A Geek History of Time - Episode 344 - Interview with Dragon Lee Author and Expert Kevin Garcia Part I

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

I mean, it is 2 o'clock in the fucking morning, where I am. The 1848ers were so much more radical than what we're comfortable or familiar with. The layer, the layer of sarcasm involved in that entire delivery is, like I've seen, I've seen, yeah, it's not even frosting. But he failed, so fuck them buddies. Like that now after World War II ended Lockley started mapping out foot trails for the newly created Oh God, Pembrokeshire

So Pembrokeshire Okay Pembrokeshire Just please let me just read Latin all day We're way into the 19th century now I'm sorry Well Damien It's 3 o'clock in the fucking morning

Thank you. This is a geek history of time, where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock, I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California. And just earlier this evening, my wife introduced my son to the movie Greece. She realized earlier this week that our son, who is now seven, had never seen Greece. And it is one of her absolute favorite movies ever in all of media history. And he was not very interested for the first two-thirds of the film. She got kind of annoyed.

I actually had to walk over. I was preparing dinner while they were watching the movie. So I had to, like, came out of the kitchen. And I said to him, hey, your mommy is trying to share this movie with you. And I just held eye contact with him. And he kind of, oh, okay. And I took his iPad away. But then the last two thirds of the movie, he got fully invested.

And during the one that I want, he got up. And it is one of my victories as a father. I consider one of the wins of my parenting that at age seven, my son still Snoopy dances. And he got up and he was bogeying his heart out. And it actually made my wife tear up. So, yeah, that was, that was my glimmer for the evening. That was, that was my moment of wonder. How about you? How are you doing? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a U.S. history and economics teacher up here in Northern California. And I got to say, I was listening with a, a deep, sense of dread at what could have been so I'm very glad that that stayed wholesome

instead of him asking mommy what's a gang bang or or mommy why would she put up a fight so I'm really glad that he just danced the details of lyrics just all kind of you know thankfully thankfully yes yes those those that's gonna be when we get a little older sure when and if we rewatch but yeah church sleep over uh so You know, I Okay, we all know what a wrestling fan I am And I am absolutely going to date this episode Yeah, I'm absolutely going to date this episode

Even though I hate dating episodes I just watched AJ Lee's return Smackdown was in Chicago She came back, she's been gone 10 years A.J. Lee is a tiny little just swizzle stick of a wrestler, but she's fit as fuck and she has always played like a kind of psychotic

like put the manic into manic pixie dream girl and like amp it up right she's married to CM Punk who's one of my favorite wrestlers and no surprise that one of his favorites is Brett Hart right she's married to him they live in Chicago she's been away for years and years and years and the crowd who loves CM Punk has always cheered for him as well or cheered for her as well

And they will chant her name during other women's matches and stuff like that It's just there's a lot going on here There's a storyline She came back Okay And I love seeing her back She's amazing

She does this little skip to the ring That just adds to the psychosis of her character Yeah But what I love the most was And this is just a few glimmers that I saw of it CM Punk is sitting there with his arms folded Watching her come up And that man is her biggest guy

Damn fan. He is so in love with her. He is just so satisfied with seeing the joy in her face as she is like, or maybe not the joy, but like, yeah, the joy of her performance. Yeah. And he is just so enamored. He's so proud. He's so clearly in love. It's just really cool. That's awesome. It really, yeah, it just warmed my heart. So, you know, wrestling does that. Yeah. And I had to go on my phone and look her up just to see, you know, what you were talking about. And yes, I have a type. Number one. Yeah. Number two, she has arms that I would commit a major felony for. Like if I could, like, oh my God, what do I need to do? Like, what's the routine for that?

Right. Number two. And number three, if I were 25 years younger, my response would be, oh, God, whip me, beat me, make me write bad checks. okay wow i was talking about how a man loves his wife but yeah you go off that's you know well i'm just saying i said 25 years ago sure you know but that doesn't make it better ed no but so all right cool so uh geez um here's here's the thing we have uh yet uh another time where i I have found an author whose stuff I have read for a long time without realizing he was a contributing member to that stuff.

And then I dug down a rabbit hole and found out he has done all kinds of other things. And I, of course, reached out to him as my daughter is always shocked to hear that I do and shot my shot. And he has agreed to come on with us. I would like to introduce us to Kevin Garcia, mercenary elucidator professional. writer certified teacher cohort of the or i'm sorry co-host of the my primos podcast and part of the team that helped create the uh the official handbook of marvel universe a through z for like 11 years and is the official expert on japanese spider-man and the author of the world's war comics all right mr garcia kevin uh welcome thank you for having me i as i think that you mentioned mercen

elucidator. I put that on my website. Because, I mean, look, I get paid to talk to people about things. I think that counts. Absolutely. Yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, by the way, I'd also like that you were mentioning that you introduced, or rather your wife introduced your kid to Greece. My fiance and I have been introducing each

other to movies a lot lately. And we just, right before we started recording, just finished Space Devaders, which is one of my favorite movies. And so she'd never seen it. We were having fun with that. And I realized, well, watching it, like, I know the guy that plays the villain. You know, Greg Berger, the voice of Grimlock is the villain on that.

And I've worked with him at some comic cons before. Oh, wow. That's awesome. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Nice. So I and Ed were both on a panel during the COVID times out in Virginia to talk about Squirrel Girl because of an episode that we did on Squirrel Girl because I fucking love Squirrel Girl. As you should.

Yeah. And I'd also been on a panel years ago out here in San Jose. because I was part of a group of comedians called stand-up nerdity. And I dressed up in full Mandalorian armor and held the mic up to my speaker and went on for probably eight to ten minutes about how the Jedi had it coming. They really did. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not really an arguable point anymore. I showed my fiancé all of the Star Wars movies for the first time because she was aware of it through cultural osmosis, but they never actually watched them. Sure. Yeah. And she enjoyed them. And it was actually acolyte that made her want to do that

because she watched all of the acolyte, not knowing anything about Star Wars, loved the hell out of it. And afterwards, she's like, how are the Jedi the good guys? And I'm like, well,

George Lucas thought they were. Right. Yeah. Which, yeah. Ed has done a couple episodes on. Here's the Jedi or what happened when somebody who loves Pachuli read the first chapter of Eastern Philosophy 101.

Yeah. So. Yeah. And then didn't read any more. right and decided he was going to base a semi-religious order of eschetic warriors with a question mark yeah on that so yeah yeah so it's a whole thing it's really it really is we we probably ought to do a get-ed drunk and and rant about about George Lucas and Buddhism episode kind of like we did get it drunk and talk about Tolkien yeah yeah um it's

It'd be a lot shoutier. You know what we could do. We can get you drunk and have you ask me questions about Star Wars. Oh, there you go. Drunken trivia when the trivia guy is drunk, that's interesting. Yeah. That's an inversion of the trope that I can get behind. I would be interested in that.

That'd be interesting. Yeah. Oh, you guys both get drunk and ask me questions about. Actually, I've been sober for 45 years now. Holy crap. You and me. I've been sober for 47. I have nothing against

drinking. I just have no desire for it. Everyone, so people will be like, try this. I'll be like taste like alcohol and I'm just, you know. That being said, if I ever, when drunk history, that TV show was a thing, if they ever invited me on, I would get drunk just to be on that show because it would be fun to just talk about random bits of history. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I have also been sober for 47 years, not even having tasted anything. And some people have asked why, and I've always had explanations. But now as I'm getting closer to 50, I tell them, oh, it's part of a long, con I'm gonna turn 50 and start drinking and that way all my friends who now have enough income to treat me to the good shit will be like you've never had whiskey I want to be that one and then I'll have skipped all of the bottom shelf stuff oh no oh no no no no fuck that no if and when we wind up doing what we've talked about one of the things I'm going to have a bottle of cutty sark and I'm going to tell you okay this is a right of passage you have to do this okay it's going to say suck, but it will be over quickly, it will be over quickly, and we will get to the good stuff. But first, you need to understand what Rotgut actually is.

Fair. See, I always tell people, like, one of these days, I'm going to start smoking, drinking alcohol, and drinking coffee, and I'll be an adult, but it hasn't happened yet. Right. The only way I can drink coffee is there's so much sugar in it, you can't tell it's coffee. So I don't think Rappuccino counts. See, I love coffee, but not for the caffeine, but for the bitterness. Now, tea, hot teas, I love bitter.

Like black and bitter with hot tea, but I cannot, I can't even be in the room with coffee. It just is too much. No, I can. I guess I just don't like it. I love coffee. I've always, like the darker, the better. The espresso, just straight shots is just, oh, God, so good. I've often said I like my coffee.

Like, I like my romantic partners ground up and in the freezer. I mean, that's a good way to solve problems that may happen later on down the line. Exactly. It's just practicality. Yeah. Good preservation, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

But anyway. So you recently wrote a book called Dragon Lee and the Monster of Salty River. That indeed I did. Yeah. And what I loved about it was, number one, you came recommended by friend of the show, Gabriel Cruz. Because he mentioned. Dr. C. Yeah.

He mentioned ApeX on your podcast and then sent me that link. and I was like, oh, that is so cool because it's one of my absolute favorite characters is Speedball. Really? Okay. I think I say ApeX for a second. I was like, no. He's had literally a comic and a half of appearances, so I'd be able to amazing. It's Speedball, but having

an ape pun about Speedball is just, oh, Chef's Kiss. And the fact that ape speedball was legitimately the Speedball of the Marvel Universe for a couple years. Like, he didn't appear much, but at that time Speedball was not Speedball. So he stayed on regular human earth

And he was the speedball for a couple of years So it's just crazy Which is funny because speedball was kind of He didn't appear much like in Like he appeared frequently But always in the background making a quip As he's bouncing out of the frame Whenever they need to have those 90s 20 year olds

Yeah actually I don't know if you can tell But our logo behind us You notice the color scheme I can see it now I wouldn't have thought of it to you brought it up You know what I also would have thought Although not quite the same colors I also would have thought booster gold

because I feel like it's got that vibe to it. Oh, yeah, yeah, a little bit. Nova is actually one of my other favorites. Also, which is a much deeper blue. But, yeah. I'm a big sucker for when they have, like things like Nova, for example, a big sucker for when they have like this,

the best of every planet getting together. I just, I love that concept. It's why Spiderverse is so much fun. You know, I love the idea of like, just the best of everyone just working together to save everything. I get a kick out of it. And then like, okay, Green Lantern was like,

My favorite when I was a little kid. Sure. Not because of Hal Jordan, and I've come to realize he's the worst Green Lantern ever, but because of the core, and I love the idea of that. And then they killed off all the core in the mid-90s and then replaced them all with one bland white guy. And I was like, all right, I'll give it a shot. And I was like, this girlfriend character is great.

She's like really intelligent. I'm like, the way I'm reading this comic, I'm thinking they're setting it up so she's going to be Green Lantern. Like, I think they're going to, they're going to set it up so that he can't do the job, and she takes over for him because she's so competent. And I was like, I would be down for that. And then, you know, stuff happened. Yeah. The funny part is, years later, I'm talking about Latino superheroes.

