The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 5, Comic Books That HAD To Be Comic Books

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Seanbaby and Brockway gasp as gentle expert of comics, Brendan McGinley, arrives on a V-Beam to talk about comic book arcs that are too big, too stupid, and too awesome to take place in any other medium.

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred. I'm gonna bring us in, but first, as our guest, Brendan, would you prefer the English or the German version of our theme song? Oh, I'll take the German. Fuck yeah. One nine hundred, Frankfort.

One nine hundred, Frankfort. It's a podcast, come out. Und mit Maximale im Schaal. Sack Frankfort podcast? Correct. Yeah. The craft is not trapped, it's not oner. Shit in the hundersaw.

Four and a stunder. Come on, you kiddin' them all. One nine hundred. One nine hundred, Frankfort. One nine hundred. One nine hundred, Frankfort. One nine hundred. One nine hundred, Frankfort.

One nine hundred. Nine thousand. Welcome to the Dog Zone. Nine thousand, the official podcast of the one nine hundred hot dog website. I'm Sean Baby, and with me, as always, is my very erotic and handsome co-writer, Robert Brockway.

I prefer hunky, I'll settle for steaming. I do not accept erotic. You will have to try this again. All right, we'll take it from the top. One more time from the top. You know what? We don't have time. We're gonna have to stick with erotic.

I'll remember for next time. Under protest, under duress, let the record show. We'll get through it. And our guest today is fellow cracked alum, comic writer and comedy writer, Brendan McGinley, the gentleman bastard. Welcome to the show. It's good to be here and using my radio voice.

Oh, no. I was kind of doing that, and I apologize. It's really hard to just go from regular to talking on a podcast without shadow-stevening it. So apologies. I'll fix that in editing, too. I like to give it a little Jimmy Chonga. That's my favorite radio.

Is that a real person? Yeah, he was the classic rock guy in Portland, at least when I lived there when I'd been after your time. But yeah, Jimmy Chonga, best DJ name. And I say this as a person that hates all DJs and wishes they would die. Yeah, there's a lot of sarcastic wit in that. His manager's like, oh, you got to come up with a DJ name.

He's like, fuck you, Jimmy Chonga, then. He has nothing to do with anything he does, but it's just it's the only one I will accept. He's the only DJ I respect. Perhaps Brendan McGinley, not with Stan. Right, he's got a fantastic radio voice. As an unremarkable stand-up comic, I have a theory that all morning radio DJs

are unremarkable stand-up comics, just kind of slouching into an easier gig. Yeah, there's not a whole lot of failure conditions. Yeah, they bring that improv. They bring that improv energy. You can't fail out of that job. Hey, you know, Travis backed up this morning. What's going on?

What's with this President Clinton? Can you believe this Clinton film? Come on. Oh, the only one without a DJ. Anyway, what else? What else? Crack.com says. Looking at my list of holidays, it's National Donut Day.

That's a dumb one. I do this every day, I'm always astounded how dumb these stupid holidays are. I just liked when they would steal your articles, every word of it, and just sit there and read them on the air, and like not attribute them to you at all. I wrote this, I wrote all of this.

Right, they stole your articles? Oh, nobody ever stole my articles. Very, very routinely. My opponent just swears about Glenn Beck, so I don't think anybody really, professional courtesy, I guess. Yeah, I bet they have stolen your articles. You just haven't found them yet.

You don't hunt DJs at an amateur level like I do. Semi-pro, I'm shooting for semi-pro something. Jimmy Changa, look behind you. Okay, today on the show, we are going to be hunting Jimmy Changa, but after that, we are going to be talking about something Brendan is an expert at, which is comic books.

We're going to be talking about crazy comic book story arcs, chosen almost entirely at random. Like we started with a theme and that just went to shit instantly. So we're each going to bring our own, not favorite comic arc, but a completely absurd and ludicrous comic art that almost certainly couldn't exist

in any other format or media. And I know who wants to go first. Four better words. Lead us through the story. That should be said. I think you should actually start with Avengers. I think it is perfectly positioned in the middle of absurdity and awesomeness.

Right, that's sort of the way I'd go. The thing I love about comic books is they are very absurd, but they're kind of awesome. Sometimes all the way awesome. And I have chosen one that is maxed out in both directions. And some of you might remember this because it happened like within the last 30 years. This was the West Coast Avengers annual number two,

crossing over with the Avengers annual number 16. And so this was a star studded event. And it opens with them playing baseball with their full powers. Like Thor is at bat with his fucking hammer. And they're all just chatting, like sort of setting things up to explain to the reader what's going on.

