A Geek History of Time - Episode 345 - Interview with Dragon Lee Author and Expert Kevin Garcia Part II

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

When I think nuclear annihilation, I think la la la la la la la la la la la la I'm gonna drink a metric fuck time of coffee and hope that I stop right before I start seeing sounds That's one of my one of my favorite I don't know if you know like yeah favorite awful thing I get it I get it yeah like it took the ice trees meanwhile this guy is going into unicorn cave. This is better than the, what is the orientation of the chicken strapped to your head question. The essential part of democracy to me is not that I should spend a lot of time in governing myself, for I have many more amusing things to do, but I want to be quite certain that I can change the person who

governs me without having to shoot him. That is the essence of democracy. You mean heresy? Probably. Okay. Well, I mean, yeah. I don't know if that's just, you know, my drama queen. Okay, so this is really hard because you're talking about like serious important things to you. The amount of jokes that like I think they're funny as shit. Okay. So if you've gotten to this point, you really need to go back and listen to week's episode. There was no good way to cut that episode without it being somewhat disjointed. So here we are. Now, you definitely should go and read the book by Kevin Garcia, Dragon Lee,

and the Monster of the Salty River. It is bilingual, so you can learn other words. And I stopped in the middle of that so that it wouldn't be a half hour and then a three and a half hour episode. Such was the contents that we got down with him. Obviously, you could hear how much fun we had and what have you. Anyway, this is part two. Welcome. Go back and listen to part one before you start this because there is a social contract and we need

to abide by it. But I hope you enjoy this next episode. Ed and I certainly did and we will catch you at the end. When did you decide to make it a multilingual book? It sounds like right from the jump. That was when they told me about it. They said that was the plan and that's one of the things

that got me more excited about it was that aspect of it because again it's just one of those things that i would think if i was a kid reading this that's what i would get out of it so i'm like i really enjoy it but i even wanted to go further and put other little things in it that we just didn't have the time force it's all right but like sure either way like that part of it i'm glad that made it from concept all the way to the final product there's a lot of crossover between by the way between mexican lucha and uh japanese wrestling oh 100% it's huge like especially the mask guys like there's one of the most famous guy's Ultimo Dragon

Who's So growing up Did you grow up in South Texas? Yeah, I grew up mostly in South Texas Not on the border Were Did you watch much wrestling? I said I know you said it wasn't really a thing

Again I mostly would buy the comics and watch the movies There were local wrestlers There was one guy who's Oh yeah of course he's in the movies now So you know Crossbones from the Captain America movie And he was in the Avengers Well, there was a guy whose costume was literally just 100% Crossbones comics from the comic book. And I was just like, I love that idea that like, that's great.

Because wresters, especially when they're smaller wrestlers, they can do that. They just be like, yeah, I'm just going to dress up exactly like this character. Ray Mysterio. Exactly. Yeah. And at the time, Crossbones wasn't well known outside of just people who read Mark Grunwald's Captain America run. So it's just kind of really like, it's like, you know, it's just cool. Oh, they stole all the time back then, too.

like the fabulous freebirds would come out to freebird by Leonard Skinnerd. No one ever came after them for the money. Like, because it was so, like wrestling was so like, we're going to look at the radar. Yeah, the only one who really,

and you likely know this. The only one who really had Marvel come after them was Hulk Hogan. Yeah. And they got 20,000 a match basically or something like that. I did seven episodes on Hulk Hogan, and I covered his entire interaction. with Hulk that whole saga yeah and and the money that it meant for Marvel Comics for so long and then he eventually bought it outright right yeah uh he got first writer refusal and it went up for

sale i think he bought he bought the IP of Hulk Hogan like terry billi bought it for 750k what i think is hilarious is that uh spider man's very first fight as spider man is right against crusher hogan right so it's just like but that predates Hulk Hogan yes it does it does He, yeah, yeah, well, maybe not his life, but anyway. No, no, he was born in 54, so. But, but yeah, all that stuff. So, so like I said, I'm not, I, I freely admit that I don't go a lot of the matches. That being said, a friend of mine is not only a wrestler here in the Austin area, but his nephew is a wrestler.

And he's the coach. And when I say his nephew, his nephew is a hand puppet. So what's really great is you watch the wrestling matches where he's like telling his nephew, all right, go do it. And the other wrestling, oh, the puppets got me down. I can't get up. It's the best stuff in the world. It's so great. That's an American style is comedy wrestling.

Yes. Yeah, that's exactly what he does. He's also from the ball. He's not the iguana, is he? He's not who? He's not iguana, is he? No, no, no. Okay.

But he does a lot of local stuff here. But he's also from Brownsville like I am, so down the board. Okay. So you didn't, you don't know if you watched any WCCW or CMLL or. I have. I have, but I, like, he actually, took me to a match in Austin when I was writing the book. Oh, neat.

And I actually would go to him whenever I had questions for, like, okay, I want to make sure the match feels more authentic. And I'm describing it as what I see, but I want to get somebody who knows about it to give me more. And he would give me a little bit of, like, this or that. That's cool. Now, you already touched on this, and I'm absolutely serving you up a softball, and this is purely for my own indulgence.

Sorry, Ed. Yes, I'm handsome. Okay, there we go. Devastatingly so. Yes. And also, while I've got you, what do you call it? What wrestling has shown up in Marvel Comics? Oh, a lot.

Because Spitey starts with Crusher Hogan. Yeah. Daredevil goes in wrestles in a ring against Cap in an exhibition match. He does. Daredevil's big thing is boxing because of his family history, but he does. He has wrestled, yes. Yeah, he does a pro wrestling match with Cap in a weird. exhibition match.

I feel like the thing has done wrestling matches. That's what I was waiting for you to get to. That's the biggest one. So in Marvel, there is this company, business entity, called Unlimited Class Wrestling. And in Unlimited Class Wrestling, Superpower People are encouraged. So basically, the thing was a wrestler for that organization for a long time. And he goes back every now and then. And there have been incidents where, like, bad guys would run it or whatever, but it's still around.

And then another thing came out of it. There was these, the lady grapplers came out of it, too. There's these female wrestlers that are supervillains now as well. And a lot of basically any character that is just like a very powerful guy, but street level, probably went to unlimited class wrestling at some point, whether they're a hero or a villain. Captain America, villain, the Armadillo. You know, he would always try to be a hero and never quite do it. always go back to being a villain. Right.

But his best moments of being on the straight and arrow were when he was with the UCW. Wow. You know, and so Unlimited Clash Wrestling is a big part of Marvel. There's other stuff as well. Go ahead. So you say the thing was with UCW. I'm sorry, I have to interrupt here for a second. You're talking about the thing and your hand is so close to the screen.

Sorry. That's a different thing. The other thing. Yeah. Sorry. No, it totally was Adam's family for me. So the thing. So yes.

Yeah. No, but but so so you're saying the thing, uh, was, was big in the UCW for a while. Yeah. And he rocked. He drifted away and he came back. And so you're saying his, his, his, the thing's career kind of parallels what's happened with the rock. Yeah. Uh, he actually tried to do a match recently, uh, for his bachelor party when he was getting married.

and he pulled a groin which I have to explain to people that underneath his rocks he has flesh right yeah you know and literally Dr. Strange is there and he goes this isn't really my field anymore but you have definitely pulled a groin so it's kind of hard to go back in you know

once he's retired for a while yeah it's gonna hit you that's wow I had to try to hit I had to try to hit Damien with the pun that was so good while it occurred to me and I will say while the thing could try to take down the DC universe, he would not have been as

successful as the rock. Yeah. All right. Sorry, you guys are aware of what happened with the Black Adam and stuff, how that led to the big. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, it got rid of the Snyderverse entirely.

Hired to play the villain for Captain Marvel, or Shazam, rather, and then said flat out, I refused to lose a battle to that guy. It's like, but that's what you were hired for. your job like you're literally in wrestling it's called jobing yeah and like you lose a battle and then team up together yeah yeah i refuse to lose a battle how do you how do you refuse to lose a battle you you wrestled like oh yeah well now that he's now that he's graduated from wrestling

into being a hollywood star he's coming a standard contract that he cannot he cannot lose a fight on screen that's the issue there that's so crazy i um actually that brings up a wrestling question i have for you guys um so um a lot while i've been also a public speaker for like 15 years give or take uh and a lot of what i do aside from giving talks about comic history is i will host celebrity q&As at conventions and every once in a while it'll be like something i i don't know that hey look like we need somebody tomorrow to do this i like sure and there was somebody i can't remember her name right now i can look it up it's on my my my list but she was uh a be heel basically uh in the in the w what's today the w ewee

and her husband was a wrestler. She was more of like the promoter person, the announcer. And he was famously an alcoholic and had issues and he died. And she continued on as a heel in the background, like being the evil promoter and stuff, right? Vicki Guerrero? Yep. Okay.

And so I was like, all right, before, the night before, because I only found out right before I was going to be hosting her. I was all right before I went to go watch as many clips I could find. And all I could think was, these are the good guys? like they are like you got you got the you got steve austin what's his name um peacemaker my brain's shot for johnsina sorry i could not get the third got johnsina you got the you got the you couldn't see him that's the problem no you got john seen i got the rock get all these guys exactly um that are he's waving his hand in front of his face so i can't see him but on radio you cannot see him

yeah but uh i'm watching and they're like making fun of her dead husband making fun of his alcoholism making fun of her looks making fun of her age there'll be points where they're like you know they begin to compliment her she'll be like smiling and then it becomes an insult she's like oh and the thing is I know she's in on it and I know she's the bad guy

but my issue with it is is that little kids growing up with this see that that's how good guys act right and I grew up with ninja trolls and I don't cuss in public you know so like yeah like I I I've never cuss on a podcast.