Yeah, well, that's where we get the fridging term from. Years later, we're talking about Latino superheroes, and somebody tells me that, well, Kyle Rainer's Latino. I'm like, what? I did read his early issues. I feel like it would have come up. I looked into it. It's about five or five to ten years after his first appearance. he finds out that his secret birth father was a Mexican assassin.

And I'm like, look, I know I'm very white looking. My Spanish is not good. But like, at least I was raised with tacos. You know, and this guy is like, and the thing is later writers like lean into him being Latino. And they have him like holding a rosary and praying in Spanish. And I'm like, he didn't find out until he was 30. I mean, what the heck? But anyway, sorry.

I'm getting my little Green Lantern rant. Sorry. No, quite right. No, no. No. It just your love of those things. I wonder if it comes from the same place that mine is, which is the Laugh Olympics. Oh, yeah.

Well, that and the Animal Olympics, but yes, I love the combination of that. Yeah. Just, you know, you get the Laugh Olympics. And then, of course, Battle Royals. Like, you know. That one I did not actually watch. No, not the TV. Not the movie Battle Royal.

No, I'm talking about just the idea of a battle royal. Oh, the idea of a war. Oh, oh, sorry. Yeah. I'm on cartoon brain right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I switch a lot. So I wrote this book on wrestling.

We're talking about it right now, Dragon Lee. And the thing is, I'm not a massive fan of wrestling the sport. You know? Okay. I get it. Like, I'm not going to, like, as a kid, I might have thought to make fun of it. But I very quickly, I realized, you know how you have secret identities, you have behind the stage scenes drama, and then all of this action in front. It's just superheroes.

It's all it is. So, like, it's perfect. But the thing I do love about wrestling is the movies, specifically like the Lichador movies. a santo blo demon and all that kind of stuff i i i grew up on those and i just i i absorbed them so much so when i i got approached to write this book about the real professional wrestler dragon lee and his family um immediately my thought was to go in like it was a santo thing and he never takes off a mask and i'm having my first meeting with the with the i guess the producers whatever we call them the the publishers and they're like and they're like well here's

the drawing of what we think he'll look like without his mask on as a kid and i'm like no I'm never going to write a single scene with him without a mask on. In fact, there's one scene of him where he doesn't have a mask, and the person who doesn't know him personally can't see him because there's light behind his face. And it's in text, so you wouldn't see his face anyway. But I want to make sure that no one sees his face because that's the point. That's the whole point. And when I said that, the guy that honed the IP and the guy that was the intermediary with

Dragulina and his family was like, he gets it, he gets it. You know. Nice. Yeah. There you go. I mean, that was the whole thing. And I explained to people that when Mexican wresters are wearing the mask, they're not hiding their identity. It's not like Spider-Man trying to protect

at May. It's, they're showing who they really are. The mask shows their true power. And I'm like, that's what it's all about. It's not about, like, everybody knew who El Santo was, but it was about never take off the mask. And when he did take off the mask, the fans went nuts. They were so upset that he did it. And he was retired.

Yeah. Yeah. And then he literally died a week later, which is crazy. I was going to say, yeah, he was buried with it, too. Yeah, well, afterwards, yeah. Didn't want to risk any curses. Right. Yeah. So, so Ed to give you just a bit of background on on on the book so the plot is kind of a would you call it a coming of age tale Kevin um he's got to earn his mask so he has to earn his mask but I call it a coming of age except that they're not supposed to have come to the age yet so

let's call it the approaching of age tale there we go an approaching of age tale of dragon Lee and his brother uh dralistico and their father el toro blanco okay now dragon Lee basically has to earn his lucha mask. His brother kind of just is out for adventure. And they're beset by a group called the Canacoles. So, so, the, the, sorry, after I hear that, and I have to read how to pronounce it. The Canales are, are, for the book, think of them like putties from Power Ranger. So, so it is a, it's, it's, well, that now, but I mean, literally like putty.

from Power Ranger because this is a legend from Central Mexico, basically the idea that farmers would want to protect their crops. So they would take these like wax dummies and like, like, imbue them with spirits that would then protect the crops. So basically animated scarecrows. Animated scarecrows is exactly what they are. But the idea was that I wanted the kids to be able to beat something up without me to kids' books.

I couldn't have blood everywhere. So I'm like, they're made out of wax. He could blow them up and it'll be all fine. It's fine. You know, don't know about it. Okay. All right. Now, I found that interesting because the cancunola.

So a little bit of background about me I taught Latin and it ruins my pronunciation of literally everything. Like you should hear me butcher French. It is hilarious. Which like that shouldn't do it. But yeah. So it squeezed up my Spanish too.

I taught high school on the border. So like whenever I'm now I live in Austin and I'll every kid I get I pronounce their name in Spanish first. Right. And then I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, it's Anita. I'm like, oh, sorry. right just you know yeah yeah sure um ernan no herman oh exactly yeah exactly so but the concanoles uh i thought it was a reference to the indigenous peoples uh in the san antonio and gulf coast area of texas a lot of those things could be uh the the the the caroncoa um i'm trying to think that the which group are you talking about right now this was the group that were the nomads and were accused by uh folks near them of cannibalizing their enemies.

Yeah, but the TCHMAX? No, I think it was the first one you mentioned. Okay. So both of those groups have been accused of that. Oh, okay. And essentially it comes down to, you know, whenever somebody's got an enemy, especially if that enemy is slightly smaller than them, they're going to be like, oh, they're horrible people.

So they get that down. So, like, I like the idea. I talked to a historian once of Texas historian, actually. He was on the Texas historian board, actually, the official one for many years. And he was telling me about this. And I was thinking about it and like, so this is a group of people that the Aztecs were afraid of. And they're the ones that lived here.

Right. I like this. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So, and by the way, I do use term Aztex. Sometimes people will call me out on that. That is the historical term that is used by historians in every language pretty much.

It's also a term that it's not inaccurate. They did have that term pre-Columbian. It just wasn't commonly used. You know, we say the Mishika, that's just one of the group. that made up what we call the Aztecs. It was called the Triple Alliance for a reason. They were the main group, but they were too much. So the other thing, I did some diving on this, no pun intended,

because a lot of what I found was a group called the Chongos, who were sailor peoples from Chile and Peru. That one I'm not familiar with, but I'm definitely want to know more. Yeah, and they also had that name ascribed to them. Oh, yeah. So I, but I figured since you're from South Texas, that it's likely the first group that you're more feeding off of? Well, I see, here's the thing.

I am, I've been a professional writer for 25 years, but most of that's been like journalism stuff, like interview people, that kind of thing. And then, of course, being a historian on things, but mostly fiction. But in my spare time, I'm just obsessed with Mesoamerica. And not just Mesoamerica, but also like all of the cultures that kind of made up the Americas, but primarily that.

And so I just have a whole library of that stuff on my shelf. know, several shelves worth, rather. And one of the books is by David Bowles. And he's a friend of mine, and he's also an editor on some of the projects I've done. He's a professor in South Texas. But he's got a book called the, I think it's called the Mesoamerican Beastiary or something like that. And most of the creatures in there were things that I was already aware of, but it's good to have them all in one set. And so it had a lot of these creatures that I could definitely, like, pull from.

But my thing being obsessive about things, I'm not going to take one source and run with it. I have to go figure out what his source was. So I ended up reading translated versions of the monks that were, like, writing down oral tradition stories during the colonial era. Sure. And that's where I got the main creature in the book, the actual monster of Salty River from. You know, so it's like, I was, I am definitely one for rabbit holes. Let's put it that way.

Okay. But tell me about the Chancos. What connected you with that? So it was just that name was assigned to them. And essentially there were people who were very maritime based off of the coasts of Chile and Peru. And so I just found that interesting because that would be on the opposite coast of the Gulf Coast of Texas. There are so many connections between Mesoamerica and the Andes. I'm actually surprised more.

And again, I'm not a professional archaeologist or anthropologists. wanted to be. It's part of my degree. Part of my master's is anthropology, but it's not the main thing. Anyway, the point is, I'm surprised more of them don't talk about the connections. Sure. Because there's just so many of them. There's so many. Trade is a hell of a thing. You have the whole concept of multiple worlds or multiple sons. You know, that's all the way from the Hopi, all the way down to the Andean peoples have that. And they all have it differently. Most of them have four worlds, Aztec have five. But like, it's just fascinating to me how similar and the ball game the ball game has played all the way from from again the hopi all the way down to central America and and it's just it's they all have different names depending where you're out it's just so many things that are connected and and I just it's one of the things I obsess over and I just love that yeah yeah I believe fully that if this group had a similar name there probably is some kind of either linguistic connection or maybe even a cultural connection if they're using more modern Spanish when they're doing it so and it so when we're

we, when I did a couple episodes on the history of puns, one of the things, what's that? Always good. Oh, yeah, yeah. And what I ran into was Mayan literature, and it was called the Chilam Balam of Chumayel. And this was a series of like nine books that was written on the Yucatan Peninsula. I think, I think Chilambalam was the writer of those, if I remember correctly, looked that up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was of Chumayel.

Yeah. And he wrote a series of nine books. it's a mixture of Latin script, hieroglyphic script and it's yeah he was he was the he was a priest essentially whose last name was the same as the word for a jaguar

yeah um and so if you have an untrained eye it's it's a jaguar priest and in the in that book the town names ended up getting turned into puns and this this is like going across

like multiple languages to make this work and it's traveling all up and down the peninsula. It's just, so yes, things get traded and the languages will preserve some things and then pervert things and then change things and stuff like that. So there's part of me that wonders if like this, the term, the term concanolis ends up being like those people over there who do scary shit. That's just what it means. It could be.

I mean, I could easily see it like having the same like similar or same sounding word. but having different meanings but all being like well negative in some way yeah like because like the the the legend I'm going with is still kind of a scary story but at the same time it doesn't sound that scary because they literally just protect the crops and I'm like right but you want scary things to protect your crops exactly it's got to scare off the scary stuff right exactly speaking of scary stuff there's also the ah huizoto yeah aouizotu is one of my favorites oh actually wait so so I don't speak now what right I have a for our friends that do David Golds for example and I'll often go to them for like meanings and try to break things down like I'll be like look I from what I know this word looks like it means these three things put together is that right right they'll often tell me that but when you put these together it means it's other thing okay cool yeah but one thing that I've been trying to to focus on more is that that TL sound is more

of like a you know like you're kind of just bring it out okay but But again, I'm not, I'm not a speaker. Actually, one time I was giving a talk about Mesoamerica, and I was saying right off that I've been going to pronounce these wrongs, and there was one lady in the audience who would yell out the pronunciations, and I'm like, what she said. Yeah. He just, like, hold the mic out to her.

But this story is basically, it's often called a water dog, but, you know, the descriptions of it could be like a dog or a possum or some of the kind of small mammal. It's usually a prehensal. Yes, with hands or forelimbs and a tail. And a tail. It sometimes has a hand or sometimes it's just prehensile. I was going to say the tail usually has some kind of a hand on it, although, like, spider monkeys from there, I do have that prehensile tail, which is amazing.