Somebody mentions that the score is 417 to 413. And during this time, Thor has been at bat and he has taken one pitch. And there is, I counted 13 word bubbles. So if we're counting 13 word bubbles per pitch and the score is 417 to 413, they have been here. And I did the math on this fucking 4,000 years. That's how long I've been playing baseball.

So I would like to get an answer. They are playing in the Astrodome. And they do not appear to be authorized to play in the Astrodome. Yeah, who could stop that? And there's no crowd full of sick kids or anything. Right. No, it's for fun.

And they're absolutely destroying the Astrodome. There's literally two people in the crowd. And it is Espireta, who just is a superhero and no one's heard of, and Moon Knight, who's like a legitimately mentally ill lunatic. These are my notes. And I was like, I just heard of Espireta. Did you write down the line that Espireta said

to Moon Knight in the crowd? No. She said to him, and I quote, this is exciting, Moon Knight. I don't want to join the Avengers. And you haven't said, but I wish we could play anyway, don't you? That's how. They invited them.

They invited two people, two people, and you're not allowed to play. That kind of keys into my theory, which is that Moon Knight is just a mentally ill person trying to join the Avengers. And Espireta does not exist. She's his Bruce Willis. And he's just picturing her.

That would make sense. As the Astath. Because he does have several brains inside his own. Like Keonshu has cursed him to live with the spirits of three men, if I remember. Yes, his superpower is mental illness. Yes, he's got schizophrenia, then plus an extrafrania. And then he's also Batman.

But dressed in white so everyone can fucking see him. He's the best, he's one of my favorite superheroes. Except for in full Moonlight. That's true. A perfect Camelot Clodge if you stand against the Moon. Oh jeez, I lost that guy in the light of the Moon. Jesus, it's the Moonlight. Jesus, it's the one inch to the left of the Moon.

I see him now. But was it a Moon or a man dressed as the Moon? Yeah, so you should pull your picture after the first 200 runs is my takeaway. I mean, I'm a Red Sox fan, so obviously we don't follow our own advice. Well, the picture is Wonder Man who is powered by ionic energy, ionic energy.

So I don't know if there's like, I don't know if he gets tired, right? Like I don't know, do you have to wait for like the half-life inside him to, I don't know, I feel like he could pitch all night. That's not really the point of what I want to talk about because just now, just now they all die. Okay, I just want to set that up.

That's how quickly it happens in the comic. A beam comes through the sky. They all die after the Silver Surfer destroys the Astrodome like almost completely. I really want to hammer that home. They have gone into a hallowed institution. The space beam comes in and the caption makes it clear

this lingers there for 60 seconds and then Silver Surfer is there as well and they're all dead and they don't quite blame it on Silver Surfer but he is standing there while 60 seconds of magic energy is killing the Avengers. They have a very, very long conversation and then they notice everyone's dead.

He also mentions that as soon as he found out there was a threat to him, he came directly there except when he stopped to meet his girlfriend. Yes, he saw a ball of energy going towards the Earth. He was still in tension. He knew this was going to kill something. He had to go see if the beautiful Shalabal would polish his pubic mound.

That has no genitals. Sorry guys, I had to bang it out real quick but all dead. We can tell there's lipstick all over your ungenitaled crotch. So, there's a line here I love where Hawkeye who's just saw his best friend lying dead. He says, play a softball at a stadium.

We were like fishing a barrel to somebody shooting from space. And again, this is an energy beam that came from galaxies away and hit a ball spinning at 1,000 miles an hour. And in addition to that, it killed like the second baseman but not the guy on second. Like, I don't think there's any shame

in dying to this space raid. This is the Babe Ruth of space raids. Well, there is shame. Sitting ducks. I'll tell you why because the beam selectively killed them. Which is confirmation that even the primal forces of the universe don't consider the West Coast Avengers to be real Avengers.

Like it didn't even bother with the West Coast. They're like Hawkeye and Mockingbird. I think let's not waste a space beam on Mockingbird. Oh, wait, what's your power again? You got a stick? You got a stick, turns into two sticks? All right. I got to say this.

I guess you're on the West Coast Avengers. Oh, West Coast Avengers. Or as they call themselves, the Whacko's. The Whacko's, man. That's like a total Stan Lee type of thing. Like, give him kind of a fun nickname. The Whacko's. So Moon Knight starts to explain he's like,

I know this guy, the grandmaster. He's one of the elders. Because Silver Surfer knows this blast came from an elder. And so Moon Knight's explaining he knows this guy. Silver Surfer's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the guy, grandmaster. OK, this is where it starts to fall apart really hard. Because Moon Knight, who has been brought back to life

himself, is like, no, no, no. He's dead. He couldn't have done this. And everyone's like, no, dude, all of us die all the time and come back. Then after they explain that to him, he's like, cool. So we can just bring him back to life. And they're like, yeah, dude, we're fucking way ahead of you.

We've got to bring our friends back to life. We're doing it right now. Yeah, they spent so much time catching Moon Knight up, I started to get confused about what was and wasn't possible. Like, I'm fully on board with the Avengers just suddenly dying during a baseball game. This is really not that unusual.

Then they made it weird. And then they make it weirder by going into space to the collector and asking him, like, hey, we've got to kill everybody. And Wonder Man's just this human-shaped sack made out of energy. Like, do you have any poison that might kill him? And he's like, oh, sure, totally.

They just all drink it. There was one little thing I liked. Die. Which was when they were headed towards the collector, they didn't make a big deal about it. But they quite plainly got a tow from Silver Surfer at faster-than-light speed. He was like, I can't wait for a Quinn jet.

Like. They would have been there so long. Not as long as their baseball game, but pretty long. And so they all just died. They all just instantly commit suicide. They have no, they need no convincing. He doesn't even try to convince them. He's just like, hey, I have this poison.

You want to do it. That's on you. And they're like, they have a two-second conversation where they're like, hey, do you like poison? Yeah, sure. Hank's all for it because Hank can't go five minutes without bringing up that he's tried suicide before. Right.

It's extremely uncomfortable. Like, it's not like a cry for help. He's the last funny kind of mentally ill the moon night. Like, he's just a really troubled man. So here they are there. They're dead. And like, it's at this point where, as a writer, I can kind of see the scaffolding.

And I see like, these guys wanted to have an adventure where the adventurers are all dead. And this is how they got here. And it's completely absurd and insane. Now they all die, except a spirit couldn't die. And so they immediately, they're like, oh, hey, cool. Everybody's dead, except for that spirit, a bitch. What a coward.

She wouldn't even kill herself for these people that she barely knows. And that's not mentioned again. Yeah, back in the room with a living, the collectors just like, eh, that'll be fine without you. Don't worry. They're OK. Don't worry.

They're fine. So I guess what this is, it's like a what if comic set in canon. Like, it's what if these Coast Avengers fought the West Coast Avengers and all the Avengers died all in one issue, but it's not like an alternate universe. This really happened. They get into it and it's as contrived as any other thing.

They just immediately start fighting without anything. Really, they're not like, hey, what are you doing here? They're just like, we got to pair off and fight, guys. Right, they don't even try to get to reason out of it. They're not like, hold on, let's talk about this. They see each other and they're like, well, I'm going to kick your ass. What's amazing about it?

And or wife, sometimes a wife. It's not even about like, I have to do a thing and you have to stop me. It's legitimately the only way to decide who's right is four out of seven wins. Exactly. I love it. It's exactly what I would do if I was a superhero all the time.

So can I go back one second? I had a killer line. OK, so they're right in the front of the page. Thor's talking about how he's going to increase his standing among the batters, which is a pretty low bar because Hank's best known for battering his wife. Please continue. That's good foreshadowing, too, for that for this comment.

That's why I thought of it now. So the fights pair off its Ironman versus Captain Marvel, who is the Monica Rambo Captain Marvel, who can basically just turn into any form of light, which is a very overpowered superpower. She's pretty much unbeatable. Yeah, so the writer goes apeshit with just all kinds of pseudo science to have this fight go back and forth

between super genius Ironman and completely impossible to kill a laser lady. And you can see this is what he wanted to write the whole time. And there's so much more care that went into this brief fist fight than the entire setup for this universe-spanning adventure. And all of the fights that follow. This is the only one that looks like there was any effort put in. And if you're wondering where Silver Surfer is in all of this,

who he's going to fight, it's nobody. Because as soon as he sees the fight, he basically says, good luck with your stupid shit. I'm going off to try literally anything else. Well, there's your ride. He just he just fucking serfs away and he's like, have fun. He's just somebody's mom with a with a minivan. Just call me when the kids off.

Drop the kids off the mall. Yeah, he should have at least mentioned like, dude, aren't these the guys you just killed yourself to save? And now you're going to like fight them? He does not give a shit. I don't I don't get humans. But and I think, you know what? I think a flying surfboard is the best vehicle to not give a shit on

as you just like flying surf away like that. In itself, you don't even need to say, I don't give a shit because. Yeah, it's so hard to look like you care about anything on a flying surfboard. And just so the readers know, at this point, there's two Eternals and they're both claiming they have the answer to save the Avengers from the other Eternals. Right. So I mean, there's not nothing that there's some sort of a stakes that you could sort of say, and maybe they think that they need to win

for that guy. Well, it's not very explained. They trust the Eternals more than their teammates. Right. Yeah. I think the main point I have is this completely rules now. This comic is awesome and everything setting it up is is insane. And it didn't have to be like, I would have been fine if they just died playing baseball and they're like, we got to kill ourselves to get these Avengers.

And then one guy said, you must fight first. I'm like, OK, but they have all this unnecessary crap to get here. The next fight I love is Captain America vs. Mockingbird, which is so good. This is my favorite. I have it in bold. It is kind of cute because like it opens with her trying to hit Captain America. And he like literally thinks almost exactly word for word.

Oh, this is kind of cute. She's doing it. She's been practicing this for the first time doing her best. I want to say, really sad. This is my first ever Mockingbird story, and this isn't her best showing in this story, but I was mightily impressed with how much trash she was able to talk on everybody. It's true. She has so much trash to talk and she cannot back up a single word of it. Every minute, just Mockingbird is pretty bad at trying.

She's not not in this comic. And no, she doesn't do OK. She tries to fight Captain America and then she loses because she gets her giant 80s sleeves caught on some thorns. And Captain America just like gently pity captures her as she thinks to herself, a forties man is no match for an eighties woman. That's also the plot of who's the boss. Yeah, you're undone by the giant 80s accessories.

It's like an ironic punishment towards independent 80s women. It's amazing. It's such a. I actually wrote down her line when she gets caught and she screams, but my sleeves, my sleeves on the thorns, which is a fan. It's just good writing. But it's also kind of insulting to your artist to be like, I don't trust this guy to fucking make this look like she got caught on thorns. I better put this into the dialogue.

I don't know if you last more than a minute and a half against Captain America. Those are bona fides right there because he was running away because he was scared, but because he wanted to like pity capture her with thorns. He did disarm her and was then like, well, look, if she can trick herself into getting caught, then it's OK. Like it's not too. It's like when a when a toddler punches you in the knee and then you fall down and go like, oh, my head.

That's what it was. She she did great. I think we all agree you don't have to kick your toddler when she tries that. Well, I don't I don't have any kids. So it would be other people's toddlers. And yes, I absolutely do. Well, once you kick it, it's yours. Like you break it, you buy it.

That's right in the handbook. You didn't make it. So the next fight is Hank Pym fighting against his ex-wife. And this is a real psychological mind fuck like this is a problem. Whoever wrote this should like their wife should be careful. That's my point. My last note in this is this is an unhealthy relationship. Yes. So here he is about to have a fistfight with his wife,

which is not the first or the last time this happens in the Marvel Universe. Right. She's their ex-wife at the time. Right. And I swear to God, he brings up his suicide attempt to disarm her. And then he suckered you dozer. He's like, oh, man, remember that time I tried to kill myself? And she's like, oh, my God, you're right. That's really sad, judo.

And then I believe they get together again after this. I don't have my kind of entirely right. But this is the unhealthiest relationship. It's absolutely. And even in the fight, it's so unsportsmanlike. He fakes his own death during the fight to trick her into pity. And then he puts her in a gas filled bubble. No, I can't stay away from that man.

Got to love that. He drugs his wife. It's for the record. He walks around with a bubble filled with sleeping gas exclusively for shrunken women. I just had that in his pocket. This is this is the point in Hank's career when he can no longer shrink or grow, but he can change the size of things that he touched like he's inverted his powers.

So he has a bunch of cargo pockets and he's just pulling out useful things. We're just kind of cool. Do you remember? Do you remember the Harlem Globetrotters cartoon? I remember the Scooby-Doo. There was a Harlem Globetrotter with an afro and he would just pull out whatever gadget he needed from his app. He's exactly.

It's hammer space. Exactly. Yes. So Hank's manhandling his wife out of the gate in this fight. And she is still sparing his ego like halfway through the fight. She's like, well, he better if I beat him too quickly, he'll try to kill himself again. The wasp was never treated with like with the full power of feminism by the writers at Marvel Comics. Like usually her her thought bubbles were like, look at all these men, yum.

And so for her to spend a fistfight like trying to protect her abusers egos, it's very like ordinary for a Marvel Comics writer to do. It kind of depends. You can actually see this in a lot of like Kirby Lee stuff where like the girls are kicking ass, which is actually on display here. Like it's the 80s and women are absolutely like liver punching, Wonder Man or whatever, but you'll have Kirby block it out and then Stan comes in and and wants to give it like some soap opera drama.

And it's like, I better have her worry about a relationship with Reed. So she's like, you know, shrinking the atomic man. And she and Sue is thinking to herself, I hope Reed doesn't judge me for like stepping out of turn. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yes, a little nerd. OK, keep going. So the next flight is Thor versus Wonder Man.

I have no notes other than rad. They go at it, Thor pounds on him and then just shoots him with so much Thor power that he goes down. And that dude can't go like 30 seconds without mentioning that he's filled with ionic energy. That's the only thing he wants to talk about. Like, dude, you guys have I told you about the thing that I am. I think he's hoping someone will relieve him of his ionic energy.

I had the same note. I was like, this one was actually a great sign. The one thing I wonder is why 90 percent of Thor fights aren't just he drops his hammer on your foot and you can't move your pin down. I think there was some time when he like dropped it on somebody's chest in the movies or something, but. Well, because Thor is a himbo. He's not a he's not a strategist.

He's a big man with a big hammer. And he looks great with a beard. He looks phenomenal with that beard. Yeah, very good. I sometimes do this podcast called Marvel by the Month, where we talk about old Marvel comics. And I do mention how Thor is completely invincible when they want him to be. And there's an issue where he's fighting the Super Skrull.

And he's kind of getting his ass handed to him that he's like, you know what, fuck this, and he shoots him with a ray that just makes him go back to where he came from, just hands directly back. Yeah, he just shoots through the universe, taking rights and left, goes back to his home. And that's the kind of thing Thor can just do. If he wants, he just puts you in a whirlwind and sends you to hell. It just whatever his hammer does, whatever he wants.

So you better fight him fun is the thing. You better fight him in a fun way. I used to play the Marvel superheroes role playing with my brother and he would be Thor and he would just bring up precedent from the comic books. And you just, you know what I do? I put him in another dimension. He would he would totally put the fucking hammer on some guy. And you're like, OK, he can't ever move again.

And be like, yeah, OK, you win again. I'm glad you're playing as Thor. This is fun. You have to counter and be like, I starved to death and Thor is no longer worthy of the hammer. That's not a bad idea. I wish I would have thought of that when I was nine. Yeah, do it for a load. If I had to get the psychological ring when I was nine,

if you were a four year old man completely committed to children's stories, you would have rocked this meaningless contest. Speaking of meaningless contests, the Avengers are now what, three in one? Something like that. It's I don't even know what the stakes are. I don't know what happens, whichever side wins. But neither did the people writing this comic. We are getting to the most mockable fight in this in this journey.

Take it away. Let's get right into it. Tigra versus Dr. True, all stars of the Avengers. I feel dirty watching this. It's just he's just like a gross old man. He looks like a sex therapist and he's a hypnotist and she's like a furry. And they're like, yeah, and she's just a sex pot. Just a furry sex, he's going to hypnotize her into doing what he wanted.

Like, no, no. What I love is he's just sort of doing illusions, but she has kitty cat powers. So she like knows their illusions. And so it's just this dumb mismatch. But all it takes is one little distraction and he can take control of the mind. Yeah, I didn't need to know that. Like I just want to go to my notes and I'm just going to read you my notes. Word for word here.

It says, then he walks off with the bikini girl under his mental command in the realm of infinite time outside the sight of gods and man. I didn't like that with his hand on her head. And she's just like walking, half hunched. