[SPEAKER_03]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Greenmulkin Lane Patreon channel.

[SPEAKER_03]: We are here to record an episode about one of my all-time favorite X-Men characters.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have a little list of like super villains that I love.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have a little list of supporting characters that I love.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this character is easily in my top five, maybe definitely in my top ten.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're here to talk about Erdy Maddox.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I am so fond of Erdy.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't even know why he's just the fucking cutest.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love him so much.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm thrilled to be joined by two very cute friends of mine as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin Canary and Michael Anderson, let me have you both introduce yourselves with your name and pronouns, and let us know some of your preliminary thoughts about Artie using only psychically projected emojis, please.

[SPEAKER_03]: So just tell us what emojis you would be projecting to portray your feelings about Artie.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, no, I have to figure this out.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is like, oh, thanks a lot, Chad.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're on your toes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know, I know, I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so so my name is Mike Anderson and I'm one of the admin for Age of Dazzler.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a Facebook group.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Dazzler.

[SPEAKER_01]: Stand, fan, love your sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was a little kid and I live Marvel and I'm Marvel Comics and I'm usually sticking in the X-Men family.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I go to Avengers World to follow my other love fire star.

[SPEAKER_01]: Who's back in Avengers right now?

[SPEAKER_01]: So I go back and forth.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the amazing friends of course.

[SPEAKER_01]: I see Kevin freaking out.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we will get to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So let's see, by day, I'm a vocational rehabilitation counselor.

[SPEAKER_01]: And by night, I'm just a husband with dogs and a cat living in Maine in a nice rural area.

[SPEAKER_01]: Keeping things real and calm and peaceful.

[SPEAKER_03]: And you're emoji thoughts on Marty.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I have to do a little heart because he's so cute.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, he's just the cutest.

[SPEAKER_01]: He needs no words.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has no words.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has images.

[SPEAKER_01]: So keep it real.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love his big eyes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love his big head.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love already in Leech together too, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're the cutest little buddies.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I just love him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have to just do a heart repeatedly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Heart probably was sparkles, but definitely hearts for him.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, I am Kevin Canary, a pronouns or he him.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am a longtime comic fan of the X universe and already in particular to Michael's comment, Firestar and Spider-Man is an amazing friend who actually got me into that cartoon got me into comics, which is why it's a big deal.

[SPEAKER_02]: From that, I knew the X men because they guessed art in that, which got me to X factor and uncanny X men right when these were all introduced.

[SPEAKER_02]: Arty is one of my first groups of characters that I actually got to start to read in comic book.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he has a very sweet spot in my heart for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am decked out in my furry pink care bear hat today and honor of Arty just from a cuteness level as well as projecting him, you know, emoticons from themselves like the Carebirds do.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's my little crossover AD's moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: From an emoticony kind of point of view, it definitely the hug emoticon because I just find him like adorable, huggy, huggy-wise, and pink hearts all over the place just because there's so much love and just adorableness and everything about Arty.

[SPEAKER_03]: You've already messed with my head a little bit.

[SPEAKER_03]: Is Artie the care bear of the X-Men?

[SPEAKER_03]: I think he is.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe he is.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's really cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my goodness, I love him even more.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, lastly, my name is Chad Anderson.

[SPEAKER_03]: I use him pronouns.

[SPEAKER_03]: I first met Artie.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was thinking about this this morning and I'm not entirely sure where.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was collecting comics in the early nineties.

[SPEAKER_03]: I definitely remember him in like Gen X, Daydreamers.

[SPEAKER_03]: And in the era kind of before that, he was kind of a bit character.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I was also picking up a shit ton of back issues.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I was really fond of the early X-factor stuff in particular.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of characters that are introduced there that I think are really fun, ranging from tower to fire fist to skids to already matter.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, in fact, there's a holistic character.

[SPEAKER_03]: I probably first met Arty in that like annual backup story that's like all about WizKid and they're like fighting bullies.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, he was the little kid on the team, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: He's the Kevin McAllister of the X-Men in his kind of own way.

[SPEAKER_03]: But when you tie him into the history of the universe, I think there is something very cute about him.

[SPEAKER_03]: My least favorite part about Artie is the trope that exists with him through most of the nineties, where he and Leach look like they're twins.

[SPEAKER_03]: One has pink to skin and the other has green skin.

[SPEAKER_03]: Leach speaks in like broken English and Artie speaks in emojis and they are just kind of the little brothers of the X-Men like Adnauseum.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's some fun stories through that daydreamers, et cetera, is really cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it kind of just goes on and on and there's not any character development.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they're the kids living in the treehouse, but there's some really fun moments along the way.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love them on the future foundation, even though I wish they had more chance to shine.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I mostly love just what this character means.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think there is not a person in the Marvel Universe who hates Arty Maddox.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think that makes him a care bear too.

[SPEAKER_03]: Does he have any enemies, any villains that are just not out to kill mutants?

[SPEAKER_03]: This kid doesn't have like a single person who dislikes him at all.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have any of his key relationships besides his friendship with Leach that you really love?

[SPEAKER_03]: Who do you ship already with?

[SPEAKER_03]: From like a kid, adult relationship perspective.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're not talking romantically here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I will tell you going all the way back to the beginning.

[SPEAKER_02]: His relationship with Rusty when he is first introduced because it's at great kind of moment of Rusty hates him for being different and looking like him mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: Everything Rusty hates about himself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's such an asshole at the beginning.

[SPEAKER_02]: But then they bond in this weird way.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, kind of brotherly, like, but mentory thing where Artis kind of teaching Rusty how to be a human being or Rusty's kind of being the big brother to him.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they drop it eventually.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then they start pairing them up with just with leeches, like these little kid things, you know, like they kind of sideline them.

[SPEAKER_02]: I thought there was such potential to have, like, interesting dynamics that were also, like, kind of two generations, not generation per se.

[SPEAKER_02]: But like a tenured age difference at least or something between them.

[SPEAKER_01]: I actually was going to say the same thing, Kevin.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, and I will say to go back a teeny bit, I jumped into the ex-world, the exact same ways Kevin did.

[SPEAKER_01]: Spider-Man is amazing friends to the X-Men episodes, and I started reading during the mutant massacre.

[SPEAKER_01]: We got a serious catalog, and even remember that.

[SPEAKER_01]: They would have the, would go through a month.

[SPEAKER_01]: We want these things or Christmas, mom and dad.

[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't get most of them, but we did get the comic packs to yours, Nero.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the first year was all the mutant massacre comics, or twenty-five comics, so we had X-Factor Ten.

[SPEAKER_01]: on Kenny Xman to eleven massacre.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's how I meant Arty in Xfactor ten.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he had just followed Rusty into the tunnels.

[SPEAKER_01]: Really like that dynamic with him in Rusty to Rusty did not like him first, but it's like Arty almost broke him down with his kindness and like this big brother figure to little brother Rusty just finally couldn't help himself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because like we keep saying already's the care bear like he has no enemies other than like Marauders trying to kill him but they wanted to kill everyone so that's not personal to him right in his character.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I really liked that dynamic and in the same of the U-Chad, I was kind of sad when they just basically paired him up with Leach.

[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, forever after that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're buddies, but like you said, it didn't really lead to any development.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and here's the key there because they're cute and they're background characters, but they're also not given any character development.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's more exactly created.

[SPEAKER_03]: Artian Leach for a whole generation of readers kind of represent childhood in a certain way.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're the characters in the back that represent like the innocence of mutants.

[SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of mutant powers don't develop until you're an adolescent or a teen in a moment of trauma.

[SPEAKER_03]: Already in leacher characters who their mutations not only developed early, but they made them stand out visually because they both look very, very different than human.

[SPEAKER_03]: They have different origins.

[SPEAKER_03]: Leech is the survivor of the more lock massacre.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's the little kid who's often seen as the tool.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's getting kicked in the head or used like they're throwing them at somebody to block his block their powers out.

[SPEAKER_03]: He speaks in broken English.

[SPEAKER_03]: He hasn't seen his family.

[SPEAKER_03]: Massacre in front of him in that case.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty has a very different origin story.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is where it ties in a little bit to my show.

[SPEAKER_03]: At the beginning of last year, we jumped into the world of the beast and amazing adventures.

[SPEAKER_03]: and one of the stories from beasts first appearance by Steve Engelhardt in amazing adventures eleven where he turns blue and furry there's like a Nazi spy at his agency named Karl Maddox who is kind of a horrible guy where's turtle necks and he works for the secret empire and he's trying to steal intel for like a white supremacist movement inside the the american government [SPEAKER_03]: He's girlfriend is also there.

[SPEAKER_03]: She murders Carl at the end of this story.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's got a two pay on, but we never see Carl Maddox again until like well over ten years later when X-Factor has now launched.

[SPEAKER_03]: The original X-Men are all back together.

[SPEAKER_03]: Beast is blue and they have created a premise and X-Factor which still remains baffling to explain because it's baffling.

[SPEAKER_03]: They are pretending to be mutant hunters, like Ghostbusters.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, who are you going to call?

[SPEAKER_03]: Mutant hunters!

[SPEAKER_03]: They call themselves a spactor.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're using Warren Worthington's resources.

[SPEAKER_03]: Under the premise that, if, like, you see a mutant, we will come and pretend to arrest them.

[SPEAKER_03]: But really, we will get them away from the government and give them a home.

[SPEAKER_03]: So it's kind of an odd premise because the mutant hunters are also the mutant heroes.

[SPEAKER_03]: But in order to do this, they need to get beast back from blue and furry into a human form because you can't disguise blue fur when you're wearing multiple costumes.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the way they do this is by tying us back to police beast's initial transformation at the brand corporation.

[SPEAKER_03]: So in X-Factor II, we learn Karl Maddox actually never died.

[SPEAKER_03]: He has hired Edward Pasternak, the tower, to kidnap Beast for him, and tower dumps Beast into the middle of Maddox.

[SPEAKER_03]: Karl, as your laundry docked, pressed and folded, ha ha.

[SPEAKER_03]: Enough with your moronic quips mutant, get him in the car quickly.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they take his beast back to his underground lab, and Carl is I see you remember me from the days when we worked at the brand corporation.

[SPEAKER_03]: Fortunately Henry, the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

[SPEAKER_03]: I've gone to great expense to enlist your aid in a most monumental project.

[SPEAKER_03]: I need you.

[SPEAKER_03]: You are one of the finest biochemical scientists I've ever worked with.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Beast has put in shackles in a secure facility and he's given a bunch of papers to review and the mutant hunters expect her to go after tower.

[SPEAKER_03]: But then we learn Carl has a kid he's keeping here.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a little guy named Arthur.

[SPEAKER_03]: He goes by Arty.

[SPEAKER_03]: He has kind of looked at enlarged pink [SPEAKER_03]: cranium and like very large white eyes.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's a little monstrous, a little skeletal, almost a little like more lucky pathetic, and the boys put to work projecting math equations up on a screen, because his power, at least at the beginning, is to project emojis.

[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't speak, he's mute, but he can project things.

[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't project words or thoughts.

[SPEAKER_03]: He projects images that convey his words or thoughts.

[SPEAKER_03]: If he projects a heart, it's almost like it comes with a message.

[SPEAKER_03]: You see it and you know what he means.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a lot of creative use of this power over the years, but at the beginning, he's projecting math equations for his dad.

[SPEAKER_03]: Moreover, this Arthur continued projecting the mind's dad, McCoy is completing the experiment.

[SPEAKER_03]: One of what I'm almost envious of that fantastic brain of his enough my son.

[SPEAKER_03]: We've obtained the means to remove your genetic curse.

[SPEAKER_03]: All we need now is a test subject.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so, Maddox is virulently anti-buttoned, and, like, again, like white supremacists.

[SPEAKER_03]: This guy's in the friends of humanity, or hydrate, like kind of energy, secret empire, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And if he can get beast to revert to his human form, the premise the story goes to, but he wants to save his kid.

[SPEAKER_03]: Your mutant power, your appearance is disgusting, but I think we can save you.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love you, and that's why we're saving you in this way.

[SPEAKER_03]: So very uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_03]: So now Maddox thinks he has the power to turn mutants into humans and he loads beast into a bed and blasts him and then beast has a heart attack and in the next issue Carl Stableizes beast Marty projects or excuse me Marty already projects the battle between tower and X factor.

[SPEAKER_03]: So you can almost get the idea that he's formed like a little bit of a psychic link with tower and he's like now able to monitor events and project them like it's a projector on a screen.

[SPEAKER_03]: So let's talk about the opening of this before we talk about the wrap up.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is the most consequential arty story of all time.

[SPEAKER_03]: The one right at the beginning.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to share your thoughts on Arty's shit dad Kevin?

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, he's terrible and it's funny reading it again.

[SPEAKER_02]: It reminded me so much of that kind of same motif and what was the third X-Men movie where Angel's father was kind of doing the same idea where it's like [SPEAKER_02]: I'm ashamed of my child, I'll do whatever it takes, you know, to switch them back.

[SPEAKER_02]: He kind of also puts Artie who's a child at this point to work, you know, and he's like responsible for like, you know, helping this through.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a whole bunch of, you know, kind of ableism in all of this as well with the fact that Artie can no longer speak, but could it one [SPEAKER_02]: point maybe and just the way that it's dad treats him through all this is just it's just terrible to watch and again like your heart just grows five sizes for already and you want him out of this situation but it can any kind of abuse situation already loves his dad even though it's dad is doing this to him and that's even more horrible to watch when you want him to be like taken away from this family and you're like but he just is freaking out it's just it's really heartbreaking [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it reminds me of like early days in X-Men genotia, how are the mutants were used for their powers, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So they were completely second class citizens.

[SPEAKER_01]: They were stripped of all of their identity, but they were still used for their powers.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, Artis dad seems to love him kind of, but he's definitely using him for something very specific for gain.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I kind of see it like that too, and again, traumatic for Arti.

[SPEAKER_01]: and already still just loves, because he's that happy, and he doesn't know anything else either, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So we have a child in the situation with an abusive parent, but that's all he knows.

[SPEAKER_03]: For Artie, he's growing up in a world where these like concepts of white supremacy are normal, but the the queerness of it, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: We have parents who love their fear kids, but they push the agenda that I love you more when you act straight or standard.

[SPEAKER_03]: Could you be a little less you is very clearly the message?

[SPEAKER_03]: Because Artie, yeah, hide who is.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so Arty has a little kitten in his first appearance.

[SPEAKER_03]: The kitten's name is Muffin.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like the one thing he has in his little basement lab home.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Arty ends up finding beast all wrapped up in bandages.

[SPEAKER_03]: Beast has been through it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we get narration from his perspective.

[SPEAKER_03]: For Arthomatix, the desire to understand is stronger than his father's command that he never entered his private laboratory.

[SPEAKER_03]: A gnarled little hand reaches out to touch the bandaged prisoner, then mind-link established.