I never cuss on when I'm giving talks. You know, I've done a talk for a bunch of drunk people, you know, I was fun, but I still didn't cuss. Sure. You know, but like, I can't imagine growing up watching the good guys

make fun of somebody's dead husband for his alcoholism and for being dead and for her being ugly, all in the same sentence. And I was so confused by that. I am, I know that at one point, Randy Orton,

who is a third generation wrestler who is just I gotta say I'm gonna indulge my inner pig here he's a gorgeous man honestly but I also want to point out even before you continue I love the concept of multi-generational heroes I just love it anyway yeah

so Randy Orton has well he's multi-generational heel heel multi-generational villains also works yeah yeah so he absolutely is his dad was cowboy Bob Orton always a heel their dad was cowboy Bob Orton senior always a heel. So Randy Orton, he shortly after Eddie Guerrero died, Eddie Guerrero died in 2004, 2005, thereabouts. He feuded with Ray Mysterio. And Ray had this thing about I'm going to win the championship for Eddie. And so wrestling, number one, it was run by Vince McMan, who we know is a terrible human being. But also wrestling has always been run by very disreputable men. And, uh,

and one woman and uh also yep and jeff jarratt's mom actually christine jarrant uh but it's always been run by disreputable men and it's always a self-cannibalizing thing if somebody died you can make that into a story and the thing is the the prevailing logic is most of the wrestlers who knew the person is like no he would have been fine with being part of the storyline right i get that I understand that. Yeah. Randy basically said to Ray, like, you keep talking and pointing to Eddie in heaven. Eddie's not in heaven.

He's in hell. And everybody was like, that's way too fucking far. And, you know, it's, there's heat and then there's cheap heat and there's, you know, that kind of thing. He was playing a really awful, vicious, ruthless heel. He ends up losing, like, it's the whole morality tale, blah, blah, blah. Vicki comes back a few years later. And in all honesty, the family needs the money. Yeah.

So Vicky comes back and she plays this character. And by her account, and I don't know if her account has changed, but by her account, Vince took very good care of her. That's what she said when I asked her about the stuff. Yeah. And, and I didn't go, because it's a Comic-com thing, I didn't go too far. I'm not going to ask hard-hitting questions. It's not what you do. It's not what you do at a Q&A.

You're there for the fans. You're there for the celebrity. But, being said, I did ask her a little bit about that. And she said, yeah, it was all. And that Eddie probably would have been fine with it. Like, again, you look at the storylines that his family had always been in. Eddie's mom was supposed to fake a heart attack in the ring in a show in El Paso. And she had a real heart attack.

Damn. It's like, God damn. Was it in the ring? Yeah, within the ring. That's taking B. K. Fabe a little too far. Oh, yeah, yeah. They actually treat her.

Wow. So, yeah. She was taken care of. She didn't die. but like but Eddie was you know her mom

you know his mom was supposed to do so like you know the blurring and the blending I don't remember I remember

John Sina always roasting Vicky because Vicky also was playing this woman who used her husband's legend

to wrap around what she was doing but then she was like the absolute like villain and she was a sex pot she always went after Edge

Chavo was like her her last lackey um chavo is uh eddie grero's nephew but because eddie's the youngest and chavo is the son of the oldest they're like three years apart so they they used to team up they're the los goreros which is spanish for the guerreros and uh well the warriors that too yeah uh i'll have to check the translation on that one no but but they they were an incredible tag team but so she would abuse him she would abuse ray she'd come out and she's very you probably saw her going excuse

me you know that whole thing yeah she was a heat-seeking missile and her thing was that she absolutely was a sex pot and she would make out with edge and all this shit so the slut shaming that the good guys would do is within that context i never saw them talk about eddie that way no i there was one where the rock was singing to her i think uh and and his song he would mention that stuff um but but he does yeah rock would do the song thing where he's you know again he would slut shame and all that. But here's the thing. That's what I'm talking about.

I get her part of it. I get that she's the evil one. I get that she's, you know, seducing people and that she's evil and she's manipulating things and nepotism and all others. I get all that, right? What gets me is that the good guys are doing the slut shaming and the good guys are doing the, you know, the ageism and the good guys are doing that.

I'm like, like, no matter how bad somebody is, Spider-Man doesn't do that, you know. I take it back. They've been a few times with bad writing, but not usually. Yeah. Yeah. Damien spent several episodes. I don't remember how many looking at the phenomenon of the rise of Stone Cold Steve Austin and the moral ambiguity and the what the nature of being a face turned into.

Yeah. And has never fully recovered from. Yeah, and I think what you're observing is kind of on the tail end of or as the result of all of that, because the storylines that resonated with fans changed. I mean, the extreme stuff is going to resonate. I understand that. Yeah. The meanness, though, became a part of the norm for good guys because good guys had to be more ruthless. this. I tied it to the Republican National Convention of 92 and going forward and how it ratcheted

things up. But the rock is a holdover from the attitude era. So he comes back and it's no longer attitude era, but that's what gets him over. And unfortunately at this time, this is only a few years before or after. I think it's a few years after Lita gets, I think Lita ends up retiring after this I don't remember the exact chronology but Lita was with Edge and in real life she and Edge started having an affair while she was

like with Matt Hardy and the entire crowd would shout slut at her and like I said her career in some ways was just weirdly snake bit to the point where John Sina was feuding with Edge

and Lita and he would slut shame her and and again he had that rapper gimmick and he got to keep that edginess to him and the result was that the most popular good guys were like you said essentially shitty to women and that still would get over whereas you know in the 80s they're the the good guys would be hell of racist yeah there was that yeah that was a big thing in the I know that about uh I did watch a bit of wrestling in the 80s actually yeah uh and early 90s paul orndorff literally did

the you know slanted eyes at mr fuji during russalmania too and all the stuff of the iron sheik and all that stuff yeah yeah so there weren't that many women in in the larger federations but in the the smaller federations the women managers still weren't weren't shamed in this way they were not attacked in this way there were other ways that like baby doll having a brick in her purse and dusty spanking her. There's that, but we're talking southern places where corporal punishment was the order of the day. I'm going to pause you right there and just say that if you read a comic book made before, say,

1985, there is probably a woman getting spanked. Yep. The thing spank Strax's daughter, you know, is a bunch of, it's weird stuff. It's, yeah. Well, and there's slapping them to make them come out of it. Yep. That kind of shit. Everybody picks on

Ant Man, Hank Pim, but Peter Parker, Antman was not in his right state of mind when that happened. Reed Richards slapped Sue once. She was not in her right state of mind then. That doesn't make it any better. I'm just pointing that out. But Peter Parker slapped Mary Jane so hard

she went across the room and neither one of them was under mind control. No one ever talks about that. Yeah. Like he was in a dark place. Don't get me wrong, obviously. Yeah, but like there was no. malice yes yeah malice was the mind control thing uh with hank it was the yellow jacket mine

right well not mind but mine addled but peter was in his right state of mind yeah yeah no one talks about that one um but yeah so you're saying that the that the history of this that it just it goes back pretty far and it just i guess i guess maybe because i was watching a super compilation of it of just like here's her interactions with famous people that it was like all of it once but it just seems so intense but it was it was the go-to thing with her like she would dress but again her acting like it i get she's the bad guy them using that is the part that gets me but she's dressing that way so that it's coded so that when they do that the audience is in on it no i understand that part i said i get that yeah to me that doesn't justify it that's the whole no i don't think

again i'm not i'm saying that they're they are priming the audience to be okay with that by the way that they're making her act and talk and dress so it's the whole machine there and it's here's what I was going to say is that a few years earlier Vince McMahon's daughter Stephanie McMahon she was teamed up with her husband triple H and they were teamed up on on camera and uh what's her face um Chris Jericho was feuding with her and he would always call her like a dime store trash bag ho and and just like go off on how loose she was and what a horseshoes. She's like 19 or 20 years old.

And she's already paired up with a guy who's like 14 years her elder kind of thing, which is weird. Yeah. But like, and she's dressing like I think that was around the time she got implants. And she's dressing in a way to accentuate herself specifically so that the audience was both titillated by her, but also on Jericho's side when that happened. And when the switch happened, as always happens, she backed Jericho against Triple H. Triple H then starts slut shaming her. And she's his own wife. And he's like, you know, she's talking about how he's got a small dick.

And he's like, well, you know, even a 747 looks like a toothpick in the Grand Canyon, you know, and shit like that. Like, and, you know, there's some back and forth there. But that back and forth is built on top of Jericho for six months talking about what a ho she is. And so you got that happening to the boss's daughter And the boss is a bad guy And he's a lech and all that And also he plays one on TV But

But she does the same thing Like she's hypersexualized And all of the guys who are Instead of like I'm going to teach you what it is to lose the title They're going after They're slut shaming the shit out of her And so that I see that trajectory very clear

from her to Vicky Toledo and it's unfortunate because it was such a lazy way and yeah you're right because it was as it was transitioning from attitude to the PG era as well and just because it doesn't say PG

doesn't mean that kids are going to not watch it but you're absolutely right like that's all there even as they're starting to try to again head toward marketing toward kids yeah so i agree the the the bit that kind of jumps out at me thinking about all of that is also what i've said before on here about wrestling in many ways being uh commedia del arte yeah in that the the roles they're their stock characters and the audience is primed to respond to stock characters and the audience is primed to respond to stock

characters in a particular way. If you are familiar with who you see on stage, you know what the beats are going to be within certain parameters. And the way it is constructed is very old, for lack of a better word. And so those cultural tropes and those cultural ideas unfortunately continue to carry forward as part of that that I don't know structure for lack of a better word and again

I totally agree with you I don't like it either I don't I you know and I agree with what Damien said that it's lazy but you know that's that's I think how that's part of how it happened and it had shifted because in the 80s sensational Sherry

was a sex pot she was overly made up like you look up a picture of sensational sherry and you'll see just like flamingo makeup everywhere and she's she is almost looks like divine on a bad day um she was an incredible worker by the way wow um and she was beautiful but she was getting older and she was dressing in a way where it was like a hot woman would look good in this but she doesn't and she was seconding macho man savage but she was never slut-shamed ever like ever yeah and she got her just desserts and her just desserts tended to be the bad guy she was backing accidentally bumps into her and that's a big deal you know back then because there's not that much violence toward women back then but again the attitude error shifted

everything to let's see how far we can go and you know it's the the laziest joke that I hear from and you know Kevin you teach high schoolers laziest god damn jokes that we hear is like you know that's what she said no i've i've literally had situations with students who'll be like is that the best insult you can do for me that's yeah that's how you're going to go after the teacher that's all you got right yeah and they feel like is that really i literally had a kid once go sorry yeah i'm not mad i'm just disappointed exactly like like look i said i never had a well i took it back i almost never have a problem with the kids the only real issue is all the you know the the politics of it all yeah but like the the the

attitude era brought with it um shittiness toward women on a slut shaming level because just prior to the attitude era you had sunny getting buckets of slop poured on her by hillbilly wrestlers and that's the worst you know and it's like oh she she thinks she so much look at her with buckets of slop on her that's very different than what you're talking about and so yes it continued that wave and now because the women have such agency in in as equals um there is very little of that although you don't have to look hard to find some of it so the most so the the by the way my friend who is the wrestler and also from brown's worship I need to mention people's names more often be easier Oscar Garza he is he's part of a comic book making group called five meets

which has two members in it, which makes perfect sense. Anyway, but he took me to a wrestling match here in Austin, and Jade Cargill was there. Oh. And she was very impressive, very cool what she did. But also, I was immediately clocking her outfits. They were all superhero inspired. And then my fiancé is like, oh, yeah, I know her.

Because she's into fashion and stuff, and she showed me all the stuff that she, that all the different costumes that she's worn over the years that are clearly inspired. I think that day, I think it was Aquaman, is what she was wearing. Okay. But like, but she definitely had some superhero stuff going on. I just thought that was fascinating.

But also, I didn't, in the match that I saw, I didn't see that kind of behavior, you know. But then again, it was also not the big headliners, you know, still. Yeah. Well, yeah. Again, like it seems to have disappeared a fair amount. I would honestly, there was a moment where there's a British wrestler named Paige, who actually goes by Soraya. in most other places but in w w w she was page she kind of broke open the divas into the women's movement like she was the bridge there she was phenomenal she's really really good wrestler um she's been wrestling

she's been wrestling forever um she young lady you're you are uh beset by young men also uh all these beautiful bodies around she's certain she got into some relationships with some of them uh and one of them is a little bit more expositional and a little more polyamorous and stuff like that, a sex tape got leaked. Various acts that they were doing together, you know, the kind of stuff that you would see on certain websites for free. And they were doing these things and it got leaked and it's really awful. And so there was a whole thing and WW stood behind her and it was good.

Like it was like, hey, cool. That's really cool because normally you would fire somebody for something like that. a few years earlier, which is wild because you're like literally having a woman bark like a dog and then make out with Vince McMahon, and then you're going to fire them for shit. You've got them like every year there was a new diva who was in Playboy, you know, and yet if a video came out, you know. So they stood behind her and I thought, wow, that's a really cool move. Triple H, again, Paul Levick, he was Attitude Era guy for the longest time,

and he's always been very witty. and there was some sort of tete-a-tete in the ring and with him on the mic as well and he made reference to the sex tape video and got a pop from the crowd that night on Twitter he immediately apologized for it and this is while Vince McMahon was still in charge and he immediately apologized for it

so there was this interesting shift that had happened and you know for what that's worth like you know it's one of those like you know when when Walmart starts printing out like rainbow stuff for the LGBTQ community you're like okay clearly culturally we're somewhere where they think it can be commodified you know that's a good sign if not a bit cynical you know and so at least that was in the ether um I'm curious what's going to happen in the next few years but the women seem to have like a lot of a lot of agency so now that all said i actually kind of

want to if we can i'd like to talk about your comic book because i've not read it uh i i've not had any exposure to it um you've you've done all these really cool things that i actually am like oh shit i have that volume um and and as much as i want to indulge that i i would much rather hear of something more original than tell me about things I already know about and love. So, yeah, well, what's the thing is like I've come to realize, well, number one, most of what I've done in comics has been other people's stuff, you know, like I did Marvel. I got hired by a company called Chispa Comics, which is, which focused on Latino characters and creators.

Actually, for them, I did a, they actually asked me, or sorry, they had a list of characters. This is pick one and that's the one you're going to write. I'm like, that one. It literally just said Latina Scroll Girl, you know. But with rabbit powers. And I was like, I want that. So I did that. Yes, exactly.

And I had her against a Latina saber tooth, basically. But that one hasn't published yet to behind the scenes stuff that habit is. It'll come out eventually. But so in between other jobs, I was like, I needed to make something. So I had to make my own books. So I did one during the pandemic called Teowat, which is set before the founding of Tunisilan. And that's one that I'd love. to do later, like redo, get a new artist, make a whole, make a graphic novel out of it,

and the idea was that the last chapter would be them finding the snake in the mouth of the eagle on the cactus, because it's like, everybody always mentions that part of the story, but there is so much more. I basically went through so much research. I collected like four distinctly different origins for Tenochilan that all end in that same place. And I was going to combine them into one story with a main character, and everybody in the story is somebody who historically existed in Tamishilan and the main character was going to be somebody who's going to be important later in this in history. And then I did one more recently called World's War Comics, we mentioned earlier, which is

about superheroes of World War II looking back on their lives and still being affected by the war 80 years later. And then the idea of that one being history, I was like, well, the character should have history, so I used characters up from the public domain. And I came to realize just about everything I do is related to the history of stuff. You know, so I keep pulling in that. So, like, I was a researcher for Marvel covering their history. And now I'm doing original stories, even the, the Dragon League book.

You know, I'm drawing in Mesoamerican history into this. I'm like, I apparently have a niche. I didn't realize it till later, you know? When did you realize it? Like, how many episodes or it, sorry, not episodes. I would say a month or two ago. Oh, no shit. Like, no, I was, I was giving a talk in, I don't know, May or June or something.

I don't remember what it was. And I was like, actually, yeah, they're all about history. I'm just like, I just, yeah. Somebody pointed out to me after I'd done the speedball episodes that our design was those colors. And I was like, oh, like, I wish I was that devious. But, yeah, I just, I just really liked those colors. Ed, go ahead. So, um, I'm, I'm looking at the, the Kickstarter.

that I found about World's War and I noticed that you went with you know as you said domain open domain what's what I'm looking for public domain characters

where did you find the specific ones that you decided to go with and like was there was there any particular like was there a particular public domain character that like sparked your thinking about it or you know how did that

how did that work so when I first started developing the story they were going to be all original characters and again the idea was that their powers and origins weren't the focus of the story so they were definitely going to be pastiches of familiar looking characters that was the point it wasn't like this is my original character

and this is what his powers are there wasn't that I have those characters too but that wasn't the point of the story and then I realize these characters should have history and I have a to okay so I recently, I say recently, it's like three years ago, like three years ago, I sold most of my comic book collection. I'd say like somewhere in the tens of thousands of comics that I got rid of. And yeah, it turns out I had something that I didn't even realize this I had. There

were like, like a friend of mine's house. He's like, well, since you're selling them, why don't you take the boxes at my house? I'm like, I had boxes at your house. Like, I didn't realize so many of it had. But the only ones I kept, I kept the ones that are not likely to get reprinted and a lot of indie stuff. And I have a lot of old, you know, books from the 50, and even a few from the 40s and from smaller companies and I was like, well, these exist. There is, there is online, you know,

wikis that can say, oh, here's some public domain characters and there's cool. There's one public domain superhero wikis, which is nice. But like I said before, I don't trust anything unless I can verify it through multiple sources. So I looked for characters that have the archetypes I wanted.

I wanted to have that paragon that can fly in, you know, and bulletproof and all that kind of stuff. I wanted to have that guy in the dark cloak with that, it's going to come in at night, and, you know, he's got a vengeance to go for and all that kind of stuff. I wanted those kind of characters. You would see it. You look at the cover, and you're like, well, there's a guy in a dark cape. You know, there's a guy who's flying, you know, there's a guy with no shirt with a different color of skin.

That's, you know, you get the idea. It's all very, it's a running guy wearing red. You get the idea. So, you know, all of that. But then I was like, so then I started reading in the characters. And I decided I didn't want, I'm in various online. groups of other people who like also delving into number one golden age comics and number two public domain comics and i didn't want to use characters that are overused a lot so um there's

some characters that like phantom lady is used in like everybody's thing and there's a lot of characters like that um but at the same time i wanted some that would be really iconic so i think the only one of my group that is used a lot other people's comics is the the streak or the original one was called the silver streak and the main reason two reasons i want to use him one because i love the idea that Marvel's, or sorry, DC's Speedster was called the Flash, and which has another meaning. And then Marvel's Speedster was called the Wizard, which has another meaning. So I like the idea of having my Speedster be the streak, which also has another meaning. You know, so that was fun. So that one I had to keep. But other than that, I was just trying to get a little bit more

off the beaten track. And the other second reason for you the Street Streetster is that I went and read all of the original Silver Streaks comics, even though my character was going to be a legacy character. It's going to be the modern version of the streak. I still wanted to read the origin of the streak. The origin of the streak is pretty racist. Not overtly, I guess. He gets his powers from a yogi

from India, I guess, who just they just hand out powers to white people all the time, I guess. And I mean, Dr. Strange, they did. Yeah. And then later on, he gets a sometimes talking, but definitely a speech falcon rather that's his sidekick um and that one that origin was also racist it involved a a sheik in the middle east and it was it went downhill from there and then he got another

sidekick who was a little kid's sidekick also speedster and his origin involved Asian people in very racist ways so it was pretty bad but as i'm reading just calling again yeah right oh it's worse if you look into dr druid who is dr strange's predecessor it's um yeah it's worse um but um i'll tell you about that in a second if you want but but then i got to as i'm reading through all the streak's got a lot of appearances by the way and that's something i get to a comic that i was like wait this is good so as the comic opens the streak or silver streak rather who's a blonde guy he's there in presumably new york reading the newspaper and his you know 12 13 year old speech or sidekings next to him both white guys and he's like i just read the

paper that black people are being lynched in the south we got to go take care of that and so they run to the south to go after essentially the KKK and I was like this was unheard of in the 40s like it's a big deal that that Superman did that and I'm like yeah that's a thing and then I realized it was a new writer and artist that took over that issue and then the next issue same writer and artist in the next issue he's going after a millionaire who is trying to stop unions reforming, saying that if you believe in America, you believe in laborers, you believe in workers, you believe in people that are going to work together for their own rights. And he tells that to the billionaire, the millionaire, rather, and says, you better sign this thing that you agree

with it. And I'm like, damn. So his origin, horrible. But like, later stories, really good. Yeah. So I feel better now. You know, so there's that. And then other characters, I wanted a Captain America character. And there's a lot of Patriot characters. But there's one character, okay, so the original character, and by the way, with the streak, I just shortened it from Silver Sheik to streak. I changed all their names slightly. That one, these other people use the streak. It's not really that easy to say. You can trademark that one as easily. But this other one, the original character is called Yankee Doodle Jones. And I renamed him Yoman Yankee because I wanted a deliteration. And also because a Yoman

is the one who serves the captain. So I'm like he's serving the American people. Okay. Okay. I like it. But the origin of Yankee Doodle Jones in the 40s. So. tell me if you've heard this before. There's this blonde guy and a scientist is going to inject him with a formula that's going to make him really strong in a secret experiment, right?

