]: proves that she is innocent of all charges and I would like for the prosecution to take back this charge against my client and instead offer up for her to receive an award as a hero of [SPEAKER_03]: You should in this one is kind of related in my brain like is she just I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lack of honesty and transparency Which isn't super consequential but ultimately yes, it's very much her now and I could fall along.

[SPEAKER_03]: We see this Nicholas scratch story played out Right, she's the single mom who makes the deal with death to keep her child alive for longer and then wants to live forever as a result And that's like the only innocence because she'll kill other people's kids [SPEAKER_07]: Sorry, sorry, for is this I always thought of it as like she's still keeping their secrets.

[SPEAKER_07]: So so much of that secrecy is like with new Salem, I don't want to still the beans.

[SPEAKER_07]: I do have or want to, you know, do whatever I'm supposed to be doing in my own endeavors.

[SPEAKER_07]: So while it may seem like she isn't entirely honest, I feel like there are portions of this where she really can't because she is keeping that secret, even if she's not like necessarily a part of the community.

[SPEAKER_06]: Whenever your client stripped her son of his powers, did she have a sort of response or statement for what that experience was like for her and maybe her methodology for choosing them?

[SPEAKER_07]: Do believe that it is heartbreaking for my client to have to remove her son from the community but I think that ultimately we recognize the danger that he poses and after multiple attempts to rehabilitate and remove him, this was our best option.

[SPEAKER_05]: How would you frame the deal with the kidnapping from the Richards and using him as a pawn in this whole system and did to deal with Nymphless Grouch?

[SPEAKER_07]: While the actions of my client are questionable, I do believe that in the long run, she recognized that she could not defeat this threat to herself and to Earth in general alone and the best way that she saw with the live time she had for preparation.

[SPEAKER_07]: was to reach out to allies that she had protected in the past.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think this is a scenario which is regrettable.

[SPEAKER_07]: My club blocked to offer up an apology, but in the long run, I think that with this scenario as it played out, it didn't seem to face the group as they then joined her in a return to New Zealand.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's a couple different ways like is she saving Franklin because she knows he can help save the day or that Nicholas is going to target him.

[SPEAKER_03]: Nicholas possessing Franklin is kind of a frightening image.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's always the evil possessing the child, you know, to not maybe I would I would also get on to one depending, but I think to like not not great choices, I guess, but like you have like done the thing.

[SPEAKER_05]: So I do understand difficult choices.

[SPEAKER_06]: I would say the same reasoning, difficult choices.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I'm going to go with one.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think when faced with kind of your past and such hard options presented before you, sometimes you're going to make the right decision and sometimes you're going to make the wrong one.

[SPEAKER_06]: Ultimately, you know, really the, I think the person who has harmed the most in this was probably Agatha herself.

[SPEAKER_06]: I agree.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to go one as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a zero for me, actually.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think she did anything wrong here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm going to go one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just like teeter on the secret, but that's not that big of a deal.

[SPEAKER_03]: The secrets are meant to be teated on.

[SPEAKER_07]: And I will vote a one, I think only because I know like from my mother's perspective how like challenging that would be for her knowing like that she would have to harm her son in a lot of ways.

[SPEAKER_07]: But also, I vote a one because in this art, you could be art before the prosecution is like, Grayson, I know better.

[SPEAKER_07]: Like you had all this time, like your son is not like new.

[SPEAKER_07]: You're growing man.

[SPEAKER_07]: You got seven kids like come on.

[SPEAKER_07]: But you know, it's hard because you love your kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm a grown man in that he's centuries old.

[SPEAKER_07]: Yes, I'm sure he's still getting rid of his magic girl.

[SPEAKER_07]: Should've made a good one for his first kid.

[SPEAKER_03]: No one's accusing Agatha being a good mom or a good grandmother, but she did it on here.

[SPEAKER_03]: So this gives us a six out of 30 in this section, which takes us to trial point for death and rebirth.

[SPEAKER_03]: The assigned jury member here is Alicia Wilder.

[SPEAKER_03]: Alicia, I always love that you're willing to jump over the Marvel Universe per week.

[SPEAKER_03]: This takes us to vision in the Scarlet Witch volume two numbers three through five and weirdly Nova volume two numbers six and seven and I try to give you the X-Men content my friend Akita has been tied to the stake by the witch of New Salem.

[SPEAKER_03]: They are spurred on by Salem seven who shout burn which burn and she yells [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I'll do.

[SPEAKER_03]: And you've bound me in the old ways that even one such as I can not escape your vengeance, but vengeance shall be mine as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: I curse you all from my grave, you and all of New Salem.

[SPEAKER_03]: I give you birth and I give you death.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then the weed will turn again and so swears with a friend, Sanderson.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I could feel hawkness.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they did it.

[SPEAKER_03]: They burned her at the stake.

