A Geek History of Time - Episode 176 - Speedball, Penance, and Liberal Redemption Part I

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

So thank you all for coming to Cocktalk. He has trouble counting change, which is what the hands think. Wait, wait, stop. Yes. But I don't think that Dana Carvey's movie, um, coming out at that same time, was really that big a problem for our country. I still don't know why you're making such a big deal about September 11th, 2001. Fucking hate you.

Well, you know, they don't necessarily need to be anathema, but they are definitely on different aspects. Oh boy, I have a genetic predisposition against redheads. So because you are one, yeah, combustion, yeah, we've heard it before. The only time I change a setting is when I take the hair trimmer down to the nether reaches, like that's the only time. Other than that, it's all just a two I'm joking I use feet after the four gospels what's the next book of the Bible?

okay and after that it's Romans Yeah, okay, and if you look at the 15th chapter of Romans, okay, you will find that it actually mentions the ability to arm yourself That's why worth it. This is a key history of time where we take turns into the world. You know, that's Ed's line and you can tell by the fact that I poached it that Ed's not here because he has to work and I work in a different district so we don't have to work yet. But I got for us, you know, I'm a big believer in the 1990s model of wrestling supercarts. If you have the ultimate warrior dropout, you try to get Bret Hart to come in. And so that's what I've done as best I could.

So joining us today from North Carolina, I assume, is a doctor, professor, Gabriel Cruz. Gabriel, how you doing? I'm good, Amy. And I'm also glad that I got your name right this time. I apologize for that one tick-tock video. So, nobody can hear a misspelling, it's fine. Yeah, not.

So, no, I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be a beneficiary of your quota system. You've replaced one, certainly, but it's weirded Catholic with another. I try to stay as close to the card as I can. You know what they call their progress. Oh, yes, I'm coming from North Carolina. I'm excited to do this today, especially what we got going on with today's subject matter

because it's right for discussion. Cool. Well, let's see. Those of you who don't know Gabriel Cruz is a professor out in North Carolina. So that takes care of our credentials. We have a middle school or a high school or now a super high school as far as teachers go. Yeah. Communications professor, as I recall. Yeah, I just started Recently a job where I first in your track job of my career This fall of 2022 marks the 10th year that I'll be teaching and finally got a senior track job and yeah

It's it's good. I'm a media studies professor. That is my assistant professor. So that is my official title and rank. Nice. Very cool. Well, I'm Demon Harmony. I am a US history teacher and a Latin is on its last legs teacher. It's literally been put on hospice care in the last two years and we're doing palliative care this year. So after this, I will only be a social science teacher again. So it was a fun run. But much like the Roman Empire, it died a slow and agonizing death. So I feel like the ecclesial last Latin is going to make a comeback when when Vatican III hits the books. You know, I feel like coming. I'll listen to your episodes on on the folks in John Cena and Walter White and I feel like we're due for another for, you know,

our resurgence. Yeah, no, I would love to see the rubber match. Uh, that we finally decide is it, uh, the old school or the new school that's going to take Catholicism into the new millennium. I don't know. Boy, boy. So speaking of internalized trauma, uh, so today, we're doing a subject that is near and dear to my heart and I thought of all the times to have Ed miss but also to have you on. This would be the perfect one.

So do you have a favorite comic book character? Oh yeah, it's it's not caller. Really? Yeah, it is. The Catholic thing or just the... No, it's because I grew up watching him in the Expo Nevolution cartoon where he was trying to blend into normative human society with a holographic watch made him appear like a white dude And as a biracial kid who grew up in white spaces and tried really hard to blend in like that spoke to me

Also the Catholic thing and he looks cool. He looks like a demon. He does. And he was funny. So yeah, the second turn of that was Gambit, who was like the southern man that I always wanted to be. You could talk to girls and just didn't get there. So, you know, but the top one with good hair. Right. Right. I had a good hair. I just what I told I was not even thin. So, you know, yeah. Right. No, I feel that I really do. Uh, it's funny. Um, I, I totally vibe with the, uh, the night crawler thing, but you're totally showing my age by mentioning a cartoon that I never even saw because I was already an adult by that point. Although I have children and the Disney plus channel. So I might go back and watch that. My exposure to Nightcrawler, which I loved him, by the way, absolutely loved him, was in the old T.S.R. Marvel game. So T.S.R. made a

Marvel game. It's a terrible mechanic. And Nightcrawler and Spider-Man were the two characters who had amazing agility. And so that was really cool to me. And he looked distinctive. He was a blue demon. Really cool looking. I don't know. I vibe with like deep blue colored superheroes and beast in that game was still human-formed. So because he was just transitioning to the blue. Quite a war criminal yet. Right. So not quite a eugenicist or at least a latent one. But I always dug him because he was hella smart, you know, and athletic, but at the same time as I get older, it's like, oh, he is on the wrong side every time.

It's a good metric to know in a story arc, where should I be? Oh, there's beast. I should step over here. Yeah. Oh, where's respectability politics? There's beast. Okay. Let me, let me see what, what cable saying then. Right. Yeah. But, uh, but I loved Nightcrawler. The first time I saw him in cartoon form and I thought you were going to say this, which again shows my age. The, the, Spider-Man and his amazing friends, um, had a couple, I had a couple episodes where he runs into the X-Men.

And Nightcrawler, my son, I showed him this when he was much younger. Nightcrawler, basically, I think they were controlled by Arcade or somebody like that. There was some sort of blended, let's get all the superheroes in there. And Nightcrawler would pop around and go, ha ha, ha ha, ha ha.

And so that's the voice I've almost always had associated with night crawler. That, and then there was also, there was a cartoon that my brother and I watched when I was a kid, when you could rent VHSs. And it was Kitty Pride of the X-Men, or Pride of the X-Men, where they used an Australian voice for Wolverine.

It was weird, it was really weird. And Nightcrawler was in there and he had a much more featured role. So those were my two exposures to Nightcrawler because he didn't show up in the classic, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. He has two, no, yeah there's one episode, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,

da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, to get about that kind of thing. I have a book chapter under review at the moment where I do a critical race class in gender analysis of the Steak as an exploited laborer in that series. And so that's how I know what episode it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because he didn't show up in the background when they were on Giannosea or yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Ginocia is a portmando of that in the place where Django Fett died. So yeah. So anyway, one of my favorite superheroes is similarly agile. But by no means as respected or respectable, and that is the character named Speedbowl, Robbie Baldwin. And he underwent one hell of an arc from about 2006 through fairly recently, to be honest.

Prior to that, he was all kind of one note that I loved and that's why he was one of my favorites. And then he goes through this huge traumatic shift because he's part of the New Warriors. So today's episode is Speed Balls internalized traumas are a liberal fantasy. So this seems like a reasonable time to point out that I study comic books. I'm a comic study scholar. This seems relevant to this conversation. Also just as a disclaimer, you know, that

means that I study comic books, and particularly super hero narratives, I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of these characters. So I had to do some brushing up on like Spiderman's arc during civil war as well as speed balls in order to sort of, you know, try to catch a girl. But I'm excited to learn even more from you, they mean with your unreasonably well-researched presentation. Unreasonably well-rese well researched. I really like that.

It's like my friend who was unreasonably good smelling. She had no business smelling that good. That's okay. You know what? I know what that's like though. I get that. Yeah. So the opening exposure to Speedball that I found is, and Speedball is a Steve Ditko and Tom Defalco creation. And you might be able to speak more to that because I don't know high from hell water

when it comes to creators. I think that's the difference between a unreasonably well researched love of characters and somebody who is big into comic analysis for their career. So Ditko and Defalco created him. So Defalco, I'm not familiar with, but Dico is one of the greats, right? He's up there.

He helped to invent Spider-Man, actually. I think credit is often given to Stanley and Steve Dico, but if we're being honest, I think Steve Dico had more to say about the development of the character because the concept came from Stanley in fairness to him, but Dico pretty much shaped the character and gave us the life that he did. And was one of the creators who helped tell those stories, those early stories,

four or a few years, and then sort of laid the groundwork of Peter Parker being in school, and all that kind of stuff, and what have you. And certainly the look was definitely Dicco, but Dicco is in the same conversation as people like Jack Kirby or even people like Archie Goodwin or John Rami to those folks. Okay, yeah, because I remember Dicco's name at the bottom of amazing fantasies, that kind of thing, or shortly thereafter. And that makes sense a lot, actually, given what we're about to discover about Speedball and his origins. Tom DeFalco, I don't know much from him. He seems like he was a later comeer on. But he was, as I recall, he was fairly big in comic creation circles for a while there. Just I remember seeing his name a lot.

But again, it's a name that I've seen, but I'm not as familiar with. But I'm thinking, I'm trying to remember when Dicco got out of writing and what their overlap would have been in terms of timing, because if Dicco was a younger guy, then we're probably talking a handoff. Yeah, we're probably talking like in the 70s, maybe 80s. Well, this speedball comes to 70s, maybe 80s. Well, this speedball comes to us in the late 80s. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would make sense. Yeah.

Now, also, there's another guy who's pretty instrumental in speedball's development and in the New Warriors. And that is Fabian Niz, I can't ever say his name, because there's too many consonants in the middle. Nice, Keza? Nis? No? Okay. He is like the great grandpa of the New Warriors.

And I should probably have his name down better, but I don't, because Latin screwed me up for everything. If anybody has any questions about that, go find the episodes where I try to say French things. It's... But French has a Latin root. Yes, but French is if you speak Latin

with a lot of wine in your belly, in cursive and marbles in your mouth. Like, like it will be the first language to become fully telepathic because half the word is already implied. Like, it's fair. Like French reading it, I can

understand it syntactically, grammatically, and in terms of the roots, but hearing it, I'm lost. Like, how do you add a letter to a word to make it a plural? And then suddenly, you take away a syllable? Like, that's not fair. And rice, have you seen, pray? No, not yet. Okay, I won't give too much away, but it does uphold what I believe to be one of the few eternal truths. And that is that there's no situation that the French can't make worse.

I'm looking forward. So pray is the prequel to eat, pray love, right? It's in that genre. Okay. To be sure. Cool. It's the eating is very integral. So that you are praying and the love bit,

that's a bit dicey. There is a fair amount of exchange of bodily fluids, not necessarily in the loving manner. Okay. Like when I saw us as the prequel to this is us, I was disappointed. Oh, no. I saw us as the prequel to this is us. I was disappointed.

Oh, no. Oh, no. So in the very first issue of Speedball, Page One, the massed marble from September of 88 says on the very first page, you know, where they used to be like, you know, show you the action like Daredevil fighting the owl and it's like how did we get here and then Says quote you wouldn't think that Robbie Baldwin had any serious problems after all he has two loving parents who want only the best for him What's more Rob is well liked by his friends and teachers at springdale central high and while he's no Einstein his grades are Respectable, but something's happened to Rob. He's been changed by mysterious forces, forces which he fears may overwhelm him.

Robby desperately wants to understand what's happened to him and to master the incredible energies which seeth within him. The question is, does he have the time? So that's the first issue of the Speedball Limited series. So it feels very spider-manlyy to me in that it is obviously puberty that we're talking about. Okay, yes. Sure, I follow. Yeah. Now, this is not actually where his story starts though. Robbie Baldwin was the cover star of the amazing Spider-Man annual number 22 from January of 88.

So January of 88, we see him for the first time. And he is smack dab in the middle. And you got Spider-Man off to the left and daredevil off to the right as those two often came up in the, in the annuals. And it literally says, move over Spidey, enter speedball. Like, I've learned that here. Oh my God.

Ah, ah, ah, ah. My brother is older than you. And I always see my brother as a as a four year old. Um, so, so yeah, in January of 88, we, we see him exposed. And then in like September of 88, he gets his own limited run, which is 10 issues, and it is every bit as bad and wonderful as one of the ladies were a wild time for comics. Like the mid-late 80s into the early to mid 90s was just full throttle everything. And so I guess it makes sense that you have a character whose like power is kinetic manipulation, right? Yeah. And manipulation is generous because he has no idea how to control it. It's, but yes, it is. In fact, that, like, yeah. So, you know, if you're, if it's the, if you're

in that, you know, that full throttle, you know, God, which way I'm looking for sort of heavy metal kind of comics era than someone who can make stuff explode stands the reason, okay, that's good. Yeah, and the explosion doesn't come until he has a bit of a metamorphosis later actually. So as it stands, his powers, so for people who know, and I told my friend, friend of the show Tim Watts, who is also a comic book creator.

By the way, feel free to call up Empire Comics Tim wants who is also a comic book creator. By the way, feel free to call up Empire Comics and Sacramento and secure your copy of The Republic. It's a really good comic, Tim finally published. But I told him I was doing this podcast on Speedball and he was like, why? I'm like the least hipster hipster there is because I'm finding like obscure and obnoxious obnoxious Marvel characters. Yeah, like I'm not going independent. I'm not even going with like well I like Jack of Hearts or anything like that. No, it's it's speedball

Especially of the new warriors because there were people with like greater claims to fame. Yes Yeah, within the New War. Yeah were people with like greater claims to fame. Yes. People. Yeah. Within the New Warriors. Yeah. It's all true. Uh, I've still yet to find an action figure of him. I found one of Nightthrasher, but I've not yet picked it up. So, uh, the dad life. So, uh, the, the Spider-Man annual of 88, uh, it starts with, uh, a, a, this, the, the

title page is, I believe it's, um, Gangmore Rageson or Drug War Rageson or Rages. And it starts with suited drug dealers reading the Daily View with their like reject gang from the Warriors movie playing craps in the background. So you have very much a tiered system there. It's so very 1988 like there's half shirts go lower on the street thugs. And of course it's in a warehouse because Urban Light in 1988. It's easy writing. Spider-Man breaks in and starts beating them all up. He turns the criminals into a beat cop and he goes off to get the film developed before heading home to MJ because this is the pre-digital era. And in the what do you call it where it's the box text? Is that just box text or narrative text

exhibition box? I think that's editor text. Okay. Okay. So the editor text says with visions of redhead swimming in his mind Spider-Man pays little heed to the gutter and the glitz of Broadway back ining below. Now you were here for a Punisher episode and I went in deep on urban blight and crime in New York. So folks just scroll back to find that. But at this point, just for a quick primer, it's New York in the waning term of Ed Koch. Urban blight was a thing that was still very much in the mind of New Yorkers that they wanted to forget by 88 and the trappings of wealthy New Yorkers would show that. So, you know, pump up, time square, pump up, Broadway, ignore the blocks around them. And now, it's undeniable that this underbelly still exists, though, as did an obvious undercurrent of police corruption racism in 1988. Uh, yeah, in New York, all places, all places.

So the Spider-Man annual within two pages has slipped from dealing with well-dressed top level drug capos and their young tough drug runners to the phantom of the opera and Robbie Baldwin's mom taking him to a play to show him some culture in a story called drug war rages. Oh no. If she wearing pearls, is that what you know? No, he doesn't go with his parents. They don't go down crime alley. No, although it's funny that you mentioned this.

So she, her name is Madeline Naylor. Maddie Naylor. She keeps her, her professional name. And she takes her son, Robbie, to have, and they have both, quote, journeyed to Manhattan. And it's because they live in Springdale, Connecticut. A man bumps him and Robbie is really freaked out because he already knows about his power here, but he clearly, his mom doesn't.

So you've got another Aunt May doesn't know kind of trope. So you go back to Spider-Man, he gets accused of murdering these criminals because somebody goes in and murders them afterward, Daredevil goes to help him, because at this point, Daredevil knows, okay, every time Spider-Man gets accused of something, I've been wrong. So let's start in good faith for once, which for Daredevil is a big important moment. And Robbie wanders the streets instead of going to a cast party afterwards with his mom and her hot actor friends. And here again, we see into the character that is New York, New York City. danger is merely a block away from the glitz

and glamour of Broadway because Robbie Baldwin is wandering with his hands in his pocket, his head down, and of course five thugs run up on him, whose sense of fashion is clearly inspired by the dreadnoughts who worked for Zartan and G.I. Joe. So now that might be a date reference for you. No, no, okay. Knowledge is power. I understand. His chin hits the pavement and that activates his power and he is speedball. And his thought balloons will tell the tale. And by the way, this happens in an alley.

So we do have all the trophy stuff. Quote, I don't know how to control the speedball effect. I keep bouncing at random until I can anchor myself. Got to try to angle my body. Keep ricochet and just home. I eventually hit the right targets or just hope I eventually hit the right targets. So he's bouncing around in an alleyway. And the more he bounces the more speed he picks up and the more speed he picks up, the more these colorful balls appear of kinetic potential energy, and I never took physics. So I don't know if I blended terms. I'm going to say it because, yeah, kinetic energy and potential energy are two different things, but I follow where you're going.

Yeah. So the plot thickened and he keeps knocking the wind out of these thugs until he gets to rooftop. And the plot thickens when a host of the warriors, the things that Kingpin was complaining about earlier, show up to murder the thugs in order to purify them. Now the warriors are this silver armor, clad, anti-drug group. They're like if the Guardian angels

were better funded and more fashion. Uh oh. Yeah. They think they're doing good work because they're stopping drugs. So which kid? Yeah. I'm getting silver shirt vibes. Yeah, bit.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. It's got except all armored, you know, like even better. Yeah, silver shirts, if silver sable had funded them, you know, that kind of interests them. Who doesn't love a good, well-armer and fashionable crystal fascist? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Speedball then has this crisis of conscience, but he decides because he witnesses this murder of the guys that he just knocked out whom he'd been attacked by. But he decides he needs to follow these guys to get proof so that he can stop

them from killing more. So with great power. Sure. To me, this is part of a larger attempt by Marvel to recreate Spider-Man every 10 years or so, although it starts to accelerate after this. And they did it in the 1970s with Nova, right? And that's its own episode that I'll do later. And now they're doing it with Speedball. And frankly, they're going to do it again in a few years with New Warriors, where each one represents a reaction that Parker could have had in getting his powers. So here's his moment of seeing Uncle Ben dead. his moment of seeing Uncle Ben dead. Now it turns out behind these these paladins of fascism

are called the warriors is the high evolutionary. Sorry, that sounds like a D&D build like a home group. Paladins of fascism. With the fascism paladins. Well, you you don't want to call it fascism because then it doesn't play. So it's the oath of law and order. Yeah. The oath of the secret majority. Yeah. Or I was thinking, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, smite those people. It's what it is.

Yeah. Right. Yes. A specific, a racial specific smiting. Yeah. Yeah. So you would call it something like the oath of the pure. You would.

Yeah. Or like the oath of the family values. I like it. I'm uncomfortable. But I like it. They should not be a player or character. They should definitely be the BBEGs. It's it's it's like the oath breaker. You're not meant to actually play the character. This is just for narrative purposes. Exactly. And don't enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you'll see professional. Yeah, we got a whole

another problem. So so it turns out the high evolutionaries in charge, and he's behind it with something called a mission or operation big sleep, which is a reference to the Howard Hawks film of the same name with Humphrey Bogart, Maurem Becaul. Philip Marlow is a private investigator who gets hired by wealthy general to find out and stop his daughter, Carmen, from being blackmailed over gambling debts. And Marlow finds himself deep within a web of love triangles, blackmail, murder, gambling, and organized crime. And with the help of Vivian, another of the general's daughters, Marlow hatches a plot to free the family from this web and

traps the real culprit. That's taken directly. I just copied pasted from the back of the box, as it were. What is the high evolutionary doing getting involved in this level of crime? Because he's like a galactic level. Well, you remember, Mifisto used to show up in Central Park. That makes sense. I am convinced that other world entities make deals in Central Park. That scans. Thor stopped a bunch of mobsters from running jackets at one point, like fur coats. Okay. And at one point, Usgard was relocated to Oklahoma. So I guess,

stranger things have happened. So, see, and I'm okay with the, the Oklahoma relaunch as it were of Asgard. Like, you're going to go somewhere where, like, people just continually get pushed around so that white people can have the land, you go to Oklahoma. Sure. Yeah, against stands. Yeah, but yeah, it was weird to me

that high evolutionary was here, but that's what they would do in the Peter Parker, what do you call it? The annuals would be very often. They would bring in versions of villains that you wouldn't normally see with him. You know, like if Gormamu were trying to, you know, rob a publics or something.

Yes. Yeah. Very much has that vibe of, so yeah, fully much has that vibe of. So yeah, fully agree on that one. But, but here's the high evolutionary and maybe because drugs are screwing with our evolution and he's curious about that, I never quite understood his involvement in these things. But, uh, Kingpin hates it because, uh, you know hates it because drugs are good money. But it's unfortunately how it goes. Spider-Man needs to stop it along with Daredevil as they try to clear Spidey's name. And Speedball has it in his head majorly. So you've got all these things kind of just combining

so that you're gonna have the big fight surrounding, you know, all these threads are connecting in the annual. While Speedball is spying on them, it's revealed that his powers are like a barbarians rage. It only works as long as he keeps getting hit. So while he's spying on them, he turns back into Robbie Baldwin. He looks around and notices.

He's no longer Robbie Baldwin. And he calls the police to report a murder and that's going to happen. And of course, he gets hung up on by an incredulous 911 dispatcher. Spider-Man and Daredevil go in breaking things. Speedball is still trying to figure out his powers. This leads to the thought bubble saying, quote, almost made it just missed a little that time.

Maybe if I twist around, hit lower on my back to change my bounce angle, there's got to be an easier way. I did it. So it's that episode of Donald Duck playing billiards, mixing with Spider-Man. So it's, I have so much fun with the fact. And there's something to me about bouncing that is just kind of jovial and fun. And not threatening. Right. And he doesn't know how to do it. And there's just so much exuberance that I see with it, that I think that's what charmed me. Yeah. And ultimately, I mean, doesn't this kind of harken back to the old Spider-Man exuberance of swinging through the city? Yeah, I mean, you know, of 15, 16-year-old with the ability to do that kind of thing.

I mean, it's giddy for a lot of better term. Yeah. And I think that there was a lot of giddiness missing in the anti-hero age. That's so entirely because this is also the era that saw the rise of characters like the Punisher and Deadpool and Deathstroke and Lobo and looho man and man himself. One month when the first comics ever read was at like I was like 10 or 11 years old, it was Lobo coming to Earth just to fight Superman for like an afternoon because he was bored and like they fight to a standstill and then he's like all right what in bad I'll come back later and then you know

flies away on his space motorcycle and wow that has just that left a imprint on myself wow what a what a what a bottle episode like yeah that's. Oh wow and and as Ed is fond of pointing out like a lot of Lobo was just satire that no one seemed to get. Yeah, yeah. So a space, a space-biker who destroyed his own planet as part of like a grade school science experiment who also has like an unabiding and love for galactic dolphins. Yeah, and no one got the joke. Wow. Wait, oh, Lordy. Well, here you've got, um, Speedball, a teenager, at a time where Spider-Man is now married and an adult, and daredevil is now Catholic. And so he also isn't any fun. It's true. And like both of them said boy he is and both of them just no longer

possess that exuberance. Also, speedy is terrible at his powers, whereas these two have absolutely come into their own. And so I to me, I think maybe that was the draw that I always had to speedball was because I also hit it when I was 13. I also got into speedball when I was 13. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say was this a drug reference is that with his name was. Sorry. So it's all right. Of all the people to to be thought of as having done drugs at all. It's funniest that I am. Like I'm famously sober. Like irritatingly so to people. So the other thing that comes to mind is like,

this isn't just any daredevil at this point. It's like Frank Miller's daredevil, at least not far removed from it. Yeah, yeah. So it's not just daredevil, but like, having seen electro-died daredevil. Yeah. Yeah. Like, this is only about five years removed from him beating Kingpin nearly to death and

then saying, I forgive you. Yeah, this is this is trauma is one of his superpowers. Yeah. Yeah. Of all the things he couldn't sense. So the problem is that after Speedball succeeds at breaking the thing that he's trying to break. There's this like outside like antenna satellite dish that he's trying to break and that'll stop somehow thwart the high evolutionary plans to do things.

He's overshot his landing. So he succeeded bouncing into it and smashing it. But now he's falling from the Empire State Building, which to me, I was like, Oh, no problem, he's going to bounce. But what's funny here is that he doesn't think that he can survive the fall. So he hasn't tested the limits of his power yet. Despite the fact that terminal velocity is a constant, you can't accelerate past terminal velocity. So if you're falling from the Empire State Building, the top of that, or if you're falling from like the 20th floor from it, it's the same, it's the same impact.

But then he's rescued by a familiar thwip. And he meets Spider-Man and Daredevil. And the editor's note is ambiguous explanations follow. So now later in the same issue, you know, he meets back up with his mom, they go to the daily bugle because she has a friend in the drama review section of the bugle. And he almost collides with a very familiar brown eyed, brown haired reporter slash photographer, who notes that, quote, nervous kid acts just like bumping into something, could send them bouncing off

the walls. So, da, da, more, but they absolutely were a blast. Because then you get another story and another story. And one of them is usually like a countdown list for Spider-Man. And like, you know, the top 10 women that I've had trouble with and it's always told from his experience or the top 10 villains that I'm embarrassed. I got beat by or the beginning of listicles. Yeah. Yeah. So the next segment is another speedball story. So they're spending a lot of ink on speedball. And this time it's an actor. And I never found his name. And he's in a very green and sickly mask. So kind of has some green goblin vibes to it. And he wants revenge on speedball's mom for beating him out for a part in a play.

This mom has lived a life. She has, which I find fascinating to be honest. Like a working mom. Yeah. You know, not a majorly aunt and a dead mom. And she's alive. She has presumably not geriatric. Right. She appears to live a robust life and people react to her beauty.

Yeah. And well connected. It seems, um, it, it seems like she's going to be a villain. If I were a betting man, where's the heel turn coming? Right. Hey, uh, well, uh, this guy, uh, kidnaps Robbie because he knows that Robbie Baldwin is Madeline Nailer's son and suspends him in a sack above the stage and eventually speedball's power is activates

because he bumps into something and he escapes and I still don't know the actor's name. And what I love is that there's a bunch of back and forth to this guy's layer and he's super horny for all things theater. At this point, Robbie's mom doesn't know that he's speedball still. And he even has a moment where he needs to answer her, but because when your speedball, your voice changes, because he has a different coloration of his talk balloons, right? He realizes that he can't talk to her in his alter ego. And his thought balloons read, eap. Now what? My voice goes all weird when I'm like this. How can I answer her? I'll bet Spider-Man never has problems like this. Which again, just like really push that puberty

button hard, you know. So, but it's got depth to it to me too. It's not just like, hey, puberty over here, puberty, puberty. He can't control his balls, puberty, you know, it's, yeah, he is. Yeah, can't relate. I was born looking like a 42 year old man. That's just out the gate. Okay. Yeah. But I understand from what I hear that's a very common experience. Yeah. Yeah. I remember yelling somebody's name once in PE to get his attention in my voice cracked. And everybody got shot me that look. And I'm like, we're all the same age. What are you doing admittedly though, you are, you are head and shoulders above everybody

else. This is true. This is true. You were done already. Yeah, it's also true. Yeah, I, I shot up to six feet at 13. And then I've just been filling outward since then. So.

Oh, Lordy. Well, so, he is the new generation Spider-Man, I think. He's got a secret identity. Check, he's a young teenager who's OK at school. So, Spidey was exemplary at school, but that was the 60s. This is the 80s. He's got cool powers that luck comic book artists draw cool positions for him. He's bouncing all over the place. He's also stopping really weird villains

right from the get go. He's also distinctively and he's distinctive and he's a new imagining of him. Peter Parker got bit. He was largely sexless. Puberty didn't really seem to affect him. Despite his newfound ability to throw ropes of sticky white stuff, suddenly to have a need to hide his face. I remember, what was that that MTV like bit from years ago? I think it was like if Jack Black was as though he had Spider-Man powers. Is this pretty good? Is this pretty good? No, no. It was a thing on MTV where I think they were like making parodies of the pop culture of the year. And so like there was one with Jack Black, I think,

having Spider powers. Oh, cool. And so of course, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whip. Yeah.

You know, Spidey has to cover his face, you know, and he's physically gifted in athletic pursuits. I mean, puberty, puberty, puberty, puberty, right? Speedball's puberty is a change of voice. His balls are out of control. He has a lot of self-isolation. And sparkling. Yeah.

And fabulous hair, because it's the 80s. It's also in the context of comparing and contrasting to Spider-Man. Like literally, I bet Spider-Man doesn't have this problem. Who at this point is a married adult? Speedball also has a supportive and actively involved mother who's constantly valuing his happiness and trying to expose him to new situations beyond dating, whereas Parker has an out of touch elderly aunt whom he has to protect who thought that he was even more frail than she was and kept trying to set him up with that really annoying woman Mrs. Watson's niece.

Don't really know what happened with her, but I'm sure it didn't go. One of the great mysteries of the Commonwealth publishing world. I really wish they would have paid that off, you know? Yeah. At least have a reveal in like the Tiger Catcher or something, you know? So something like that. I was just talking to someone actually on my podcast about who we, um, who was like the, who made an impression on us, uh, as young men and

the episode with Nerdy. Yeah, yeah, with Nerdy. And so like, and he was talking about like, because he wrote the song, Windstacey. And you know, he was talking about, you know, MJ being like the one, and I was like, oh man, like Felicia Hardy, that's where it's at. You like a bad girl.

I like, I don't, I, something exciting about not know if I'm gonna wake up in the morning. It's, right. There was a wonderful bit that Ali Wong did. comedian in her first special I want to say. And she says, like, I don't want to die, but I don't want to know that I'm going to live. It's like, wow, that's way more leaning in that I'm willing to do. Like, I want to know I'm going to live. Like, but yeah, I absolutely agree.

Like the age that you're at when you find Spider-Man, it's like, who's he going with at the time? Yeah. So, yeah. He's an image. Yeah. So, we learn, oh, it's funny you mentioned the Gwen Stacy thing. Have you played the Lego Marvel?

Oh, it got so much fun, especially when your kids get older. It's probably gonna be very inexpensive to play by then. Like I bought it for like 19 bucks kind of thing. There's a part, it's an open sandbox kind of world with limits that are pretty far out there. So the first one is you're in New York. It's definitely MCU inspired, but you can get up on the Brooklyn bridge. So my son and I were

playing and he was Spider-Man. And I was, you know, we're chasing each other around. And so I landed next to him and I immediately changed my character to Gwen Stacy and Dove off. Oh no. Yes. I do remember that game now, now I think about it. Yeah. It's a blinks at it when it first came out. Yeah.

Oh wow. Yeah. So, well, so we learn more about Robbie Baldwin in his own limited series of 10 issues, like I said, that came out in September of 88. We get his origin story, which tells us the background of his family as well. His dad Justin is the assistant DA of Spring Deal Connecticut who absolutely loves his family and wants them to be safe and happy. It's obvious, it's coded that way. It's written that way. It's a very standard dad trope really. Man just

screwed this kid like yeah. I have an appearance like this. Right. Well, and he's in Connecticut. Like this is like what if Spider-Man had the economic advantages of being white and an intact family? That's why I say like each expression of the New Warriors is a version of Spidey. Before the multiverse was a thing. So his mom, Maddie Nailers, very successful stage actress, but she quit to go into quote, academics,

which meant that like we see her speaking to an auditorium full of people at a school, but you can't tell if she's a teacher or not or just an activist. I think it meant teacher, but she's basically coded as this huge defender of the arts and she hates the idea of censorship, which cool. They obviously have cracks in their marriage. They show within the first two pages, but and it's really kind of coded to the fault of neither one really.

They both love each other fiercely, but they express it differently. Robbie largely keeps to himself because by the time the story starts, he's already been altered by the lab experiment gone wrong and yes, it's a lab experiment gone wrong. We're just going to hit that Peter Parker button all day. And we're hitting that button in multiple ways too because he's walking by a bunch of gals who are talking to each other about him as he walks by, and they're talking about how cute he is.

And there's guys who are teasing him for not being athletic. I mean, we saw this for issue after issue after issue until Peter graduated with Flash and a bunch of the gals at school. Notably not Betty Bryant, because she dropped out of school to start working, which I thought was an interesting wrinkle in the Spider-Man. In the very beginning of Spider-Man, he meets Betty Bryant. She's already an employee of the Daily Bugle, and she never finished high school. She's Peter's age. Oh, yeah. And I found pictures of Peter's graduation, and there were several black people in Cap and gown and in the audience and it was an integrated audience in cat.

Yeah, in his graduation, which I was like, that's pretty cool for 1964. That's that's pretty aware of the environment. Yeah, now I'm thinking about now, I think Betty Bryant in the MCU is like a valedictorian or something like that. And she'd like, yeah, and blonde white girl. Yeah, yeah, Ned's girlfriend. yeah, and far from home. Yeah. In the Spider-Man comic, Betty is a brunette. And Ned leads as a reporter who is crushing on her at the same time that she's crushing on Peter. And back then, the idea of going steady was a big

deal in the culture. And so it was expected to date around unless you're doing it on a steady. Yeah. So I heard that mid-20th century dating ritual was really, really particular. Yeah, really? Well, you got to control the kids even when they're out of your control. Like now that they have cars, what can you do culturally to keep them fastened to your part? Slash the tires. Exactly. Right? I'm a new parent, so I'm so figuring it out.

Yeah, yeah, I suppose to do. Yeah, I like our kids. I'll be able to afford via calls. Jokes on them. We figured out other ways to control them. Poverty. So Robbie's keeping do himself and the guys are teasing him and he talks about the power churning in him trying to get out You know, as he's talking to himself and again the pure the puberty parallels to Peter Parker a properly paradigmatic if not a piton's pathetic per perceived pursuer and Purchase their persuasions Predating to public presentation of proceeding preadoles prattalings about perturbants in prankster papers. That was well done. Thank you.

I got to get an alliteration in every couple episodes. Otherwise, I lose my contract. So he ends that page with quote, gotta be cool. I can keep the power under control if I stay calm and don't think about, right? How do I stop thinking about it? Sounds like a big joke. It really is a seventh grade.

It absolutely took me back to seventh grade when my very hot English teacher leaned over to help me and then I had to go up to the board. Like, ha ha ha ha ha ha. So I get it. I hell get this. I feel this way more turgidly than I want to. And in academic sense, this is what we call

narrative fidelity, wherein the story arc resonates with the life experiences of the audience. I like that. I've never heard of such a thing. And that absolutely I like that there's a word for it. Now in 1988, the comic book code probably wasn't too charitable to the idea of a character figuring out how to specifically hide a heart on. So this is how we do it. Robbie walks off presumably to his after school internship with Doc Benson and he gets mugged again this time by old drunks and then he bounces all over the place in a tunnel uncontrollably.

So you get a bit of a repeat of what we saw in the annual. Meanwhile, his parents are arguing about the only two possibilities that they see for Robbie. Arts or the law, which the argument goes as, because dad is a lawyer, mom is a dramatist. And then that gets interrupted by criminals who take the two of them to the same park that Robbie is dep powering himself in. Because he's the assistant DA and he's prosecuting

somebody, he gets kidnapped along with his wife to make sure that things go, you know, because we only have 24 pages for this comic to establish all the things and we've got to get Robbie rescuing his parents. Now, luckily, as Robbie is deep-powering, Refactory period for his relatively short for a 15-year-old, and his ball spring into action to save Justin and Maddie. And what I love is that Robbie spends the whole time bouncing around and missing over and over and over again, like he never hits his mark. And this, of course, extends the fight and draws a crowd. And so, you know, Damien, some have theorized that the mark doesn't exist, that it's a lie. It's a bit, it's a bit. Well, either way, he's, it. And the crowd kind of increases in the park and speedball gets away just in time to

come out of the crowd and have his parents be none the wiser. So he's able to power back down because, you know, he, he, he doesn't get hit for six seconds. So barbarian rage goes away. And I really would love to create like like I like the idea of creating a monk that's all strength-based. Yeah. Like the guy who fought Van Dam at the end of,

you know, the blood sport. And then also have a barbarian that is constitution and dexterity-based, like a bouncy barb, you know. Yeah. It reminds me of some friends who had a tactic of, uh, they had a berserker barbarian in the group. And so, uh, every now and again, and they had to do it all the time because then the player would get wise to it, but they would shove him into a room of enemies and someone would shoot him in the

foot with an arrow and they'd lock the door. Uh, and that was, that was combat. And it didn't last very long. It's great cinematically for like the first two rooms. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. So of course, the media has him frustrated now because it's that much closer to his being known as speedball because they're reporting on speedball. Right.

And the epilogue shows us how we got his powers. And it's basically him in this cat, Niels Niles, N-I-E-L-S, named for Niles, Boer, B-O-H-R, physics guy. They both get zapped by an extra-dimensional entry energy source filled with bubbles. So it's the flash too. We've just gotten the flash. Yeah, pretty much. So he runs to the bathroom. He notices a change in his hair, his face, in his voice immediately. The rest of it is him bouncing around and beating up mass criminals without knowing how he's doing it. And then, of course, going home afterwards and giving a report to the police who have drawn their guns on Robbie, not speedball, but Robbie. He then goes home and tries to activate his power by pounding away until

his balls return to shoot all over the room almost uncontrollably again. Skeet. I just, if we're going to put a finer point on it, so those are his origins. And the next eight issues are him fighting off some of the most forgettable villains as he continues to barely be able to control his balls His power is actually pretty fun as it's kinetic to I call it kinetic deflection Because he's still not manipulating it and it means basically he can't get hurt physically and I There's something deeply attractive to that for me. It doesn't mean he can't get suffocated. He can't get gased It doesn't mean he can't like suffocated, he can't get gased, it doesn't mean he can't, like, and Spider-Man is good at dodging. And so is Daredevil, they're

both good at dodging, but, but, like, kinetic bouncing-ness, you can't get physically hurt, which means bullets, punches, blades, none of them can do it. You just redirects the energy. Yeah, which itself is its own menace, like what if I bounce a bullet into somebody who can't absorb such things? Sure. That's awful. But you yourself can't get hurt physically.

Which and you're totally untrained. I mean, there's just something really, I don't know. There's something that resonates with me, with teenage me certainly, and adult me, there's something that I'm still like wistfully romanticized about that. It reminds me of how, as is almost always the case, young men are blissfully unaware of their own mortality, and the things that we do,

like during that, like 15, like 15 to, I don't know, 24, 25 age, before really, really sets in an eminent way. Like I have friends who I was not participant to or party to, but have observed, just really stupid, reckless things that someone should have gotten hurt or even worse. And it just didn't happen, right? And you have all that energy and like none of us were wisdom builds, none of us were intelligence builds, right? Right. Yeah, I used to, now that I think about it,

I used to jump off of roofs. Like, that's stupid, that's really dumb. But I would jump off of like one and two story roofs all the time. Just for fun, Zees. Yeah. And it's not like I was landing on something soft. It was gravel. Yeah. You know,

were you trying to get shorter? Hope you had kneecaps with tight. No, I was pretty good at absorbing it and just kind of rolled with it, but like that was the thing. Like let's time up there and I'm going to jump off it now. And it wasn't even, hey guys, watch this. It was just like, I like doing this. So some buddies, some buddies my I'm back in the day. I remember they were racing down a dirt road

that one of my friends lived on that was only a lane and a half wide and the goal was to get to, to turn left onto a bridge that was a one way each way. So it was a two lanelane bridge with a double yellow to get to the highway. And it was a blue Toyota pickup truck and a Toyota Corolla that were speeding down this dirt road and the pickup truck hit the gas.

And mind you, this is a neighborhood. So there are people who live on this road. There could have been someone coming down, right? Yeah. It hits the gas, makes the left turn, and just clips the driver's side headlight. There's a brief exchange of paint and the headlights busted out.

And then, you know, he told his parents that he had a deer, my friend, who drove the growl up. And they were like, really? Was it a blue deer? Cause there's some other stuff to account for there. in a deer, my friend, drove the girl up. And they were like, really? Was it a blue deer? Cause cause there's some other stuff to account for that. Oh, and you know, oh, God. And parents kind of just accept it as a reality of having teenage boys too. Yeah. Yeah. Like you just, you just shake your head and you're like, well, I'm glad you dodged it. Yeah, I'm glad I have daughters.

Just the collective dumb of just a bunch of yeah, teenage boys. Yeah, it's, it's a powerful thing. It really is. It knows it, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's that's where the, yeah, it's, yeah. It's why they show them like World War two video games instead of World War one video games where you just spend the whole day dying in different ways or the non video games where you know who you're shooting right and it doesn't matter

Actually, it was I think it was like 2008 2007 black ops 2 came out or black ops one call a duty black ops, but at the same time it was the the force unleashed to came out. And I noticed at that point, I'm like, wow, a lot of our heroes are having dissociative disorders. Like that's the main driving force of both. That's a bit odd. So he's also able to direct his kinetic spheres out at his enemies and knock them the fuck out.

Like he does this with Terax in the first New Warriors issue and Terax is a former herald of Galactus. Like this, like he's able, so it's like this huge amount of power. It's just so thoroughly undirected. So like you said, Teenage Boys. So this series lasts until June of 89 when in 10 issues he fights giant animals which was a scientific attempt to end world hunger gone wrong. He also fights, I mean, just the most forget, well, I didn't even bother writing down their names villains. In the speed reading section of issue 10, which I think is the first, first section that had letters in. Joshua, Joshua Dagle of a libatoville Louisiana.

So libatoville? You could be, I don't, probably. It's probably French. Yes. So I'm already. So libatoville sounds like some sort of like alpha male foolishness, but yeah, that's a little bit of a yeah, you're right. A little bit of a lot. Laba Daveville, maybe, Louisiana. I know. He wrote into the comic. So shout out to Josh,

if you're a listener, quote, I really enjoy the new Speedball comic. It was nice to see Ditko drawing after some time. I thought the art was fantastic. Speedball reminded me a lot of Spider-Man, still a young teenager, still in high school, not sure of what his powers are. Still a little different since Spidey was excited about his powers instead of being somewhat afraid. And with Steve to draw it, it kind of brought it all back. Now, I don't know how realistic the letters were.

I do know that there has been some hay made recently over, I want to say, there's a director who wrote into Spider-Man when he was a child. And I didn't bother to chase that down because it wasn't quite relevant. But so I don't know how reliable and narrative these letters are, you know, this easily could have been a plant, you know. Sure. Sure. But I do like that. Yeah, they're publishing that, you know. But either way, even if it wasn't a plant, they have to, they can only publish so many like letters per issue, right? Right. And so they're, they're making the editorial decision of which ones do we print? And one, the references Spider-Man is obviously, you know, yeah. Probably. Yeah. So this character gets shelved until July

of 1990 with the New warriors. He was an accidental new warrior, I like to put it, which totally fits his character, because Knight Thrasher originally had planned. Knight Thrasher for those of us that don't know is Dwayne Taylor, originally is Dwayne Taylor. Think a young, angry, black, Tony Stark. And you basically have white guys writing a black teenager with wealth. Again the 80s. I'm not surprised. So ninth raster, very rich, wants to make everyone pay, wants to make the criminals pay for killing his parents, because why not push the Batman button as well.

And so he wants to come up with a super group of four people. That's what he had in mind. But Namarita and Speedball joined them in their first fight just by happenstance. And Nightthrasher goes with it. There's even a thought balloon of like I had originally planned four, but six will have to do. That didn't mean that nightthrasher use, uh, I forget the name, but they're they're sticks. They're, yeah, the battle stays. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like favorite weapon.

I feel like Tony Stark, a parallel could have come up with better weapons. True. Yeah. But, well, he also has a skateboard. Okay. Cause he's a teenager, you see. Yeah. Yeah.

I love the battle staves, actually. Him and Mockingbird. Like, I never really thought Mockingbird's costume was all that cool. I certainly don't like the giant winged eyes kind of thing and the big flowy and all that. And then you don't cover your legs at all. It's not the number prude. It's just that I'm looking at the practicality of it. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but having said that, I loved the fact that she had battle staves. Like, there's something, and I never actually took Eskirma. Like, I never thought to take a martial art where you're using two sticks, but I love the idea of dual wielding and they're both blunt.

Because ultimately, as has been proven on our podcast, I love quarterstaffs. And so battle staves are just I love quarterstaffs. And so battle staves are just like eighths, so Ed and I will argue regularly about, because he loves swords. He's a sword guy. He has a sword rack. I love a quarterstaff, because I'm like, it's the most democratized weapon there is.

I'm partial to the mall because that's a working man's weapon. Nice. Nice. Yeah. It is absolutely about ideology for me too. Quarter staff is is a learning man's weapon, you know, and it's a shepherd's weapon. So it's a leave me alone. Yeah, poke poke, you know. Yeah. So, but yeah, so the group was really cool. I like I said, it's six different reactions to Spider-Man getting bit by a radioactive spider. And it's a reboot for two specific Spider-Man recast, Nova and Speedball.

And growing up, this was absolutely my favorite comic. And Speedball was a huge reason for it. He was the Joker of the group. There's so much zaniness. And he's often bouncing into and out of the frame while being zany. And as far as powers go, it was one of the most novel powers at the time. Other people had super armor, other people had flight,

other people had energy projection, fire, telekinesis. Bounceness as a superpower was, I think it was unique to just him at that time. And his cap. Well, I'm not terribly familiar with other characters who have the same power set necessarily. I mean, gold balls comes to mind, but they then sort of retconed his abilities that, so I mean, because he could create gold balls out of thin air and then like throw them at people, but that's about, so the naming motifs being similar is about it. About it. Yeah.

And then those balls turn out to be eggs. And that was weird. Yeah. You know, when they stopped paying attention to the CCA, they all the weird came out first. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So which I get, I get, you know, you got to, you know, when

I'm writing jokes, the bad ones get written first, you know, so there's still stage worthy. But yeah, I mean, you don't, you also don't find that many characters who have cryoconesis, right? There's ice man. And that list windows pretty quickly. Like in DC, you have Mr. Freeze. Mr. Freeze, yeah. And there's in color frost. But they're, yeah. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I'm not aware of anyone else who has that particular power set.

Yeah, like, I mean, you do have people who have elemental control. They will somehow control the water and they can freeze it sometimes. I think crystal was able to do that in humans. But by and large having that be their thing, like it's it's remarkably unique. Surprisingly so too. So also, I guess, which is surprisingly unique is that night crawler or night thrasher has absolutely zero powers tied to electricity despite the fact that he's a black man. That's true. It's weird. It's one of those things that's not it's not that all black characters have electric powers,

but an unusual number of them do. Yeah, I'm proportioned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's telling Spidey like jokes the whole time. In his first issue with the new warriors, he jokes with Marvel boy about how they both

got rejected by the Avengers, because they both tried out. Cap said that basically he was too unpredictable, you know, and he kept told Marvel boy that like grow up some, because he didn't actually realize that uh Elden Bishop. Elden, Elden Bishop, is that his name? Rage. Um, I don't remember. I don't remember his last time. I might be mixing up with a, uh, a, a jazz singer out here.

But anyway, he's joking with, uh, you know, at that time Rage was 14 years old, but the Avengers didn't know because I guess they don't card. Um, but, uh, they did reject,. But they did reject Marvel Boy and said like, a year or two young come back when you got some seasoning. And so he says to Marvel Boy, who later becomes justice, he says, hey, we can be like the Legion of Substitute Avengers. So, well, and you know, Peter Parker had applied to be an Avenger, but you needed a guardian design. Is that what

stopped him? No, I'm making you think about his parents. I was like, man, that's dark if that's what stopped him. I would have liked it. I know he applied to be part of the fantastic four to screw up their numbers. But they, they basically were like, you know, maybe, and he's like, never mind, I'm better on my own, because he and Johnny couldn't get along. But oh, God, I was, I was really hopeful for a second that they were that dark. It's like when you have a, your, your, your parents can help help you kit and it's like a Batman kit. Your parents can help you put it together. It's like, no, they can't. So he he cracks another joke

about the Avengers coming in at the end, take all the credit after the New Warriors had just defeated Terax. He says, sure, no problem. You can take all the hard stuff. You know, the press, the adulation, the glory, the drooling female fans. So I always crack and wise, and I like that, you know, because they're phasing some really existential threats. At some point, his mom does find out about his secret identity, but his dad still doesn't know

and they end up divorcing because the 1990s, so everybody's divorcing, and she ends up working on a soap opera, co-starring with Mary Jane Watson. As things get more serious, he continues to be the nice boy, annoying, funny guy, who's constantly taking the piss out of villains and teammates alike.

He even throws in a Donald Trump joke when they get new headquarters. Oh. Yeah, like that was, so they move into a warehouse, of course, after a little while. Like I think it's right around like issue 18 or 19. And he makes a Donald Trump development joke. So, and it's 1991, 1992, you know.

And he's scolds night thrasher who wants so badly we take him seriously and he's just taking the piss out of him He says quote, yeah, thrash man way I look at it lots of babes probably caught us in action on the tube Should give us a cover and tiger beat for sure when a dream date with the masked marvel details inside now quit your whining take the first h out of thrash and let's start cleaning it up Okay, yeah, we're yeah, we're based puns. All right. Yeah, I'm a fan. Uh, so and he's bouncing upside down while saying it, uh, after a second bout with Terax, uh, but this time, the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer come down to fight Terax as well. And the new warriors

are the Vanguard of that fight. Um, he joins a group called, oh, what were you saying? I was gonna say, doesn't Vanguard usually mean expendable? Yes. So, but also the bravest, the first one in, the first to fight, that kind of thing. That's what they tell them anyway. The father. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. That's what they tell them anyway. The father. Yes. Yeah, exactly. He joins Damage Control in July of 1991, and he makes an erection joke about Vulcans in that, which is fun. I like about Pondfar. Yes, actually, about how it doesn't take him seven years Yes, actually, about how it doesn't take him seven years to get ready for Pond Far. So it's just I wonder they're really living into like this kid has no hopes of yes. He is driven by his grondle like that's that is it. The more serious the the stories get, the more he becomes the foil. He is always the humor. He's always the smart mouth that's spidey is, but he's on a team. And when they attack Gideon in his own home, Gideon,

whose power is pretty damn cool, he has automatic, he's a mutant who has automatic mastery over the powers of anyone near him. So he not only copies their powers, but he can use them better than they ever have. Right. So, a speedball ends up cheering on nightthrashary, says, quote, pounded out of him like a civilized person would because they're asking Gideon. This is when various heroes' corporations start having fights so then they have to settle it fist-to-cuff-wise.

Of course. So they invade Gideon's home in Vale, Colorado, I want to say, by snowboarding in. It's the tactical thing to do by's home in Vale, Colorado. I want to say by snowboarding in. It's the tactical thing to do. Yeah, yeah. I mean, no one would expect the snowboard in acquisition. So and Robbie's the only one that has his own snowboard. So you know, there's and they go in and they fight Gideon, who is buck naked the whole time because he is in his hot tub and Gideon starts beating them all, like really, really quickly.

And he even like uses speedball's powers to cover his groin for the audience by making like a double helix around himself with speedball's bubbles speed balls as you know while he's got speed ball by the throat speed ball is like mr. Gideon sir how do you make your bubbles do that so it's like forever comic relief for a hot second out there and you say he's got about the phone speed balls as harder you know daddy harder. Daddy. Why are your balls doing different thing? So he ends up being the mentor slash sidekick for rage for a while since they're the two that are closest in age, right? Rage gets kicked out of the new warriors for lying to them and joins. All right, I'm sorry, he gets kicked out of the Avengers and joins the New Warriors. And he becomes like a kid brother to Nightrashir,

but he becomes almost like a twin brother to Speedball. And Rage's power is that he's hell of strong and invulnerable skin, kind of a loop cage, but younger. Gotcha. And again, he's acting the foil and again, uncomfortably acting the white, wisecracking foil to an angry black male character whose superpower is being strong. Yeah. So, and it becomes even more uncomfortable, and Nova has rage and night thrasher kicked off the team. And those are the two black male characters. And by this time, I think Silhouette

has left kicked off by the cop. Yeah, by space cop, whose girlfriend is Namarita, who is the the niece of Submariner. But she's white presenting and very blonde. So, I mean, you know, you listen, progress, let me go so far, we're not about to this ain't the guardians, all right, we're not about to incorporate sexualized, you know, alien or nonhuman entities. This is true. This is true. So, and then Robbie tells Rage, because Rage is like, well, what would you have done? He says, I would have agreed with that call if I was there to make it. Because rage is like, well, what would you have done? He says, I would have agreed with that call if I was there to make it. Which you kind of see that in World War Hulk, by the way, where, you know, he goes

and questions Xavier. So, so then after the New Warriors comic has its end and and it New Warriors was a hot comic for like 25, 26 issues. And then it finished its major arc and didn't know where to go. It just kind of floundered around a bit. And then you had some cool developments and stuff like that. Like I just said, but by and large,

if it ended at 25, it would have been like if supernatural that ended after season five. Like the way it was intended. Yes, yeah, logical end, but then people are like, no, let's actually, we finally got the BMG license. Let's play real music now. So. Yeah, show. I'm still I'm still finishing it too. I'm in season 13. Yeah. Oh, it was a 15 years 15 years. 15 years of my life. It's like a bad relationship. I just I had to see it through. That's how I was with lost that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, and heroes I'm the only person who really liked the carnival season

Okay, I will say this after the after the Leviathan season like that one that one hurt But after that, I feel like it you know, at least for my part Mm-hmm. Yeah, I well because they got more back to the biblical stuff probably for you. Well, it, it just, it seemed like the monsters made, I don't went back to making more sense. The whole purgatory thing was neat and concept, but weird in execution. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But I mean, I've had that critique about purgatory since I read about it the first time. So, uh, the speedball disappears from comics for a while. He runs into Jessica Jones in 2003 in Michael Bendis' alias. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Yep. Uh, he's hitting a low point in his costume here a career. Uh, he's around Jessica Jones. Yeah. Well, and he's not even around her. She is investigating the drug dealer of mutant growth hormone, Denny Haynes, uh, who is the boyfriend of a strong out Maddie Franklin,

who was the sometimes spider woman, um, who, and, uh, and Denny Haynes says, quote, listen, no offense, but if I'm getting taken down, man, it ain't going to be from fucking speedball. I want a drug dealer is like, send someone else. Yeah. Listen. I need at least a B-lister. Right. Right.

You know, and then Jessica drew in Jessica Jones, Burston answering his plea. And they assume that Speedball is another second rate, Spidey knockoff, former superhero who's down on his luck working with bad guys. That's really funny coming from Jessica Drew. Yeah, I mean, I like the character, but I'm saying like yeah, you know, she was literally hit the yeah, anyway. Yep. Yep. All the things. So it turns out those speedball was trying to bust any hands and he's working specifically with the NYPD undercover. but also there's a snitchy aspect to it. So. This sounds a lot like, I think, uh, oh God, was it a, uh, ultimate comics, uh, run with Miles Rouse's dad, Jefferson.

I think it was, it was, unfortunately named black man character. Jefferson Davis, yeah, no, it's, I don't know what Michael Bindis was thinking, but then again, it's, maybe it was like, we're taking it back like yeah I just loved it like when solid and Ahmed Actually wrote Miles Rallus, you know somewhere in his mind. He was like what if he actually spoke Spanish because he's after nothing Whatever right so But yeah, I think though that reminds me of a

The thing where this I want to say was like busting a drug dealer who was selling MGH. That was a big thing in their early 2000s. Was MGH and then there was also SGH. I think it was because they were like kind of, because the ultimate is to come out by that point. And so the idea of, was it Hank Pym or Bruce, I was going to say Bruce Boxlite, no, Bruce Banner, not the guy who played Tron. idea of, was it Hank Pym or Bruce, I was gonna say Bruce Boxlite, no, Bruce Banner, not the guy who played Tron, but Bruce Banner. One of them was trying to recreate the Super Soldier of Serum and try it on, oh, it had to be Bruce.

Try it on himself and that was the origin of the Hulk and Ultimates. Something like that. Something like that, right? Yeah. So like in the early 2000s, there's a huge push toward like injectable super hero-ness, which I mean, honestly, that's right around the time that you have the baseball stuff coming to the fore in terms of they sit up there in front of Congress.

Yeah, yeah. I like about it. Is it a semi-sosa and a Mark McWire? Or all of them, yeah. Roger Clemens. So, I mean, that all kind of cons. And then you also have the onset of meth. It's true.

Entering into the humans' eye, guys. I'm actually, I'm doing research right now on the TV show being human. That was the American one. Yeah, I think I know of that show. Yeah, it's amazing, but it comes out right at the time that the opioid crisis is hitting huge. And it's like, oh, well, this is clearly a one to one. Yeah.