That's in a secret location. But then the bad guys come in and kill the scientist before he can reproduce it again. So now he's the only one who has those powers. Totally original origin. Yeah. The difference being, and by the way, this is so similar, by the way,

that Marvel, you know, let me get to that a second, Marvel did not really have the money to sue. So instead they had an ad in the, we're not an ad, but I guess the house ad in one of their comics that had Captain America pointing at the audience saying, if you see any comics of people stealing my stories, don't buy them, you know. Nice. But the difference is there was no scrawny Steve Rogers.

Instead, there were three wounded veterans who volunteer their bodies to science, saying that we will give our lives for our country. so that you can make a new hero. And the scientists apparently took them apart and put them back together again as one guy and then injected him with an invincibility serum. You would think, Frankenstein, right? But in his first appearance, as one person,

he literally leans out from behind the curtain being a very handsome blonde guy going, all right, Doc, I'm ready for the injection. And I'm like, the 40s, science could do anything. And I just, I like, I have my Captain America. Like, he's right there. There's some Eldridge abomination. There's so much you can do with that.

Right? Like, wow. And if I get to continue the series, that is going to come up. Yeah. And I would say if I get to, I was going to have a second issue a month ago, but I, because the first one came out at the end of last year, and it was going to come out months ago. But like, there was a family tragedy. It actually took months to develop, and I could not, I couldn't function for a while.

So just, you know, that happened. But anyway, yeah. So I had Captain America, and I was like, this is, this is great. The fact that the story is so silly makes it even better, you know? Yeah. And then I wanted a Hulk character, and of course, Hulk is from the 60s, but I got a character from the 40s, who is originally called the Purple Zombie. His real name was Zorro, Z-O-R-O, and I really didn't want to get him mixed up with either Zorro from One Piece or Zorro, so I re-spelled it with an X, so, you know. But his big thing is that he was created by one of the first,

female creators in comics Tarpay Mills who made a lot of really good books and his story is just I could go into it for an hour it's insane but it's one continuous story that lasts like 13 issues and has an ending like it actually has an ending which most comics back then didn't have right and so that was cool and then I wanted a Superman character

so there was this guy called Wonder Man that the story goes that Will Eisner the guy who the comic version of the Oscars is named after was hired by this company And they told him, we want you to make us a Superman character. And he's like, you're sure? Yeah, make him just like Superman. So he made this character, and he was so similar to Superman that DC sued him out of existence.

They had the money for a lawyer. Marvel did not have that money. He is the first character sued out of existence. So he lasted one issue. So I brought him back and made him more like Superman because the rules are different now. Back then, a judge would be like, he's super strong? He's Superman. Now, you know, it doesn't matter.

But yeah, so it was just. like that. I just wanted to find these characters, and there's just so many crazy stories that you don't need to know the stories to read the book, because I've literally picked them to be familiar-looking heroes. But if you want to know more, I point out that you can read all the stories on websites like comicbookplus.com, where I read them all, because it's public domains, so they're free, legally. And two, you might recognize things. Like the Purple Zombie, he had an army of robot skeletons, because why not? And if you see the flashback pages in my book, every time he's there, there are these robot skeletons

and military outfits next to him. You know, and it's like, I don't explain it. I don't address it. But if you know, you know, you know. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. Love that.

That's cool. So you said if you get to go on with it, do you need to kick starter it again? So I will have one, hopefully, in the next few months. I need to get off on the ball of that now that I'm back in my, back in my functioning area and I'm doing things again. But the artist you did the first issue,

Ray Garza told me flat out from the beginning. He was only going to do the first issue. So he mainly does his own. It was the only time he'd ever worked with the writer before we even started. He's like, I usually write my own stuff, but I want to experience working with a writer. So let's do this, but it's just going to be one issue. It's like, no problem. So I have a new guy that is an upcoming artist who I want to, I don't want to name me yet because

it's not happening yet, but he said he's up for it. And he's doing really good work. And so, and already the cover artist, Freddie Lopez Jr., when I first came up with the idea and I told you, I bought the U.R. for World's War Comics, I also knew that I wanted Freddie Lopez Jr. to do the art for the cover, and I told him that he is

he's already made the cover for the second issue. Like it's done. And so we're ready to go. And it's just, I love the idea of having new stories that I could tell and then use these old characters that if you wanted to, as far as I'm concerned, most of their stories are canon. Maybe the racist ones, but to a point.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I actually made it a thing when I go to comic conventions and I tell people like, just name a Marvel character and I give you something weird about them. And then when it comes to these public domain characters, I like, I love digging in and finding all these weird bits of history, you know? That is, that's awesome. But you said that and now I'm trying to think of a Marvel character to hate it. That's what everybody does. I usually, I had one kid go and like literally Google, what's the most obscure Marvel character.

And he comes back to me and goes, Jack of Hearts. And I go, yeah, he's currently dating She-Holk. He's like, dang it. And I'm like, yeah, he's not that, he's not that obscure. No. But I did have one kid a couple, and another one asked me about mystique, and we're like pointing out about mystique, is that canonically, she is Sherlock Holmes in the actual Sherlock Holmes. Like, he was a real person in the 1800s in London, and it was mystique. Oh, wow.

So that's a thing. That's cool. My noodle is thoroughly baked. Yeah, I know. It's great. Her wife's name is Irene Adler, who everybody would joke, oh, it's the same as the name as the character from the books. she is the character because she is in fact

wow and then but the most obscure one I got is at a recent convention a kid comes to be like immediately

as soon as I said like the name a character he goes well I want to know more of Mr. Dahl and I'm like

you know what I can tell you more of a Mr. Doll so Mr. Dahl is this guy that fought Iron Man once in the 60s

but and his power was that he could make dolls that would cause you to have pain basically voodoo dolls you know

but he came back later he got killed and was brought back to life into a doll body but as two separate dolls and the process of putting him in two different mannequins, the human-sized mannequins

broke his mind and he now believed he was two different people and his wife didn't want to break the news to him so she just said, boys I'm your mother so his wife became the mother of him as twins and then he got killed again and brought back again and I'm like this guy is just

so fascinating. I would love to, I'd love to bring him back again as even more puppets. It just have them just be even more twisted because it's just so weird. That's wild. Yeah, I know. So yeah, name weird characters. The one that got me recently, somebody mentioned null the living darkness and they want me to

do TikTok about it and I'm like, I know that name, but I had to go back and look to remind myself. That was when I had to look up to remind myself. And I was like, which one's null. I'm mixing it up with void, which is, yeah. Yeah, and also there's a current null who's got spelled with a K, and which as a big guy in the Venom stories.

But this is known spelled with an M. And he basically, like Cthulhu looking character, Lovecraftian ball of tentacles and eyeballs. But his origin is that there were these winged perfect humans that lived up in the sky, specifically on the moon, in the time before man. And they wanted to learn about the universe. So they went off into the space, came back, and said,

there's nothing out there interesting to find and decided to jump into the lakes of lava that existed on the moon at that time and after dying they merged into one being and became null which is weird and I looked into it I'm like well the moon would have been molten

four billion years ago so that has to have been when that happened and then in one reality is null that it usually just wants to cause people to destroy themselves he just hates existence but in one reality he started working from

McDonald's because McDonald's had a new policy of like it was off-brand McDonald's but of course and then a new policy of I think it was actually called Rick Donald's a new policy of hiring aliens because they wanted to be equal opportunity employers and so they they hired him but they can't fire him because they also hired a watcher to become manager and the watchers refuses to get involved so the Fantastic Four has to find a way to get him out of the job because they can't fire him and so, and he refuses to leave. So I just, I just know the living darkness is fun. Okay.

That's pretty funny. So yeah, if you, name a guy, I'll give you something weird about him. I mean, I'm going to tell you speedball right away. I'd like to hear what weird thing you know about him besides his cat. See, the cat's the favorite part, though. That's the part that people don't talk about enough. And, of course, you know everything about speedball. So I don't think I have something I can tell you about speedball that you wouldn't know.

But I don't know what's like this cat. His cat got the same powers as him. Yeah, and he got him before he did. So the cat technically has more experience than he does with his powers. Cat is alpha speedball, basically. Yes, exactly. And also the idea that the cat is a member of the Avengers, and speedball has never been a member of the Avengers.

Right. That's, yeah. So, Ed, I think I've told you is that I actually want to get a really good shot of speedball bouncing on like my shin and wrapping around my calf. I love it. And my daughter said, will you put Niles on the other calf? And I'm like, yes, I will now. Yes, yes, I will.

Niles the Speedcat needs to be there In fact you could even have you could even have Speedball like having a little cat toy And on the other side of the cat's chasing it Oh I love it oh oh perfect So okay perfect yeah But yeah Niles was part of the The pet Avengers yeah

I was gonna say like the puppy Avengers Which I'm kind of curious why I don't work at Marvel anymore When I worked at Marvel they wanted to say that they were alternate reality And I had a bunch of evidence that said no it works in the continuity And I literally had somebody tell me it's too silly I'm like, Howard the duck is in continuity. Right, thank you. He fought a guy who's a beaver made out of beavers.

I mean, but anyway, I even pointed out that, like, there's a storyline Bendis wrote where Reed Richards has the Infinity gauntlet and he's talking to the Elubanati, what do we do about it? And I'm like, how did he get it? Well, in the Pet Avengers story, literally Lockjaw gives it to Reed Richards. So I'm like, that explains it. Like, literally, you just set this right before that story and now you know how he got it. Yeah.

Anyway, whatever. Yeah. But I bring this up because since I left Marvel, there have been multiple stories that have clearly been involving the Pet Avengers. Yes. But they've never used the phrase Pet Avengers since they've come back. So like Frog Thor has shown up. It's like that was what instigated this.

I was writing about Frog Thor. And they wanted me to say that he was not in this reality. Like, no, he is 616. Three issues. Yeah, I know. But now he's appeared. Frog Thor was a member of the Asgard. Guardians of the Galaxy, which yes, was a team.

Yeah. And then... He was in the Thor Corps, too. And he was the desk sergeant. Yes. Yeah. Well, that's... Well, yeah, but that doesn't count because it's Secret Wars.