[SPEAKER_03]: But soon, vision and Scarlet Witch are brought to the village, and Agatha, as a ghost, guides Wanda in destroying the entire civilization.

[SPEAKER_03]: Then Wanda uses the collective power of all the witches there to get herself pregnant.

[SPEAKER_03]: With twins, but on all Hollow Z, the Undead Witch is Wanda revenge.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so Agatha influenced Wanda from beyond the grave, again, to help her fight.

[SPEAKER_03]: Back Agatha then returns in blue robes that soon turn purple, once again, to help defeat the [SPEAKER_03]: And then she said she was passing on into the next life.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Q and unexpected time travel adventure, Firestar goes back to New Salem, where she meets an elderly Agatha Harkness, who has been allowing her fellow witches to be tried and executed, believing that it made the witches more powerful from the persecution.

[SPEAKER_03]: after she fought Firestar, which is not a story that you expect about that in a witch-child place.

[SPEAKER_03]: Agatha agreed to lead the witches to a new place to live, which eventually became new Salem.

[SPEAKER_03]: So it's weirdly akin to Agatha all along these two stories, we're just framed by Wanda and Angelica Jones for some reason, let me turn it over to Alicia Wilder.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's just get into this version of Agatha's history where she just pops up and then disappear.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to start with the prosecution.

[SPEAKER_00]: People of the jury, as we begin the prosecution, I would like you to remember that at the heart of all of this, Agatha Harkness is only out for herself.

[SPEAKER_00]: The defense will point out what they believe to be acts of kindness, but I am here to remind you that all of these acts are in fact motivated by self preservation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Agatha was burned at the stake by her grandchildren, but they were seeking revenge for acts she committed against them, and we are not here to get into the middle of those particular events.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's focus on the threats she made to destroy them all, and after that you [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she did come to Wanda's aid in her moment of need, but all of this was in turn to help herself escape imprisonment.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that she could claim to go into the next life, but we all know she's likely to have lied about where she was going.

[SPEAKER_00]: Helping Wanda through her struggle led to Agatha's being freed from her capture, and thus, we can deduce the motives here were selfish, but disguised as something more.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to focus on the events that took place in Salem, in 1692.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here, we [SPEAKER_00]: have fire star who discovers that Agatha was feeding information to the authorities to serve up other witches in order to yet again save herself and say that she was doing it for the betterment of all the witches that would be left behind.

[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of person offers up others of their own kind to slaughter someone who's only out for themselves?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, what we have referred to here may be labeled as baby crimes by our defense.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we are here to judge Agatha not just on the level of crime, but on her moral standing as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't want the words of the offense to cause you to forget that above all else, when it comes down to it, if Agatha Harkness needs to do something unethical to save herself, she will do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: No matter who is harmed in the process, thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the defense.

[SPEAKER_00]: So interesting that the prosecution is taking time to talk about manipulating situations for one's own benefit when it seems that they are doing the same thing with this story, that they can come out on top.

[SPEAKER_00]: Agatha Harkness was burned at the stake by her own grandchildren.

[SPEAKER_00]: in a town that she created for their safety.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, she vowed her revenge, but wouldn't anyone do anything they could to try to sway the minds of those who are in their process of murdering them.

[SPEAKER_00]: In what I will add is a slow and painful process.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's focus on the good things she did after her death.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll lay them out for you in bullet points.

[SPEAKER_00]: She came to Wanda in a vision to give her the strength she needed to fight back against the save at Salem Savage.

[SPEAKER_00]: She granted Wanda encouragement that she needed to wield her power in a new way and that new way helped her conceive, which is something that her envision weren't even sure was possible.

[SPEAKER_00]: She came to Wanda again to warn her to be prepared for what might happen to her on Halloween.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Wanda wasn't troubled and being tortured, [SPEAKER_00]: Who was there for her, Agatha?

[SPEAKER_00]: And when Wanda couldn't take care of it by herself because these evils wanted to steal her baby's life force, she went and got vision, so vision could come and help her.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then in the end, she helped Wanda defeat everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, she got away, but she also is helping Wanda the whole time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I know we have to talk about the Salem witch trials, and the moment where yes, she did give up the names of some of the witches in order to help others.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, these are morally gray points.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, in the grand scheme of things, we would consider these to be baby crimes as the prosecution pointed out.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we should also focus on the fact that she came to see reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: She came to see the errors of her ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: After chatting with Firestar, she in turn decided to leave that plan, leave Salem and create new Salem as a haven for other witches.

[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution wants you to believe that she did all of these things for the good of herself, but we would like to point out that from all of our evidence, it appears that she had the good of other witches in mind the whole time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And perhaps you should not judge someone's mistakes made out of fear for their life and the life of the people that they hold dear as harshly as others may want you to.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with that, the defense rests.