You know, you've got basically the vampire is heroin addiction, you know, and then you've got the werewolf is meth, meth insanity, you know, and stuff like that. So it's that, that one's the research that I'm doing, you know, for fun, fun opioid crises. Woo. Yay, Purdue. Just not cool. But in the early 2000s, like injectable stuff is kind of a thing. So yeah, they're working on that. And we really don't see him again until the middle of 2005,

when the New Warriors get another reboot. And the artwork for this, I didn't look up the artist for this, but I hate this style of art. There's no approach to looking realistic. It's hyper cartoonized. I can't even think of a cartoon that does it this badly, but, anyway, it's subjective. But the new warriors hop on the pathetic train of reality TV But the new warriors hop on the pathetic train of reality TV in the mid 2005 because again reality TV is a big deal at this point You've got Paris Hilton and the simple life It was dismal and speedball was still zany, but there was a desperation to him now

No one does reality TV because the career's going well. Yeah, that's really good point. And he really needed the TV thing to work out. And this was Marvel's way of guiding them toward being the inciting incident for the Civil War in 2006. And that's, I think, where I want to cut this episode because that's what I really want to discuss. So, of course, I'll spend an entire episode not discussing it just so we have the background. Next week, you all will hear that Speedball goes from being this

happy-go-lucky horny spider-man to a liberal-marter fantasy. So that's where I want to go. So anything that you've, I always ask Ed what he's gleaned from from from the episode. So anything you've picked up or any gleaning that needs to be discussed. Yeah. So being unfamiliar with the origins of Speedball, but kind of no one where the character goes after a while, it really does seem in that vein of like the nostalgia that sours. Makes sense. So like the youthful things that we enjoy just kind of

curdling on the vine because you know by the time you get to where we talk about next time, he goes through quite a bit as evidenced by just the conceit of having a reality TV show as a superhero in narratives like that's rough. Oh yeah. Because it does sort of scream of, it's very, it's very, what's it? Rock of love. Bret Hart. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And, or, you know, flavor of love, flavor of love, or those sort of, you know, TV shows where you have these, has they say washed up, because I mean, who am I to say, but like these guys who had their glory days, who are now maybe taking another stab at relevance, right? Yeah, they're in many ways playing parodies of themselves. Yeah. And only a parody that most of middle America is comfortable with casting the mask.

Like I've given thought to doing an exploration of comparing Flavaflave during his public enemy days to his reality show days and how he's so much more comfortable for white people in that casting, wearing Viking helmets versus saying, fuck the police. In many ways, it's like, oh, okay, see, he was crazy back then too. Like it's a retconning that happens. Yeah, or when Gene Simmons had his family jewels show, right? And oh, that's right. Yeah, it was a very domesticated version

of Gene Simmons. Yeah, or Ozzy Osborne, same thing. Yeah, exactly. You know, still wild and antics, but not like, not like Aussie antics, right? Right. Yeah. He's just a daughtering old man. He's not dropping acid every day for a year and they're putting that on camera. You know, like, right. Yeah, there's there's something about the two thousands where nostalgia rots on the vine for us. I think it has a lot to do with George Bush and Ronald Reagan, to be honest.

Yeah, and we'll get into that a bit, but I'm glad you're catching that. I keep coming back to this as they did my boy dirty. And I might be the only person that loves speedball, but they messed up that character so badly. Yeah. So cool. Well, then what are you reading lately? So actually right now, I'm almost finished with a reread of one of my favorite comic books or graphic novels,

however you want to put it, bone by Jeff Smith. Are you familiar at all? No, it's a fantasy story, No, it's a fantasy story Set in a valley with like dragons and rat creatures and stuff and it's the lead character Phone bone is a he and his cousins are in exile and out of their town after one of his cousins gets him or gets them run out because of a Mayoral candidate run gone terribly a rye involving some bad prune tarts in a campaign funding. It's a whole thing. Actually, it gives a town diarrhea as part of a campaign and whatever. It's goofy. It's goofy. It's fun.

It's lighthearted. There's not the only one running from air. He's not. Um, in fact, a lot of them work. Yeah. So it's, it's goofy. It's fun and it's, it's fantasy and stuff. It's a, it's a fun read.

But the other thing, um thing I'm reading currently is, and I want to plug, is a comic book by Dark Horse, comics called Survival Street. And the premise is that it's a sort of extreme libertarian conservative utopia where corporations are granted personhood. Yeah, yeah. Oh, boy. And and so the it follows a group of puppets who are alive, right? Okay. Who were a part of I forget exactly what it was called at

the beginning, but they become known as like survival street. They was like the Sesame Street analog, right? And so when things when PBS gets defunded, everything goes privatized and they get like sold off or whatever, they become guerrilla fighters. And so the, you have like, for example, a Oscar the Grouch parallel, who recycles things into like weapons. So he's taking various objects to recycle into Molotov cocktails. There's there's a Lovar Burton who is like the man in the field doing like Intel and scouting and stuff. There's a Grover parallel who is a marksman like it's all what? Tell me there's like an assassin who's never seen that snuffle up a guess. There's there's not that'd be great, but there is a recovering ice cream junkie,

who named Gurgle, who is a real problem. So, but the opening issue, the first issue is them trying to save some orphans who are held in a detention center who are being adopted or auctioned off to the Walthier Leads as part of like an organ harvesting thing. So it's like they're staging a jailbreak. And so like that's issue one. It's a four part series. And it's absolutely it's great. Oh wow. It's from Dark Horse Comics. I strongly encourage people to pick it out. Pick it up. It's by James Asmus and Jim Fostanti. Okay. That's, yeah. That's awesome. Well, I'm going to recommend obviously do a little pre-reading if you can go and read Civil War Frontline. So the Civil War, when it happened, it had a very, very pervasive

influence for like the year that it existed. And there, there was a whole bunch of mini series that came out that tied absolutely in. And the one that I'm largely going to be drawing on for a lot of the speedball stuff next week will be from Civil War Frontline. So I recommend if you can find an omnibus of that to read that. It's really well done. And it has this wonderful structure at the end of each one. The epilogue is always an historical story that ties into what we've been reading about in that month. So strongly recommend that. That's where a lot of the speedball stuff happens. So cool.

Well, anything you want to plug, anything you want to tell people where you're where you're at, what you're doing, where they can find you. So if you want to find me, if you're ever mind too, you can find me on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter at G.A. Cruz, PhD. I changed my handle on TikTok so that they're all the same now. And I have a podcast called Office Hours of Dr. C, where we post episodes weekly, including some

with the illustrious hosts of Geek of Geek history of time, excuse me. And so yeah, it's, you know, you can find me there. I do more pop culture stuff and comments analysis and I'm super excited because recently some would be conservative media pundent on TikTok stitched me and I'm going to go smooth in so I that's my Christmas. It's oh nice Beats the shit out of getting death rats. I'll tell you that it that well, you know, I'm glad There was a time where I was getting some profile pictures with like the black son commenting things so wow. Yeah I had no idea that I was

Yeah, I had no idea that I was being controlled by my Marxist Jewish masters or something along those lines. I don't know. Whatever trite drivel those trouble bites coming up with. Oh, yeah, I love my V episodes. So cool. All right. Yeah, I do recommend you all go check them out. It's wonderful bite-sized stuff and his Podcasts know where Nero's long as ours so you can get in and get out and he has a lot more interesting guests than Ed has on ours. So I don't know you guys have had some like guest guests. Yeah. Yeah. So geez, a couple authors that I was like, oh wow, that's impressive. Yeah. Yeah, and I I live in such a weird little bubble that I didn't realize having Brent, Hannah Hill was a huge Who like but it's kind of like what you said in the first one like if you reach out to people they often if they're famous for saying things They'll often want to say more things. So yeah. Yeah. No, I love to have in her. We also had a pinball expert on in our early 20 episodes.

So yeah, we've had a few. It's been nice. But I just got very interested in nerds music after that. So I was stoked to talk to you here years. So if people want to find me, you can go looking for me in these streets in Sacramento. If you want to come by and see the the pun competition capital punishment November 4th, because I'm pretty sure this will drop after the well actually it might drop by October 7th. So October 7th and November 4th down at Luna's in Sacramento bring proof

of vaccination in $10 and be willing to participate by shouting out pun topics. My group, the show has undergone a huge change. My partner of six years Daniel has moved away to Hawaii and we now have Justine with us and she is phenomenal. She is the major Winchester to his Frank Burns. So it's amazing. She's come check her out. She's amazing and see if I can keep up. So that'll be October 7th and November 4th and held December 2nd if we're booking that far out. But in the meantime, you can find me at Harmony on Twitter and Instagram. That's about it. So, well, Gabriel, thank you so much for joining us on a geek history of time. For a geek history of time, I'm

Damien Harmony, Dr. Gabriel Cruz. And until next time, I believe Ed says, with great power, comes great responsibility. I thought it was keep rolling 20s. He changes it on that. And until next time, I believe Ed says, with great power comes great responsibility. I thought it was keep rolling 20s. I think he changes it on that.