That was a different reality-ish thing. But like in the regular 616, he's shown up in and he's team... Thor lost control of his hammer. And the only one he trusted to help him with this problem was Throg. Right. Which I love. So that... They had a desk sergeant?

I'm sorry. I'm stuck on that. So during secret wars, there was one planet that had the survivors of every reality that had ever been destroyed. And their military slash police force was every Thor they could get their hands on. Yeah. The Thor core. So there was a Thor Grout. There was a Thor Grout. There was a Thor Dazler, which I find really fascinating because she survived Secret Wars and then died later.

But her hammer is just sitting on the boardwalk. and I can't remember if it's Seattle or Portland, but one of those towns just sitting there because no one could pick it up. Right. And they just turned it to a tourist attraction. So I'm like, okay.

I was going to say a traffic circle. All the times that Thor has lost his hammer, there's a backup right there. Right. Just go get it. Well, but you can't fly to get it because he needs his hammer to fly. So it's going to take a while.

But anyway, yeah. So I like those little stories. Yeah. So we did, I think, just one episode. I think it was just a one piece Remarkably enough Yeah for me especially Where I covered that three-issue arc

Of when Thor became Oh because So that's canon But I'm talking about Thor frog Being a separate person from Thor Right well he met the frog Later during that Oh yes he did

Yes puddle gump Yeah Who had been turned into a you know And all this and But what was interesting Was that the author of that trio was he yeah he did not know well okay so he was living near central park and he saw that they were poisoning the rats and he was wondering what that would do to the ecology and that got him going rats and frogs

what's wild is that we don't know who is the original author a lot of people attributed to homer but i don't but there's something in greek mythology called the batraco miomacia and it is the battle between the frogs and the mice. It lasts for one day and it's 336 lines of a dactylic hexameter so the same epic meter

that the Trojan War is in the Iliad and it involves a Hercules like frog. It in or not hercules and Achilles like frog it involves like they've got names for all these characters Palace Minerva

what's her name in Greek mythology? Athena Athena she's she's like people are like are you going to help them she's like no those mice chewed through all my shit fuck them and like and so the whole battle lasts all day long complete with like descriptions of deaths and everything this author never knew about that he just developed it what's that that's how that works that's yeah it's so wild and so I talked about the Bichaco Mio Machia and all this because I've read it and all this and all this And then, you know, I talk about this part. It was, it was a fun, fun episode. So that really, it really is. Yeah. So that writer, that artist creator, a artist writer is Walt Simonson, right? Right.

Yeah. Walter Simonson. Yeah. Well, after people had clamoring for more Frog Thor, they brought Frog Thor back, of course, and they gave him a real name as a human because he was a human before he could go up. Right. And his real name is Simon Walterson. Yes.

Because why not? Yeah. it's i i would love like if if if in the comic world there was a legacy and my name was just you know harmon damony or something like i would know no one else would need to know i do i do exist in some comic universes um there's a there's a comic the indie comic called el gato negro who's basically like a batman daredevil type character who lives on the border spanish for the gato negro yes exactly yes um and And he's going through some papers, newspapers.

I used to work for a newspaper called the Brownsville Herald. And he's reading an article from the Brownsville Herald by Kevin Garcia about this mysterious superhero. So I exist in that universe. That's nice. Yeah. I also, aside from Frog Thor, I also got to write about Thunderstrike, or rather the current Thunderstrike. Thunderstrike was a human who got Thor powers and he was allowed to keep him later. But his son inherited them.

And his son's name is Kevin, so I'll take credit for that. Sure. but there's something that happened to his son that I think needs addressed more often because while he is currently like a 16 year old-ish kid who's got the powers of Thor when he was introduced he was like six right and he tried to save Thor when Thor was getting attacked this little six-year-old just threw himself at a bad guy strong enough to fight Thor and afterwards Thor thanked him for his bravery told him don't do that again but I bet thank you for that and the little kid had a toy hammer and he's like well i'm like you and thor goes to him and says

you are a true hammer bearer and then blesses him his hammer and then later on sounds like adventures and babysitting it does very much like that um so i think it's happened after that too um which by the way i love the fact that the guy who looks like thor and that movie is kingpin in the correct yes they're notable yeah um but anyway he uh so later on kevin's worried about his dad because his dad got kidnapped into space or something and he starts crying hoping somebody could help him and he just happens to be holding the toy hammer while he's crying and it glows he doesn't notice it glow but thor is in another dimension and he's like he needs my help and he rushes out and i'm like wait so you're telling me that if you are an official hammer bearer and you cry for help while holding a hammer all the other

hammer bears will hear you i want that addressed more often i would like to see because but by this point like think about it uh storm is a hammer bearer loki is now officially hammer bear officially Thor, Betaray Bill of course Throg, you know there's Captain America Steve Rogers is a hammer bear

so I'm imagining that one day like Captain America is just building something with a regular hammer and it starts glowing somebody needs my help I could just see this happening Jimmy Carter

Exactly right Yeah Yeah What is it Mr. Rogers Love fan art Yeah Art says that he'll be a hamburger It seems heavy to some

They can call each other Right yeah exactly By the way My favorite fan art Of a Thor story like that Was the Muppets meeting Thor and it was posted on a website

I think it's called Max over Axe which he does a comic about this little boy who wants to be an actor but he took it off it's not on the website anymore it's not there anymore and it actually made me cry

it was so good because in this one it was just like a regular Muppets adventure and where they have a guest star it happens to be the Muppets in their van driving cross country

happens to be at the exact same time as the opening of the Thor movie it were in his origin so as he lands on Earth and the hammer's there before he earns the right to become Thor again the hammer is sitting there and Kermit picks it up and Kermit immediately realizes

that it has the ability to go through time and space so before anybody can stop him he spins it and disappears and then he reappears to see Jim and I'm like oh my God just the idea of him going back to see his dad and I'm like oh my God

goes back to see Jim Hansen and Jim Hansen thank you him and says, don't worry about it. I know you're going to be fine without me. And it's just, oh, my God. I was like, I just want to cry. It was so well drawn. I'm like, I want Marvel to go to this guy and say, I will pay you to republish this canon.

Please. That's, yeah, that's, that's incredible. I was like, no. That's devastating. Wow. It was funny at that point. Like all the jokes were like on brand Muppets. show kind of jokes while Thor was trying to go through the motions of his movie like I'm in the

middle of my movie like he doesn't say that but like he's right right yeah yeah yeah and like miss piggy starts hitting on him and stuff it was great but like oh my god the ending oh my god and then and then he just hands the hammer back to Thor and Thor's like you earned it and you needed to have that moment and it was like oh my god there's uh we did an episode of uh all the people who would be worthy of holding me only. I've had people ask you that too, and I've made potential this. So I've got a list of all who did, and then

I did the ones in the comics that I think would, and then I did a list of other fictional characters who would, and then real people who would. But here's my question for you. What do you consider the criteria? Because they've never defined that in the comics. By my criteria, I wouldn't have qualified the Kermit, although I love that story, so I don't

care anymore. I'm going to pull it up right now, actually, because I did find criteria and it's defined by Thor himself. Okay, all right. And let's see. Let's see.

The power of the Thor is to hold back the storm and this comes from 2023. Yeah. To hold the storm back and my greatest power, my greatest strength that it took me longest to learn is knowledge if how to use my power is knowledge of how to use my power well

with compassion, with restraint, with nobility with hard one wisdom and most of all with humility and that by the way I know the comic you're talking about that is a beautiful comic that's where he's fighting Toranos I think the Thor of Thor's like the god of Thor of Thor's yes you know like the most

meta and so the Al Ewing is a great writer the non-marvel fictional characters I included were Mr. Miyagi 100% agree Wigolf from Beowulf the distant cousin of Beowulf 100%. I always I

I always pronounce it Viglav, but yes, that guy. Yeah, I, again, me, Latin. Maggie Rhee from being human. No, no, no, not from being human from, what is it? The zombie movie show, the walking dead. Oh, oh, Maggie's the one that's always with, what's his name on the bike, right? No, no, that's Carol. Maggie is the one who was married to Glenn.

Oh, oh. And she took over Hilltop. And again, I'm going by those. I gave up on that show. I also gave up on the comic about halfway through the comic. I gave up the show after season two. It's just dark upon dark upon dark.

I dropped. Anyway, continue your list. Finn from Star Wars. He's the only one. 100% from Star Wars. And in history, I said Suleiman the Magnificent. So historical characters.

Cannibal Marka. The guy who scared the shit out of the Romans because the Romans are bad guys. With those elephants. Yeah. Well, okay. So I would question that one maybe he's ruthless but he's also he he does show compassion restraint

nobility wisdom and humility okay fair enough right his career all right budica not toward the romans right okay certainly yep well the Romans deserved do they know what they did yeah yeah smedley butler I guess he he he's the general that uh the businessmen went to and said hey we want to do a fascism can you be in charge of the I don't know that name Oh, God, Smedley Butler, enjoy looking him up and or just, you know, check out this episode. But he, they came to him and they're like, hey, we want you to be the figure. He had been a tool. He had been a Marine for his entire adult life.

He'd been a tool of colonial expansion. And then afterwards, he was like, this is some bullshit. And he wrote a book called War is a Racket and went all over the country giving a talk about how all we ever do is colonialism. and it's not okay that we do it. So he's, this is humility. And then when they come to him, he's like,

and he was a soldier. Yeah. And they come to him and not only is his soldier, but he like, they called him duckboard at one point because during World War I, he laid down duck boards and like, he's like, you guys aren't doing it fast enough.

Here we go. I will show you what I mean. And he like brought down the instance of the influenza that the Americans were bringing over for the offboarding, right? And so he wrote. this book and when these guys came to him he said oh okay tell me more tell me more tell me more then he went to congress he's like by the way they're going to try to do a fascism like he totally turned them in

um and then i also picked uh nzinga of nongo and matamba which was she's the angolan queen that basically held off the dutch and the portuguese through a series of like actions that she took and she's just super badass and then i also argued for people in our life times. Fred Rogers, obviously. Steve Irwin. Bob Ross. I don't think I put Bob Ross in there, actually. Here's why I would put Bob Ross on there.

Because the thing about Thor's Hammer from my perspective is the reason Captain American can pick it up and Spider-Man can't. And there's a reality where he has picked that about gives that in a second. Sure. The reason that Captain America can pick it up and Spider-Man can't is that they are both completely filled with honor, completely filled with compassion, completely filled with helping the little guy when they need it. Yep. But

the difference between the two of them is that Captain America will kill when he needs to. Spider-Man won't. Yeah. And Bob Ross also has done that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I would count Bob Ross. He's full of compassion, helping the little person, and he has to, he's done it when he needs to.