[SPEAKER_03]: These are wild stories, and they're fun, and in my mind, she's kind of blameless, but also she murdered a whole village of people, which is okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: But she, okay, but I just would like to just show you a re-enactment of when she's talking to Firestar, and Firestar is saying, like, you would give up other witches, like you would do this, and like this is why I really believe that she thinks it's for the good of her people, because, you know, Firestar is saying, like, you think genocide is good, [SPEAKER_00]: I just was saying I'm trying to help people.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they try to burn her at the stake.

[SPEAKER_03]: I can understand her being upset.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it does lead to the birth of Wiken, which is like the greater good mentality as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: But also she still killed a bunch of people.

[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry to scare past that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like that was in the past.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like we open on Agatha being burned at the stake.

[SPEAKER_00]: So therefore my prosecution opens without that business.

[SPEAKER_05]: are all the people that she killed people who also were mean to puppies and or kitties.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure yes.

[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_05]: That's all I need.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm curious what the defense sees as the legal precedent for something like this because there is a very notable villain who was known for wanting to call the week survival of the fittest being in subnourer, also apocalypse, [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, not at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's super different.

[SPEAKER_06]: How so?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's choose a way and he's an ancient being and they are different.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think that it really comes down to Agatha makes a point at one moment about the differences between like what the witches want, do they want to just separate themselves from society, do they want to like kill all the humans and take over or do they want to just like go about their business and stay hidden and she's trying to figure out what's the best route for everybody and it's kind of unsure about that because she doesn't agree with the idea of just like [SPEAKER_00]: So she's I think struggling a little bit more with like the hierarchy of where which is stand in the grand scheme of things where Apocalypse is very much like you are lesser than us.

[SPEAKER_06]: On a slightly separate note, I do think Agatha was a little delusional like I was just flipping through those comics a minute ago.

[SPEAKER_06]: One Angelica looks fucking fantastic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, good.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's so high.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, good.

[SPEAKER_06]: And, too, she makes a academics comment one point in time that you are one of the most powerful, if not most powerful beings of your world.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm just like, are you just taking her for gene?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, so maybe Akatha was a little, maybe she was feeling a little off.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was being hunted.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we can't be held responsible.

[SPEAKER_03]: So let's go ahead and vote in this section.

[SPEAKER_03]: At least I hope it was fun for you to read these crazy old.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Can general experiments stories, the firestar, what is particularly wild, even for the new warriors at the time?

[SPEAKER_07]: It's it's crazy to give her a two here.

[SPEAKER_07]: Just because I think that it's a lot of manipulation, the more questionable actions I think here.

[SPEAKER_07]: Wow, inevitably, you know, lead to good things.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that ultimately it's very [SPEAKER_05]: Well, I was going to give her a four, but then they should told me that the people that she killed were mean.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, two, one, two, one.

[SPEAKER_05]: I can just get it down.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to say a four actually because I think impact is is just as important if not more important than intent.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I think the impact was the whole village people died.

[SPEAKER_06]: And yes, there were some good things that happened in the long run.

[SPEAKER_06]: But did she was that part of the plan?

[SPEAKER_06]: It's hard to know with Agatha.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm going to be a bit heavy handed with this one.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a four.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, she was Narcan and other witches.

[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody likes to snitch.

[SPEAKER_03]: It is a five for me.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like these stories.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like her in them.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like the result, but it's still murder.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think if I think a lot of characters, you cannot.

[SPEAKER_03]: But like, let's, I can't like wipe out hundreds of people and be like, yeah, but I did it for a nice reason.

[SPEAKER_03]: The history of these trials.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's crazy.

[SPEAKER_03]: I do love witches.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm all right.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's been zeroes on others.

[SPEAKER_03]: But this one's a five.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I'm going with a three because there's some pretty terrible things, but there's also like appearing from the grave multiple times to help out people.

[SPEAKER_03]: So this is a 20 out of 30 here, and that will take us to our final, which is the postagot that all along, most recent series, which we really liked.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think a lot of us, this is called Made in Once Again, midnight songs won through five, or the issues, and the assigned room member here is Scotty Degest.

[SPEAKER_03]: Flashback to 1428, Agatha Dreston, purple, which is her signature dollar.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you haven't figured that out yet, [SPEAKER_03]: is part of a covenant including Karina, Jacket Levo, Menoru, and Zorik.

[SPEAKER_03]: In order to protect him from a deadly mob, Agatha and Levo made a deal with Valtor, what a Valtor, one of the entities that Strange calls on all the time.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it resulted in her friend Karina being lost.

[SPEAKER_03]: In a panic, I got the shattered the deal, dooming the witches there to persecution, and Karina was still lost.

[SPEAKER_03]: So you obviously have to assume the others died.

[SPEAKER_03]: Years later, Agatha entered the realm of Valtour, but was still unable to save Karina.

[SPEAKER_03]: So now we move to the present, where Agatha, who is old and teaching at strange academy, had her sins returned to haunt her, though through Valtour and the agent corrosion and corrosion turns out to be corrosion with a K by the way.

[SPEAKER_03]: So you know, she's evil.

[SPEAKER_03]: Corrosion turns into Karina herself.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's the witch who was betrayed back by revenge.

[SPEAKER_03]: I got the end up taking Karina's magic and then reverted herself to hot young mom status once again.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's turn it over to Scotty.

[SPEAKER_05]: I am really excited to talk about this.

[SPEAKER_05]: Let's start with the prosecution go to the defense and we will use our Southern Lawyer for the defense because that's I think the only way I'm gonna sell in it is to you.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, prosecution, ladies and gentlemen, and gentle days of the journey.

[SPEAKER_05]: Let's lay out the key problems here.

[SPEAKER_05]: I thought Engage had a conspiracy to kill a woman.

[SPEAKER_05]: Then she tried to kill the couple killed this woman and then she kind of felt bad about it.

[SPEAKER_05]: And sort of, you know, act out for the last second.

[SPEAKER_05]: And then she tried to kill her again, several centuries later.

[SPEAKER_05]: And then she also involved kidnapped and engaged in the reckless endangerment of a child and or in the process of trying to kill this person.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, these are not disputed facts.

[SPEAKER_05]: These are things that Agatha would have.

[SPEAKER_05]: Happily telling you that she did.

[SPEAKER_05]: She was not arguing with you about any of the uh, any of the suspect pattern.

[SPEAKER_05]: In a court of magic or law, I guess this crimes are clear.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's called reckless endangerment kidnapping, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I guess into it, [SPEAKER_05]: a lot.

[SPEAKER_05]: And you might say, well, she felt regret.

[SPEAKER_05]: She didn't really want to kill this woman in the comics.

[SPEAKER_05]: She makes a big deal about it.

[SPEAKER_05]: But, you know, I get that you kind of knew what was happening.

[SPEAKER_05]: Because you can't walk into the store and be like, oh my God, I have these matches.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's so crazy that I might let something on fire in this fireworks store.

[SPEAKER_05]: This is what you sound like to us.

[SPEAKER_05]: And Agatha will tell you she didn't know she was somewhere, but Agatha is a powerful and respected witch.

[SPEAKER_05]: She is a long history of knowing a lot.

[SPEAKER_05]: In fact, one of the things she does.

[SPEAKER_05]: it's very difficult for me and I hope it's very difficult for you to believe that she didn't know exactly what she was getting into and she walked into that room that day and agreed to sacrifice this woman's soul to increase her power.

[SPEAKER_05]: So last thing, we're not here trying to see her to, you know, try anyone for stealing anybody's magic.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like obviously this, uh, this, uh, erosion, erosion person.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, corrosion with the cat.

[SPEAKER_05]: Superheroes are so close.

[SPEAKER_05]: for what their names are.

[SPEAKER_05]: You know, we're not here to tell Indy to talk to about her senior magic.

[SPEAKER_05]: It seems like an entirely reasonable assumption about how people do these sorts of things.

[SPEAKER_05]: But I want you to leave you with the thought that if she had the power to steal these people's magic and be able to influence all these events, why was it so messy?

[SPEAKER_05]: Why didn't you have to involve all these people?

[SPEAKER_05]: Why did you have to do changes?

[SPEAKER_05]: My control.

[SPEAKER_05]: Why did you have to risk a doubt the lies of half a dozen of the world's best superheroes to get this done?

[SPEAKER_05]: it boggles the mind.

[SPEAKER_05]: And for defense, ladies and gentlemen, in general days of the jury, I'm but a simple country lawyer.

[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm going to do my best today to defend Miss Harkness from various things that are happening to her.

[SPEAKER_05]: Now, I would like you to consider it.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's a lot's long and Agatha Jeff and I will give it to Taylor.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's now part of the game rope we could see this cracking up so hard.

[SPEAKER_05]: Agatha, generally.

[SPEAKER_05]: She'd take it on these difficult dark choices and you know, it's always a devil's dilemma with this kind of which craft and Tom Flurian who's nanny and all that I don't know quite what the round word is for that She'd take a difficult choice if the greater good now.

[SPEAKER_04]: I remember I mean which which things can be a little crazy maybe cream was in on it maybe [SPEAKER_05]: that there are some other explanations.

[SPEAKER_05]: We don't really know exactly what happened.

[SPEAKER_05]: Now that happened over a millennia ago, I would like to recommend Ramonju that that happened to hundreds, who would exactly hoot nanny.

[SPEAKER_05]: That happened many, many years, many, many centuries ago.

[SPEAKER_05]: They were saying millennia.

[SPEAKER_05]: So who was to say that perhaps all of these women's memories of the time that happened so long ago are a little bit questionable.