Yeah. And the idea is that it would, like, whimper in the forest near body's water. Yes, exactly. And then when you go to it, to see what's going on, it grabs you and pulls you underwater, and then you're gone. But at the same time, I'm like, this is a Pokemon. It's like an adorable creature. So immediately I said, I want this guy to be part of the main group. And so I just threw him in there.

It's one of those things that I I love how much Japanese culture, like myth culture, like like a yokai and stuff like that have become very ubiquitous in the U.S. and in other places where people like, oh, I know what a kaiju is.

I wish that kind of familiarity could happen with Mesoamerican things, but beliefs, culture, things. It's interesting too, because one of the other things that I found as kind of a through line is they would do that and or they would scare up all the frogs in a pond

which I put in the book I had frogs to be around in the scene where the where the obviously little first shows up there's like why are there frogs everywhere and I don't address it again it's like it's like it's one of those things where it's like it's not important

sure but I know it's there yeah you know you know so they would so Ed they would scare up all the frogs to lure fishermen to come and fish and then that's how they could you know get you too um they look

for all the pictures that I've seen of them they look like a furrier version a doggier version of a displacer beast what's a displacer beast in D&D Ed can you put that in the chat for us actually I'm gonna be super I'm gonna be super honest I have played World of Darkness from White Wolf

for many many years but I've only played you just became Ed's favorite guest but I've only played a handful of D&D games I don't know if Ed you'd like this or not but I used to homebrew most of my World of Darkness I was always the storyteller and then when the new World of Darkness came out

and had all this backlash online I was like they're basically doing what I was already doing you know? The only thing they didn't do was the soaking which was important but the thing is like the whole lore was basically like make it up as you go along

and like that's what I was already doing so I'm okay for sure. Yep. I was one of those guys. See if I can. So displace your beast. What does it displace your beast do? So while he's doing that, I will tell you this

I also found a account where Hernando Cortez swore that one of these dogs ate one of his men. I haven't found that one. I got to find that. I got to find that. I did read a lot of, I didn't read his directly because it wasn't relevant what I was doing, but I did read one of the Columbus ones and another one from one of the early conquistadors

that was an autobiography. Let me see. Well, actually, when I look at this Displacer Beast, definitely has that, vibes of the nine-tailed fox as well yeah yeah you can kind of see that in there I suspect strongly

that the original model for the displacer beast much like the Rust Monster and there was one other one I don't remember actually come from a dime bin cheap plastic Chinese toys that Gary Gygax

used on his table that would make a lot of sense and he just like picked stuff out of the diamond at the toy store and was like, I can use this. Yeah.

And, you know, that's the first rust monster. I know that's the story for that. That's literally how I would write stories as a kid. I'd be like, this is the weirdest toy I've got. Okay, it's a creature in my story.

And I just start writing about it describing it. Yeah. You know, another thing about the, uh, the, uh, huizu, that thing.

The water dog. Yeah, the water dog, uh, was that, um, only a priest could touch a victim of it. because if a layperson did, one of two things would happen.

Either you'd get gout or you were its next victim. And I'm like, is there like a D10 that you roll? Like how do you figure this out, man? Right. Yeah, that's some heavy duty like vampire shit. Yeah. That's like not only are you dead, but your corpse is cursed. That's damn.

Catholic clergy. Honestly, a lot of the stories are stuff that goes beyond a lot of the vampire or D&D stuff. Like there's one that if you're in the forest night and you hear and it's coming towards you, you are going to see probably a six to seven foot tall man with no head and he's going to rip open his chest and you're going to see his beating heart. What would you do after you see this? I would run screaming. Okay, you're going to die. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. What's your move? We're already died. What's your move? I'm grabbing a stick and I'm lunging. Because if I'm going to die, I'm not going down. So the correct answer is you grab the heart and take it, which proves that you are a man of confidence and bravery, at which point you will be blessed with luck for the rest of your life.

Good to know. I'll keep that in mind. Yeah. I will remember this anytime I'm, you know. I appreciate that one. I appreciate that this has an out Or like a lot of the the Japanese stories Like you have a choice of this or that

It doesn't matter what you choose You still lose Right, right Oroned either way It doesn't really matter, yeah Yeah So they also have to fight something called The Tila Coato or Tilaquat

Tilaquat Yeah, basically Black Snake is what it translates soon Yeah, so I figured with the end part It was some sort of serpent But I think it's a reference To something called a Cilote mythos or there's there's there's there's aspects of this in the chilote mythos which comes back

around to the the chonos people in chile oh okay and essentially there's an archipelago off of the off of the coast of chile and this beast kind of swims between uh all of these different islands it kind of reminded me of tennettos uh in i need to read more chilean mythology is what i need to do i love this um and uh yeah i like i said i assumed it was a sea-based serpent so it's nice to know that it was well it's lake based uh but yes okay yeah yeah water water based yeah so just just a theme here well it's occurring to me is there's an awful lot of water stuff here well true go back to the title salty river well i mean i mean yeah but but but in in i'm i'm going to ask like is is water

like thematically in these native cultures is there like an association between water in the underworld or like water and the spirit realm

or I'm gonna ask have you have you heard of sonotes I have yes okay so sonota is for the unfamiliar are basically sinkholes that have developed

under areas where there's very soft rock and it's very close to the ocean and they end up usually looking circular. It's almost like you're looking at a big, giant circular hole in the ground. Right. And you go to the bottom of it, like it's a little tiny circular calvin, a little bit bigger than the circle, and then you have a lake of water that goes down as deep as you can go, right?

Right. And for a lot of Mesoamerican cultures, that was the gateway to the underworld. Like, you found a sinote, that is a way to death. And underworld, not necessarily being a negative, but just death. Yeah. And I don't know. I wouldn't go so far. I'm not, I would have to ask David and other researchers more about if they're an ongoing

through line. But certainly a lot of the creatures do have a water involvement. In this particular case, I picked the creatures I wanted that were both visual and interesting for the kids to fight first. Like if this is going to be their first thing, they're fighting. I wanted a large monster. So the Thielkot worked for that. And I wanted the small one because I wanted to have something that has rumors about it that are all about it being evil, but like not all monsters are bad. And then I needed bad guys to beat up. So it's where the Cancunolololini is coming. And

and so I did that. But then I also went and looked up because I hadn't actually met Dragon Lee. I was just told it's going to be about him and his family. So I'm like, all right. So I started researching their hometown and where they're from. And there's literally a river, a little creek rather that goes through their town that

translates to Salty River. So I was just like I never named the place but like it's all based on like an exaggerated version of where they grew up. Sure. And the idea being that if a kid picked this up in Wisconsin, they can pretend they're in Wisconsin.

I'm not going to say it's in Mexico, but it's in Mexico. Right, right, right. And so that's where the river itself came in. And the black snake is something associated with water. It basically, it's like, you remember the movie Anaconda. It's essentially a snake that big. Wow. That has what looks like tendrils.

It looks like a beard coming off of it. And it can scream like a sonic scream that would just blow things out. I can also shoot itself through the air like a giant javelin, you know, and just like, you're already the size of several buses. Why do you need to fly, too? That's O.P. man. It really is. The challenge rating on that is not right.

No, that needs to be higher. The CR on that is not balanced. And the way to defeat it was to collect a bunch of dead fish in an area so that they can fall into that area and get trapped. And it's like, okay, hopefully this will work. Right. You know, it's, it's, it's, I love these stories. But, yeah, those are all stories that were written down during the early colonial period that were about, that were just, just listening to people telling their stories.

And, and again, I got a lot of the names originally from David's book, but then I went back to go read the original stories, so I don't want to just take one source ever. I mentioned that I give talks on Aztec mythology or many things I give talks a lot of things but one of the Azic mythology I was going to a nerd night talk talking where people get drunk and listen to nerdy stories and I was like

well before I go out there I want to double check something so I go to Wikipedia just because I want to double check something before I go I want to be wrong and there's a thing there and I'm like I feel like I remember that fact I feel like that's something that I would notice

what's their source and their source was an out-of-print book I own that book so I went to my bookshelf and I went to the page they said nowhere on that page didn't say anything about that so I never I never trust a single source I always got to yeah I was got a double check

and that book by the way was a codis that went through several translators so I'm like double checking translators not several transactions so I'm like I feel like that's as close as you can get to the original source yeah that's that's pretty cool like that that's what we do like yeah that's that's

nice significant historical record right there there's a there's a character also named Rush. Well, so apparently, is this an adversary or is this? Roush, okay. Is this an adversary or is this a ally? So, spoiler, for anyone that doesn't Google Dragon Lee's family. I was going to get into that soon.

Yeah. Well, no, we'll get into it. What were you going to ask? Well, first I just wanted to know if Ruch was an adversary or an ally. So his, yes, to answer your question. That makes sense, considering what I know about the family. Exactly. Well, because, again, you have ideas where you're wrestlers and so much you play back.

bad guys and the good guys, but also the fact that they wanted the story with the three brothers together. And one of the brothers is like 10 years older than the other brothers. That'd be a really awkward thing to have the little 10 year old leading the 18, 19 year old, like, come on, kid, we're going to go this way. It'd be weird. So I was like, well, he already plays, you know, the Rulo. He already plays the heel. So I was like, I'm going to have him be the bad guy and not reveal in the book at all that he's the bad guy. I mean, that he's the brother, rather. And they talk about a missing brother. Spoilers for people reading the book right now. and the thing is that

the one publisher came to me and was like well but people know that it's a brother why would you hide it and I said yeah but if a kid's reading this for the first time they're going to say I think I know what this is and they're going to go online and they're going to look up Dragon Lee and they're going to find out Dragon Lee as a brother and they're going to be like I knew it and they're going to feel so smart

because they found that thing that wasn't in the book I know this because I was that kid I was that kid that I would read a book and I'd be like this sounds like it's something and I'd go dig into another book and I'd be like oh there's that thing I knew it was something and I'm like It made, before the internet, really, but it made you feel so smart. And that's why I did that.

I didn't want it to be obvious. And if we ever do a second book, they're going to find out it's their brother. You know, sure. So just to be, you know, obscure, what you're saying is this is kind of a racer X situation? Yes, 100% Eraser X situation. Wow. Okay. So the most dangerous foes that they face, Ed, are the Rudos.

Now, Rudos are bad guys in Lutra Libre. and they are the ones who go to war with the technicos. Technicos tend to be the good guys, the faces. The heels and the faces. Now, by the way, because the book is printed in both English and Spanish simultaneously, I'd originally wanted them to take all of it. Because I didn't do the translation. It would be, I said that would just make kids dumber if I did the translation.

But I wanted them to take all the Spanish words in the English one and make them English in the Spanish one. But we never got around to doing that. It would have been fun, though. That would have been brilliant. Because the word of Rudo shows. up in the English version, I wanted to say heal in the Spanish version, but I don't think, we didn't ever do that. So anyway, sorry. No, it's fine.

I would have just loved them in Spanish, folks reading in Spanish to go, hell? Yeah, exactly. And then, heel? And exactly. And then they go back and look at the other page and be like, oh, I know what that word is he? Learning something new. I loved it. Yeah. Fase.