But there was a reality where Spider-Man lifted the hammer, but that was the kid-friendly version of Marvel. So presumably in that reality, Thor doesn't kill people either right right he just he stops gangsters from stealing fur coats um and again i'm putting killing as a requirement but i'm saying that like the idea that that they are willing to go further steps to protect the innocent yeah yeah yeah then say spider man spider run has a limit he won't go that far yeah so steve irwin uh malala yusuf zai certainly um and uh that that was her oh and then

finally um the forward from the Los Angeles Lakers James Worthy I will add one who I have because he is literally worthy and that whole episode was the setup just to make Ed Haley's

that much more just for that goddamn I didn't see it coming I love it so pissed I love it I love it I love it I love it I would add somebody that I've actually interviewed before who is

also I feel worthy on all of these categories Bambi the deer Okay okay So the original voice of Bambi Donnie Dunnigan was six Five years old when he was voicing Bambi

Later on joined the military was there for many years Didn't tell anybody that he was Bambi His superior officer found out at one point And they didn't want people to know that he was You know Sergeant Bambi Yeah But and eventually to come out

But once it did come out publicly that he was Bambi and Disney found out, oh, wait, he's alive. He spent every moment of using his fame, I guess, that they had this of to raise funds for people who need it, to raise for events that need to be, that awareness. He would go to like a small town or even it was hometown starting with that and being like, Bambi's here, support these families. Bambi is telling you to do that. And I'm like, he's worthy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. That's awesome.

so do you have an obscure character or a character like because i i i kind of threw mine in with with speedball but yeah i don't not not a really obscure character but um or an obscure fact about a character and now and now the the name has escaped me but um good good solid russian boy uh oh yeah colossus yeah he's a scab he's a fucking scap i will tell you that right now He's a scab. In the X-Men cartoon, he is working scab. He works scab. He was.

He was. He's a scab. So, so, my fiance, I thought his real name was Ivan, because that's what Wolverine keeps calling him in the cartoon. So she's like, oh, look, Ivan's in this comic. And I'm like, no, it's not his name. Why are you calling you? And then she explained to me why.

I'm like, oh, God, that does make sense. He does call Ivan over and over again. It's all the time, yeah. So besides it being a scab, what else? In the comics, Colossus, 100% believes in workers' rights. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

But yes. He was a scab. He was a scaven. He was a scap. He was a scap. He was a scap. I mean, the cartoon of me. Yeah.

All right. What about silhouette? She's also one of my favorite characters. Good one. From. From the New Warriors. All of my shit is going to be New Warriors. Okay.

Sorry. Yeah, 100% silhouette. I don't, I don't think. people but I do think silhouette but there'll be some characters like I just did oh I didn't mean about who's worthy I don't I don't think she's worthy because you got to have a bar like well so what are we listening then I thought we're listening who could be weird weird weird no weird facts that the party oh you're asking if I know things about silhouette yeah well I just I didn't know we jump topics

so that's okay I'd do that to people all the time so with her I would mainly get to the fact that her family's never really brought up and but the fact that she's got a brother who also has powers and he's he's in nights fire she'll be exactly shown up like three four times outside of no warriors yeah but my big thing with her that i like is that so many times when there is a character with disabilities yeah their power is their disabilities so like professor x you know his power is not the wheelchair but like he's got his mind so it's okay that he's in the wheelchair right come on or daredevil he's blind but he can see with his ears and i'm like okay look i mean that's cool don't me wrong

Their powers to overcome their disability somehow. But hers are completely unrelated to her disabilities. She's got amazing powers. She has disabilities that are very severe disabilities. And it does not, those two things neither conflict nor relate. And I really appreciate that about her character. I wish there were more characters like that. The other one that would have been perfect for that was Barbara Gordon.

But then DC Editora had to mess that up by demanding that she get fixed. And I'm like, why did you do that? Why did you do that, D.C.? And even, I think people blamed the writer for that. And she's a great writer, and it wasn't her choice. Like, it was going to be done one way or the other. And she just happened to be the one to agree, okay, fine, I'll be the one to do it. Was Edgale, Simone?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, her X-Men is like some of the best X-Men I've read in years. It's so good. It honestly feels like what your memory of Chris Claremont's comics were. I have to word it that way specifically. Yeah.

That's really well put. Because it is everything that I think I loved about Chris Claremont, minus the weird, well, no, I actually take it back. She keeps in the weird sex stuff. But minus the unintentional racism, because Claremont was very much of that 80s white liberal, where I'm doing this because I believe racism is bad, but in doing so, he does a racism.

Yeah, there's a whole spate of TV shows and movies and comics where the white person teaches the black person that you shouldn't judge and now we've solved racism and it's like or the white or the white person puts on black face and then says i right now see how bad racism is that i'm like oh god that didn't make it better you you see one part of that um i also there's two other things i liked about silhouette just a pile on the silhouette love train here um one she's long she's into it yeah uh she's she's um she's biracial and and it's they don't play on the Vietnamese mysticism

aspect that they do with Thai even though she's Cambodian which I also appreciate about that yeah but I know about the other one too and and the other thing that I really like about her is when when all was said and done like so she she her outfit her uniform

was stolen by Dwayne Taylor hacking into the Fantastic Four's network and and and making it like getting the formula she goes back to read richards and she's like hey we stole this i'm sorry i can't you know i can't in good conscience wear this and he's and read for once it's nice to a woman he says keep it because you've proven yourself and i don't want you just disappearing into nakedness so you can keep it but like the fact that she went and she she could have absolutely gotten away with it because she wasn't the one that stole it or

anything but also they wouldn't have found out right but she's like no this it's a bad rap though reed he's a bad rap he's a bad father read read knows what he did he's a bad father but like not intentionally so yeah but hold on i want to say that you brought up her by racial i want to bring up something as well yeah um i i i grew up mixed uh you know my mother was of scottish extent my dad is Mexican. I consider myself third generation, Mexican-American. But growing up in Brownsville, everybody saw me as the white boy. And then I would go to visit family in Kansas. And the family they didn't care, but like other people in Kansas would see me as, oh, look at that Mexican kid, which surprised me the first time that happened because I'm so used to everybody calling me

white that somebody clocking me as Mexican was like, whoa, cool. All right. I know it was an insult, but I'll take it. You know, but so with that in mind, it, bothers me when we have stuff like Miles Morales, who everybody talks about he's mixed black and Latino, but like there are black Latinos number one. Right. His mother is a black Latina.

You know, and number two, every time his status is being mixed comes up, it is celebrated. You are great because you are black and you are great because you're Latino. It's a great there. And like it's never a problem. And that's not been my experience and not been the

experience of other people I know. but the one person in comics who has shown that more than anyone else is not more, the Submariner. And I have, for years, I wouldn't tell people who my favorite hero was. I didn't really have one. I'd say choosing a favorite child, but eventually I realized it is no more. And it's kind of funny to have a favorite hero who's never really had an iconic storyline. You know, he doesn't really have, you know, he doesn't have his dark night or anything.

he's always kind of secondary to what the Fantastic War has going on but see that's the thing he's listed as a Fantastic Four character which he should not be you know yeah um he's literally Marvel's first superhero yeah and Marvel's first supervillain he is the first superhero to fly under his own power he predates Superman being able to do that predates Captain and Marvel doing that he is the reason the Marvel universe exists because originally in the 40s every superhero had their own little

unrelated comic to everybody else's comic the first time they had superheroes meeting other superheroes was because they had to stop not more from doing his you know is destroying the city bit but back to this conversation he

is always fighting for respect when it comes to that humans see him as a freak and his own people see him as a human sympathizer because he's pink you know and so like

they I actually got to write his life story in Namara the first mutant number one. I did the last seven, eight pages of that book, which is the thing I, out of all 10 years, I was at Marvel, 10-ish years, what you ever take? That's the thing I'm most proud of. Is that the one where you touched on Nomora?

Yes, I had Nomora telling his story. In fact, I even asked the editors, they just asked me to do his life story. I said, can I have a character telling it? And I was told by somebody that, oh, well, you can't do that because every time they do that, they're going to rewrite it because there's no way

you're going to write them in character. So I said, well, let me try. And I did, and they kept it all. you know um they even even the the the all the graphics and and the designs were all my my creations but um but the point is in that number of the first merchant series the writer stewart more goes and delves into that a little bit more having showing that his grandfather who has always been seen as kind of antis a little bit antagonistic in the comics before that was openly racist against his grandson and like like actively like basically tortured him publicly because of it

essentially. And it's like, this kind of stuff, I think, even though that's a very extreme situation, and he's from a fictional race, better shows that than the celebration of like, and again, I'm not thinking, I love Miles's a character. He's a great character. Yeah. But I think when people talk about him in that aspect, it kind of gets to me a little bit, because I feel like it doesn't show the concern. You know what I mean? It kind of sugarcoats the reality of the lived experience of people who, yeah. The other character who, oh, sorry, continue, go ahead. I was going to say, to pile on to that a bit, it shows the celebration that we now have

without showing the history that we came from. Or the celebration that we wish we have for the situations where it doesn't happen. It's still around. That kind of issue still happens. It's less common now, I think, but it still happens. There's very anti-black sentiments in some communities and when those communities, and I'm speaking as a white man, so I'm not going to name names. But

when those communities interact with black communities, inevitably, because when people interact, children come up, right? There is an anti-blackness in several communities despite the fact that these are your grandkids.

Yep. I don't. I've seen that as well personally sometimes. But the other character that, since I'm just ranting now, The character that kind of bothers me, for weird reasons, is White Tiger. And that's because he is always promoted as Marvel's first big Latino character. And by the way, I have found a character from the 40s that I believe, in my view, is the first ever superpowered Latino character at Marvel. Very moderately racist.