[SPEAKER_05]: I don't just ask them to put [SPEAKER_05]: attempted to murder this, uh, this which was, you know, I'd stole the dark forces of a demon who claimed that he could destroy the entire dimension and was hell bent on doing so and she stopped her and, you know, kills her and do that seems like self-defense to me.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I believe you want to see it that way as well.

[SPEAKER_04]: And if [SPEAKER_05]: The other last things, you know, this, this, this reckless endangerment charge of the prosecution is rallied about this young girls.

[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, hello.

[SPEAKER_05]: Well, this seems like she was very central to this situation.

[SPEAKER_05]: And there was, I got the wood actually be her caretaker in this position as she was in instructor at this sub that they say, [SPEAKER_05]: how some mystery sands or protection, it's got a fancy name, I'm just a simple controller, I don't know all these fancy magic words, but you know she was the teacher, she probably felt like she was doing the right thing and taking, so that is what I would like to leave you all with today.

[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you very much.

[SPEAKER_03]: There is a really fun vibe through this series.

[SPEAKER_03]: And again, we got to get ag of the hot and young here, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So she makes the mistake initially and then corrosion comes at her heart and she gets this power source and she's like, oh, I can make myself hot again.

[SPEAKER_03]: She's very opportunistic here.

[SPEAKER_03]: it away, it's very exciting.

[SPEAKER_03]: I've kind of into this story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Think of three.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think AG was opportunistic.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, but I don't know if it was as manipulative as some of her other actions.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think she just saw an opportunity and rolled with it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going for, and I'm not going to five just because she did try and get out of the contracting.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think for a second, even if she screwed it up, but like, I don't know, I'm going for.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go zero.

[SPEAKER_03]: I thought she did anything wrong here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's go to Alicia than them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to give her a two.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is my vote for when she's widely, but she's okay.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think I'm going to go as three.

[SPEAKER_07]: Um, I think that, you know, someone who is as powerful as Agatha is and who has so much experience.

[SPEAKER_07]: Failure is unacceptable.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that also later on, she should have tried to or tried hard or to make things right with Karina and not have stolen her magic to make herself you again.

[SPEAKER_07]: I think that that's very greedy of her like, man, you still have magic.

[SPEAKER_07]: You can still do things.

[SPEAKER_07]: You don't need more.

[SPEAKER_07]: How dare you also you should have made things right.

[SPEAKER_07]: So I think that that's why I'm voting a three for because you have messed up and then cat messing up and then now it's over, but still you should have done better.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think a three for me as well.

[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to get for any points, because she literally tried to murder this lady twice and literally made active plans to do it.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's not just like self defense.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's like I'm actually going to kill this one twice.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, it's hard to get her to give her a pass though, but like this one with both times was kind of directly involved with I'm going to make friends in the demon force that's going to try to destroy the planet.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, next time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Loster tried to save her, but then used whatever husk was left.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, I thought it resourceful.

[SPEAKER_03]: Was that a two for you, Scottie?

[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's three.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm three.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so that gives us 15 out of 30 for the last section, which gives us a total of 58, one second.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that it gives her a 39% basically of the asshole scale, which is completely fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: It was fun doing Agatha because we're all really fond of Agatha all along, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like it's such a huge kind of queer anthem.

[SPEAKER_03]: But when you take this character, there's I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of light and fluffy.

[SPEAKER_03]: Her journey.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's an interesting one because she's never really been the featured character and almost anything outside of the midnight sun series specifically.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like her a lot.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think she's fun.

[SPEAKER_03]: So if we're as we're wrapping up, we can share kind of any final thoughts.

[SPEAKER_03]: How's the, how's the vibe?

[SPEAKER_03]: How you feeling about which is in Agatha as we're, as we're concluding here.

[SPEAKER_03]: The next three trials, we're going to jump into October with the combined trials of the son of Satan and Satan.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're going to continue this kind of Halloween vibe.

[SPEAKER_03]: November, we're doing the trial of Baron Helmet Zemo, which is the the child of the Nazis.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be a whole journey.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have some really fun plans around it.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you love thunderbolts, we're going to make you take it real seriously.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then we're going to close the year in December with the trial of Latu, the Watcher, which I'm very excited about.

[SPEAKER_02]: uh...

you can follow the show at grandma can underscore lane on instagram next show after this is gonna be what if storm had remained a thief it's an and in a senty story from what if number forty my friends jester heo and terrie blast joining me for that Kevin can iary and this is a joy because i love i get this so much and i will probably be doing a rewatch if i get all along for holoine you can catch me at new york comicon walking around a ridiculous outfits probably and hopefully coming back for more fun stuff on gray mockin lane which you should listen every episode because they're all amazing [SPEAKER_00]: I suck at that, listen to every single episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Alicia, I love doing this and getting to just like continue my education of Marvel characters and I just, my takeaway is that I would like more Agatha, I would like her in every story.

[SPEAKER_00]: She should just pop up as a floating head.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd rather see her floating head than Charles Xavier's any day of the week.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, let us put that out there, Marvel, if you're listening.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to follow my cosplay and dance journey, you can find me on TikTok and Instagram at Wilder Moves.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I am also one half of the X-Wife podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's T-H-E-X-W-I-F-E as an X-Men, not former wife.

[SPEAKER_05]: you can find me on Instagram at Scotty, underscore, loves underscore comments.

[SPEAKER_05]: And you can look for me and regularly contribute to a great mock-and-line.

[SPEAKER_05]: I also recently recorded an episode about the Phoenixburg with loader on X-Men horoscopes.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's fantastic.

[SPEAKER_05]: Please check it out.

[SPEAKER_05]: And keep an eye out for a future post about the Goldnage Lovers Lane that we'll put all going to best issues to have our cat.

[SPEAKER_05]: Wait, that's the delicious.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I am Taylor Russell.

[SPEAKER_06]: You can find me online at Taylor underscore the bookstaboy.

[SPEAKER_06]: So my current library book right now is just called which craft history in 13 trials.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's part of some research I'm doing for an original comic book script and potential novel that I've been [SPEAKER_06]: It's also kind of my way to deal with some of my feelings about how folks are being ostracized and society right now So yeah, this was very near and dear to my heart.

[SPEAKER_07]: Hi everyone.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm no one you can find me on all my social media No one X-Men cosplay.

[SPEAKER_07]: I will also be when this airs.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'll also be gearing up to be at New York Comic-Con and So I'll be running around for four days being a minister.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm really loving these trials.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm loving getting to sit in judge people [SPEAKER_07]: It's been really interesting really fun learning about all these like characters I don't really read about a lot in my you know comic poles locally So I'm loving this.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm ready for Halloween now I want to go and just watch Halloween movies and be spooky all by myself So this is really gotten me really excited.

[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, okay We've been waiting for this the whole time, but thanks everyone for listening.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you to my dear friends And I will see you all down down down down down down down down down down [SPEAKER_03]: Just play that 97 more times, and you've got Agatha all along.

[SPEAKER_03]: Alright, everybody, we'll see you next time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Take care of yourselves.

[SPEAKER_03]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism.

[SPEAKER_03]: As a special guest and I talk about a red skull story, and it's modern applications.

[SPEAKER_03]: Friedrich Carl Kuhn was born on October 26th, 1896 in Baden, Baden, Germany.

[SPEAKER_03]: After serving in World War I, he immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City.

[SPEAKER_03]: As Nazi theology started spreading through the 1930s, Kuhn found his political calling, leading the German American boomed on the United States soil.

[SPEAKER_03]: This was the main organization promoting Nazi ideals.

[SPEAKER_03]: Koon openly admired Adolf Hitler's leadership and saw himself as a counterpart who could bring Nazi principles to the United States.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is before Adolf Hitler was committing war crimes, but was still widely known to be a very bad person.

[SPEAKER_03]: See Charlie Chaplin's the great dictator from the same era.

[SPEAKER_03]: In public speeches, Koon would call himself the American Hitler quite frequently.

[SPEAKER_03]: He unabashedly drew comparisons between himself and the New German Führer.

[SPEAKER_03]: He admired Hitler's ability to unite Germany under a single vision.

[SPEAKER_03]: He admired Hitler's forceful rejection of communism, and Hitler's hatred of what Kuhn also called, quote, the Jewish menace.

[SPEAKER_03]: He praised Hitler for being a charismatic leader.

[SPEAKER_03]: He praised his nationalistic fervor.

[SPEAKER_03]: He praised his authoritarian control.

[SPEAKER_03]: He told crowds once, Hitler has shown the world what a man of destiny can do.

[SPEAKER_03]: I am here to carry that flame across the ocean.

[SPEAKER_03]: The boond organized rallies, paramilitary drills, and pop-up propaganda campaigns, designed to mimic Nazi Germany, and you've seen this group from history recently in James Michael Strisenski's Captain America for those of you that read that recent volume.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're 1939 Madison Square Garden rally, which is directly referenced in Capsbook.

[SPEAKER_03]: Attracted some 20,000 attendees, with Kuhn at the center, delivering fiery speeches, denouncing Jews, communists, and the Roosevelt administration.

[SPEAKER_03]: Not surprisingly, Kuhn's leadership was soon marked by controversy and corruption.

[SPEAKER_03]: Turns out he was embezzling thousands and thousands in funds.

[SPEAKER_03]: He was manipulating organizations through blackmail and pressure, and he was alienating followers with very erratic behavior.

[SPEAKER_03]: His fall was swift and humiliating.

[SPEAKER_03]: He was not executed on American soil, but he was deported.