That's exactly what it would be. But yeah, so they're the bad guys. Now, there's other people that show up in Lucre Libre, other conventions i guess i don't quite know what i want to say but mini is i would say traditions traditions so there's minestreyes so you've got uh little people wrestling which again if i do a second book do you do you know who alusha is who so um alushe uh the term can be like a like a little goblin or something it's a it's a term from the maya culture I thought about culture

There's a couple different ones I'm trying to remember which one that is right now But anyway it's a it's a basically little creature That's out in the woods and it tricks you But there's a famous I'm looking at him now Yeah I remember there's a famous wrestler Yes

Who was a little person And he would basically wear a Chebacca costume And wrestle in that And so I would love to have Alushes although I probably could not describe them or look like that Because that would be something we don't have The IP rights to

But like I would totally want to have You know references to that Yeah There was also So there's exoticos, which is essentially drag wrestlers. Or they would probably wouldn't have directly, but yes. Yeah, they would hyperfeminize certain aspects of what they do. And that was their thing.

And then, of course, there's luchadores, which are, these are the high flyers themselves. Like the whole thing is called Lucha Libre, shortened to Lucha, but Luchadores are specifically high flyers. They, I'm not going to say they tend to be the ones who are masked, but they're the ones that Americans tend to see the most masked. And that's the thing, not every, not every Lucha Lichadora needs to be masked. Most of the mark.

Yeah, but anyone can be. The good guys, the bad guys, you know, all the outside characters. But what's important to me is whoever is masked, that is significant to them. Absolutely. That's the important part. Yeah, yeah. And that's why the story opens, the prologue, has the bad guy losing his mask, and it just

destroys him, like, emotionally. Like, he can't take it. like most wrestlers go on like they get unmasked and like okay i can't be that guy anymore but i'm still a wrestler right but this guy just quits it's somebody who does not uh does not have a good sense of fairness i guess yeah um and so like for him it's the end of the world yeah and and those are the uh emascarados is is typically the word for the masked ones now in masked yeah the masked ones you know yeah uh so the the mask as far back as i could find and this is drawing on prior research that I'd done. I found the 1920s and it was guys who were emulating cockfights and like in bringing their

spirit into that wrestling and that that seems to be like I found that in a few different spots where they linked cockfighting to that and I would go farther back was that I would go farther back go ahead I was going to say there was the masked the masked Marvel was a wrestler up in the United States who I think was in the 19 teens he was the first United States wrestler who was masked

but who did you have well the reason I say well not so much a who but like a what the idea being that you know you talk about these guys emulating the chickens and I talked earlier about how wearing the mask is showing who you really are showing your true power through a lot

of Meso-American cultures, mass were important. Oh, yeah. So, like, and still many cultures in, like, I say cultures in Mexico. People think of Mexico as being a monolith, but there's several still existing indigenous cultures in Mexico that either they've merged or intermingled with the Spanish culture or they've just completely, like some areas of Mexico that don't speak Spanish, you know? Right. And in a lot of these cultures, they will have mass ceremonies, whether it's just fun ceremonies

or it's dramatic ceremonies or it's even something that that's become more popular in the U.S. then it was it's funny that the day of the dead became a bigger deal in the u.s that before it did in the areas of Mexico that i was familiar with and now now it's a big deal there they're like yeah it's a part of our culture and i'm like you didn't do this 30 years ago right because there were areas of mexico they did don't get me wrong but it wasn't like all of Mexico and now all of Mexico is like yeah we love that um but but the thing is that the mask thing was that if you were for example say the ball game um if you were on the side of the gods you would wear the mask of the gods while you play. You are the God. And basically, if the legend says that God wins this ballgame, then you

better win this ball game or else we're going to be in a big trouble. You know, because it's not, again, it's never about hiding your identity. It never was. It was always about taking on the power of that thing. So that cockfighting thing also, you know, follows into that same example. They're taking the power of these roosters that are fighting. And the idea is that, like, I have a book that's just about Mass of Mesoamerica. Like, I've got a whole book that's just researchers. talking about different, different stories. And it's like, I feel like that the tradition goes back way farther than wrestling itself. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Now that you mention that, yes, you've got the face painting, you've got the putting on the head of a different bird. You've got all kinds of priestly things. Hell, if you want to go further forward again, you can point out Zorro, wore a mask. Yeah, yeah. Like, there's all kinds of masks. So you're absolutely right. I was talking specifically to pro wrestling.

No, I know. I know. And that's, of course, the most direct. But I, I, when I look at Lucidur's, I'm looking at the, the mythology of it. You know, I'm looking at, you know, Santho versus the vampires, you know, that kind of stuff. I'm looking at those kind of like the bigger than life things. And the idea that, the idea that, again, when Santo retired, he took off his mask on a TV show. And the whole, like, the whole audience just gasped. Like, you don't do that. And it's like, but I'm already retired. What's the big deal? And then he died a week later. And everybody's like, see, that's why you don't do it. right um it was a heart attack but still yeah um and the and the thing is is that like it's just it's it's the mythology around it that's so much stronger for me yeah than then then and i i don't mean to i'm not trying to put down wrestling but it's so much stronger to me than the sport is the feeling that it has for the fans and the resters themselves you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah um so a couple of things occur to me that i that i kind of want to touch on when you're when you're talking about that uh the first one uh in in the context of Mesoamerican culture,

I immediately thought of the eagle and jaguar warriors amongst the Aztecs as a thing. So those guys weren't necessarily at least near as I can tell from anything I've read, weren't necessarily taking on the roles of eagles and jaguars. But there were Jaguar warriors throughout mythology that were part of things.

Close, for example, which is going to seem less of like one, is I mentioned the ball game a couple times. There'd be ball games or it'd be the gods of the upper world versus the gods the underworld. One side would paint their face is black. The other side to paint their face is red. And that paint would be the mask. So while they're wearing that and there's even statues of the

ballplayers that are wearing masks. And that is ceremonial mask for that purpose. One of my favorites is there's a ceremony which builds up a year before the actual ceremony. And they pick a young man to be Descott LePocca, who I always tell people

is basically imagine if Loki was Odin, you know. And so he gets to be him for a year. And everybody for the entire year, they train him how to act like a god. He plays music like a god. Everywhere he goes, people treat him like a god. Flowers at his feet. Do you want some of our fresh, you know, fratias,

everything that are going to be there for him, right? And at the end of that year, he ceremonially marries the four women that represent the four goddesses that marry Tescalipoca, and then they kill him. Yeah. And the thing is, is people are like, why would somebody do this? It's like, well, number one, it's religion. People do serious things for religion.

And number two, if I told you that for a year, you would be treated like a billionaire and you could tell presidents what to do. But at the end of that year, we're going to kill you. Would you do it? And so the idea is that the masks are more important than the person inside. Right. And so, like, that's the whole point. Like, the idea is that mask is the important part.

Yeah, because the person is transitory. The person is going to live and die. The mask lives on. Exactly. I would like to point out that I really like that story because at the end, they finally treat the billionaire like we should. I've got his heart. Yeah. And then we'll have luck forever.

There you know. Yeah. Now, the other thing that occurs to be, especially now that you're talking about the mask, you know, the point of the mask being eternal and the individual being transitory is it is the, the, the, the, the. subconscious kind of Jungian kind of archetype of that shows up in Warhammer 40,000 with the Eldar I just I have to get this out of my system

explain to me because I want to hear this I'm aware of Warhammer but I'm not into the war So Eldar which is Spanish for the Dar The Dar Go on Also Arabic There you go yeah There you go yeah

But the the The Eldar are space elves First of all And in the setting, they have to balance their incredible psychic, their innate psychic power with the threat of being devoured by one of the chaos gods, essentially. And so they have developed a culture that is that any given Eldar, when they become an adult, they choose a path. and for the for the tabletop war game there are different paths of the warrior and when you decide that you're going to follow the path of the striking scorpion you go to the scorpion temple and while you are training and while you are doing your warrior stuff you wear the mask of the scorpion or the hawk or whatever and then if you wind up um studying too long the threat for the elder is that they can become obsessed and when you become obsessed

you become an exarch which means you're a badass but you wind up wearing a mask that has been passed down from Eldar to Eldar for the last 10,000 years and your soul literally becomes a part of the mask

and becomes a gestalt with all of the other souls that have won it. Yeah, no, it's... Is that, I'm going to ask for now? You don't clean the blood off. Yeah. Wait, I was...

Hmm. I'm going to ask this. Warhammer is not usually played like a D&D game. It's usually either the miniatures or the games games. Okay. So I was going to ask if that could be a player character, but I guess it does not really that's how it applies here. Yeah, it's, alas, like it would be a fascinating kind of thing to do.

How is there not a tabletop RPG of this? Oh, I'm sure there is one, but that's not the main way Warhammer is played. 40K has an RPG that is part of it, But it's, you don't play a Zeno. You, you play a member, a member of the Death Watch, which is the group of space Marines. Oh, but you have, yeah, well, post-humans, who have dedicated themselves to, you know, fighting against every non-human species in the galaxy forever to the end, human supremacy,

fascism, et cetera. So, yeah. I'm going to go back to White Wolf for a second. So I was a storyteller. I was the game master for over 10 years. And it was basically, it was more or less the same game for that time. Like,

like, like you do. With what you do. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is that like we, we occasionally have a little side story that would be like, this took place 100 years earlier or whatever.

But like, the main group of people, I had these main three guys that were at every game and other people would come and go. One of the main three guys died near the end. And then we're like, well, I guess you got to make a new character. And they're like,

we're going to get him out of hell. And I'm like, all right, let's do it. All right, guys figure it out. but I stopped playing when I moved to Austin which is a give or take 10 years ago I feel bad about that I miss it but right before I stopped playing I had designed a setting to play the vampire game

in a thousand years in the future and I was gonna I had this whole thing around it but how you could be vampires in space without you know there's no like atmospheres there's more sun there all kinds of stuff like this but like never got a chance to play it that's a shame because that sounds awesome like yeah i would i would be i would i would jump into that this episode is actually part of a long game that i'm trying to play to get kevin to come out and work in my district as an english teacher uh because we pay really well now and we have really

good benefits you know as as i tell people repeatedly they're like i'm a teacher and they're like oh that must be tough and then i go in texas and they're like oh i'm sorry and i'm like i know no no no I hope you believe in God, because it sounds like you're doing the Lord's work. This is my 20th year this year. Oh, congratulations. I'm in year, God, what is this? I think 24. I can't do the math.

The problem is I would love to be able to retire, but I need that 10 more years to actually get the retirement. Yes. Although they did count, because I'm teaching a journalism-ish course, they counted my years as a journalist toward it. They added five of my 10 years of journalists. And I'm like, does that count towards my retirement? I meant they're like, no. Oh, just cancer its salary. Cancer salary, which is good.

But like, I mean, yeah, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Yeah. So your characters are all named for wrestlers. And do you want me to not use the wrestler's actual names and just use their their cave names? Well, it depends.

It depends on the wrestlers. So, for example, Dragonly and Realistico do not use their real names publicly, even though they are known. It's not like it's a secret. Right. I will leave those names off them. But, but Roush does. And their father, their father, their father, who we call El Toro Blanco does.

And that was the name he used years ago. He doesn't usually have... Or La Bastia del Ring. Which is what he used more recently, yeah. Right. But, okay. So the dad, El Toro Blanco, in your book, he's now La Bastia del Ring. Or most recently was La Bastia del Ring.

He's the father of Roush, Dralistico, and Dragonly. I think in that order, too. Yes, in that order. And Darlestico used to go by Mystico. which is a different IP, which I love that they can pass around IPs, you know? Yeah. And apparently when he switched IPs, he wanted to still have something that kind of referenced the other one. And they're like, you shouldn't do that because of copyright reasons.

And they're like, it's different enough. Yeah. So real quick, Ed, so that, you know, Dragonly is currently part of the LWO in the WWE, I think. Oh, okay. Cool. That Ray Mysterio Jr. is kind of the godfather of. him and Andrade I want to say

I might be mixing up and then Rush and Duralistico are in the AEW I believe Dralisco used to be And Draaliscoe used to be Dragon Lee Yes And then he went to Mystico And then he

Because he took Mystico's mask And then when he turned in He went to work in WWE As Simcara He dropped both those names but then he he now works in MLW Major League wrestling he stopped

he might be sure that the reason I say that is because he showed up at one of Ruch's matches that's why I don't I guess I wasn't aware where early school but he was he was there at for like the whole like the entourage as they were coming on he was there with his brother so that's why I was thinking that okay and there's a lot more so it used to be that if you were in one

you were never in the other right so yeah exactly you're more into wrestling the the culture that then I am that aspect are you aware about triple a so oh yeah yeah and then CMLL yeah yeah that was the main federation in Mexico right and well apparently the WWE bought them recently yes and and and and and that's two weeks ago yeah yeah oh wow very recently holy cow and it's just everybody's just like what does this mean going forward you know yeah no uh WWE has been oh go ahead I I just I have so you've been talking about Dragon Lee this whole

time and I had to like okay what what is this what does he look like um motherfucker's a space marine like yeah he looks like that like oh there you go like like plenty of these guys are you know big and plenty of them are like you know sculpted you know bodybuilder looking but like I'm looking at his build and like yeah I love that every picture of him is like a jacket and underwear yes just the breeze yeah but But it's funny, I wrote this book three years ago. They hired me like, this is the first one that came up for me. They hired me like five years.

Wait, is that him or is that the toy? No, that's him. Okay, because the action figure looks just like that. But anyway, I actually wrote it three years ago, got hired like five years ago. I met him finally a month ago. There's wonderful pictures of him reading it to his daughter. Yeah, oh, I love that. That's what I told him about that.

And I asked him, how far did he get in the book? Did you finish the book? And he goes, it's got a lot of pages. I'm busy traveling. to make a living. No, no, but it's still cute. I do love it. And he was a good guy.

We did connect a little bit there and exchange information and stuff. That's cool. That's very cool. He was at San Diego Comic-Con when I went to San Diego this year. Oh, cool. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

There's a huge wrestling presence down there. Well, actually. Especially for the Comic-Con, actually. A lot of the wrestlers come out there. Frye Thormento was there this year at San Diego. Yeah. For most Americans, Nacho Libre. right um the actual priest who became a wrestler uh to raise money he was there yeah uh and

he's apparently going to be working with a company that hired me for dragon lee and i'm like i would love to do something with that that would be right that would be really really cool um so yeah drlistico used to be mystico then he like i said he went to w w he was seen kara for a while and if you ever see uh really cool entrances seen caras is one of the best they put a little trampoline down and he just vaults over the ring and it's just it's really cool shit um and then uh he yeah like I say now he now works in MLW but MLW and AEW might have like agreements where you can work there because like we've seen Joe Hendry show up at like five WWE events in the last year and he's in TNA and now WWE has like deals with TNA which they never I'm assuming TNA

doesn't mean what I think it means. Well, it was created by a man who absolutely wanted you to think that. Fair enough. Given by Vince Rousseau, but it means total nonstop action wrestling. Of course it does. Yes, naturally. The S is silent. Yes.

So, yeah, so you've got all these guys in, they've never worked in the same federation at the same time that I could find. And I think part of the IP thing is that we're using these names as the ones we could use, but also like if I were going to have anything else I would allude to it weirdly enough I thought I couldn't mention like Dragon Ball and stuff but I was like I can put in like a little placeholder that'll sound like it and they're like no you can say Dragon Ball I was like okay okay yeah so it's it's basically I was like if you're a kid growing up to Mexico in the 90s you were into Dragon Ball so I had to have Dragon Ball

poster on the wall sure nice nice so a thing that's I think I've talked about this before Ed, where if you are an emascarado, you might have a hair versus mask match. Which is something. And it's a big fucking deal. I believe Gori Guerrero lost a hair versus mask match

in like 65, 66 or something like that. He's the father of Eddie Guerrero, all the Guerrero brothers, Chavo, Eddie, the other, Mondo and Hector. And Gori, I think he lost the hair, because I don't think he was

masked wrestler ever, but it's a big deal to lose your hair, very Samson-esque. It's a bigger deal to lose your mask. If you lose your mask, that's it. Which is interesting because Ray Mysterio, he started in the United States in WCW, and for the longest time, he kept his mask. There were a few different things. He ended up losing his mask. And he did, Huventud Guerrera, lost his mask, psychosis lost his mask, all in WCW. And yet when they came to WWE, Hovey and psychosis kept their masks off. They were like, no, we lost it. Ray got his mask back.

And he always wears it. And there's never been a time where I've ever seen Ray not wearing his mask in WWE. And that's for more than 20 years. He's the only one I know who's gotten to do that. And I think it's because WW is like, we smell money. Yeah, of course. Well, branding. That's kind of the issue.

That's what's really fascinating to me. And this is conversations I've had with the IP guys who work with the Mexican wrestlers. It's like IP here and IP there are very different things, intellectual property. Because the idea here is that you want to have a recognizable brand, keep it forever, hold it really tight. Don't let anybody sell knockoff versions. Right. Over there, number one, it's expected that there will be knockoff versions. That you're going to go there that everybody's going to be able to buy a knockoff version of your math.

mask and wear it and number two the it has to be transitory otherwise what's the risk you know so so like it's just interesting like that you know yeah and when ray lost the mask um he he became a different character um and i mean he was a baby face and and i don't mean that as then he was the good guy he had a baby face oh okay i thought i thought you meant it as and he was the good guy i was like okay I mean, he was the good guy. He's, he's never, I don't think he's ever wrestled heel as far as I can recall. I'm going to tell you right now. I did not meet Dragon Lee out of mask, but he's also a baby face.

He, he's adorable. Yeah. Actually, when I first saw that picture, I was like, is Ray reading? No, that's not Ray. He's not old enough. And there's not enough tattoos. But Ray ended up joining a group who were very popular, even though they did heelish things in WCW. and while he still didn't have his mask.

And again, when WCW got bought out, he stayed home on his contract because WW is like not going to offer him that much money. He's like, I'm going to stay home. I'm going to rest up. And when he came back, by the way, San Diego, his move, his main move became called the 619. And in WCW, it was not a main move.

It was a transition move where if he was running at the guy to do like a suicide dive on, him. Yeah. And the guy like backed up or something, he would do that move to kill his momentum and end up safely back in the ring. It was just kind of a little switcheroo. Now it's a, I'm going to kick the guy in the face using the rope's move. It's a really cool move. But, but yeah, Ray came back with the mask, really cool music. Buyaka, boiaka, and just has always had the mask. And he changes his masks up all the time. But yeah, it's just kind of interesting how he's, I think, the only one I know. And his uncle, Ray Mysterio, Sr., was a masked wrestler who lost his mask and then wrestled

the rest of his career without a mask. And Ray actually got to go back. And a lot of people seem to have forgotten that period, which I totally get. WCW was, you want to forget. It makes me think about, like, in the 80s, when a lot of wrestlers would have one title and then they'd completely get a new character entirely and not even reference the old one. Yes. Hardly race.

And people would know the difference, but they wouldn't. and you wouldn't talk about it. You just move on. He's that character now. Yeah. You know, it occurs to me. I've been mentioning several times the company that hired me,

but I haven't named them. They're called the Master Public. They work mostly with Lusradors, but they work with also wrestlers in other areas as well. And in fact, while I was meeting Dragon Lee, the other guy who was with us was El Vampiro. I was wondering if you know his work.

Because you mentioned a tall guy covered in tattoos. I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, Vampiro. Okay, so we're talking about the same Vampiro. Yeah, yeah. Guy who paint his face white, kind of had dreads,

always wore a misfit t-shirt. Well, now he's, I think he still wears the shirt. But other than that, no, but he's, so yeah, so he's also working with Master Public, and he's got a comp book out or a couple of compilocks out. Yeah, that's right. His persona, like, fighting monsters and stuff. So it's great. He ended up being an announcer for Lucha Underground.

Yeah, for a while. That's he was talking about, yeah. Yeah. So, oh, that's so cool. You got to meet him. That's, that's neat. He got done dirty by WCW as well. Yeah, I could tell from the, lots of people did.

I'd say, I could tell from the way he talked about things that, something was up but I didn't want to dig into it I was just yeah yeah it's basically they had the golden goose with so many people there's another guy named Conan um who uh he wrestled down in in Mexico and he was huge

he was absolutely huge um real good uh technico real good high flyer did all this stuff they turned him into a cholo and uh and he did incredible things in that in that purview as well but then like WCW just

they misused pretty much all their talent and underdeveloped everything. Like they let Eddie Guerrero go. Like, who does that? Only them. Can I just say that I made the comparison earlier saying that, well, I'm maybe not the biggest wrestling fan. I love the culture and I love the movies.

But I made the comparison of wrestling to superhero comics. Yeah. That conversation you're having is, I think every comic fan is like, well, you know, Marvel has these characters and they're not using them properly. Or they had this creator and then they just screwed over that creator and it's like it's all just like it's the same conversations you know what I mean

yeah you know really is as you're saying that I'm realizing again my favorite character is speedball yeah one of my favorite wrestlers of all time was billy kidman exactly uh they both continue yeah but like like most people are like who and and if you know your deep wrestling lore you'd be like oh the shooting star press guy okay um and uh it's a move where you stand on the front on the top turn buckle and you do a forward facing back flip and land on the guy below you. So easy move.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. Holy shit. Right. And he came out. He was not a good talker, but he was a fantastic wrestler. So it's still one of my favorite matches of all time is him against Huventu, and two Guerrera.

Also undersung. Billy Kidman worked with Ray Mysterio. He worked with a lot of luchadors because he's a smaller guy. But interestingly enough, two of my favorite guys are people whose body type is nowhere in your mind. But, yeah, so you're right. I complained all the time about how Billy Kidman was underused, too. So, yes. When you mentioned speedball, I'm remembering, I think the first podcast of years that I listened to was a lot of speedball talk.