[SPEAKER_03]: At first, like a broke the memories of friends, lovers, and colleagues flow gently through the young mutants mind, then suddenly the pain.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's surges with the violence of raging rapids until the boy can endure no more.

[SPEAKER_03]: The mind-link breaks.

[SPEAKER_03]: The boy's eyes filled with tears for McCoy or his father.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's not certain.

[SPEAKER_03]: So let's talk about Artie's powers for a minute.

[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's kid, we often just get the emoji thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I already kind of hinted that the emoji projections are kind of complex ways.

[SPEAKER_03]: I would be interested to see, like, cipher and already have a story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, sorry, I'm just going to spray it all right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Totally agree.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, these emojis carry with them, memory and emotion and intent.

[SPEAKER_03]: And you have to kind of learn how to read them.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the other part of Artie's power is this mind link.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's right there from the beginning.

[SPEAKER_03]: He touches you.

[SPEAKER_03]: He forms a connection with you.

[SPEAKER_03]: He can experience your pain.

[SPEAKER_03]: He can see into your thoughts.

[SPEAKER_03]: He can track you and project what you're going through for others.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this idea of the boy's ice field with tears, but he's not sure if it's for McCoy who's in pain or for his dad who's lost.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's an emotion or an empathic nature.

[SPEAKER_03]: It has abilities that make him quite powerful and quite unique in this world of telepaths.

[SPEAKER_03]: And everything he projects is always like pink pink, which is really cute too.

[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on his power and potential?

[SPEAKER_03]: It kind of never [SPEAKER_03]: Well, okay, there's a spot in future foundation where they give him like a helmet when his powers are gone, and the helmet allows him still to project his ideas.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it shows him at the time able to kind of work out complex problems, like let me break the components of this down, like the math equations thing, and like figure out how this works.

[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't get used a lot, but that also seems to be a part of his powers, the kind of sussing out of the details of things.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like he didn't get training, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like he didn't get sufficient training to develop his powers.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I like how they're explained fairly clearly early on, but I feel like nothing exciting really happens with it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So like he'll be with someone.

[SPEAKER_01]: He will use it as his language quite often too, as we see.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when we're getting to, I know we'll get to it later.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there's like a little touching moment in inferno when basically already in Leach, I mean, broken up.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, you know, they [SPEAKER_01]: They show the breaking hearts the same thing with them like Rusty and Skids when they're being broken apart when he needs to finally go to jail, then she needs to go off to school.

[SPEAKER_03]: You see those things so well that like childhood purity of emotion.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Heart breakdown.

[SPEAKER_01]: Real the fearsome.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is, and I feel like, you know, with a lot of powers and a lot of comics because, you know, he wasn't fully developed that the telepathic part of the abilities could have been developed and maybe you'd have much more power in that.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, maybe he would be able to link up with more than one person at once, maybe he could, maybe like project more, maybe he could do a little karma situation in control.

[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know because it never really got developed.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it would be nice for them to circle back around with that someday in developed already.

[SPEAKER_02]: He starts strong or not like there's a character but like also is a fleshed out idea what this power could be it's when they kind of spent more time I think being unique about people's powers back then there were maybe less mutants to choose from whatever it would be and so he wasn't a telepath but there was a telepathic nature to this there's you know this mind link idea there is this way he communicates [SPEAKER_02]: There's in a way being disabled, but like using his skill set in a different way.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then writers after that, as we will talk about, I'm sure, relegate him in leech to being like the plot device for other things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so they don't look into what he can do after that.

[SPEAKER_02]: But he is, mixtures of caliban being able to track people, he is mixtures of like raven with the empath thing, as you mentioned.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's all of these nuances that a straight telepath never gets.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was more interesting with his powers and that initial take of what that meant and how that could be used and as a useful member of any team instead of being the sidekick.

[SPEAKER_03]: So this is where like being a therapist writing an X-Men book would be so fun.

[SPEAKER_03]: I would love to work in a scene with like Emma and Arty who's like helping him learn how to use his powers that like yes, like like at an age appropriate level.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_03]: You get to develop normally and being a telepath and an empath is part of that.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we jump back to Karl Maddix, who is like way oversharing with his son and he's basically like, like, look, I know I'm a big shit, and I'm doing terrible things.

[SPEAKER_03]: But he says, it's all been for you, Arty.

[SPEAKER_03]: I want you to be my normal little boy.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like you used to be.

[SPEAKER_03]: Your mother would have understood that.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we then get the flashback.

[SPEAKER_03]: He took a job at Ryan Biochemicals after the secret empire killed him and dumped his body.

[SPEAKER_03]: But he was still alive, even though he was shot.

[SPEAKER_03]: So he, like, his wife died apparently, and I don't know where his kid's been living, but he brings his kid to live with him.

[SPEAKER_03]: But then on Arty's eleventh birthday, he turns into a mutant.

[SPEAKER_03]: It leaves him like disfigured and mute, and he's like, I vowed to make him normal again.

[SPEAKER_03]: So he always kept Arty hidden after that.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's conducting experiments.

[SPEAKER_03]: And now this is where McCoy has come into the picture a little bit.

[SPEAKER_03]: So really kind of a tragic backstory, what I would love to see more of that part of Artie's story referenced in a story like his mother and the loss and like the circumstances under which his powers developed I think is really interesting.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so rushing through this we end up like with Carl Maddick's killing himself suicide by cop in the end.

[SPEAKER_03]: Artie goes into the custody of X-Factor and becomes one of their first wards and their [SPEAKER_03]: Their place gets really overwhelmed by words really quickly, because it turns into like Rusty and Arty at the start, but then it's like, it's in boom, boom, and Richter and Ben, like a whole bunch of more locks move in, and then they eventually have to write all the characters out.

[SPEAKER_03]: But Arty as X-Factor's word is really cute, although it results from his father dying first.

[SPEAKER_03]: So in this moment of tragedy, he moves in with strangers who love him and let him be a kid, but also he's completely in danger the whole time.

[SPEAKER_03]: They room him with Rusty Collins who is the character fire fist who's just he's an awful character.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like him but I think he's interesting but he's very like whiny white kid.

[SPEAKER_03]: He he's like you put this ugly little guy in my room without even asking me [SPEAKER_03]: And you all treat him like he's normal.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, if that's what being immune is, I want nothing to do with it.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Cyclops is like, look, I hope you're not really listening.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's just having a hard time with all of this.

[SPEAKER_03]: He murdered a prostitute with his power and he touched him.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's fine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's on the lab.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, already projects an image of Professor X on the screen in X factor four.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's like reading into Cyclops's thoughts.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Cyclops tells him all about Xavier's dream and already smiles.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then he puts an image of Madeline prior on the screen.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's got like, oh, okay, our sessions over now.

[SPEAKER_03]: Because this is a chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair.

[SPEAKER_03]: The chair [SPEAKER_03]: Rusty runs away.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's yelling at Arty.

[SPEAKER_03]: Don't look at me like that.

[SPEAKER_03]: I know what I'm doing, missfit.

[SPEAKER_03]: You stay here.

[SPEAKER_03]: You want.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're kind of belongs in a place like this, but I'm, no, I don't.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm no freaking beauty.

[SPEAKER_03]: So long, Baldi, don't forget to write.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the narration tells us that this is heartbreaking.

[SPEAKER_03]: As the door slams, Arthur's huge eyes begin to fill with tears.

[SPEAKER_03]: Still he reaches out scanning for Rusty's mind, he seeks to understand the older boy's bitterness and anger, and when contact is made, Arthur's overwhelmed by an all-encompassing darkness.

[SPEAKER_03]: He feels Rusty's fear and terror, and more he understands.

[SPEAKER_03]: It is Rusty's fear of his own powers that has driven him away from his only salvation.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arthur sees that Rusty hates no one, but himself.

[SPEAKER_03]: With that, Arthur breaks contact, and the draining emotional bond fades.

[SPEAKER_03]: But Arthur's concern remains, and the young boy knows what he must do.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is why he's such an important character.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's the best communicator out of almost anybody because he doesn't have to use words.

[SPEAKER_02]: He understands and gets right to the point of what somebody's feeling as opposed to trying to deal with the word salad we all put in there when we don't want to explain things.

[SPEAKER_02]: and they really like he just dealt with his dad dying and here he is being like all let me try and understand where somebody else is coming from like a prince he's a sweetheart of a character so he puts on this big old coat and a hat and some shades and he tries to sneak out because Rusty's giving attack by frenzy outside anyway [SPEAKER_03]: It all ends up resting wrapping up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Rusty comes back and he tells, uh, Arty, I suppose that these guys can own up to their mistakes, so can I.

I owe you my life.

[SPEAKER_03]: I owe you an apologies.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I was wrong to say all those terrible things to you before.

[SPEAKER_03]: After all, you and I are in this together, aren't we?

[SPEAKER_03]: Another best buddy.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a cute, cute, cute, cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: In issue five, Arty puts images of Gene and Maddie up to try to help.

[SPEAKER_03]: Rusty understand why Scott is complicated.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the narration tells us that Arty knows, quote, all Scott's sorrows and heartache in Israel.

[SPEAKER_03]: In issue seven, we see Arty and Rusty making sandwiches in eight.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty's making a Rusty makes pop.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty popcorn for breakfast, and they're watching Trish Tilbe on the news, and he meets the god clean, very cantilever.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Arty's watching and releasing the world's getting very complex for mutants.

[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a moment where he projects images to let Rusty know the ex-factors in danger.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's starting to realize Cameron Hodg is a shithead.

[SPEAKER_03]: In issue nine, Arty wakes up and realizes through his mental length that Rusty's in danger, because freedom forces after him.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty tries tolling botch who's just like shut the fuck up kid.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so like Arty follows Rusty into the tunnels dressed again in his oversized clothes.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he ends up meeting a little kid named Leech, and then he meets Caliban, and then the mutant massacre begins.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is where the morauders who are professionals assassins show up in the tunnels with their guns.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, Michael, what are your thoughts on Arties understanding of Cyclops's complications?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, I mean he's he's going to work there later than anyone else.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's too, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, he's not eleven-year-old trying to explain a thirty-year-old having to fare like nineteen-year-old.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and he seems to get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_01]: And he just gets it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He literally puts it out there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, this is what's going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is why Scott sends such a bad mood all the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which will continue as we know because things just get worse and worse and worse and worse.

[SPEAKER_01]: But meanwhile, I was still trying to hide this information in, and we shouldn't even know this.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's so much complication in that context, not just what he's showing him, but all the ramifications for it, too, with the team, what that means for them, because, you know, Jean and Scott are more or less parental figures right now, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're guiding them, they're teaching them, they're also teachers to them, and to kind of put out there for Rusty to see, yeah, this is all the calamity and all the drama.

[SPEAKER_01]: that we have to deal with too.

[SPEAKER_01]: This will impact us too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he's very, very insightful.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I really like about him.

[SPEAKER_03]: Cameron Hodges isn't listening.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's going to help this friend, but already being in the tunnels is a large part of the reason that X factor enters the tunnels because they're there to fund already and then they find a massacre.

[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin, were you, well, what was your first exposure to the mutant massacre storyline?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's rough.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's more rough for Genocia, Genocia's face.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a couple pages.

[SPEAKER_03]: It is a story once there's like a rip shreds.

[SPEAKER_02]: And can we go back to the fact that Michael was saying that there's was like advertising the series catalog that you got to have mutant massacre out of this series catalog.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is shocking to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of the most defining moments I think of X-Men history.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know that we bring it up enough of just how adult in a way this was and how [SPEAKER_02]: before the terrible world we're in now like this was like shocking and how everybody was like vulnerable and what happened to these characters and the danger and tension throughout this entire storyline and it was this whole thing of like don't bring them into the tunnels don't go back into the tunnels like this just dread but you have to rescue these people but you have to find them and it was so well put together crossing over through all the stories of like what was happening in all of these different locations but the fact that like [SPEAKER_02]: Arty, throughout, again, meets Caliban and Leach, and kind of has this interesting bond out of trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: Up to this point, Arty's whole life is trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, really, his mom dying is dad dying, and he's linked with his dad when that happens.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then he's like experiencing people being murdered in the front of him.

[SPEAKER_02]: So even though he's not coming from the moral ox, he's still like a kid of trauma.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's why he bonds so much with Caliban and Leach with all of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's just, oh, it's so heavy, but like talk about great storytelling.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is like the height of like eighties soap opera to with the whole like gene and Maddie and all that stuff too.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so this was like this heavy part of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Also, they use already, I think in a clever way here because this is of that editorial time where like thought bubbles or narration things are still allowed.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so you could see the interior thinking of things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they sometimes use Artie to be that in a new and fresh way to explain to other characters things that Artie is picking up.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I miss that kind of way in of narration since it's like not in fashion right now to kind of like get in people's heads.

[SPEAKER_03]: Here's why Artie is key to the X-Men.

[SPEAKER_03]: We talked about him a bit ago being the representation of childhood and childhood innocence.

[SPEAKER_03]: So this is in nineteen eighty three nineteen eighty two in Marvel graphic novel four is when the new mutants are introduced.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's literally a new era a new generation.

[SPEAKER_03]: The very next issue of Marvel graphic novel in nineteen eighty three is God loves man kills in which the Christian organization led by William striker is now hunting down vulnerable populations.

[SPEAKER_03]: In X factor annual number one that comes out right around this time.

[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't show it on the page, but X-Factor ends up in Russia, and they discover a mass grave full of mutant bodies.

[SPEAKER_03]: From a mutant, like Nazi scientist, who is working for the government.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is where the Sentinels start working for the government, where we start seeing freedom force, the supervillains working for the government, where we start seeing the mutant registration act tossed around, [SPEAKER_03]: The themes for X-Men went from like the playful, fun, adventure stuff that Claremont introduced to now we start getting into more and more complex things over time like genosha and the legacy virus and the queer analogies are ramping up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Already as this character who walks [SPEAKER_03]: into the tunnel's innocently one day at his oversized coat, who is now hiding in drain pipes because Saber Tooth is slashing people up right outside, it's really, really complicated.

[SPEAKER_03]: And watch how the themes and X factor get really crazy too, because this is the story where Warren Worthington, he gets his wings chopped off, and it's made to look like he had committed suicide before he comes back embracing his darkness.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the billionaire character.

[SPEAKER_03]: Things are getting rough.

[SPEAKER_03]: We've never seen an X-Men story like this before.

[SPEAKER_03]: The body count is [SPEAKER_01]: So many things change in and I didn't realize it in the time because this is where I started in the Xbox.

[SPEAKER_01]: I started in this place of everything's getting blown up.

[SPEAKER_01]: All of these people are dying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of these X-Men are now injured off the team.

[SPEAKER_01]: The whole team's changing the melodrama of X-Factor.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think I've ever read anything like that since, especially this period of time.