[SPEAKER_03]: American justice revoked his citizenship, and he was sent to live in Germany in 1945, where he lived quietly until his death in 1951.

[SPEAKER_03]: Germany was not an easy place to live for former Nazis after the war ended.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now we're going to talk about a red skull pretender.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you go back to the very beginning, we talked about the character Albert Malik, who was the first red skull that appeared in the comic books.

[SPEAKER_03]: He gets revived in the modern age and we're gonna cover all of his appearances in one fell swoop.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Albert Malik was the guy that put on the red mask and started killing key American figures and his bid for power in World War II, but now it's 1968.

[SPEAKER_03]: An amazing Spider-Man annual number five in the story where Spider-Man learns that his parents were spies and they died in a plane crash.

[SPEAKER_03]: We show that the red skull was the one that ordered their deaths.

[SPEAKER_03]: This Malik version.

[SPEAKER_03]: Redcons will also show that Wolverine was involved and was the one that killed their parents.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a couple crazy issues, including Mark Guggenheim's new Spider-Man Deadpool or Spider-Man Wolverine run.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's happening out in our referencing this history.

[SPEAKER_03]: But this is a red skull running an international ring of spies and saboteurs.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's got a huge cadre of that guy's working for him.

[SPEAKER_03]: He lives in a castle.

[SPEAKER_03]: He has a murder chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: and he seemingly blows up at the end of the story.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's back in solo Avengers number 6, where in Algeria, he's trying to gain a device that will up him activate nuclear warheads so that he can blackmail the governments of the world.

[SPEAKER_03]: But Hawkeye, Peregrine, Sandman and Silver Sable are there to stop him.

[SPEAKER_03]: Red Skull has a full breastplate that fires lasers, kind of like Craven's nipple lasers, and he gets unmasked here as a very old man.

[SPEAKER_03]: Finally, in Captain America 347, Albert Malik escapes from Justice and Algeria, in an armed fight with machine guns, and as he boards the helicopter he's escaping on, he puts on his red skull mass and begins laughing maniacally.

[SPEAKER_03]: Once again, I assume the mantle of the red skull, and unlike that preening Nazi who originated the role, I, Albert Malik, shall have the last laugh on my enemies.

[SPEAKER_03]: While he's heard about launching one ridiculous plan after another, I boiled an anonymity establishing one of Europe's largest criminal empires, but when I learned that the original skull had finally died, I decided to resume his identity, an identity I first assumed in the 1950s when he was in hiding, but then the pilot kills Malik with an energy rifle, giving the catchphrase of Justice is served, turns out he got by the scourge of the underworld [SPEAKER_03]: For a mysterious red-scaled man who is smoking a cigarette off in the distance, so the red skull had his follower eliminated.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me welcome one of my favorite people, Darrell Lawrence to the show to talk to me about this crazy story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Darrell, are you a red skull fan?

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean this and with the most derogatory sense possible, what a little freak.

[SPEAKER_01]: for him wanting to be the red skull.

[SPEAKER_01]: What a weird, wrong aspiration.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I had never been aware of him before you asked me to read these three issues.

[SPEAKER_01]: And funnily enough, I picked up last week an issue of the Marvel Handbook, the back half of the book of the dead update where it has all of scourges victims.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember seeing this dude in there and I'm like, okay, whatever, and then I read these issues last night.

[SPEAKER_01]: Blown behold, I've been scurting around this guy with all of my comic history.

[SPEAKER_01]: I started reading the Grunwald cap run shortly after this issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have read solo Avengers and Avengers Spotlight here and there, like I haven't read it sequentially, but I've never read this issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I is really loving silver-sable, of course, and Sandman, her good.

[SPEAKER_01]: Benjamin, like, Sandman has a really good arc I think in the late 80s early 90s, so it was really cool to have these touchpoints based around this fakeish, red skull, who's in Algeria, can do no right, seemingly had Spider-Man's parents killed because they were double agents.

[SPEAKER_01]: Poor Peter Parker on his quest to redeem his family name, hitches a ride with a fantastic four.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's in Algeria, he goes to all of these little casbos and figures out that, oh, that's a very last one is that this restaurant guy must have known what happened to my parents.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it was interesting to see how these stories, which go from 1968 to 1988, tie together.

[SPEAKER_01]: And two of the three are from 1988, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just very interesting that they picked up on this little tiny thread that year, and that immediately murdered him.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, so there's a couple places where that origin of Spidey's parents are discussed.

[SPEAKER_03]: Weirdly, we've talked about this on my show.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have an episode with Josh Trujillo out on the untold tales of Spider-Man minus one, which is a weird Wolverine appearance where we show the flashback to him working with Spider-Man's parents as spies.

[SPEAKER_03]: Baron Strucker is in that issue, as well as the lady who's never shown up again named Baroness.

[SPEAKER_03]: Baroness Adelisha von Krut.

[SPEAKER_03]: We talk about her and that a [SPEAKER_03]: episode, but he's got a weird history with his parents Richard and Mary.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're not going to delve super deep into it.

[SPEAKER_03]: But let's talk about the psychology of a character like Albert Balik, who wants to style himself after a man overseas.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I open the show by talking about the real life example of a Friedrich Kuhn, who is maybe a person you've never heard of, styling himself as the American Hitler.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not shy about my comparisons here, but this is a little like someone over [SPEAKER_03]: want to claim for any reason.

[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on a Malik's desire to be like the red skull and any thoughts on the comparison to this real world person Friedrich Kuhn?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the comparison is apt and his aspiration to want power.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can all agree that we want to compare ourselves sometimes to people who may be more successful.

[SPEAKER_01]: There may be richer, or they have more social standing or something like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But he goes about it the wrong way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you want to be a Nazi?

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Seems like an ill-informed decision, especially when he's like, Oh, the real red skull is gone.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to take his place in the 1950s.

[SPEAKER_01]: What?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, wrong-invite, Nuremberg just happened, buddy.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're making a dumb-dumb decision and Judy Garland is going to come out as a character witness or something in that trial and make sure that you're put away.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, seeing the evidence to the infamous film, judgment at Nuremberg, Darrell and I are maybe two of the only people outside of Sarah's century who might understand that reference in our active audience.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, go look up, Nuremberg.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it makes sense when he first comes around in 1968.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, it's not that far of a cry to go back to Marvel 1950s stories and drop on that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And also the readership sort of understands still what's at play.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're still having Nazis pop up in South America until like the 1990s.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very real thing where you have these people who did terrible things, continually popping up and they're in the news and they're like, oh, we found another one in Argentina or something like that was really interesting is how they revisit the character in 1988 and how.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was still seen as a cultural touch point as things are changing, and I think it's referenced in these three comics too, like we're very near the end of the communist era, fascism is way out, communism as a controlling mechanism within the European sphere is on its way out too, and that's probably why they got rid of them so quickly in group ones like, just cap them and throw them out of the helicopter.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's so interesting that he defaulted to this and still being his own person just embrace yourself guy You don't need to be red skull because you're not really operating a criminal organization on that scale You're your entangiers and you're not in Berlin You're not in Europe.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're not in America.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, uh [SPEAKER_03]: Like, oh, I'll be here.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love that the real guy from the German-American Boone just kind of had an unadventful, unremarkable death.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this character dies kind of unremarkably, as he's ranting to himself.

[SPEAKER_03]: But we have a man with a skull face ordering a man with a skull face to kill the copycat skull face guy.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of...

[SPEAKER_03]: that he doesn't deserve any better.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, he's blasted out of this very geo geo helicopter with the jaws painted on it and everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's looking real badass and he is just blown from the sky.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can see it.

[SPEAKER_01]: The shot goes right through him.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's dead before he hits the ground and good riddance.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this was part of the Red Skull coming back and clearing house in terms of the Captain America framework.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have any advice for locals who may want to emulate themselves after the life and times of Donald Trump in a 2025 monitor?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, don't do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe read some books, read some history books, see how it goes, because it usually doesn't turn out well and you're going to end up having to hide an Antarctica after a while.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and that's been one of the healing parts of these making these episodes is realizing all the crazy that I'd all finished around with them slept with and then you look at all the crazys that are out there in power now And it's truly intense.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any final thoughts on the the rich interior world of Albert Malik if you want to revisit this character Easy three issues and it's so different bouncing from [SPEAKER_01]: a Spider-Man story to a Hawkeye story to what a Johnny Walker Captain America's story.

[SPEAKER_01]: It keeps it fresh, so if you can read them all in an hour, if you really want to dive into this character and see how sort of dummy is.

[SPEAKER_03]: Gerald, what a joy to join if you always [SPEAKER_03]: silly, that serious conversations around fascism remain deeply educational.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm learning new things all the time and super grateful for your time and talent's my friend.

[SPEAKER_03]: We've got to hang out a fair bit lately.

[SPEAKER_03]: We've got to hang out on the uncanny experience.

[SPEAKER_03]: We were just on my show for a couple episodes.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're doing another with me and we're hanging out of flamecon.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm gonna get plenty of down time this month.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yay!

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for joining me Chad.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me home.

[SPEAKER_03]: All right everyone, we'll see you back here next time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.

[SPEAKER_03]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.

[SPEAKER_03]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.

[SPEAKER_03]: Look for us on Patreon where we are releasing weekly episodes about obscure characters and facts.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a great way to participate with the podcast for only just a couple of dollars a month and it helps support what we are doing here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Also, the best way you could help [SPEAKER_03]: Grimmulkin Lane is by sharing and liking and subscribing, but also please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you back your next time on Grimmulkin Lane.