It's the 40s, so you expect it. But my issue with White Tiger is we should know better by that point. And he's co-created by a Puerto Rican artist. You know, Puerto Rican American, well, Puerto Rico is American. by a Puerto Rican artist but he gets his powers so there were these three guys

called the Sons of the Tiger this was in the middle of both the Kung Fu crazy movies and the Blacksploitation crazed movies and these three guys is a white guy, a Chinese guy, and a black guy who have Kung Fu powers, magic ones well they one day decide to throw away their powers

into the trash all three of them once he literally walks by sees these things in the trash and says I'll take them and he got powers so he got his powers from the trash right and then then

he is constantly presented as angry like every time he meets him they assume he's a criminal and almost never is that refuted like Spider-Man teams up with him

but still at the end he's like yeah but he probably should have been stealing things but I wasn't like it never gets refuted and then he also is one of the first Marvel heroes to get outed without his consent. And then he just becomes a punching bag. Villains just beat the crap out of him. They kill his family, you know. And then they treat his powers, because remember it's magical

Kung Fu powers, as if it's a drug addiction. So he's addicted to his powers. And once he avenges his family, he's going to finally go cold turkey. And he gives up his powers. And that's it for about 20, 30 years. And then Bendis brings him back in Daredevil. And immediately, has him framed accidentally for killing a cop and he goes to court and in the TV show Daredevil is the one that outs him

which I think is horrible but in the TV show spoilers he gets found not guilty in the comics he was found guilty also because of Daredevil's fault but unrelated and then he does not want to go to jail so he then becomes

the first and as far as I know only superhero ever to commit suicide by like he literally grabs a gun to run in front of a bunch cops and reporters knowing what's going to happen next and even says the narration like he's waiting for it to happen so he can be killed wow and i feel that using him as representation is not great now the subsequent white tigers have been great although the fact that there's two of them tells me that writers weren't even aware that somebody else had made a female white tiger so but but they've been better better. In fact, yeah, the most current one, she even makes a point of saying that her uncle inspired people, blah, blah, which is great. But I still do not like what his character was. Yeah. And what it says about everything. A whole lot of stuff. Yeah. Wow. There was a phrase that I used to use when describing anytime Marvel would write a black

character, it was here's what a white guy thinks that black people are like who doesn't know any. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. A friend of mine... Same thing's true with all these other groups as well. Exactly. One hundred percent. Especially Romani people. A friend of mine

Evan Narcisse, he wrote a couple of Black Panther stories recently, but before he became a writer for Marvel, he wrote for a website like gizmodo and those related sites and i read an article he wrote once that that really got my attention uh because he's talking about being a kid reading um power man and iron fist he was for hire and that one initially was written by white people right written and drawn yeah but he picked it up later in the run and he said this is the first time i read a character and said i can tell this was written by a black man um because it was the stuff that was going through Luke's head as he's thinking

versus the stuff he says out loud when he's dealing with white people that he realized that he had no idea who Christopher Priest was and Christopher Priest it went by Jim Owsley at the time but he had no idea who this person was he did not know that he was black but just by reading it he could tell and that made all the difference for him as a young reader W.E.B. Du Bois I believe he coined the term dual consciousness. Yeah. You're talking about a comic book version of almost exactly that. Yes, well, it's the code switching is what the more common term is.

That's code switching. Basically, he's thinking one thing and then acts a different way as rather to deal with expectations or to encourage those expectations, whatever would help him in that moment. But he's thinking an entirely different thing. To navigate a white world that is hostile to him. Yeah. So, oh, going. No, I had no more.

Okay. There's a character that I wanted to ask you about because I'm currently reading. And then we should probably wrap this up because it's getting made. where you are. By my clock is almost 2 a.m. Go ahead. I'm going to ask you to, I'm going to read something into the chat and see if I can get you to say it.

But, but, and Ed knows what it is. And I think I'm not going to get it either. I don't think he'll deliver. But what's this character you're talking about? Yeah, this character is, um, there's two of them. There's one. So I'm reading six different comics from their publication beginning, right? so one of them's in Daredevil

He's a blind black man Who fought in Vietnam Okay And I believe it's Willie Lincoln Oh okay I believe I I've forgotten the name Wait no hold on a second Continue with your story first

Because I want to check something Is that what you just said Brought up a different memory So and it could be that I'm mixed up But um Okay no never read I was thinking of somebody else Okay um the person I was think Willie Lincoln is the name of Lincoln's son, so I don't know on that.

But for some reason, that sounded like the, never mind. It was the whole George Bush political campaign thing where they, you know, that thing. Willie Horton. Willie Horton. Anyway, so the blind guy, we're talking about him. Okay, so this is, I believe this is Willie Lincoln. And if not, I've conflated him with a character that the character I want to ask you about is hunting down. But Willie Lincoln, if I recall correctly, I know, I think his name's at least Willie.

and I don't have my iPad with me. It is Willie. Looking it up right now. Yep. So there's a character named Bengel who is basically avenging war crimes and he shows up and it's in the 80s and he shows up. He's still right. Yeah, yeah.

In fact, he gets mentioned as the cover character name or the cover name of Sam Wilson when they go to Madrepoor. no he was a smiling tiger it's a different character oh smiling tiger but but but they were in the same team together so I yeah yeah yeah um but what no well smiling tiger was part of a I don't think Benka was part of the well I don't know the same team but they were in the same new warriors issues is my yeah yeah they were the same I don't remember like smiling tiger shows up about 14 issues later yeah but they were but they were like in the same book yeah within within the same year and a half yeah um because new warriors was all about Vietnam uh but

and so so bengal is hunting down people that destroyed his village and and stuff like that um and they write his his words with a very thick accent so instead of did the jungle breathe it's did the jungle breit yeah and so it's the approximation of vietnamese yeah accent in english so punisher ends up i think protecting the the guy that bengal is hunting I forget exactly what. But, so this Bengal character, you said they're still around. Yeah. I was going to ask what has happened with them.

He was in the Thunderbolts for a bit, and he was part of the 50-state initiative. Okay. That's kind of ancillary. But something interesting has come up. Like, as I'm searching this up, I notice that. So like I said, I always check 20 sources. I don't just go to one thing. But I just want to remind myself, I'm like, oh, yeah, Willie, I know who you're talking about now.

I didn't know his name, but I know the character. But what's funny is when I pulled it up on the wiki, they updated part of it to match current continuity that I don't think has ever been addressed for this specific character. So it's weird that they put it in there. Okay. And the update is that Bangle was presumably, I mean, double-check Bengel's page to what it says.

Yeah. Bangle was not upset about the Vietnam War. Because the Vietnam War did not affect any of those heroes. It did long before. keep in mind that in current current Marvel continuity none of the heroes were heroes during 9-11

you know right right yeah so so like that's how that works right so one of the one of the last things I did at Marvel was giving notes to Mark Wade it wasn't just me it was me and like four other people

giving notes to Mark Wade for the history of the Marvel universe and we didn't know where he was going to go with it we just gave him like here's all the information and presumably he and other probably Al Ewing and other writers working together to figure out how to make continuity work and one of the things they did was change the name of the war

that so many of these characters were in because to tie it to a real world war would mean well Afghanistan yeah well Afghanistan they've done that and it was fun well not funny but what's interesting we're doing about Afghanistan is like you know if you watch the Sherlock TV show the first episode

Watson is dealing with PTSD being in Afghanistan. Yeah. And if you read the original books, Watson is coming back from war in Afghanistan because there's always a war in Afghanistan. Ed did several episodes on Sherlock Holmes. He talked about this a lot. Brown is a nut.

Yes, yes, was the line. But anyway, they've now used this fictional country that shown up a couple of times in Iron Man and basically said that it's the country where all this stuff was focused around. So there might have been battles in Vietnam. And there might have been battles in South Korea. There might have been battles in Japan, but they were actually about the Sin Kong War. That's interesting because in the 90s, there was a fictional Arab-style country that the new warriors helped, like ran into like a nobody wins here situation. And then there was also a South American country.

where the same thing was true. Yeah. And I've forgotten the names of both. I mean, this has been more than one of these things. Yeah. I mean, it kind of reminds me of in Batman,

the Cordova Maltese, I think it was. Well, what drives me nuts, one of the first book in Marvel that has my name in it, although it wasn't paid for it, it was just me giving them information,

is the Marvel Atlas. And what drives me nuts is that there are like 20 fictional Latin American countries. Yeah. And I'm like, I like having, a fictional country or maybe

two or three fictional countries. But when you've got 20, just go back to the same one over and over again. You know, that's no problem with that. I mean, you know, got Latvaria and stuff like that. We can do that. Yeah, got Wakanda. It's, yeah. One per continent. Yeah, sure. I don't know a problem with that. Like, let's have a fictional country in North America

that speaks English. That'd be interesting, you know. Quebec. They don't ever do that. I wonder why. Almost like it means something different to them. But anyway, but the point is that, so they made sense, Kong, this kind of stand-in for any war that would have happened in Asia, or if you need be, any war that somebody had to have been a veteran of, you know?

So, for example, it was going on before and during comics that happened in the 60s and 70s. So Flash Thompson lost his legs in the Sin Kong War, you know. Okay. The one that gets me, though, is that they... Wow, because he was actually drafted to the Vietnam War. Yeah. Well, now he was drafted to the Sin Kong War. Yeah.

Um, and so, uh, what the one that gets me, though, is read and Ben, because retroactively, they were now at the beginning of the Sin Kong war instead of World War two. And the thing that bothers me about that is that time travel exists. I feel like there are ways to explain why college age Reed and Ben would have been in World War II. Like there are ways to explain that. Yeah. But, you know, that's just me. That's crazy. so yeah i just i just it's funny that i pulled this up and i just see that sincong war he's like because that's not been addressed for for willie lincoln in the comics because he's not been mentioned in decades right but like you know yeah i mean i i i i'm finding him because i'm reading through daredevil interestingly in in february of 69 both daredevil and spider man have an interaction with a black activist of some sort and they both decide to quit being Daredevil and Spider-Man.

It's February of 69. Now, that means it was probably published in January of 69, probably was written in December or November. Yeah. But like, and that puts us as could these writers be reacting to Martin Luther King's murder the previous summer? 100%. 100%.

I just find that fascinating because I originally started this project because I wanted to see how comics reflected JFK's death and how they reflected RFK's death and MLK's death. And this is the first of the three that I found. Sorry, I mean to interrupt you. I think a lot interrupting. You know that Richard Nixon killed himself in office. Yes.

In the Marvel universe. Yes. Yes. So like, that's interesting. Yeah. Well, and that's when Cap becomes nomad, I think, for the first time. Yeah, exactly. And it's basically the writers saying like they're disillusioned with the world, because we do.