[SPEAKER_01]: And all the kids coming into the drama with all of their own trauma.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if you've read the books over an X-Men, this is where Wolverine and it's safe to be cracking, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: But yes, we're kitty and night crawler leave it to him because they get wounded really badly.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, Colossus kills us on the page.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there's yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the first things I've ever read an X-Men.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't even know why I was drawn to a back then.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I needed some additional therapy to work through that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we all do, but it was wild and it was a huge turning point.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like for all these books, just the seriousness and the consequences that like you said other than Thunderbird, um, characters that we've grown to care about can die.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe they're not gonna come back.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, well, in the other corner of the other corner of this, there's also part of the Newton massacre Franklin Richards is four and a half and he's put a power pack and they're all children in the middle of this.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's crazy.

[SPEAKER_03]: So already I think represents that in a very specific way.

[SPEAKER_03]: So do Lincoln Caliban Calibans, very simple minded, leeches very innocent as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so Artie's literally clutching a teddy bear.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's projecting his thoughts like asking like, X-Factor for help.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's running through the sewer past corpses.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he finally finds Angel.

[SPEAKER_03]: Artie, you're okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're alive.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank heaven.

[SPEAKER_03]: Score one for the mutant hunters.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then Harpoon fires his spear and pins Angel to the wall.

[SPEAKER_03]: We continue in Thor III-seventy-four, which you have if you have the mutant massacre trade, this is always part of it, of course, where Thor finds already hiding in a drain pipe, and already in his shock projects the image of a graveyard to Thor to convey his feelings.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thor promises to get him out, blockbuster attacks, [SPEAKER_03]: who shatters Thor's arm, Angel attacks again, and Angel is nearly killed before like Thor docks blockbuster out.

[SPEAKER_03]: So already noticed Thor that Scott and Gene are in danger.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Thor puts Angel over his shoulder and they go looking and Gene is supporting a wounded cyclops.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty, oh, thank heavens, you're safe.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty, we were so worried about you, hugs.

[SPEAKER_03]: We jump into X-Factor Eleven, where Arty's projecting what has happened to Scott and Jean, and he also, or notices how Scott's first thoughts are how Warren must love Jean too, so Scott's obsessed with the thing being the center of her world.

[SPEAKER_03]: In twelve, we see a lot of the more locks move in among X-Factor, so this is where Leach and Arty are now roommates, beast yells at them in thirteen calling them Hooligans, [SPEAKER_03]: boom, boom, moves in, and skids moves in.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then, Arty learns that Angel's wings got chopped off.

[SPEAKER_03]: And again, Angel is the heavenly messenger character, the one that represents hope, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, his wings have got chopped off.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, the innocence of the X-Men is very, very gone, and it's a very sad story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty, like, screams in, like, a loud emoji of Angel in his grief.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then, Leach returns to the tunnels.

[SPEAKER_03]: In sixteen, [SPEAKER_03]: Arties interacting with the other students and news keeps getting worse as like Rusty opens up about that time that he burned that prostitute Emma Leport with his powers whole different story and they put on all hospital gowns and they try to sneak in to see oh I guess he didn't kill the prostitute.

[SPEAKER_03]: She's like an a burn.

[SPEAKER_03]: They take her down to the sewer because they're like, hey, maybe mask can fix your face mask is that big guy who can shape your flesh.

[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, but he ends up like mangling.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: And some can reach leaches back and already is so happy.

[SPEAKER_03]: But now they can't find boom boom in the projection is boom boom space with like a circle around it and a slash through it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, God, and then already also projects a stinky fish at Cameron Hodge, because you know, that's very fair.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't mess with this group.

[SPEAKER_02]: This group is like everything to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: This was like when I thought X factor was like working on all like cylinders.

[SPEAKER_02]: The whole exterminator slash will boom, boom, running off and being part of the fallen angels for that little bit.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like all of that was just so great.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I do want to just quickly say, parties, again, such a good communicator, he always finds the evil that's hiding.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love this period too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it just what Kevin was saying, you know, this was right after things have fallen apart and I had started reading it, but I loved all the kid characters I and very partial to skids bad code name and all I love her.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like what happens with her throughout the years, the comics, the same thing happened with Artie.

[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't know what to do with their powers as far as let's keep them interesting, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because Skids did not just have this force field where she would stand around.

[SPEAKER_01]: She would skate on it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was friction.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was very well.

[SPEAKER_01]: They very poorly defined to make sure she wasn't just a force field character.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then somehow the same writer developed her backwards to just stretch her field and just stand there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like why?

[SPEAKER_01]: And kind of like with Rd too.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, what changes in the cast of characters has now gotten a little few big?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the thing too.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's too many they had to pick who's important.

[SPEAKER_01]: So of course, we got exterminators to usher some off and then further usher them to new mutants.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then usher some varsity and skids really got the shitty end of the stick in that deal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like forever after that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I love this group.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I feel like their personalities were developing, which is really cool to see much like in new mutants, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: We had a very large cast of characters in that book, some were kind of thrones the back, like Carmen Magma and favor some other ones that got more development.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like [SPEAKER_01]: This was great time for this book, but then you can see those things shifting a little later.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's really cool.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll say that like I feel like this was the perfect mix of characters around this time.

[SPEAKER_02]: By the time we get to inferno, we start getting the trope of I think Arty and Leach has just in peril and as like plot device more, here they're still I think being included in as the group and they're still part of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is probably prime of boom boom, you know, Richter skids, Arty Leach, Rusty.

[SPEAKER_01]: agree and one other little point I want to make is that I always loved the um I didn't even want to call them they'd have a different artist and they would have their own like the kids issues you know what I mean like we would have a storyline and they would get their own like Rusty goes in the park and June Bergman drew the issue and it was a different story just for the kids [SPEAKER_01]: I always loved those because sometimes when it was the gene and then Warren and Scott at least the melodrama of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Less melodrama for my span, but the melodrama, the kids would get lost a little bit.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or there'd be more just reacting to that and not having their own stories.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I always appreciated the separate stories like the one we just talked about with, it was a very rusty and skin story with Emma that was burned.

[SPEAKER_01]: Going to see her, but then skids, we learned about her past that we didn't know until that issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: how her powers activated her father or stepfather's beating her mother and her mother died and her field saved her for beating as well and the pearls and she left and I just feel like those stories I always gravitated towards versus the overly dramatic genus got stuff and we got the development of the characters this way [SPEAKER_03]: It's a whole new generation of mutants.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but so pop our job on Marvel and Navy.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love making this channel in particular, because I get to hop all over the X-Men universe.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: Expecter, twenty is a really cute, already story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Skids is making sandwiches, already wants to help.

[SPEAKER_03]: He projects an image of like a sardine can and skids is like, no, we are not putting a sardine on the sandwich.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's like worried about the adults and he's worried about Angel who, again, they believe he commits suicide like right after this and it gets kind of dark for a minute.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, there's a moment where Artie gets sad at night and he grabs his teddy bear and he sneaks into Rusty's room and he wants to snuggle with Rusty because he's feeling afraid, but Rusty's gone.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so, Arty has like a little psychically with Rusty, and he gathers up the kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: They all go after Rusty, and they find a bunch of anti mutant signs in like subway tunnels and just rip them up.

[SPEAKER_03]: They run away from a cop, they run into Central Park, it's snow, there's snow everywhere, and they see Rusty getting attacked by some anti root thugs.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the kids disperse the protesters, and they write in like, in the snow, they write in giant letters.

[SPEAKER_03]: By their deeds, you shall know them, mutants were here.

[SPEAKER_03]: already projects the thumbs up and they go back to X-Factor and like turn on the news.

[SPEAKER_03]: Look what we did.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really huge story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Following up in an X-Factor X annual two where we see Arty and Leech have a plate ate with Franklin Richards and power pat.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty's a little nervous around new friends and like he's been through a lot of shit and he ends up projecting the fears of Scott and Gene in this issue and one shows up as the mutant massacre and the other as the Phoenix Force which is interesting again kind of that emotive piece of his power.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then Angel's gone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that central park thing is gold.

[SPEAKER_02]: That story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Big idea that like what they're doing to is it's a central park was ruined by ice man not being able to control his power.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he puts all the snow all over.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so they're like, let's show because everybody's like mutants are terrible.

[SPEAKER_02]: Look how they ruined central park.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they sneak in and do that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Have their little like gang problem as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the fact, oh, it's just so well written, so adorable, so gooniesish.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like they're all together.

[SPEAKER_02]: You get their personalities in it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a, it's a really perfect story.

[SPEAKER_02]: I highly recommend that one.

[SPEAKER_03]: So fast forward, fast forward a few years to the extinction agenda, where we open with like the teen mutants getting captured in genosha and like stripped naked and wolves vain is branded like it's really serious, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Expecter twenty two is where the theme gets really rough again.

[SPEAKER_03]: Cameron Hodges been living among X-factor and he has also formed a group called the right, which is very ergonomics.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's called the right, like the far right.

[SPEAKER_03]: They dress in giant green tanks with smiley faces painted on.

[SPEAKER_03]: and they come in with fucking like tranquilizers, they're firing from machine guns.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they fully assault all of the ex-bacter kids, string them up, block their powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: They put a little helmet on arty, and so he has no way to communicate when he's blocked.

[SPEAKER_03]: The kids are getting like electrocuted.

[SPEAKER_03]: They get to like escape, of course, and they're reunited with ex-bacter, but it's again, it's quite a serious story, which then results in angel coming back as archangel, and like the horsemen of the apocalypse, like ravaging the lead.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like they get really crazy in this era, [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to keep it focused on already, obviously, but the themes in these stories are insane.

[SPEAKER_03]: Are you fans of the right, Michael?

[SPEAKER_01]: So no, but again, so you're going to last.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this was the next year, twelve months later, Sears catalog.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was the next story that came my way.

[SPEAKER_01]: You'd mask her and then this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was collecting issues in between.

[SPEAKER_01]: And let we go to a local comic story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Get some back issues.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think my parents at this point too are like, what is going on in these comics?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like these kids are getting trained.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're getting kidnapped.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're blowing people away with guns.

[SPEAKER_01]: People are dying.

[SPEAKER_01]: What are we reading here?

[SPEAKER_01]: I thought the X-Men were supposed to be fun comic books.

[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, they still allowed me.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, again, trauma trauma, the kids are all kidnapped.

[SPEAKER_01]: They are strung up, right, in the power dampening, whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they're just held there.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just again another situation where [SPEAKER_03]: What what more can these kids go through right you want to guide us through kind of this next second of our history we're like in nineteen eighty six to eighty nine air right well right before they filled an x force and like all the rebranding gold tea and like all that's about to happen [SPEAKER_01]: So we get this really fun x-vector twenty-seven Christmas issue with a really cute cover with ice-slide and Arty is featured prominently on the cover of the huge smile in his face.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's having fun in that slide and we love to see this with Arty because all the trauma they just went through her usual.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he projects a Christmas tree that team built a huge ice tree which we can see on the cover as well and top the entire state building.

[SPEAKER_01]: very cool.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love the art in this toy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I always love the shine of the ice, to the way it's drawn an X-factor.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm of course a good trish with already, you know, all smiles, one of the mutants fly by, and you don't tell it genetically.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the group moves into, oh my god, apocalypse is ship, which I feel like they were going to live there forever at the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, that senty and headquarters from apocalypse, like I said.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they have cute moments delivering the, you know, the presence to kids.

[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, you know, they after they go to the hospital already gives boom boom the biggest hug, which is really sweet because I feel like boom boom often is pushing away from getting love from other people because she's had to be so street smart and tough.

[SPEAKER_01]: So she doesn't really accept that.

[SPEAKER_01]: then he gives it to her and I love that woman.

[SPEAKER_01]: Artie, he's just so cute.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you see the elf in the red sand to hat.

[SPEAKER_01]: While Beast wore a sand to beard nearby, that was incredibly cute.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this was a very cute sea issue.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all needed the break as readers, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this is not classics.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're like the kids get some presents, but choose to be the less fortunate, which is basically a limited edition.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like at the end of all the eighties cartoons, we would get that little snippet about like the life lesson in Thundercats.

[SPEAKER_01]: What did you learn from this?

[SPEAKER_01]: I learned to give this up to save everybody, you know, similar little thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: So cute, so cute, so cute.

[SPEAKER_01]: So once everyone's inside ship, so, you know, Christmas has kind of moved forward.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're an X-package of twenty-eight, you know, the ship is a little out of control, going wonky.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did anyone else feel like it was an odd choice just to move into ship?

[SPEAKER_03]: Did anyone else feel that?

[SPEAKER_03]: There was a big skyscraper superman headquarters available.

[SPEAKER_03]: Warren were thinking to just let all his money behind.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know!

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know!

[SPEAKER_02]: But it hit it back to the falls and crushes their headquarters.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they have to move it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a mess.

[SPEAKER_03]: Shipped deserves one of these episodes.

[SPEAKER_03]: Shipped becomes Prosh later.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's connected to cable.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's in-drink, chin, like, avalanche part of it.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't like this character.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chip's going walking and already uses his powers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, turret them all in one direction with some psychic arrows.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, go, go.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then by showing the image of ship's brain being bound up.

[SPEAKER_01]: So apocalypse wasn't so nice after all as we always know.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they free it and learn that ship can talk.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, already.

[SPEAKER_01]: See, he always knows.

[SPEAKER_01]: how to help and what to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: When the kids are floundering, he gives some direction.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so X-Factor, thirty to thirty-one, kids play in volleyball, on to practice their powers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cyclops loses his mind.

[SPEAKER_01]: Shocker, never.

[SPEAKER_01]: Later, the Bobby and Hank bring, all right, I'm going to say I love infection and I love these infectious issues.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love her so much that when Chris and I are sick around the house, we call each other in infectious, back away.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're in infectious.

[SPEAKER_01]: It would have been too much for many years now.

[SPEAKER_02]: So many of her, her leather mini skirt alone.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know, I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she just would take what she wanted in very scheming.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the kids realize, way earlier than the adults, how dangerous she is, do everything they can to stop her from kissing Bobby, which I found all that hysterical from tripping and just everything they could do.

[SPEAKER_03]: Are you guys like a pink dinosaur to scare her?

[SPEAKER_03]: The issues you started with, you're like, like, eighty sitcom episodes.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's really fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I think we needed a break, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's still very serious because in the texture word soup, that's anyone we know would happen, but they kept it fairly silly too.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in you will, so the kids are playing on ship, they learn about the origins of their caretaker.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, already seeing the story, but his own dad mixed in here.

[SPEAKER_03]: In like, be sorry, then, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: They don't often get into spats.

[SPEAKER_01]: They get into a little kid's bat, hold over who gets to tell the story.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that was pretty cute because they're usually a log step.