I think it was a lot of speedball talk. I had Gabriel Cruz on that one. That's what it was. Yeah, because Dr. C, you're talking about like your favorite guy that people haven't heard of. when I was talking to him about APEX and Speedball, The Monkey, I also talked to him about one of my favorite characters

that I developed a massive obsession with recently who only ever appeared in two comics but I'm like, there's so much potential here. I just like, I'm like, Marvel, give me a call. It's a Latino hero created by Latino creators

and he's just sitting there. Like, let's do something with this guy. Who is it? So his name is Soulfire and he looks like if you combined the Hulk with Ghost Rider and then like up to the 90s like just several degrees of 90s. Yeah like he's got spikes on top of spikes

he's got his he's like not wearing a shirt but he's got bandages everywhere but oh Jason Maldonado yeah that's his name but here's the thing about him the reason I love him is because he's got this you know kind of generic look but still cool but if you read the only two comics he's in he's the most chill dude

ever like he's like whoa yeah oh a demon i'll help you okay and then he's like all right you're gonna help fight crime he's like i just want to go home and play nintendo man and then like the cops are like what happened he was like don't ask me man i'm out of here and that's the last we hear from him yeah and then so he's like this eight foot tall guy with a flaming skull for a head it's just this chill like kentuses on his fists yeah and he's got like only like like four fingers right i guess and they're all giant claws yeah and the thing is like the only other references to him are a a they were was a book put together by the handbook team, of course.

I wasn't part of the team at that time. For the Civil War, Marvel Civil War, where Tony Stark is listing the initiative. Tony starts listing all the characters that could join the initiative. He's one of the ones that Tony would want to recruit. And then the other reference to him, which is the funniest one to me, is Brian Michael Bendis wrote a story where Dr. Strange lost the Sorcercerer Supreme title.

So the Eye of Agamoto is deciding who else could be. And it showed a collage, basically, of all of the sorcerers who could be the next Sorcerer Supreme. And like you've got Dr. Doom and you got Baron Mordo and you've got Mordred the Mystic and Celine from the X-Men, all these really powerful magic users and Soulfire. And I'm like, and you just know, you just know this guy is like at every family meeting. He's like, they're going to have family dinner together. There's eight-foot-tall guy at Flaming School. He's like, did I tell you guys I was almost Sorcerer Supreme? Like, yes, you brought it up already. You just know he brings that up every time. And I'm like, I would just love to do more with this guy.

It's just this eight-foot-tall flaming skull guy that's just totally chill about everything. You know, I have gone on more, more, I got to get a picture of this journeys on my phone in this episode tonight than I think I have in the last two years on this, on this podcast. I've talked about him so much that I've got a playlist on my TikTok. That's just me talking about Soul Fire and more than one video. Like, again, two full appearances. I've got multiple videos about it. Oh, that's great. That's brilliant.

That's like right up there with somebody who stands for Osprey. like from the fantastic four yes the one who tried out to be in the mass or the uh the fright was it the wizard was holding auditions yeah and osprey showed up well I'll say yeah so yeah so

the wizard's holding auditions because he wants to have the frightful four versus the vatic four and he's already captured the fantastic four they're tied up in the building he could kill them right now but he's just like I can't kill you with only three of us we need a fourth villain oh my god so he puts out a call for everyone with superpowers to come here and apply for the job. And most people who show up think they're applying to join the Fantastic Four. Right. So they're mostly people who want to be

heroes, but none of them are good at their job, right? So like one guy, the most competent of all of them is the Texas Twister, who is this Texan guy, obviously, who has the ability to become a twister, who would have thought? And literally he's like, well, how much do you pay? He's like, we don't pay. We rob banks and stuff. He goes, nope, I'm out and he just walks away. He could have saved the Fantastic for by himself, but he's like, you're not paying me. I'm out of here. he later works for shield anyway and then the one that is most famous from the issue is

Captain Ultra who is probably the most powerful human on Earth I have to specify you always have to be the most powerful what like he's got he's like Superman he's flight strength you know x-ray vision he's got hypno vision he's got voice that can be heard all around the world

he can phase through walls he can get super speed everything he does is ultra if he says he's like I got ultra speed he has ultra speed he's like I've got ultra comedy he tells ultra comedy. Problem is, he's scared of fire. And I mean, any amount of fire. Literally, as he's joining the team,

I think as Sandman lights a cigarette, and he goes, no, it passes out. That's great. And it's like, yeah, he's the one from that issue. But now, Osprey is the other guy. I put a link in the chat, Ed. Exactly. Osprey is another guy who people need to bring back

because he's this guy who's got wings on his costume And he's the Osprey. And he's like, I could be a hero. I could be villain, whichever's good. As long as people know who I am, it'd be great. And they're like, well, okay, so you can fly. He's like, well, not really, but like, if you have a way for me to fly, I'll do it. And then the wizard's like, what?

So barely he made a costume that looks like he has powers, but he doesn't have any powers. And then the wizard throws an anti-grab disc at him and says, there you can fly. And then he just flies in the base. And that's the last we've ever heard of Osprey. But the thing is, he technically was given the ability to fly now. So, like, he can come back. Oh, my God. Oscar King K. Jr.

He looks like a Hannah Barbera cartoon. He really does. Honestly, he looks like the father of hindsight lad. I swear to God, hindsight lad was inspired by that. Well, I mean, to be honest, I mean,

the body types is the thing that, you know, if you were a chubby character in the day, that was the joke. It reminds me a lot of what became the steel spider. He was originally Spider Kid, And before that, he was, well, kid, Dr. Octopus, I guess. But the joke originally was that he's this chubby kid who was a super genius.

And then they left him alone since like the early 80s. They brought him back in the 90s and they, 90s fight him. They made him tall and skinny and built and gritty and wanting to kill people. Lots of, lots of pouches. He was a fun guy. Yeah. And you never see his feet because Rob Lee Field drew him. Exactly.

That kind of stuff. So Osprey is actually who they used in the TSR game for Marvel to teach you how. to generate a character. I forgot about that. That was my first exposure to him. Oh, God. Oh, yeah. I've actually, I've actually referenced the TSR games in the handbook entries.

So, like, because like I did one, a mini one, really, for the Sanctum Centorum, and I wanted to get, like, more history behind it. And I realized that the TSR book went into deep history of it. So as I told the editors, like, I want to use this. And they're like, but doesn't contradict it to it. He doesn't mean, no. But now we've got like decades of history, it's entries of history, really. yeah let's do it so so yeah i've actually cited that before and i'm always looking to see if there's anything hidden in there sometimes they do most time it's not right yeah uh the tsr game actually

came out as beast was transitioning to being the blue person because the card for him is still Hank mccoy the human looking guy with just huge shoulders and hands but then there's a picture of him as blue beast playing ping pong using his i think yeah no um when it came out you It was actually the other way around. Oh, he transitioned back? Yep. Because in the mid-80s, Marvel wanted to do a push of reviving the original X-Men. And they're like, well, you can't have the original Beast if he doesn't look like Beast.

So they reverted him back to human for that. And then it lasted like 30 issues or 20 issues. And he went back to being blue. But so that's still in a liminal spot. Yes, it was definitely a liminal spot. Yeah. In fact, it's kind of funny is at the time they were planning that. issue, that series, rather, X-Factor,

Gene Gray was dead. Right. So they were working to replace her. They're like, well, maybe we'll use Dazler, or maybe we'll bring in Madeline prior and say she's got powers. And then this writer named Kurt Busek says, I have an idea for how to bring Gene back. And when I say a writer named Kurt Bucic, he wrote the Avengers for most of the 90s. He wrote the Marvels, the painted book of Alex Ross.

But when he came up with the idea of how to save Gene Gray, he was 12. he was a teenager and he sent 12 or 13 or whatever he sent a letter to marvel saying if you bring her back do it this way and they did and they used they gave him credit so he so he got credit for how they brought jean gray back so that she could join next back isn't that kind of similar to jim shooter like yeah except you didn't pay for it yeah well yeah jim shooter got paid yeah and and and well i i won't I won't impugn him in case you need to work with people who knew him. Well, here's the thing. Everybody who knew him knew that he was both things.

Kind of like Stanley. Yeah. You know, they both had their good about, and I've interviewed Stanley more than once. I've talked to Jim Shooter a couple times before he passed. And the thing is, is that with Jim Shooter, he had a lot of positives that people were like really good stuff that he believed in for the comics industry.

Right. But to get to those things, he would literally just crush people's dreams. Yeah. You know, like, for example, the reason Gene Gray was dead in the first place was because he said, if she's responsible for so much death as the phoenix, she has to die. She cannot be alive. And then Chris Cromat had this whole story, this whole redemption where she was going to try to deal with the trauma of what had happened. But he's like, no, she has to die. Yeah.

So the reason she died at the end was because Jim Shooter said it. Yeah. You know, and it's funny because when he quit was let go from Marvel as editor-in-chief, he had created this universe. called the new universe. That was all his initiative, right? And he wrote one of the books, but he was his baby. Well, as soon as he left, not only did they pretty much destroy the new universe from within, the inciting incident was the complete explosion, explosion, destroying of Pittsburgh, which is where he's from. They blew up the entire city. And it was replaced with a giant hole in the ground, which was called the pit. And there's actually, there's actually a

but called The Pit, which is about the, like, the survivors and stuff. And so, like, and then also at that time, in D.C., somebody wrote a story with Guy Gardner, and I don't remember the story who the guy was fighting, but he got a, found a guy called, like, like, James Gunn or something like that. Well, that's a funny name, Jim Shooter, James Gunn, I just realized that right now. But basically, it was, it was an obvious pastiche of Jim Shooter. Sure. And, and, and he, he also destroys him because people really disliked him. But the thing is, he really did have some good ideas and really strong.

faith in the industry. And I would say more than half of his ideas were ones that are definitely good for the industry. But of course, implementing them was the issue. And then Stanley, Stanley knew exactly what he was. Like he flat out told people, you know, like, hey, I'm going to go produce my, I'm going to go promote myself. And if you want to be there, I'll put you right next to me. And Jack's like, I don't want to be there. Okay, then I'm going to take all the credit. You know, like he told him, like, I'm going to give you a chance. And you don't want it. I'm going to take it. Yeah. You know, and it's like, he knew what he was. But the thing is, if it wasn't for Stan's showmanship,

Marvel probably wouldn't have become what it was. And I don't mean because of his writing. Right. I mean, because Stan went on like, who's your, what's, what was that guess, the game show where they had to guess which somebody were? Yeah, no, he was on several, he was on several, who and I. It was the first one, who am I? But he was on several other game shows as well.

I remember seeing that, yeah. And he did this to promote the existence of Marvel, which exactly. Did. It worked. Like, like, you know, his writing was. mediocre but like he knew how to promote and that's what he was good at no and and i mean you know making himself uh making j Jonah jameson very him like you know and i i i i feel like that was subconscious yeah well that could be i think i in some ways i always took it as like he he knew

how other people saw him that's true he did know he was very aware yeah so then it's funny because um You know, famously, people would joke about him having a toupee. You see footage of him in the late 60s, early 70s. He's bald. You know, he's not wearing it, there. And when Kirby introduced the villain, a funky Flashman in DC Comics, he's literally a bald guy, comes in,

puts on a hat and a fake beard, and it's exactly what Stanley looked like in the 1970s. But I have a Stanley story where he did a favor for me. Oh. So I interviewed him when I was like, I don't know, 18, 19. by phone, and he was exactly as gregarious he did you expect. And at the end of the interview, I was like, hey, look, Stan, I'm never going to get to work with you. And I'm not supposed to ask favors, because that's not a journalistic thing to do, but like, I want to ask you something.

If I were to work with you, what would you nickname me? And he immediately started coming up with these really good nicknames. It wasn't even the obvious Kevin from heaven. Like, he was actually, like, naming off some stuff. And I wrote him down to my computer at work at the paper where I worked out in the newspaper. And then, like, a week or so later, they rebooted all the computers. and I lost all of my memory. This is before the little ducks.

And the thing is, I had a notoriously bad short-term memory. I give you the life stories of fictional characters. I couldn't tell you what I was doing last week. I have to look that up. But 10 years later, I'm working with Marvel. And one of the other researchers says, hey, Kevin, did you know that Stan mentioned you in a comic book? I was like, what?

Because Stan had the soapbox, Stan's soapbox. Right. Every month, he would write about whatever he thought was important that month. It could be women's rights. It could be racism. It could be who's stronger, Hulk or Thor, anything. Or it could be racism and anti-redhead bias. That too.

A lot of stuff. He did that like three times. It was really fucking weird. It's a thing. There's a reason so many superheroes are into redheads. But anyway, but the thing is, is that he put Kevin Garcia from Brownsville, Texas, asked, what would I nickname him? And he put the nicknames there.

I didn't even know he wrote it down. I didn't know idea that he was going to do that. And it was there was there for 10 years. years. I had no idea it was there. If you go get Spider Woman number one from the late 90s, and it's in there. And the thing is, is that he had there, Kevin from heaven, or he said, if I'm kind of mean, I could be Killjoy Garcia. No, it always said, Killjoy Kevin. No, backtrack, sorry, race. He did not do the obvious stuff like Kevin from Evan. Instead, he said, if you're a mean person, you would be Killjoy Kevin. And if you're a nice person, you'd be glad to see a

Garcia. Oh. And my, my, my fiance actually made me a little mug that says glad to see a Garcia on it so that's cute that's cool I I don't have any story as cool as that it does remind me though that my birthday is on the winter solstice happy birthday several months for now yeah and so if it depends on who you are to me but either I was born on the darkest day of the year or after I was born the whole world got lighter so the day after I was born the largest volcano eruption in the mainland United States happened. Wow.

The world itself was responding to my arrival. Absolutely. Heralding it. The funny thing is I've got a lot of stories that are true but they don't sound like it. And so like I hate the idea of like the two truths and a lie

because I'm like but I want to just tell you the truth. Right, right. Like you know, Harambe is from Brownsville, Texas. Harambe of the gorilla. Yeah, yeah. You know, he's from, he's a native Texan. He was born, and I worked at the zoo where, when he was a toddler, and I knew his, his human dad, that, uh, the, Gary Stones raised every gorilla born in, uh, in Brownsville for by hand, basically. Uh, he was broken up

when Harambe died. And so it's like, there's a lot of these weird little stories that are less like, but they're fun stories. That's cool. So back to the fun story that you wrote, though. I know. I realize I got off track there. And the thing is that's, that's what we do. Uh, So, but I feel bad because I want to talk about your book instead of just indulge my love of things. So you explained how this was not a licensing nightmare, but could you take us through just kind of the, I guess, the timeline of how it happened? Like, you clearly, you didn't pitch it to them. They came to you? Like, how did, how did you come to this?

So it's a little bit of both. So initially Somebody I've worked with before He's an editor and a writer as well And he's like, hey, we got this IP We want to do a book with it I think you should try out for it So he's one of the ones that ended up hiring me

But I still had to technically apply And I had to submit like a five-page story And I'm giving you more Behind the scenes than I probably should But I had to submit like a five-page story Of like a middle reader fantasy novel basically And I came up with this one real quick and I based it.

It was actually inspired on Mesoamerican mythology because, of course, it was. But it was starring a little girl in the modern day and she's walking to school and there's a... Well, I sent that in. Is this who becomes Tila? No, no, no. That will get to that.

So I set that in, and then I got a response back from one of the editors. And she's like, it's just not zany enough. And I'm like, but she talks to a... Sorry, she meets a talking coyote that basically just give the top culture reference every other sentence, and then he takes her to meet a snake the size of a skyscraper made out of stars. And then she's like, oh, I didn't get that far. Who's the fourth paragraph? You could

just tell me it was boring. It's all you had to say. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, but I did get hired because other people did read it. And that story, I actually had fun with it. I was like, I could turn this into a book later. But anyway, so they hired me and they said, okay, so here's the brothers and the dad. Those are the ones that have to be in here. And then we also want to have this female character who's a fictional character and we want her to be in the book too and I said okay cool and I suggested that I want the boys to always be wearing a mask if they're going to wear masks

so like or at least he goes mask covers his face so I have one scene where he's eating and he faces away from everybody to eat you know and so the girl I said well let's have her not have a mask at the beginning and then she'll earn it so we have somebody to kind of follow through the story the eyes of the audience and they're like okay

that's a good idea and so I started writing it and that same editor that had said that my stuff wasn't zany enough, goes, and she was a woman, by the way, why do you have this girl in here so much? Boys don't want to read about girls. And I was like, okay, so I removed her as much as possible. She's still in the book, because she had to be,

but I made it less about her. She left, got a new editor come in, also a woman, and she says, well, this girl character is really interesting. Why don't you have more of her? And I'm like, it's the middle of the ass and his son. Yeah, exactly. But also, when they first hired me,

when a lot of negotiates came back and forth, And again, I probably shouldn't say it was, I don't care. Part of it was, should you, oh, yeah, they wanted the kids to fight classic movie monsters. And I said, okay, well, that works for Dracula and the Wolfman. But like, if you want green skin, flat top Frankenstein, that belongs to universal pictures. Right. Because they have sued people over that before. And I would say, but I can have them fighting creatures from Mexican mythology, and they're like, we'll get back to you.

And then, like, two weeks later, they're like, we have an idea. What if you have them fighting creatures from Mexican mythology? mythology sounds great and i was like great great idea you guys had yeah so welcome to writing spec yeah basically yeah wow no i've done this kind of stuff i've worked with a lot of different publishers and writers and stuff so it's not a big deal uh editors and publishers i mean um but yeah so it was fun and and i got to do that um and and of course they told me was going to be english and spanish i loved that idea they asked if i could translate i'm like i speak spanish like tarzan speaks english um it would be like me hungry wear food i the kids would get

dumber reading my Spanish so like I don't want that yeah I also wrote it I asked them what the drawings would look like and they said worry about that later just write the book I like like I wrote a comic book or something and every time I'm writing something I have to have visuals there's like this is what the character looks like so it's in my head sure well I didn't have that so I just did my own visuals did my own drawings of what they might look like and I wrote the book with the idea in my head that it was going to be really realistic looking even though it's like a middle grade reader I was like I had the idea like well how do you explain why a 10 year old's a to go fight monsters so I have to like really get into why that would be and then when I

then after I finished it I saw the drawings and I was like well heck it's a cartoon I could have done it much simpler but but on the website I actually like that because it means kind of like adventure time you know adventure time is these really cartoony drawings but the story itself is actually really really deep and I'm like yeah plus I also told them that I was writing it a little bit more mature than what the the the predicted target would be because as I said I've taught high school for 20 years and it's like the kids that read want to think they're reading older than they are right you know the freshmen want to read like seniors the seniors want to read like college students and

I'm like if I'm gonna write this for for middle grade I'm gonna write it as if it's really for freshmen in high school so like and and part of it was not they're not gonna have romance or anything but the but the language and the stuff they learn and all that kind of stuff is gonna be more of a I want to say mature but more advanced than then dog cop yeah yeah more nuanced yeah yeah cool Okay. So, um, you, you, you, you get the gig. You've got this going. You've got several editors come through. At what point do, does the, the, the, the three brothers and the dad, what at what point do they actually enter into? Basically, Bass Republic was the, Bass Republic was the intermediary. So basically they would give me what information I was allowed to use. I did a lot of research on my own because I like rabbit holes. Um, but, um, but, um, But then I would send back, well, here's the, here's the, here's the, I never really got information of whether or not I could use their mother as a character. So I just kind of have the mother there, but I don't really, like, she's, she's, she's there, but not a big part of the story because I was never really given that information.

But they, they signed off on it and then they approved of it. The one thing I was worried about was, was Ruch being the bad guy, but they seem to be okay with that. And the idea is that, you know, if you were to continue the story, eventually he's going to become part of the team. Right. You know, they'll have a redemption arc. You know, I just realize I'm giving more of the story here at this podcast than a previous podcast I've done. So, here's that. Hey, cool.

The three people who listen to us are, you know, that's not true. We're really big in Austria. The town of fucking loves us. You what's crazy is that, like, when I look at my stats for my website, I'm like, for some reason, Germany really likes me. Also, Australia, you know, but in Mexico, obviously, but like those two are the ones that are like, why? but anyway I'm in the podcast My Primo's podcast

you mentioned earlier and it's pop culture from a Latino perspective and we cover all kinds of things and we have different guests on and lately we've been doing a couple of D&D games which again is like

kind of my introduction to D&D because I never really played it before so for two really bad experiences and I was in California for San Diego Comic Con and I was talking to a friend of mine who's a professor over there

and she runs a big event Latino event over there as well and she says I'm listening to my pre-most podcast and suddenly I was in the middle of a D&D game and it was really and I was like it's so nice to just have somebody randomly tell me about an episode we did right and then and then and then even our main our founder you know Freddie Mejia he was he's out somewhere and be like hey I know your voice I know that voice and it was a kid of somebody who is who he knows and the kids like I listen to your podcast and he's like oh no I cuss on that podcast that's cool no I joke about it being big in austria because there's a town called fucking and so i just you know the the fucking mayor loves us you should hear the if you're going to be huge you're going to be huge there exactly yeah so or at least well skilled and long lasting uh so it's all about the motion so you you you

have that as an intermediary um you how do i put this um why did you want to write this story specifically specifically? Well, mainly because I believed in the concept, if that makes sense. Like, I am, I've always been a big fan of the literature of movies and the comic books. Because I actually had a lot of comics for Mexico as a kid, like Théniablas and others. Al-Luchet was in them. And I really love that as an idea. And I love the idea of having a book for kids that, number one, introduces that culture. And also I used to introduce other parts of cultures like Cordon delismo and other stuff. um and uh but also has this bilingual aspect but i mentioned already my my spanish skills are are practically non-existent right when my dad was a kid if you spoke spanish in school you get a

ruler to the hand right right his parents made an effort to only speak english at home even though they're they were you know first generation and as a result my dad and his brothers all speak horrible Spanish and none of my cousins that are around by i'm the oldest cousin but none of the cousins that are within 10 years of me are bilingual like not a single one of them you know because that generation was punished. Right. The generation after us was told be bilingual. They actually had a program called Project Soul for the schools where they, every

the day, English, every day Spanish in elementary, so kids could be bilingual. But my generation, they did not care. Right. So I just never came up. And then again, my parents weren't great with Spanish. They just didn't use it at home. Yeah. And so now as an adult, I struggle with it.

And I think to myself, if this book existed when I was a kid, I would have eaten it up. I already loved mythology. I already loved the lusadores. I already loved. And then if it was bilingual, I would be making myself read both because it's weird how many people have come to me and said, oh, I can't read this. I don't speak the language. I'm like, it says bilingual right there on the cover. Every other page is English. Every other page is Spanish. Right. But so I believed in that. And also, I knew that Mass Republic had done some comics before and they've done toys before, but they'd never done a book before. And it'd also be a first for Dragon Lee and his family. And, and, And I really love the idea of basically propping up a family of wrestlers and, again, kind of pushing their mythology around them, that I just, I loved that idea.

So every aspect of it was like, okay, spreading culture, helping education, encouraging, like, these people within the culture to be promoted more. All of that was stuff I wanted to do. So that's why I signed up. I like it. How did your expertise in Marvel stuff? Did any of that feed into your ability to write this book? Or is that a completely different buffet and you're at a different restaurant? I mean, there's crossover only in the sense that I, well, because like I said,

I've been a professional writer for 20, over 25 years. I've been a teacher for 20 years. And I have a lot of experience with hero stories, you know, not just Joseph Campbell, which by the way, everybody misunderstands Joseph Campbell, was a hero of thousand faces, which drives me nuts. And not only that, but also like the actual in-practice stories, you know. And so I like the idea of basically looking for what works and then tying it together. So I wouldn't say there's direct parallels, but definitely it influences the other.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Joseph Campbell, by the way, if you look up here with a thousand faces, last I looked at a Wikipedia, I didn't watch as I looked at it. But it breaks down chapters into like as if it was like a, a, as if it was like an order of events and it's not like like he was not trained in school he was self-taught and his writing shows it he literally rambles as much as I ramble and it and it goes from topic to topic topic and he'll like talk about the death of the hero in the first chapter and talk about the birth of the hero and like the third chapter out of 20 like he just jumps

around so like the chapter titles may be in order but the actual chapters aren't so like if you If you read the book, it's not what everybody says it is. I actually, I like the way it's written. It's almost like reading poetry, but it's because, again, he's not, he's not academically trained, so it doesn't read like an academic piece. But it's just not, here is the order of events. And in fact, the other thing that annoys me about it is that people like George Lucas and, and JK Rowling and others are like, well, this is how to tell a story. And it was never that. it was how to read a story

Joseph Campbell wasn't even the one who created the hero's journey or rather my phrase that identified the hero's journey others before him did and all of them were talking about identifying the elements of it not how to write one you know it was never meant to be a guide for that anyway

huh so it probably only had 465 faces but he rambled so much that yes exactly yeah yeah yeah Ed you were going to ask something well just you know piggybacking what you're saying about, you know, the hero with a thousand faces

and the Camblian monometh when I taught English up until last year. You're looking at it. Yeah. I, you know, there were parts of it. I really enjoyed teaching

and then there are a whole lot of other reasons. I'm very happy to be just teaching history now. History is my homeland. But I'm teaching publications now, so I get to just live like character. through the kids' interviews. It's fun. Oh, that's awesome. That's brilliant. But, you know, as I was, as I was getting into, you know, teaching the kids about

structure of the Camblyian monomyth because it's part of the curriculum in sixth grade English, I think. I wound up, you know, trying to get materials. And all of a sudden now, just in the last few years, there's all these articles about, you know, Campbell is full of shit. and all of this is very Western-coded and all of this is centered on, you know, all of these models and da-da-da-da-da.

I'm like, why am I? I will say two things on that. You can, it's clear in his writing that he's only looking at male-centric and the vast majority of it, European-centric stories.

And he's not, he's not Tolkien, where Tolkien was just looking at that, like, British and things that led into Germanic stories. But he is still focusing on that. He mentions other world cultures. He does mention female heroes once or twice,

but it's usually just kind of like, oh, and they exist. Or in reference to the European model. Yeah. So that part of it has to be taken with a grain of salt. The bigger issue is personal statements that may have been like, you know, this guy in Germany may have some points. And that's, you know, yeah yeah and Hamler was really into mythology yeah and he wasn't he wasn't as far gone as

others but the fact that he would even have his foot in the door is enough troubling yeah so I will say I don't have a problem referencing his research in the sense that I also referenced Lord Raglan and I also reference a prop and I also reference you know you mentioned earlier so like I look at all of them as a whole I have actually called my accompanies monomy, monomythic, you know, because I like that idea of having a simple word that represents everything. Right. And I also love the idea that despite the fact that he coined the word, he says that he did not

invent the word. Instead, he says it came from Finnegan's Wake, which I think is hilarious. Hmm. That is funny. Yeah. So if you're not familiar with Finnegan's Wake, it is the, how I tell to my students is, it is the most impossible to read book in the English language. And to which they'll say, I'll try it.

And I go, just remember, I didn't say hardest. I said most impossible There's a different word And so it's got all these made up words in it And somewhere in that book On page 506 or whatever The word monomith shows up And so Campbell's like that's where it came from

So I can say no It's not it's James Joyce's word You know It's not Campbell's word You talked about possible sequels I'm assuming that speedball Will make a debut there Of course

I mean well We can't name him, but there will be a bouncing monkey wearing bubble go. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So name him Zenith. Got to be speedball the monkey. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm Zenith or something. So. So Tali, the female character. I play with anagrams sometimes. I didn't name her. Okay.

But I'd love to hear where you got from it. She's a female character who is needing to earn. her mask as well. In the late 1990, mid to late 1990s, there was a female wrestler named Amy Dumas who decided she wanted to be a pro wrestler. So she moved down, she's really into punk rock, she moved down to Mexico and begged them to teach her. And she had like 400 bucks in her pocket, begged them to teach her.

Eventually they did. and she got trained Lucha style and she came back up and she did independent stuff she ended up working with a wrestler well she started off as Miss Congeniality in ECW and then she got hired up to WWF at the time and was paired with a wrestler named Esserios Eserios and Lita

T-A-L-I-L-T-A were a pair and she then joined Team Extreme with the Hardy Boys and she became her own wrestler and like this was at the time where there were hardly any women wrestlers and in a sea of blonde she stood out as slightly dyed

but also brown she you know all the other gals are wearing booty shorts and by the way the women were trying really hard to become good wrestlers they were often fitness models who were hired for their looks and then they started like no I want to fucking do this like Trish Stratus is a really good example.

Lita was doing moon salts when no one was high-flying as far as the women go. Wow. Every woman had a distinct style and Lita she was wearing like midriff shirts and there's the 90s so like the thong is sticking up out of the pants but she's wearing like kind of heavy cargo pants and I mean she looks dynamite. She got a big old tattoo on her arm. uh she uh she's just so distinctly different she's my favorite uh wrestler uh from that era who was a woman um and she uh she was amazing she was absolutely amazing um her career was beset by like all kinds

of injuries uh like right when she's peaking kind of thing but the fans goddamn loved her if you ever watch her entrance it's it's amazing anyway the fact that her name is tally that she has to earn her lucha mask and all that just absolutely screamed lita's experience learning to wrestle i'm going to say two things one retroactively that will now be the origin for why that she's in the novel uh but two that actually might hear your first people two that might actually be the reason because her name and vague backstory came from the mass republic and the guys there are hardcore into the history of wrestling way like i'm the history of wrestling mythology i like I read the comic books.

I watch the novel. Sorry, watch the movies. But they're into the actual like behind the scenes like you're talking about. Yeah. So I would have to ask my,

the guy there who was in charge of that, Kevin Kine Rock, and ask him, hey, are these two connected? Because I wouldn't be surprised, actually. That would make you a lot of sense. That is definitely very clear.

I will say there's another character who I did name after somebody, not a wrestler. But there's a Kudendetta, the faith healer that they talked to in the book, who's Tia Rita. And the idea with her is that I wanted to have her have a name that was kind of significant.

And so she's basically named after both Rita Moreno and Rita Hayworth. Nice. Yeah, you said Tio Rida and Moreno was immediately. If it's not one, it's the other you're thinking of. So, yeah, she's named after both. So, yeah, there's definitely. Very cool. I showed my kids the very first episode of The Muppet Show. And Rita Moreno was the guest star.

And my son got his first crush, who's, I think, 10. It's appropriate. He wanted to reach out to her because he didn't quite understand that this was from 75 and now it's like 2020. He didn't quite get that because he was 10. But I was like, yeah, she's still alive. And he's like, could I write to her? Absolutely. So I found her address.

And he's writing. And I make him write. And he's got terrible handwriting. He's got slight cerebral palsy. So his handwriting is, you know, you got to take your time. Here we go. He writes her a letter all about her. performance on the Muppet show from 75, asking her all kinds of questions. And he's writing

her address. And I hear from the other room, she lives in California? We have something in common. She's like 90 at the time. And so I was like, dude, you get it. She sent him back an autographed picture that's still in his room. That's beautiful. I love it so much. I love it so much. your son is too sweet for this world he really is swear to god not having met him i'm still honored to be in range of his presence that's actually really cool oh he's fantastic um all right so uh yeah i was i was just fascinating by the way lena wrestled for she learned from cmLL specifically uh and and and and the the person who inspired her to be a wrestler was raymisterio junior in his WCW days um and uh it's all cyclical yeah and and one of her trainers was a guy named

el dandy um which is spanish for the dandy i don't know anybody knows yeah i love like like blue de mon and stuff it's like just take the word you want to use just go with it oh it's great blue demon has a son too el iho de no it's blue demon junior yeah and then the other one Santo is El Ijo de Santo. By the way, Blue Demon Jr. and El Ijo de Santo had a feud that was just goddamn forever.

Yeah, which kind of prevents the reunion stuff, because some of those feuds go beyond the backstage. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Okay, so you've hit a lot of my questions that I had written down. All right, let's go back and I'll retract those statements.

I'm not editing like that. But I will edit like this and that's where we need to cut this episode that's right yet again we recorded so much good stuff with our guests that we just ran straight through instead of risking having him say no to calling us back so this is the end of part one next week you will see the end of part two that's when you'll get to all the plugs and all the good stuff but seriously go by kevin garcia's book especially if you love wrestling and or comic books and things like that and frankly if you're listening to this podcast the odds are you do you can find us at geekhistorytime.com there's no need for

the www because this is the 21st century but ed likes to say it so i don't stop him uh but check us out there go back check through the archives find other episodes where we talked about other interesting things that you might like uh you can also find me at comedy spot in sacramento on the first Friday of every month with capital punishment and so come on down there get your tickets in advance at sack comedy spot.com. Go to the calendar section and get your tickets and then come and see us. It'll be a lot of fun. Emily puts on a great show for us now and Justine and I are still rocking and rolling, strutting and strolling as only we can. So come and check it out. All right. So let's see, For a geek history of time, I wanted to thank Kevin Garcia, my partner Ed Blaylock, and myself, Damien Harmony.

And until next time, keep rolling 20s.