The one that gets me a lot is, um, the one that gets me a lot is, um, the 9-11 issue of Spider-Man. People pick on that all the time. They're like, oh, why are these villains crying? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That issue was never intended to be in continuity. That issue was literally the creators processing their trauma. Oh, wow.

Yeah. That was all it was. So those villains crying isn't meant to be like, oh, well, Kingpin and Doom would equally cry. No, it's meant to be that no matter how crazy the world of fiction is, the real world hurt. And is it successful? It's up to you. But it was never meant to be in continuity.

Even at the time, like if you get a collection of that series, it skips that issue because that issue was not part of the series. It happened to be avid number in the series, but it wasn't part of the series. It was literally just, we need to do this because we have to.

But the other thing that gets me, though, is that after that 9-11, there was a Captain America series, which was very much Captain America versus Islamic terrorists. and it was not great. I mean, like, the art was good, you know, but... Well, and shortly after that, the Ultimates came in,

so then Captain America was basically John McCain. Oh, man, I just... Everything about the original Ultraments universe, I just cannot stand. You know, Spider-Round was good. The relationship between, you know, Quicksilver and his sister, I think that was okay, you know. The fact that Wolverine tried to make out with a 16-year-old?

Yeah, that, you know, yeah. Oh, God. And the fact that Wolverine was implied to be the birth father of Quicksover and Scarlet Witch and he watched them make out without them knowing. Right. Yeah, they're like not

now those two things didn't happen in the same issue but regardless, yeah, but that is implied to be the case that they're not Magneto's kids, but Wolverine's kids and he watched them make out. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Again, Mark Millar, why does he keep

getting jobs? And by the way, that issue wasn't Mark Millar, but it was his universe, really, that caused that issue. He built that. Yeah. So, but, yeah, it's just those things. And something else you said earlier about the Vietnamese pigeon English that was written there. It's reminding me of whenever they would have a Latino character for years, they would always do things like, D.C.'s eat, and it would actually be spelled with double E's and stuff. Yeah.

And what gets me is that D.C.'s first Latin American hero, and I won't say Latino hero. hero. Their first Latin American hero was the whip who was a white American who in his disguise would pretend to be a Mexican. Oh. And would talk with that accent. Oh, God. They've since reconded to say, oh, no, he was always Mexican-American. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But, um, but no, like that makes it better. Right. Like, really? Oh. Oh, my God. There was, um, wow. Oh, God, there was something I was going to say about, uh, you, you mentioned the, the, the, the, the, the, the accenting with the the bad spelling um it was uh there's i remember seeing several of the early lukega stuff and and just the like the the the chicken is the black exploitation era

yes there's a story that i've heard and i've heard it from credible people that i believe and that is the reason he says sweet christmas all the time is because there was a I think it was a book or short story written by a black writer where they had a character doing that and the whole point of it was that it was making fun of the way white people think black people talk

but the writer who read who wrote Luke Cage thought oh this is how oh I can use legitimate slang okay so so that's why he says stuff like sweet sister sweet Christmas and all that kind of stuff it's like I believe it I believe it

wow yeah all right well I think we should probably wrap it up here so normally what we do is we plug things and we recommend things for people to read and then we plug

things to end it up so time out I just realized plugging for a second I didn't say where people could get the books Dragon Lee could be found on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com

and WorldsWore Comics can be found at globalcomcom or any planet com there you go there you go perfect ed what are you going to recommend for people to read taken imbibe etc uh i am going to recommend uh totally unrelated to what we're talking about here but a great book uh how the world made the west by josephine quinn uh that gets into the uh creation of the construct of our you know uh cultural concept of quote unquote, Western civilization and, you know, where, where that comes from and how things

became accepted as part of that canon. So Josephine Quinn, how the world made the West. That's my recommendation. How about you? I'm going to plug a book called Dragon Lee and the Monster of Salty River by Kevin Garcia. I don't think I've heard of that one. Yeah, we might do an episode on it sometime. Um, but, uh, or we might find an episode within these two, uh, on it somewhere.

Yeah. Uh, but, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's just, it's fun. I don't know what else to say. We've also spent many hours talking about it. It's everything that I love. It's comic books. It's professional wrestling. It's, it's lucha stuff.

It's mythology. It's just, it's all kinds of stuff. And it blends and, and fades in that. that that k-fabe that I love so dearly so I strongly recommend Dragon Lee and the monster of Salty River

Very cool I've got a recommendation I guess So based on what you guys are saying This is something that might pick your interest But there's a big asterisk on it To read it you need to have the Marvel Unlimited app I do Now there you go

So it is called Marvel Voices Avengers Academy and it is so good that I've reached out to the writer and become friends with him, and we had it on my podcast previously. It is just so, so good. And it has had one physical issue published, which sucks. Because while that was happening, Marvel had a print comic called The New Champions, which was also about Teenage Heroes, and it wasn't good. And it got canceled after eight issues, or six issues or whatever.

But Marvel Voices, Avengers Academy, rather, been going now for their they're on issue 42 or something at this point and every and I say issue they're they're meant to be read vertically as like a web tune type of thing um but every issue has had things that have made me laugh things that have made me cry I'm like oh it is so good that the most recent issue it has a character who's not really been in the series at all just brought in for this one issue and it's this character called martha johnson from x-men I don't if you know who she is. If you ever saw a brain in a jar hanging out with the X-Men, that's her.

Oh, okay. Okay. So what happened is that she was a young mutant who got, like a little girl who got her powers of psychic powers. She was captured by scientists who wanted to experiment, took her brain out of her body and amped up her powers like enormously. Well, she then was freed by the X-Men, but lived with the X-Men for years, and they never bothered to give her a body.

They didn't build her one. They didn't grow her one. They have the abilities. Then Krakkoa comes around And they build her body And she actually asked to have a visible brain Because she's used to that by now So she now looks like a young woman

Like 18 to 21 I guess With a visible brain All right And so in this issue It is entirely narrated by her Remember she's not a member of this cast Right But she's been invited by a friend of hers

To an Avengers Academy Like a dinner party And she explains very I'm just gonna tell you the first couple lines of this issue you, everyone has a secret. I have one too. My secret is that I know everyone's secrets. Because she cannot turn off her brain. She cannot. Her powers have been amped so much that wherever she walks, she hears people. And her friend, who I think, I have to read, I think her friend has a crush on her, which she's aware of, because of course she is, she's deciding what hat to wear

to go to the party. And he's like, you know, just be you. She's like, okay. So she walks down the streets with her friend with her head exposed and everybody walks by her is like how dare she do that in public i can't believe there's children present oh god a mutant and then one little kid she looks cool and then she there's a pigeon food food food and a dog friend friend friend and it goes on like that and as the i'm going to give you the spoils for this one issue of why you should read the entire series basically before you spoil before you spoil is there a cat that just looks at her and goes fuck you there should be actually there is a cat but she doesn't hear the cat's voice so it doesn't have so spoiler but as she goes to the party there's a bunch of internal issues that

everybody has because the family members are visiting and some people hate other people's family members so it's a whole thing like that it's the series is really good at going into continuity well she finally has enough of it and has a breakdown because everybody else is fighting and when she has a breakdown everyone gets knocked out like unconscious right except for kid juggernaut because kid juggernaut is dressed as kid juggernaut and she's like why aren't you hurt he goes magic helmet blocks thoughts and she's like and so the next panel is him letting her wear his helmet to try it on and she's like the world is so quiet and then he goes yeah that's way it always is in my helmet that he pauses weight oh another thing that's cute about him is that

while she's talking to herself she's like everybody has thoughts that don't match their words and she's how you see all these examples happening and then and then it gets to him and he's has his mom bringing dinner to people, and he's like, my mom's the best. And out loud he says, my mom is the best. And she goes, well, almost everybody. Nice. Because kids are her and that's the best. That's cool.

But it's such a good series. The reason I thought of it right now, aside from the fact that I love it, is you mentioned reading old Daredevil comics. And Anacente's run is my favorite run in Daredevil of the, of the, of the 20th century, I guess. I know everybody talks about Frank Miller. This is great. But Ann Nossenti takes those Rank Miller ones and then just goes to all these personal levels that just really gets into it.

And she introduces this character called Blackheart, who's the son of Mephisto. And Blackheart's origin is just, there's a place where evil happened, and he just spawned there as an adult, and he is a Mephisto's son. And so he's never had a childhood, really.

And in this series, Mephisto has forced Blackheart to be a human as a punishment, and he looks like a very handsome, like 18 to 21-year-old. So he's a member of Avengers Academy. And there's an issue where Blackheart, as his human persona

meets Daredevil and Daredevil's like I can't believe they're letting you stay there with children and it's just the idea of he doesn't apologize for it

he is evil but it's also the nature versus the nurture versus nature situation like he was literally born from evil does that mean he has to be

right so it's just they have been really good stuff of building off other stories and yet telling entirely new ones

that's cool and you don't have to have read those other stories but honestly this series has been so good, it's made me go back and read another series that I didn't read on Marvel Limited, just called Marvel Voices. And I was like, I didn't read that series on Unlimited, and I want to read it now because of this. I just realized my recommendation just took

like another 10, 15 minutes. That's okay. That's great. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Let's see. We'll close it up this way. You can find us at geek history time.com. There's over 370 episodes. You should check them all out and give us a five-star review. Because look who we keep pulling for interviews. Yeah. Holy shit. So there's that.

You can find me at the SAC comedy spot every first Friday of every month doing capital punishment. Bring 15 bucks. Buy your ticket. Spin that wheel. We've got a hell of a crew. We've been doing it for since 2016. So for forever.

And also. if you are not in the area, you can actually still stream it. If you go to satcommodyspot.com and go to the calendar section, you can find capital, capital with an O, punishment, and you can stream the show and see what all the fuss is about. So I highly recommend that. And then Kevin, please plug away again, and we will say good night. I already mentioned where my books can be found.

You can find me online at Instagram or TikTok, Kevin Garcia underscore com. And on blue sky, it's just Kevin Garcia. because they wouldn't let me use an underscore and also I have a website Kevin Garcia.com that I find only works on some people's computers and not others. Apparently, if I pay

GoDaddy more money, they will make it easier to access, but I don't want to do that. So one of these days. Cool. Very cool. I got to say, for a geek history of time, for myself, probably for Ed,

thank you so much for joining us. This has just been a blast and a half, and I can't wait to go edit this. I'm sorry. No, no. An embarrassment of riches, I tell you. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony.

And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.