[SPEAKER_01]: So X-Factor, thirty-two and thirty-three more the Avengers.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was not my favorite issue I would say, but they're battling over shit, bright Avengers.

[SPEAKER_01]: He keeps the students isolated and say the kids are off to the boarding school.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's been for me adults being like, remember all those kids be saved?

[SPEAKER_03]: We not.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we need to send them off the boarding school down.

[SPEAKER_01]: They these kids need a real education, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yes, we're trading them on how to how to use their powers kind of, which we don't really see a lot of anymore.

[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a writer's summit and like the editor's going to pass his gotten unruly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we need to have something happen with the plot here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ship didn't quite do it for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this adorable image of Arty, um, disgusted by a shirt that leech holds up to him, that leech, we're a ridiculous hat.

[SPEAKER_01]: What Arty projects an image of clothes.

[SPEAKER_01]: So [SPEAKER_01]: They get kind of cute to hear.

[SPEAKER_01]: The kids react to Beast, turn and glue again.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's time for him for no.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here we go.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're in two seconds or less.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: X wife turns out to be a clone of Mr.

Sinister.

[SPEAKER_03]: She's lost everything.

[SPEAKER_03]: She believes her child is dead.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's some things going on.

[SPEAKER_03]: And she makes a Fausty and bargain with a limbo demon and has now unleashed limbo on earth.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're kidnapping babies to use as sacrifices.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can be like parents, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's great.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and murdering the parents to use the sacrifices to power up the goblin queen and Nostir.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's, this is where the kids getting involved.

[SPEAKER_03]: Is that era story?

[SPEAKER_03]: Because they get their own inferno breakout limited series called.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to be a part of it in Fernos.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you ever do one just about in Fernos, I could talk about all that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: Falkers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that has its own omnibus as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Woo.

[SPEAKER_01]: Which I think is pretty much the biggest one.

[SPEAKER_01]: Other maybe dazzlers bigger, but it's gigantic.

[SPEAKER_03]: But if you challenge me, I'll do it because I could listen to you read Nostir's dialogue for hours.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're doing it.

[SPEAKER_03]: It has everybody in that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it'll be, it'll be Nostir.

[SPEAKER_03]: We'll do one of these on Nostir.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's what.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really good idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we've got the breakout series, Ex Terminator, one through four of the many series.

[SPEAKER_01]: So another good time to focus the four kids and then [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, Rusty finally is surrendering himself to authorities.

[SPEAKER_01]: That seemed to take a really long time for them to get to that track.

[SPEAKER_01]: There we had that really sad moment with him and Skids and Arty, who checks images of Leech and him heartbroken, and he wishes Rusty could like with really cute horseshoes for Leef Clover.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's that time for eighties and lucky charms.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's cute slash heartbreaking, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: I love all this cool stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: I will say.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, Legion already are going to boarding a school, and very vividly, they show them being pulled in different directions by two different women, teachers, or whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, are to use his images to show that they have to be roommates, they can't be broken up.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, back together, they go.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they start taking classes, and are to wonders why it needs to read when he can project.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't his mind doesn't work that way, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So he projects to reach [SPEAKER_01]: So what black it in six out of tongue it was good.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's alright.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was pretty cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: I gotta do it five seconds.

[SPEAKER_03]: So with it is Takeshi Matsumatsu.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, who is very much that kid from Indiana Jones has like little gadget buddy in a way.

[SPEAKER_03]: He is a character who is a wheelchair user, who is Asian, and who is an inventor, sometimes at kind of a forge level.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's kind of like a cyber-netic guy.

[SPEAKER_03]: He can manipulate machines to a certain degree, not often used, but a beloved character by many, and really representation of a lot of different subcategories of minorities.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is anybody else getting wicked vibes at this point?

[SPEAKER_02]: moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have a school.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have somebody in wheels here.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have a pink and green.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just saying very heavy with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, but no.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a really good point.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a great point.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course now we are having demons attack.

[SPEAKER_01]: So poor and this seems really cute too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they're sleeping in separate beds and then they're been together.

[SPEAKER_01]: The cute little RT in Leach.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course, demons attack.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what happens is there's just little dolls left in their pillow.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like with these weird stick arms.

[SPEAKER_01]: But with Kid, he's not having this.

[SPEAKER_01]: So he's got kids to rescue and he knows that they need to break Rusty out as well to save them.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we have these crazy scenes with people going on a ladder.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's got this helicopter plane type thing trying to rescue him.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have almost some, thankfully, it's censure, but we almost have some issues with [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe Skids shirt flying up there under were a PJs, but unfortunately, they were kidnapped by the steer who I didn't know how to say his name for decades.

[SPEAKER_01]: So now I finally do.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it's like nastier, but here's the fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: The two kids, so X-Factor sends all their wards off to boarding school.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then the first thing happens to him is like Scott's X-wife drama comes and literally drags the children back in.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's always gotten the drama.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is.

[SPEAKER_01]: It really is.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they're kidnapped.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what's really cute about this is they're kind of corraling the little babies and watching over the babies because they're older.

[SPEAKER_01]: I thought those those panels are really cute too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So already, you know, it's projecting a massive distress call.

[SPEAKER_01]: The X-Factor before his powers are blocked.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the number of babies keeps increasing.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have these wild panels of the demons flying in.

[SPEAKER_01]: Killing a dad, but Mom's fighting back, and I love that scene with the blonde mom, where she's not having it.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's grabbing a demon by the face, ripping its eyes, and jumping to the screen, and I think Timmy, that's dead in the floor, and Mom's not having it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, I always love that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Soon, the older students are showing up, but they are defeated.

[SPEAKER_01]: Want, want, want.

[SPEAKER_01]: They all have their new costumes, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: They've been riding, motorcycles, they've been in the subway, and then they finally get there.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a long track, but they get put into this weird energy bubble.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the steer still wants the babies for power.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, of course, they won the fight in the end.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, in Newton's seventy-four, we see R.T.

[SPEAKER_01]: Interfacing with Moonstar, Rodini, objecting images of villains.

[SPEAKER_01]: She is discussing, to narrate, which is pretty cool.

[SPEAKER_01]: But now we're kind of sadly for me, and maybe a lot of us readers, the phase where things are getting blown apart, as far as the students.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we were saying earlier, Chad was saying that, it's just too many characters in the book, and they have to figure out people where people are going.

[SPEAKER_01]: We see the same thing at the same time, by the same writer, and new mutants with characters being dispatched.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we see what happens for the alien.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, no, we see what happens with Diddy Moonstar pretty soon and then breastfeeding skids.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there we go.

[SPEAKER_03]: So two thoughts quickly when Nostir has that moment where the demons bring him already in Leach and he's like, God damn it, I want to eat.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe he's not children.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's very like Winneford from HocusPocus.

[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing Kevin you mentioned wicked and now I want someone to like animate a video of already in leech singing because I knew you are changed for good but already as part of the song is just all clever emojis and then leech is like slightly off-key singing his version and it's a whole do-at.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's for love English.

[SPEAKER_02]: So much it is like about like imagery anyway.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like like a ship water or whatever and he could be protecting those things it worked so well because [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks everyone for having me on.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I do have to run.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're in the middle of a big old snowstorm.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm peeking out the window.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's going.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's turning to sleep.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have to get out to shovel.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this has been incredibly fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: As always, so thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was fun to talk about the under appreciated little arthurmatics RT.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's great.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm where can you find me?

[SPEAKER_01]: So again, my name is Mike Anderson.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can call me Mike Anderson.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm an admin on Age of Dazzler on Facebook.

[SPEAKER_01]: which is lovingly called the most positive place on the internet.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I did not make that up.

[SPEAKER_01]: Several members have said that over the years.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll keep it at that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Where can you find me specifically?

[SPEAKER_01]: So I am on Instagram, Facebook, on Blue Sky, the generic name like Michael Anderson.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chad, I know you know another Michael Anderson.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, not to be kidding with my husband, but how?

[SPEAKER_01]: How?

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you everyone and everyone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Have a wonderful day.

[SPEAKER_03]: You can also find Michael on the hidden years era of this show where we got to talk with Mike McLean together and and also on the mortis episode, Dazzler's most mortis.

[SPEAKER_03]: How do I forget?

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Michael.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's great to see you today.

[SPEAKER_02]: All right, have fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: Nice to meet you, Kevin.

[SPEAKER_02]: Very nice to meet you.

[SPEAKER_02]: By the end of Con soon, hopefully.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, expect your forty, we see X-factor kind of, say goodbye to the kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're so proud of how they handled themselves.

[SPEAKER_03]: Beast tosses already in the air.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then X-factor takes the babies back.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then someone else gets them.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then they get delivered to limbo and raised as soldiers.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then they come back in a new mutant story in like, two thousand nine.

[SPEAKER_03]: Crazy crazy continuity, the X inferno babies that leechin' ourty babies at that one time.

[SPEAKER_03]: We can kind of some bit appearances, Marvel fanfare, fifty, there's a story where Artis like processing his guilt over like how he's responsible for Angel's death, the way to but it's short.

[SPEAKER_03]: In New Mutants annual seven, the boarding school gets attacked by the alliance of evil.

[SPEAKER_03]: Artis gets a speech bubble, which is clearly a typo, because he also gets called leech.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the editor and writer just forgot that the pink kid needed to be entertained with the green kid, so it's fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then WizKid makes a big old ship and punches tower.

[SPEAKER_03]: And one moment, frenzy slaps Arty to the ground.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love you, frenzy, but fuck you, that's not this kid.

[SPEAKER_03]: You don't hit the care bear.

[SPEAKER_03]: Leach gets kidnapped.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's Arty's not super involved in the rest of that.

[SPEAKER_03]: In X force annual number one in the backup.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we can see that the regime's changing again, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty's faded into the background completely now.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a cute story by Gavin Curtis, where Artie and Leach and Wiz Kitter playing Legos, and then they like save their favorite teacher, Miss Huntington, from like dating a criminal.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's really cute, actually.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then Artie and Leach are at the wedding of Cyclops and Gene, on the cover that iconic, like busy cover, Artie sitting on the back of Professor X's wheelchair, but also they've drawn Leach in the crowd, and he looks like he's like seven feet tall.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: They also sit in the front row of the wedding.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's that kind of interim spot before they get pulled into Gen X, where they're just kind of in the background for a long time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do you have thoughts on any of Arty's stories here?

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the frustrating thing about Arty, especially during this period of time, is kind of what the writer thinks his age is.

[SPEAKER_02]: because to your point, when he's first introduced, he is supposed to be eleven.

[SPEAKER_02]: So on the young side of pubescence, but still closer to pubescence than child.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think they just bounce him around and leech both to be very close to Franklin's age at four years old, sometimes they're eight years old, sometimes they're eleven, they're like through all.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, in a way, maybe they are the representation of childhood in totality.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so in the Gen X years, when we talked about this at the beginning, they just look like little twins with different colors, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And their their distinguishing characteristics are almost gone.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're often interchanged or confused.

[SPEAKER_03]: It already doesn't use as powers a lot.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's once in a while, it's cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, sometimes they're drawn to be like four years old often you get that they think they're like eight, but really these kids are like thirteen.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, even with the sliding time scale, the other characters have aged up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Boom, boom was one thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: And now she's like, twenty five.

[SPEAKER_03]: So already can't still be twelve years old.

[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't work.

[SPEAKER_02]: No.

[SPEAKER_02]: The stretching is very much happening here at this point.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, we get to generation X, which I actually have very fond feelings of.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know you may be not as much.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know about gen X and there are things I'm quite annoyed by.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's full runs in it that I hate and there's a lot of drop lot lines and unresolved issues that I really dislike.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm fond of character.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the part the problem with it is that is the like messiness of trying to keep the monthly schedule going, but the potential of which generation X was and is I think is amazing.

[SPEAKER_03]: So one of my least favorite X men stories of all time is the Larry Hamma like Landau Luckman in Lake.

[SPEAKER_03]: era of Gen X where there's like that fucking pookie the Weasel or Puka whatever his name is and like those like weird plasma rates from the end of time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're a very chill man.

[SPEAKER_03]: I fucking hate that shit.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's one of my biggest favorite stories.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, we will not pretend we even aren't.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's interesting at the beginning as the idea of what Gen X is, which is this like, it's kind of taking Emma Frost's Massachusetts school, but bringing it into like kind of regular time where they're like, we're going to be at the Westchester location, but we're going to do a school for kids.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not quite new mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not quite the whole Hellians.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's its own kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right after the Philanx Covenant, where the government has created an anti-mutant weapon with an alien technology, but then the aliens try to snuff out all life on earth, like crazy intense time for mutants still.

[SPEAKER_02]: And definitely that's been off kind of sitcom way of like here, the characters that you met in this big crossover event, and now we're gonna put them all together because we think their personalities are cool.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they were, there was like, it was a mix of interesting characters.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, it's White Queen of Banshee, they're heading up the school, which is also interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: They had great dynamics.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is also that first time that White Queen is kind of becoming sort of a good guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, she's like been antagonistic for a long time, and now she's getting put in a position where Banshee is kind of like, I don't want to say rehabilitating her because she obviously is our own person.

[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a sense of like, we can do this for the children, they're both there for the children.

[SPEAKER_02]: already and leached don't come into it until like about, you know, issues five, I think is when they first, you know, get shown up.

[SPEAKER_02]: Interesting mix of other characters like Jubilee and Chamber and M, a lot of like really interesting characters that maybe have not had as much love as they got during this period of time.

[SPEAKER_02]: White Queen, Banshee, they're leading this mutant school, Generation X.

They send some teams to pick up because they're kind of using that whole, like, cerebral thing, our idea of, like, wait, there's new mutants.

[SPEAKER_02]: We better, like, help them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they see that there's something happening.

[SPEAKER_02]: They go to get Leach and Arty, but Leach and Emma have been kidnapped by Gene Nation, who are the ones who kind of have them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the weird thing about this is that Leach with his power canceling ability makes it so that Emma can't do anything.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she's feeling helpless.

[SPEAKER_02]: Artie then sends a message saying, they need help.

[SPEAKER_02]: Look, these people have been kidnapped.

[SPEAKER_02]: At this point, this is where, and part of it's the art style, his powers are starting to look a little less emoji, and they're just more like a flashback and muted color.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they were playing with how I think his powers were working.

[SPEAKER_02]: It makes it a little less interesting, I think, even though I look at the book normally.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's got a little hair in his armpits now.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's sweaty.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's got a little girl's or boys.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's got a lot of artistic expression happening.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's been spending some time with his artistic.

[SPEAKER_03]: He can do more than just an image.

[SPEAKER_03]: And for the sake of brevity, I just want to share with Kevin and listeners.

[SPEAKER_03]: I am biting my tongue so much.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have so many thoughts on the gene nation.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have so many thoughts on the early Gen X characters and Bachelot.

[SPEAKER_03]: But we have to keep it focused a little bit at hours.

[SPEAKER_03]: We will focus on that on another day.

[SPEAKER_03]: So of the gene nation, I think they're amazing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, it's really and this is again interesting ideas and thoughts kind of with these characters and also using it from a youthful.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is a very nineties book.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is like grunge to the grunge degree.

[SPEAKER_02]: There are outfits everything about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But back to the story of like them, you know, already sent the message.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's writing on skins, shoulders, skins, one of the other kids.

[SPEAKER_02]: Jubilee calls him pinky, which I know is terrible and diminutive, but I love it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's great.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then they, they're in this fight with G-Nation.

[SPEAKER_02]: The way they get out of this, Emma needs to kick Legion the head to knock him unconscious to stop his powers.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's shocking, it's terrible, but also kind of iconic at the same moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's able to get her psychic powers back.

[SPEAKER_02]: They get out of this whole thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then Dark Beast just been behind the scenes of G-Nation the whole time.

[SPEAKER_02]: They don't know who it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: He blows up the entire tunnels.

[SPEAKER_02]: So now, already, we each, they're welcomed into the Gen X kind of team.

[SPEAKER_02]: I will say, this is me going off of the tangent.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was very excited when they got introduced.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, look, they're going to be part of the team.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, they kind of get shunted off to the side and are just like these sidekick mascots that are kind of living in a tree house.

[SPEAKER_02]: In issue six skin and sink, how party and leech built this treehouse.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, this treehouse is being built in basically their danger room.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm remembering this correctly, it's not it's like they're little like, you know, kind of digital, you know, practice room or something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it looks like a kind of nice outdoor blade or something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so instead of giving up, they live in the mansion.

[SPEAKER_02]: they're in like the mansion and what do they do?

[SPEAKER_02]: They give these kids a tree house.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry, justice for Arty and Leach being shoved into a tree house.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why, but that that was what they decided to do.

[SPEAKER_03]: They also give them a massive toy room though.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like I was like comical like the guy from big rents out.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh rents out of giant warehouse and fills it with toys.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like Emma gives them like behave children.

[SPEAKER_03]: Here's your giant toys.

[SPEAKER_02]: room in a way, the entire danger room thing is like a giant playground.

[SPEAKER_02]: But again, it does do that weird infantilizing thing where they're like, are they four or five?

[SPEAKER_02]: They're in a tree house with a play room?

[SPEAKER_02]: No, they're like supposed to be like twelve or thirteen maybe at this point.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is weird.

[SPEAKER_02]: But whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's my my tangent for the moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: They build this tree house, already projects an image of them looking like [SPEAKER_02]: super heroes in thirteen when the new aliens attack the school leach removes ballworks powers making the guy look all week and they punch him out and already projects an image of a frying pan so they're like almost comical like cartoon character things like it's almost becomes this is why I called him like Kevin McAllister earlier [SPEAKER_02]: It's very much that like they're there in their tree house and then all of the you know Helien's kind of coming there sort of causing trouble and they look like they're gonna be easy pushovers, but then yeah and Kevin McAllister fashion.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like we're gonna do this this and this and get rid of them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Leach and already with that day, you know, they're safe in episode or issue a teen already jumps out of the tree house projects are disgruntled emoji and then I have [SPEAKER_02]: Happy one, landing at a pile of leaves.

[SPEAKER_02]: Twenty already jumps up for waterfall.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, obviously looks jumping after projecting a chicken.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then gave himself a ten because he's such a good jumper.

[SPEAKER_02]: He kind of looked bizarre and then oversized swimsuit with a shower cap.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like they just him and outfits that could be a whole thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: The fashion of Arty.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, next time you do a fashion [SPEAKER_02]: He loves, he loves like that look of like your three kids stacked up in a trench case.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like he loves that.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's all already though, but yes, it's exactly his look.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's like about two feet tall in this like kind of look.

[SPEAKER_02]: Later, Franklin Richards gets mixed into this whole thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: He comes to live with them and he tells them all about his origins.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now at this point, and I hate this.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is where I hate it.

[SPEAKER_02]: The writer writes them like they are for with speech impediments.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're all like, oh, what's going on?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, everything is written so childish and so weirdly like, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I know Franklin bounces around with ages, so who knows what age he ever is at any moment, because they keep making older, younger, but this just de-ages all of them so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's the dialogue.

[SPEAKER_02]: They don't do it in some of the other books, even when they're supposed to be younger.

[SPEAKER_02]: this book especially, they write them like babies.

[SPEAKER_02]: At this point, Franklin's living with them because his family, the fantastic force, going missing.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is during the Weirdo Heroes report moment, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_03]: Franklin also is carrying a blue ball around all the time and he had the universe containing his family's inside the ball.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's still unaware at this point he thinks they just went missing or whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I do love the Franklin Briggs at his nanny.

[SPEAKER_02]: He had been a witch, you know, it's Agatha, obviously.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he talks about that and already projects an image of an ugly one, which, you know, at the time, I think she sort of was, but, you know, no longer.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's beautiful now.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then they find an injured tenonile.

[SPEAKER_02]: Weird.

[SPEAKER_02]: Have a good tenonile.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know, it was she's a right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Regalian regalian.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a rival for something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is that where she, and it's a whole alien race with these, like, kind of large heads and big eyes.

[SPEAKER_03]: The tantanile is a colonizer.

[SPEAKER_03]: She's an old four character from nineteen sixty six.

[SPEAKER_03]: She comes to earth.

[SPEAKER_03]: She looks humanoid, but kind of [SPEAKER_03]: odd.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you look at her appearances, it feels like an episode of my light zone in some ways.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then they bring her back after onslaught in generation X number twenty and make her part of this kind of odd little team.

[SPEAKER_03]: The only other place she's ever shown up is in annihilation, Ronan.

[SPEAKER_03]: But she's a character that has forty two appearances.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if someone really pushed me to do it, it's Hannah and I, I'll episode, I'll do it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But she's not on my list, friends.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that seems like everybody should be writing in and asking for that episode.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, she's at an odd character and almost starts to become a bit of a nanny figure to them almost.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it is weird that they're just talking about like the nanny of agatha and this in the town and a show kind of shows up and is very like slightly motherly to the children in a weird way.

[SPEAKER_02]: So then in issue twenty two, the kids go trick or treating in Rutland Vermont.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if you remember the amazing episode, amazing adventures episode last year, where we talked about beast fighting juggernaut at the Rutland Vermont Halloween parade, there's some deep ties to Marvel lore whenever they do Halloween in Rutland.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a tie to those old stories.

[SPEAKER_03]: So go back and listen to my blurb in that episode.

[SPEAKER_03]: We talk all about why this is impactful.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god, I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So at the end, Artie gives Banshee an image of what he hoped to resell it like as a kid because at this point, Banshee's going through a whole bunch of like father issues of how he was not a good father to siren and all this other stuff like throughout all of Generation X.

So this is kind of like a little call out to that where again, Artie being really thoughtful about like what's going on with somebody else and trying to kind of be a good therapist.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like he's trying to work people through things.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what he does, like almost in all of these cases.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, Ben, she's really thankful for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then in in issue twenty three, they meet Howard the duck and Beverly Switzerland and they introduce them to Tana Nile.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we start to form a group that will become a little spin-off moment.

[SPEAKER_03]: Pause that whole cast of characters because they get a weird little jam-damate as romp in a series called Daydreamers, but there's some interim appearances.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a cute one in Xman and Limited, Fourteen, Franklin's having trouble sleeping, Legion Arty climb in bed with him, and Arty projects an image of like sheep jumping offence, which, again, you get so cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: The trio ends up visiting the home of Beast's parents, where they get a delicious breakfast.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty pushes an image of him eating a whole horse.

[SPEAKER_03]: a tractor ride.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's like some crazy fucking rude mean bigots that show up with guns and basically try to murder the children.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, already in Leech get tied to a tree like like the lynching implication is really uncomfortable, but they end up getting rescued.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a Franklin story mostly, but it's again that kind of jarring like loss of innocence here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, incredible Hulk and you will in nineteen ninety seven.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Hulk is chasing Franklin, Arty, and Leach on the cover.

[SPEAKER_03]: This story is very anime, Kevin Lay is the artist.

[SPEAKER_03]: In the second story, we get an image of like the messy room of these three kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: Leach sleeps in the top bunk, Arty on the bottom bunk.

[SPEAKER_03]: He sleeps next to a really scary, like, dummy toy and a rocket ship.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a picture of Wolverine on Arty's wall, which is great.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's projecting question marks in his sleep, so that's cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then Franklin's having a nightmare, so he wakes the other kids up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now, Leech goes, Leech was dreaming of tickling me Elmo, but Franken wake Leech up, wake Franken up before grups come.

[SPEAKER_03]: Instead of grownups, he says, G.

R.

Apostrophe, UPS, grups.

[SPEAKER_03]: What the fuck?

[SPEAKER_03]: What kind of baby talk nonsense?

[SPEAKER_03]: I hate it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: The caption tells us, these children already in Leech know all about nightmares.

[SPEAKER_03]: They know the nightmare of being born different.

[SPEAKER_03]: And she's just a really judgey, shitty thing to say.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it could be the fact that they're dad died, their mom died, like friends died, but know that they're different.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so the E-serial the next day, and Leach gets to say the word sugar-licious.

[SPEAKER_03]: They see a report about the Hulk who Franklin was just having a nightmare about, and now they're trying to warn other students about this monster.

[SPEAKER_03]: So they're at Generation X, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So Jubilee's like, yeah, I now have pint.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a monster sale going down over at the mall, and this sort of late for a date with her credit card, and then M goes, children, please.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm debugging the biosphere, a task that requires my complete and utter attention, and chamber goes, what do you believe and want?

[SPEAKER_03]: And so they can't get help from the kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: So Arty and Leech go try to scare the Hulk for Franklin, and Arty puts a pot on his head.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's like a huge image of him projecting nine major, like, X-Men powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: Jeans eyes are really scary at this picture.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, it's really like, what the fuck are they drawing?

[SPEAKER_03]: And then they like throw water balloons at the Hulk, [SPEAKER_03]: And then they throw Emma Frost's bras and panties and pantyhose at the Hulk.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then already projects a big scary dog balloon in the air.

[SPEAKER_03]: But in the end, they become up friends with the Hulk and they all go back home and everyone's worried about Franklin Richards powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's some cute moments in this story, but these children are not two and a half.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's, it's crazy to come and wear your thoughts on this little Hulk adventure.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why don't you go and even know?

[SPEAKER_02]: This is just, this is the problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, they're regressing them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, because people, and this is, again, that weird thing of adults who just don't really have a clue how to write children.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, anybody under twenty years old is like a baby.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what?

[SPEAKER_02]: This doesn't make sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: Also with the visual meeting of comics, it's like, sure you want to play with some of this stuff, but it's like, oh, please don't do this to these wonderful characters.

[SPEAKER_03]: I am delighted that Artie got to throw Emma Frost's broad.

[UNKNOWN]: Oh.

[SPEAKER_03]: Who in the world, who in the entire Marvel Universe besides Legion already have ever thrown Emma Frost's raw at the Hulk?

[SPEAKER_03]: That's amazing.

[SPEAKER_03]: That sounds like an entire episode itself.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the grups thing would.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, then things get really complicated in Gen X, twenty-five, which leads into the daydreamer stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: The storyline kind of becomes the generation X's under attack by Black Tom, who's now in slightly insane and morphed into this weird plant kind of, you know, controlling guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he gets these plants that start attacking all of the Gen X, plus also the little biosphere we're already in Leachrat.

[SPEAKER_02]: At this point, too, already gets called hollow linguistic.

[SPEAKER_02]: which is an interesting, you know, kind of phrase, which I guess makes sense.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like speaks language through holograms.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that's what they're trying to say, which is interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: So to defend himself, he projects a massive image of sabertooth to try and scare Tom away, kind of a new aspect of his power.

[SPEAKER_02]: like it's more finished off.

[SPEAKER_02]: So instead of like it being like an award bubble or being like very flat, it's almost like a three D thing, but it obviously still looks fake enough that Tom, I think immediately calls it out.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, what do you do?

[SPEAKER_02]: Are you projecting something?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like he can see it's kind of a projection.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like this weird middle ground of like not quite a full illusion.

[SPEAKER_02]: But they kind of hint that maybe artists, powers are growing.

[SPEAKER_02]: The man thing shows up, you know, we're talking about plants and all this other stuff, so man things there, and he's like, I got to protect them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Brian Marley Franklin, he's a concerned with, but like, already in lead to kind of a grouped in on this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So new friend, big plant, but they end up floating off into the nexus of all realities, which is like, you know, the place where man thing kind of comes from.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he kind of is like, we got to get away from here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, he didn't say it like that, but he's like, let's go.

[SPEAKER_02]: They all sucked into the nexus of all realities.

[SPEAKER_02]: which leads us to a spin-off.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we go to day dreamers, one through three.

[SPEAKER_02]: Martin England draws already in leech, like they are twins with bumpy heads, each of a different color.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is where really that idea.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're interchangeable.

[SPEAKER_02]: We got to remember which one speaks in which one doesn't.

[SPEAKER_02]: because it's like they're so like messing them together.

[SPEAKER_02]: So now they're floating through different dimensions as they're trying to kind of escape from the black tom kind of attack.

[SPEAKER_02]: Arty is dreaming of ice cream before he senses a dark presence and so that's going to be the big thing throughout the series.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they track Howard the duck who is kind of falling through the nexus holes and they see that he's falling into a fairy tale realm so they all jump in after to chase in one moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: Arty cutely projects [SPEAKER_02]: Angel versions of himself in his allies, like they might die cartoon style.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's very, again, Warner Brothers, he kind of like emoticons.

[SPEAKER_02]: They call Manthing Mr.

Salute, which seems weird, except also in this reality, Manthing can now speak, and he has speaking like in a very weird accent.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it kind of feels appropriate that he's Mr.

Salute.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's going through a lot and Mr.

Salad is a great name for him.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mr.

Salad is great.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Arty tries to brain bless the dark writer, which is this like presence that is like chasing them this whole time.

[SPEAKER_02]: They call him Mr.

Shadows, but he gets knocked down and then Arty gets captured.

[SPEAKER_02]: All the way through this, again, already is the one keyed into what's going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, something's wrong.

[SPEAKER_02]: He starts calling out Franklin.

[SPEAKER_02]: So like, leech is a big supporter of Franklin Richards, but Ari starts looking at him.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, you know, something's up, you know, tell us Franklin tells the truth.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's a little bit of that throughout where he's poking at Franklin.

[SPEAKER_02]: So again, Ari's the smart one.

[SPEAKER_02]: He had never gets anywhere for me, like if they had used this to reveal like Franklin becomes aware of what's happening and what he's been doing, maybe it would mean more, otherwise it's a bit of a joint.

[SPEAKER_02]: I either wanted more jauntiness or more like impact.

[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't seem to serve a particular purpose.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, maybe.

[SPEAKER_03]: How are the duck story in the late nineties?

[SPEAKER_03]: It's hard to know exactly what they were trying to do.

[SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe they've planned on some sort of spin-off, but it just didn't do well.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I like the the failed sitcom spin-off where they're like, oh, all these quirky characters together, but then to your point, I think they couldn't decide is this a Franklin story or how are the duck story?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they don't match.

[SPEAKER_02]: Especially Franklin at this moment where he's basically created a mini universe and is the terrible thing causing all this trouble.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, now we're in the rough area of Gen X, and I'm not going to spend any time here except just super quick.

[SPEAKER_03]: Gen X, thirty six already in Leach get tied up by a weird ghost named token.

[SPEAKER_03]: Don't fucking worry about it.

[SPEAKER_03]: In thirty seven, they're having a treehouse picnic with token the ghost and his friend Tracy Othier in forty four.

[SPEAKER_03]: They see Bianca Lennige and her seven dwarfs, they're called Bletarians.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're working at the school.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, in forty five, the biosphere goes missing and Artigates to Project Galactus.

[SPEAKER_03]: In forty seven, Legion already picked up a new playhouse and they clean it up for themselves and then Emma comes in with a very frank conversation.

[SPEAKER_03]: I need to talk to you about your future.

[SPEAKER_03]: After these last few months, living in a treehouse of all places, it's time there was a little structure in your lives.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to start by putting the two of you in a special Ed program.

[SPEAKER_03]: One that will include little sessions where you'll train in the use of your powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's about time your kids were part of things around here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, do you think?

[SPEAKER_03]: Don't go send your children to just like play awesome are in the tree as while you're getting attacked.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, which I'm to fifty one Adrian Frost is here.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love this character, but it's a very unsatisfied conclusion to the story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, she gives all the new teen heroes costumes.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty has a mind-leak with Banshee that we get indicated, so the writers are friendly using the characters a little bit.

[SPEAKER_03]: He gets to show Banshee that, like, someone's been kidnapped by it.

[SPEAKER_03]: He exposes a shitty kid in interest and run.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're not worried about it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Fifty-two.

[SPEAKER_03]: Emma visits Leach and Artie's attic, and it says on the door, like, Artie and Leach's pad, but, like, the easer backwards, and there's little smiley faces.

[SPEAKER_03]: Again, it's like their faces.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is what happens when you get no education.

[SPEAKER_02]: When you're just playing in a treehouse, you can't even, you can't write it anymore.

[SPEAKER_03]: But in the attic, it's all decked out with like, it's like a toy dad.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's giant dinosaur plushies, there's a ping pong table, and Emma gives the kids image inducers so that they can walk around campus, but she's like, you gotta use them responsibly, so they immediately activate the image inducers and disguise themselves as spider ham.

[SPEAKER_03]: and Dr.

Doom, which is the Dr.

Doom, Ed Emma's like you guys.

[SPEAKER_03]: In Fifty-seven, they listen to skin wine.

[SPEAKER_03]: In Fifty-nine, there's a story called Arty and Leach's Day off.

[SPEAKER_03]: They use the image and dozers to pose as human kids, and they go with the generation X group kids to the Museum of Natural History, and then immediately sneak off on their own.

[SPEAKER_03]: They try calling Franklin, but he's not home.

[SPEAKER_03]: Then they find spider-man fighting sandman and like already projected some images of spider to help in the little fight.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then they pose as pop stars and make some crazy fans chase them.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then they pose as Captain America and Thor and meet the Avengers out of Avengers mansion.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then Emma picks the kids up and was just like, it's a really cute issue, actually.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's the spin-off we needed.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, except again, they're not five.

[SPEAKER_03]: In sixty, they get in a snowball fight in sixty eight.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's the news that Adrian is back.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the last time they show up before the school is closed and sync dies.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we are on to Warren Ellis craziness.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's a fun era of Arty and Leach just because of the playfulness of it.

[SPEAKER_03]: But again, I bugs me that they've deaged them so much.

[SPEAKER_03]: All right, we're going to keep jumping.

[SPEAKER_03]: Are you a fan of the future foundation, Kevin?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I didn't read it at the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: I read a little bit of it, you know, in preparation for this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I like the idea of what they're trying to do here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Again, it becomes this thing of like the school, the training, the new people kind of coming in.

[SPEAKER_02]: The quirky like mixing characters together.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am not a fan of them trying to claim that leaches Franklin's best friend.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like no, no, not here for it.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, Franklin, it's either a leacher of the power pack kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe he, he, he leech of a very strong buddy era and with which is about to happen.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like when a fantastic four writer comes in and treats the family like a family.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like when Franklin and Valeria get lateime.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like when there's stories not just about the heroes going off and the kids being baby sat at home.

[SPEAKER_03]: So when we do something like Jonathan Hickman, which we saw in Cricula, Hickman comes on to the fantastic four and builds an entire universe.

[SPEAKER_03]: There are ancient history stories.

[SPEAKER_03]: There are all corners of their universe at play, and now like building a future generation of students that they want to train.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a school for geniuses.

[SPEAKER_03]: Franklin and Velaria get homeschooled, so let's bring some other geniuses.

[SPEAKER_03]: Alex Power, three little mulloid kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: One of them is a transgender mulloid, and then like the floaty mulloid head.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a couple fish kids.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a girl from Wakanda.

[SPEAKER_03]: It often possible the son of the impossible man joins at a certain point.

[SPEAKER_03]: Dragon man is that I love Dragon man.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, he's basically by the way, who is Bentley six, six, six?

[SPEAKER_03]: And then who it's, well, Bentley, thirty-two is the wizard from the frightful four.

[SPEAKER_03]: He cloned himself and it's himself as a younger child.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's actually a great character.

[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a really fun cast.

[SPEAKER_03]: The future foundation does not always get used consistently.

[SPEAKER_03]: And because there's like thirty fucking kids in this school, like, already in Leach never get a lot to do, but they go through a whole era of fantastic four.

[SPEAKER_03]: For like ten years, they're like a town in this franchise and it goes on for quite a long time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Jeremy Whitley, who I've befriended through the show, wrote that kind of queer version of the future foundation that was a five-issue limited series, all about Julie Power dating Bucky Barnes, like the girl from the other dimension, it's really cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: And already in Leach are there too, but they don't ever get the big focus.

[SPEAKER_03]: So fun moments that I'll cover just kind of briefly as we rush through this, but do you have general thoughts on the future foundation concept?

[SPEAKER_02]: I really like it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I gotta tell you, it feels like a really interesting group of characters to your point.

[SPEAKER_02]: The vibe is a little different, maybe because it's not just another mutant school.

[SPEAKER_02]: The school family feeling of it is a little corkier and interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know, I think if use properly, it's a good place for those two to kind of maybe have a moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: And be unique in a way that they can't be in some of the other stuff.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I'm going to hit the highlights here really quickly and there's some banger issues along the way.

[SPEAKER_03]: Higman's FF is really fun actually if you're an FF and you like the way he did X-Men.

[SPEAKER_03]: He does this in a few different franchises.

[SPEAKER_03]: He did it in the Avengers which resulted in secret wars.

[SPEAKER_03]: He builds the universe up to a big degree and it's just called FF.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's short for future foundation.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a volume by Michael Allred, where like Ant-Man, Medusa, She-Hulk, and Ms.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thing, Darla Deering, are the leaders.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's fucking delightful front-to-back the entire thing and already in Leecher in that too.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you haven't read that first episode, I really recommend it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Dude, that first issue is gold.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just read that so far and I'm obsessed with it.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's all about Antman, he's now in charge, but he's going after Dr.

Doom, who murdered his daughter.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it's playful and it's lovely.

[SPEAKER_03]: And all the characters get great moments.

[SPEAKER_03]: I really, I really am fond of this whole run if I'm honest.

[SPEAKER_02]: The introduction alone of all the characters.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to know who all the, you know, found the future foundation is, that first up issue, they all introduce themselves to Antman and it's great.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's really good.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a big cast, but it's very childy and it's very, very playful.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so I'll cover the highlights.

[SPEAKER_03]: FF, five, seven, before, we get a birthday party for Franklin Richards.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty and Leach Book both come in with like more elongated craniums here, and Arty's pink with like purple splotches on his head.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty gets a speech bubble again, which is also rough, and then we get M-Day, which happens in the middle of all this, which means Arty has now lost his powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: He cannot speak or project his thoughts, but the FF build him a little helmet with a light.

[SPEAKER_03]: And when he thinks something, it will project in light emojis.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the first thing he projects after they give him this little helmet is a four and a half symbol.

[SPEAKER_03]: Meaning I don't know, maybe that's his age.

[SPEAKER_03]: But now he's like, he's like part of the team, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: He also projects pink hearts.

[SPEAKER_03]: We get to see them now moving in his wards with the fantastic four and not frequently used, but it's cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: And when you consider already losing his powers, it's very sad.

[SPEAKER_03]: Each still has his [SPEAKER_03]: There were certain characters during MD that kind of got a focus.

[SPEAKER_03]: I remember prodigy got a big glow up when he had no powers as part of the young Avengers and already kind of got a big glow up here in that his powers go away, but now he's part of this new family.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love this for him.

[SPEAKER_02]: I do too.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's great.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, they hinted at when he first showed up all the way back in X-Factor that at some point he might be able to learn to speak again, but I'm interested that they were finding interesting clever ways to handle it when he couldn't, you know, use his powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, five, seventy-nine already in Leachdress like ninjas and they like how little fight with Franklin for fun and already projects a karate fighter.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're studying.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's an attack from the annihilation wave and the human torch dies and the kids want revenge.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we have a new title called FF that launches as a result of this.

[SPEAKER_03]: So again, the universe is being built out.

[SPEAKER_03]: And FF number one, the text describes already as a problem solver, which I love.

[SPEAKER_03]: It describes Leach as Franklin's best friend.

[SPEAKER_03]: In issue eleven, uh, Arty's projecting schematics while the students are building things like giant machines arranged by Valeria for big reasons.

[SPEAKER_03]: In twelve, they translocate to Latvia, so Arty's now in Latvia and he they draw kind of like a lumpy goblin here.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is my least favorite art of him.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think in all of his appearances.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty visits the negative zone.

[SPEAKER_03]: He writes that writes elephants in Wakanda.

[SPEAKER_03]: The kids also get free issues in Spider-Man.

[SPEAKER_03]: Amazing Spider-Man, six, fifty, eight to six, sixty, where Artie gets to write a sky sled and hang out with Spidey.

[SPEAKER_03]: He wears an eye patch on an adventure with things as blackbeard.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, like, time travel is implied.

[SPEAKER_03]: They fight the sinister six.

[SPEAKER_03]: They fight zombie pirates.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is Artie's adventure era.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's really cute in the, uh, fantastic four volume four one and two.

[SPEAKER_03]: The kids order Chinese food.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is where we like see Ms.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thing and Aunt Man and Medusa joining.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's another launching of the second volume of FFF after this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting because I think it was in the day dreamers or whatever that mini series was where they kind of mentioned about the powers of already getting he's like they talk about them being the most powerful or something like looks some kind of phrase they use at act like he's very super powerful.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't feel like he's ever really portrayed like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like it better when he's like problem solver when he's like a thinker instead.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I like that fantastic four kind of got it back into that world for him.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like this feels like a rehabilitation time for already coming out of like gen X childness.

[SPEAKER_03]: I like already doing science or being part of the team.

[SPEAKER_03]: I also like already as the psychic when they let used his powers like his empathic abilities to help people.

[SPEAKER_03]: We talked about that a little but I like that.

[SPEAKER_03]: When Artis just the playful kid in the background, he gets a cute moment once in a while because it's a cute thing to do.

[SPEAKER_03]: But that's not my favorite version.

[SPEAKER_03]: This character has a lot of potential actually.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think so too.

[SPEAKER_02]: I really do.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, FF volume two is delightful once again.

[SPEAKER_03]: The fantastic for missing, it's stated an issue one that Leech is eight and already is nine.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think, you know, maybe, when the handbook guys, we couldn't just say something was broken, maybe like, nanny deaged them a few years one time.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a hidden story.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe they, maybe they were eleven and thirteen and then they became four and a half and then grew up again.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's maybe Franklin, like maybe Franklin de Aged them with his reality powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: So there's some fun energy space.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'll Franklin keep them keeping them young to have friends around the friends.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's a story right there.

[SPEAKER_03]: So just some fun moments.

[SPEAKER_03]: The kids all get like little video interviews.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's like office mockumentary style and already always projects images.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's one time he projects Leach dressed as Cyclops.

[SPEAKER_03]: Miss thing is upset because already in Leach eat her pancakes and she's teaching them about machines, but she's really dumb.

[SPEAKER_03]: The kids hide with mole man attacks.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bunch of fun characters of this.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a future Johnny Storm.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's like Julius Caesar, but it's really an alien who's been posing as Julius Caesar for centuries.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bunch of characters that are really, really actually very delightful.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then Hora, the son of Blackbolt and Madusa joins the group as well, as Luna Maximoff, the daughter of Quicksilver in Crystal.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Luna, like, has a crush on eight often possible, and love it, love it, love it, love it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty and Leech make cookies.

[SPEAKER_03]: They play with Lockjaw.

[SPEAKER_03]: They meet Willie Lumpkin.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty is like making waffles right in around on leech's shoulders.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a attack from the front for the frightful four who are mind controlling Medusa and Arty manifests a psychic thing punching Medusa and Medusa deals it.

[SPEAKER_03]: So this is a new thing for Arty's powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like he taps into your pain receptors, projects the image and makes you feel it, which is very like mastermind.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes!

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's fascinating.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right, fun potential, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: In eight, Arty and Leech dump buckets of water on Ahura and Bentley, twenty-three because they're like kind of shitty kids and these are the trouble makers.

[SPEAKER_03]: In nine, FF goes to the beach and Arty gets to right on.

[SPEAKER_03]: She hopes shoulders, he covers her eyes.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a big water splash battle.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty projects a storm cloud.

[SPEAKER_03]: But when Ahura does a cannonball, it gets Arty all wet and he tries [SPEAKER_03]: prize.

[SPEAKER_03]: In ten, we learned to already unleash sprinkled pin particles on a tiger during a mission, and then they put the tiger in a sack because they wanted to keep it.

[SPEAKER_03]: But then it escapes from the sack and grows giant.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this cat remains their pet through the remainder of the series.

[SPEAKER_03]: They have a tiger that they, that they like shrunk with pin particles.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's very cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: They take classes from Julius Caesar.

[SPEAKER_03]: Articles down a [SPEAKER_03]: slide and he gets to project an image of heroes and villains.

[SPEAKER_03]: To teach it all from possible about good and evil color schemes like purple and green are bad and like red and blue are good.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's very few.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's an adventure with the impossible man in the watcher already gets to project an image of Scott Lang from prison time.

[SPEAKER_03]: He also gets to punch the red ghost in the face.

[SPEAKER_03]: They shrink down on dragonman skull.

[SPEAKER_03]: They visit some hot springs.

[SPEAKER_03]: They load up on snacks.

[SPEAKER_03]: They still have their little tiny tiger.

[SPEAKER_03]: In sixteen there's a closing barbecue and already it's to write on ant man's shoulders.

[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, it's just the whole series is cute.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a bunch of really fun things all the way through.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is what day dreamers was trying to be.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what it feels like.

[SPEAKER_02]: This feels like they got it right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's the right vibe.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you were delighted when you read about the tiny tiger.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, I'm now the fascinated by this.

[SPEAKER_02]: This may now be my favorite arty period of time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's fun.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really fun series in amazing, excuse me, avenging Spider-Man, seventeen already gets to project a spiny signal.

[SPEAKER_03]: He also needs death's head in the time variance authority.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is something I want to mention quickly from the FF period.

[SPEAKER_03]: Arty has now, like, I'm traveled, been in space, met gods.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's another annihilation wave.

[SPEAKER_03]: They go underwater with name or they go to Camp Hammond.

[SPEAKER_03]: The human tortoise alive again at a certain point.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a story about Franklin Richard's powers going kind of corrupt.

[SPEAKER_03]: And all of the redesigns from the heroes reborn are attacking the fantastic four and Arty's there.

[SPEAKER_03]: Psychoman comes and then the incursions begin.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is the secret wars, it's battle world, and when the world got reformed into battle world by that incredible Jonathan Hickman series, there's only a few characters on the world that remember the previous Earth.

[SPEAKER_03]: Dr.

Strange is one of those characters, so there's these focal point characters, but there's also one group of characters who completely escaped the battle world incursions, the fantastic four, put all the future foundation kids and like launched them into the time stream, so they stayed safe through all of this.

[SPEAKER_03]: So now the future foundation are going through all these different adventures at the end of secret wars they go off to like explore other universes.

[SPEAKER_03]: And Franklin is like at the peak of his powers and he's generating new universes just whenever he has an idea and then the future foundation go on an adventure there and then they're like doing this for years.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of implied like five years passes.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, already, even if he was eight, should now be thirteen, fourteen, because Franklin and Valeria are being written as children who are five years older after this time away, like time passed.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, a bunch of adventures, there's a bunch of great stuff with Dragon Man here, and then we get the third volume of future foundation.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is the Jeremy Whitley one I rent referenced earlier.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's only five issues.

[SPEAKER_03]: Already has so many bumps on his head.

[SPEAKER_03]: It looks so, so many bumps on his head in this art.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there's some time travel adventures about the molecule, man, and the maker, and leg of the laser fist, already really doesn't do anything in this, but he does project an image of the invisible woman when Leech says, she's the strongest hero, then the future foundation disbands finally, in fantastic four volume six, number twenty six, and already is only seen on Cricola, so far as I know one time, in an Xman unlimited infinity story, fifty nine, seventy five, seventy nine, [SPEAKER_03]: where Arty and Leech here at Ghost Story on Cricula, and then later Leech gets kidnapped in that story, my friend Philip C.V.

[SPEAKER_03]: Drew, where Maro and Farrell should have been girlfriends at the end, but Arty and Leech are reunited.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we don't get much.

[SPEAKER_03]: The future foundation ends and Arty's kind of faded into the background again after that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I, well, and especially with the cracoa era kind of ending, which the benefit of the cracoa era was that anybody could be pulled forward at any moment for a great story, but now that it's kind of over and they've all scattered to the winds, I want him back with like a future foundation, like have him and leech started or something like that, have them start like pulling things together, like [SPEAKER_02]: I want that plucky energy again now that they should be teenagers at least of like forming their own team and kind of taking a little bit more charge literally already has now been you know in other dimensions across the world like has experience and has been on multiple teams [SPEAKER_02]: It would be interesting to see what would happen if they could kind of form their own experience again.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I like the fact that they have not been just, like, already in Leach have not just been in mutant teams.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_02]: That diversity of guests give them the kind of person of, like, all of the old champions, or something like that where it's a mix of characters, mall over the defenders where they feel like it's a hodgepodge team, but I think that's a plus in their case.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to see already doing more.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to see his development of his powers.

[SPEAKER_03]: If already got a superhero codename, what would his codename be?

[SPEAKER_03]: What, what's something that works for him?

[SPEAKER_03]: Does and I'm Pinkie's not good enough now.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, if we're writing him as the little kid, he's going to choose something like Captain Brain, or you know, so he's going to design a cape.

[SPEAKER_03]: But let's put him as like a teen hero.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's we're like we're we're putting a book out and it's about a generation of mutant kids and he's being written seriously as like a member of the team.

[SPEAKER_03]: What's his codename?

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, this more of an eighties kind of code name is not very, you know, up to date, but I feel like something like mind link or something like that would be a name.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of words like Seer or Projector or MF or you know the clairvoyant like there's there's those types of words we could go like names where people use a long verb or are long noun for their name [SPEAKER_03]: Like he could call himself like perception or like intuition.

[SPEAKER_03]: But none of those quite fit.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think he would need something simple like like sensor like old-a-he-man villain with like an S.O.A.A.C.S sensor.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I still, that's still not quite right.

[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, I think he put him on a team and you make him the team telepath and you make his powers work in a really unique way.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think that part of him is incredibly enticing.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think he has the potential to kind of be that point of view character.

[SPEAKER_03]: in the way that like Jubilee or Katie Pride has been.

[SPEAKER_03]: He has a history, but he has an interesting backstory that could really be fleshed out as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the implications of what he's capable of with his powers, this is a good character.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is a character who has a strong moral sense, who wants to be a hero, that care-bear idea of him on a team book is an amazing thought experiment for me.

[SPEAKER_03]: I would fucking write the shit out of that character.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love him.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to, I want to read it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Any final thoughts on Artie?

[SPEAKER_03]: He's special.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's not.

[SPEAKER_03]: You list a hundred X-Men characters.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're not going to think of him until you're weighed on the list because he's never been featured in a very prominent way.

[SPEAKER_03]: But he's great.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is a great character.

[SPEAKER_03]: Leach is great too.

[SPEAKER_03]: Leach is a wonderful character.

[SPEAKER_02]: They are due their moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know who's going to get them and do it, but like it's not a poorly written character with nothing there that somebody might reinvent.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's something there.

[SPEAKER_02]: They just need their their spotlight.

[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and this just gets me hyped doing all of this and like looking at all this again into aality.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like why is there not something happening?

[SPEAKER_03]: Artie has never done a single thing wrong.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's something to consider as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: There is not one villainous act.

[SPEAKER_03]: Everything he does is from a sense of compassion and kindness.

[SPEAKER_03]: He responds to crazy things happening in the world, but he's always been a sweetheart.

[SPEAKER_03]: He loves a teddy bear.

[SPEAKER_03]: He loves a kitty cat.

[SPEAKER_03]: But what is his life if he is a teen?

[SPEAKER_03]: Like what does that look like?

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I like this character.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have a lot of thoughts on him.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I wanted to just go right about now.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like he sees great.

[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin, I love hanging out with you, and Michael, thank you for being part of the early show with us earlier.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you have any final thoughts, I'd love to hear them, but where can people find you online?

[SPEAKER_03]: And anything you want to plug.

[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin, of course, is the reoccurring as the voice of night crawler on various script readings on my show, and just one of my favorite people on the show and in real life.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love you very much.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love you very much and I love that I get to do Nikreler and some of your readings that's so much fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a delight.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you can hear me on some of those.

[SPEAKER_02]: I will always come on here and talk about obscure X-Men characters at the drop of a hat.

[SPEAKER_02]: So anytime you need somebody you call me, people can find me on Instagram at K-A-K-I-N-I-R-Y.

[SPEAKER_02]: Um, although I'm getting off of that soon because it's social media's evil.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am on blue sky for now, but you can also see me at some cons.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to be at Wondercon this year in an aheim in March and the uncanny experience in July and most likely flamecon in New York Comic Con this year.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll be doing the concert a little bit.

[SPEAKER_03]: Kevin, I just got to hang out in New York.

[SPEAKER_03]: We had big plans, but we were both kind of filling ill.

[SPEAKER_03]: But we got to have drinks and lovely conversation when evening.

[SPEAKER_03]: I will not be at WonderCon, but I will be at the other two.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we get to hang out at least twice this year, which I love.

[SPEAKER_03]: The next episode out after this is going to focus on Stevie Hunter.

[SPEAKER_03]: The one of the all-time favorite Kevin just gasped and clutched his pearls.

[SPEAKER_02]: My God, Stevie Hunter is amazing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would take any dance class from her.

[SPEAKER_03]: Harry Harris and no one caused player joining me for that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Follow the show, Graham, welcome under score lane on Instagram.

[SPEAKER_03]: Out on the main show shortly after this, we're focusing all on Thunderbird.

[SPEAKER_03]: So watch for the acted academic panel called about Thunderbird at the end of the month and then all of the episodes this month feature native talent, native voices, and native content as we explore [SPEAKER_03]: the post giant size X-X-Men number one era before Thunderbird dies.

[SPEAKER_03]: So thank you everybody again.

[SPEAKER_03]: Such a joy hanging out with you today Kevin and Michael.

[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you all back here next time on Grimalkin Lane's Patreon.

[SPEAKER_03]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism as a special guest and I talked about a red skull story and it's modern applications.

[SPEAKER_03]: In nineteen fourteen, Germany entered World War I, which happens the confluence of a lot of different world events, but Germany at the time sought self as a rising imperial power under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

[SPEAKER_03]: The country was fueled by militarism, nationalism, dreams of continental dominance.

[SPEAKER_03]: The next five years through the war, until in the late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late [SPEAKER_03]: fled, one German soldier wrote in a letter, uh, we are left with nothing not even a god to pray to.

[SPEAKER_03]: In nineteen, Germany received very harsh sanctions for their part in the war and their military was completely disbanded with the economy strained to breaking because the government had to face reparations.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the locals who were trying their best to survive increasing amounts of inflation and restrictions started kind of looking for cultural scapegoats and slow spreading blaming toward Jews and the Roma and the communists and the liberals including homosexuals were slowly spreading and people needed someone to blame.

[SPEAKER_03]: So the country ended up forming what was called the the Weimar Republic or Weimar Republic in nineteen nineteen Germany's kind of first democracy but it was quite unstable and really struggled to find its feet on either side the left or the right.

[SPEAKER_03]: The economy broke again inflation like super inflation of a basic products for survival was really kind of breaking the system and artists around this time really started leaning heavily into [SPEAKER_03]: The expressionism and dataism will talk more about that at another time, but you can look it up, which really reflected on the absurdity of society and just kind of leaning into the idea that nothing matters and that God is dead.

[SPEAKER_03]: And this is where Nazism kind of started to find its initial roots.

[SPEAKER_03]: People were looking for a clear leader.

[SPEAKER_03]: Adolf Hitler ended up becoming that leader through his own complicated journey.

[SPEAKER_03]: The messages that were being tossed around during this time leaned heavily into the ideas of nihilism and I think if we were to summarize some of the thought patterns you can kind of see the trends of the idea that violence is sacred truth is strategic morality is tribal human life is expendable [SPEAKER_03]: Moral nihilism can be defined that the idea around the idea that there is no right or wrong morality is invented by whoever chooses to invent it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Existential nihilism starts to rely on the fact that life has no meaning and political nihilism relies on the fact that there's no authority, no political structure.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to jump into Captain America, a two sixty one through two sixty three.

[SPEAKER_03]: The red skull is back.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's the secret leader of a new group called the Nileist Order.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a nineteen eighty one.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is jammed in a taste, my dear friend, and Mike Zach launching a very surprising take on the Nazi ideals represented by the red skull.

[SPEAKER_03]: So launching operation desecration into action, the Red School has an agent disguised as a bag lady who's keeping a close eye on Captain American, the Falcon, dressed in green robes and smoking a cigar, the Red School beats up a blonde woman who works for him for falling asleep on the job, reminding her to follow the nihilist caused.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Nile's cost is to find true peace in the leveling of life.

[SPEAKER_03]: Only in dissolution can harmony be secured.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's also brainwashing the giant Ameridroid.

[SPEAKER_03]: We talked about that in a recent episode.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is Lyle Decker who transferred his mind into a twelve foot replica of Captain America.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we're leading heavy into the absurd here obviously.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Ameridroid is taught to hate Captain America at all costs.

[SPEAKER_03]: But for symbols are harder to squash than men, it takes more than bullets to annihilate them.

[SPEAKER_03]: Society must first view them as anathema.

[SPEAKER_03]: The very authorence of their names must first become blasphemy.

[SPEAKER_03]: As part of his plot, the Red School has a washed-up actor named Edward Furbel.

[SPEAKER_03]: Dress says Nomad, the role that Captain America had when he no longer believed in America.

[SPEAKER_03]: The director of the New Captain America film, a galactic studio, a guy named Leonard Spellman, who is a veteran who has seen fellow soldiers die in combat under the orders of the Red Skull, and who has seen Captain America defeat Red Skull once.

[SPEAKER_03]: Red Skull's follower Will Brenner begins giving opinionated news stories on Captain America being selfish and unreliable, and all while Captain America is on a publicity tour around this new film that's being promoted about his life.

[SPEAKER_03]: The nihilist order embarrasses Captain America on a public talk show, and then there's a Captain America day parade where cap waves that are crowd under a giant Captain America balloon in the sky, and the nihilists attack with airships and guns firing on civilians.

[SPEAKER_03]: In case you idiots hadn't noticed, there are children down there, kids who couldn't tell a nihilist from a podiatrist.

[SPEAKER_03]: I know human life means little to you, but doesn't innocence count for something.

[SPEAKER_03]: he goes and leading the attack is the Amaridroid.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he guns down and would verbal the dress is no mad on camera and the nihilists are backing him and Cap is captured and taken before the Red Skull who has a spiffy new tailored black Nazi uniform with a red swastika armband.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now with your vaulted reputation finally destroyed, I can kill you with a clear conscience.

[SPEAKER_03]: Fill them your wretched death for all to see and spit on your grave.

[SPEAKER_03]: Captain America defeats the Amaridroid, shatters the skull's head with his shield, but it's a robot, oh no!

[SPEAKER_03]: The real scared railroad skull's not even there.

[SPEAKER_03]: Meanwhile, that guy on the news will Brenner get arrested for working with the nihilist order.

[SPEAKER_03]: After fighting his way through a pack of Aryans, Captain America is taken on a train through a replica of an old American town where he discovers the Red Skull owns the film studio that is making his movie.

[SPEAKER_03]: He also is a nation of watches, mind-capitone, preyed upon by a profit-seeking vultures.

[SPEAKER_03]: I knew that once news of your victimization broke, I could send him my tribute to the highest bidder, and the hundreds of millions that watched roots, and Holocaust, believing those for damped lies about the schvartses in the Jordan, or black people in the Jews, [SPEAKER_03]: We'll again sit, wash up the great American god television, but they will not know that the film is treated with a potent hypnochemical of my own design that carefully intercuts subliminal messages will flash into the subconscious of every last viewer urging them out into the streets like lemmings.

[SPEAKER_03]: These two erupting, orgy of destruction, bringing this country to its knees.

[SPEAKER_03]: At long last, the iron hand of Naziism will crush the life from this land.

[SPEAKER_03]: Captain America ends up beheading another robot, and then the Ameri-Joy blows up the whole studio, cap destroys the film, the end, the red skull lives to fight another day.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is, there was a lot packed into this, but let me welcome my very dear friend, the smart and talented, has seen Rashid to join me for this conversation.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hussein, are you a red skull fan?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is anybody a red skull fan?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, who's not in the White House?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I hate the red skull.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for allowing me to clarify that.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's my initial question to everyone and everyone is shocked by that question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Officially all the record.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I am not a red skull.

[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's begin.

[SPEAKER_03]: This was a crazy journey into, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, [SPEAKER_00]: Where whenever capfights red skull red skull is always trying to subliminally try to make Americans into racist and Captain America's like, that's not who we are.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're better than that and you're like, hmm, but also there's a lot of American really to follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I'm going with friends with Sam Wilson now.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is me.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we explored a number of themes in the summary.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's begin with the idea about nihilism itself.

[SPEAKER_03]: Jammedham is such a smart writer to take this kind of Nazi story that caps always fighting against and to put it in the idea of nihilism as it exists in America in the early nineteen eighties, which is something we're seeing now with the rise of Trumpism frankly.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very popular parallel.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we take it back to those like World War I into the rise of Naziism conversations.

[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on nihilism itself?

[SPEAKER_00]: Look, let me start with the question of time, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you think about the eighties, it's that charism and punk and it's Reagan here in the US.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think it's still that same sort of right wing, neo-fascist privatized everything that you keep coming up with.

[SPEAKER_00]: The individual feels where do I fit into this, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so the end of the weimar Republic or the Weimar Republic might be one historical moment, but it's like where do I as an individual finish this greater good?

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're seeing the same thing in the eighties in the US.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not coincidental.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a point where you get the rise of a punk and a little bit later hip hop and and you know, all these cultural forms are sort of like, no, we've got something better for us, but this is not it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So to me, it makes total sense to have this is a time for the rise of an artist movement.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's so interesting.

[SPEAKER_03]: My brain goes to the idea of like majority rules in society, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: We talked a while back when we did the trial of the stranger about the idea of like projected consciousness, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: If you take the energy of all humans in the way that we think about culture, when you take the majority, [SPEAKER_03]: and the majority forming the idea of what is culturally allowed and we start to make room for minority.

[SPEAKER_03]: That means there's a disruption in power and those that are in power then have to start questioning things about themselves and they start to looking for looking for someone to blame.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a question of order [SPEAKER_03]: And this is the kind of root system that allows these ideas of let's form under these harsher ideals related to fascism and those can start to take root.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's because the group allows that to come to power.

[SPEAKER_03]: So questioning power structures is not wrong.

[SPEAKER_03]: Nor frankly, even as anarchy, it is a certain way.

[SPEAKER_03]: I can understand the appeal of the absurd in that way.

[SPEAKER_03]: But it's a strange thing to watch that the people who will suddenly give permission to the most awful to make the rules and laws and we find someone to blame or we have a target because that allows the powerful to return to power.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what your thoughts are on this.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of a complex structure when you have to zoom outside the humanity box to see it a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's, um, I'm going to get a bit technical, but this is a really readable book that I really enjoyed.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's called a lead capture by a scholar by the name of all of Femi, say what, TAI, W-O.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to oversimplize argument, but basically, you know, what he argues is that you get all these reactionary movements who take progressive language, progressive thought, progressive ideas and reappropriate them and try to say, oh, when the progressive use it, when the progressives use that language, [SPEAKER_00]: of, you know, decency and compassion and empathy.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's wrong because they're directing it to the wrong people.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to take that language as the reactionaries and tell you who you should be feeling empathy for rich people.

[SPEAKER_00]: You should be feeling compassion for people who are taking money from you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You should be punching down, not up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so really, you know, taking that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's really what you're speaking to is like how do people empower take progressive language, revolutionary language and repropriated into systems of power?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what we're seeing here.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a number of themes in this story that get very specific.

[SPEAKER_03]: So kind of pointing a few out, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: The Red Skull has agents, but he'll turn on the agents if they're like, he takes like the washed up actor and gives him the role of his life and then murders him on camera.

[SPEAKER_03]: He gets the newsman who's believing in him to start sharing concepts of fake news and like really shaking the system and that guy ends up getting arrested.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the only one who stands at the end still is the Red Skull in its own way.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right, he puts a mask on.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's disguising Nazism as nihilism.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then we lean heavily into the absurd with this character, the Amara droid, who is this wild, see projected into a giant.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's Captain America parades and balloons.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's this giant cap murdering an actor dressed as the cap former identity.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's a lot happening here.

[SPEAKER_03]: What are your thoughts on just the absurdities of this story?

[SPEAKER_03]: And the way that the red skull treats those who do ally with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so working backwards, I think, I think the red skull, if we take him as like the ultimate fascist figure, the fascist figure is always about the great leader, nobody else matters, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So the way he treats the guard who falls asleep, the way he treats the actor, the way he treats the Ameridroid, all fits into that is it's my plan, it's my reality, it's my vision, the world that has to come through.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that actually feels like it's taken to absurd lengths, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is the absurd extension, but it also feels like this is where you go with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the absurdity of it all, keep hearing about these American ideals, like the film producer, who's like, oh, I saw you in World War II, tell this cap, I saw you in World War II.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you say by life after my buddy was killed, you know, that gave me hope and that brought me back to life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they keep talking about American ideals, but not once does cap ever articulate what those American ideals are, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, there's this whole talk about freedom, but it's individual freedom.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what is individual freedom get you if it's not fascism, if individual freedom is unbound, if it's not in relationship to community, [SPEAKER_00]: Where does that get you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Cap is a mirror image of the red skull of this, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: He's fighting this by himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why is he not?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't he bring Sam with him?

[SPEAKER_00]: He was training with the beast when he got the phone call.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't he be like, why don't you both join me and let's hang out and see what this is all about?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or once he got into trouble, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's this rugged individualism.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm both ends.

[SPEAKER_00]: They may think they're serving different goals, but really it's the same system they're operating with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you get different results?

[SPEAKER_03]: You know, one thing that stands out, the Red School is promoting Aryanism, but we also see him openly beating a blonde, blue-eyed woman, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of interesting things.

[SPEAKER_03]: The role cap plays in all of this as he's kind of trying to figure out what the fuck America is.

[SPEAKER_03]: Also seems to be an interesting thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: We see the Red School directly reference a huge event on American television in the early eighties.

[SPEAKER_03]: series roots and the series holocaust and you could look up either one.

[SPEAKER_03]: Both were starting to tell the story from the perspective of the Jew and from the perspective of the slave and we're really nationally huge.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a thing that you didn't see on television.

[SPEAKER_03]: But the Red School is saying, you know, I'm gonna make people question those.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's take away the sympathy.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we're gonna use the great American god of television to be the thing that brain washes the people into listening to whatever we show them, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever I show on the screen, whatever fake news I project out there, that's what everybody's gonna listen to and they're gonna follow me like sheep.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a very real trend that exists at the time.

[SPEAKER_03]: And frankly today, where whatever information you put out there is what people are going to believe, deeply uncomfortable realizations when you look [SPEAKER_03]: to it in that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I, you look.

[SPEAKER_00]: I, you nailed it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what to add to that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think growing up in the eighties, we had, we had what three networks plus PBS plus, you know, so we had ABC, CBS, NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then eventually we got Fox a little bit later.

[SPEAKER_00]: But otherwise, we were all sort of limited to this really small media ecosystem.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you could get a roots out there, which is something the story of enslaved people from their perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could get the hollow because for people who were, you still had living memory, but people still didn't know the story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you've got this fragmented media landscape where it feels like we're living in parallel and distinct worlds.

[SPEAKER_00]: The shows that get the highest viewership are only a fraction [SPEAKER_00]: of what was happening in the eighties.

[SPEAKER_00]: So really, we walk in different cultural realities.

[SPEAKER_00]: Americans walk in really distinct and different cultural realities from each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that makes it easier to increase that individualism and tear apart that social fabric.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, I mean, in many ways, I think this story of the skull could very easily be retold was just a slight tweak.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm going to put this on these three networks and it's going to create this whole segment of the American population.

[SPEAKER_00]: that is going to push this agenda.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the seller's like, what if I'm just not even going to know it's happening because they're not aware.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're living in a completely different reality.

[SPEAKER_03]: There's also this idea.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_03]: When we're looking at kind of a broken economy or a broken governmental system, every civilian is the victim of something like that, right now.

[SPEAKER_03]: You have to pay ten dollars for a gallon of milk.

[SPEAKER_03]: That sucks.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's, that's all that I don't know what.

[SPEAKER_03]: But here's the difference.

[SPEAKER_03]: people who are in the majority, meaning white people generally.

[SPEAKER_03]: They have to pay that ten dollars for the milk, but so do the liberals and so do the people of color and so do the Jewish people.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we start to look at this majority as like the victim of an economic oppression, then turning on people who [SPEAKER_03]: have greater amounts of systemic oppression and entire governments that have built policies against them.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's blame those people who are different.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's blame the immigrant.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's blame the transgender.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's take the weakest among us and unite against rather than recognizing we're all going through the economic oppression specifically.

[SPEAKER_03]: So we start to use that economic oppression as the reason to adopt different values.

[SPEAKER_03]: So nihilism very quickly turns into if we don't believe in decency, we get to redefine what decency is.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we start to get that in the lens of kind of Christian nationalism and the way it exists in our country now and again very deeply uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to draw any parallels between this red skull story and the rise of Trumpism?

[SPEAKER_03]: Because that's why we're having [SPEAKER_00]: That's why we're having this conversation.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're jumping back to nineteen seventeen nineteen eighty one and then bringing the parallel to two twenty twenty five exists all around us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so you know, yes, the economic hardship is universal the ten dollar gallon of melt one hundred percent the way that works on I think it important part that I want to highlight in that process.

[SPEAKER_00]: is the people in power or the people who think they're in power because that's the important thing we have to remember is that yes, powers lie to whiteness in the United States, but not all white people are in positions of power, but they may think they're in positions of power.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're in positions of privilege, right, and types of privilege.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they institute these policies saying it's going to hurt those other people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it'll hurt them more than it'll hurt me, not realizing how much it'll hurt them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then they create a system.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, crap.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did something really stupid against my own interest, but it can't be by fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's going to be those people's fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they create a system that's meant to hurt marginalized communities and it's up hurting them.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then they blame them marginalized communities for not being heard enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they shoot more policies, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's this self perpetuating cycle where they're trying to build themselves up by tearing other people down.

[SPEAKER_00]: not realizing that they're turning themselves down at the same place.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the only people who are winning at this are the people who already at the top of the pyramid, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is both a racial gender thing, but it's also a class.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a question of class consciousness that we need to raise, but also I think a question of this broader community.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what the Red School doesn't realize, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The reason he's throwing that guard across him is because she's a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, she's failed the area in ideal.

[SPEAKER_00]: She fell asleep on the job, but she's a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to understand the gender dynamic to this, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to understand that white nationalism, Christian white nationalism, [SPEAKER_00]: is inherently foundationally anti-Semitic.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet they've captured the language of anti-Semitism in the era of Trump to support white national policies that ultimately are really harmful to marginalized religious communities, including Jewish communities.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we see these cycles repeating, but this idea that history echoes, it doesn't repeat.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is transformation where instead of being directly anti-Semitic, they've adopted the language of anti-Semitism into the language of white nationalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's still maintaining that anti-Semitic credentials while also weaponizing anti-Semitism against other marginalized communities.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we're recording this in early July where we're always reflecting on the most recent news.

[SPEAKER_03]: And by the time this comes out, you won't even remember the most recent news because eighteen other things have already happened.

[SPEAKER_03]: We just had this passing of this, quote, big, beautiful bill.

[SPEAKER_03]: I largely supported by kind of the Christian Nationalist, more white side of the government.

[SPEAKER_03]: where it's of all about like economic booms for people, but really what it's gonna do is strip away healthcare from so many people, harm so many people, fun to really fascist regimes like ISIS, they're going after things like immigrants, reduce the rights of queer people, give the president additional powers to be horrible and fun the pockets of billionaires.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of widely known.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like all that information is available, but nobody gives a shit enough to actually fight it.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really frustrating like system to watch because it really fuels the idea of this quote unquote nihilist order under the very thinly masked red skull who is behind it all.

[SPEAKER_03]: These conversations are really enlightening but also really pissed me off.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, really annoying.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one thing that struck it, I was really surprised by how Director was early.

[SPEAKER_00]: So right at the beginning, cap is out with Sam and another friend, Josh, they're out having steak and drinking whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're out drunk at the intro of the mugging.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the muggers goes to Sam, because they're out of uniformity.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not Falcon and Captain America.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're Sam and Steve.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, you know, you said some comment about what you're going to do black man, how do you like that black man want to go to?

[SPEAKER_00]: But you said something like that, that's very, it's not really very racially charged.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as much as the comics code would let them be at the time, racial up with that type thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, that's a really interesting thing to put right up front when the story is taking place in Brooklyn Heights, which are the nineteen eighties had a quite gentrified at that point.

[SPEAKER_00]: So really, the white guys are the outliers of the scenario.

[SPEAKER_03]: Dmitis is not shy.

[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, and no.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's going to look at there in a little while.

[SPEAKER_03]: He introduces the Red Skull's daughter who is wearing the robes of a nun and has a whole organization of nuns fighting for her that are called the sisters of a sin.

[SPEAKER_03]: the parallels are very thinly-vailed and told in very entertaining superhero stories.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hasain Rashid, I value you always.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so grateful every time we get to connect any final thoughts before we wrap up my friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, thanks for the invitation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to talk a little bit about comics and fascism in this day and age and I can't wait to hang out again.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to be in New York next month.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get some coffee and it's great to see you.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for seeing my friend.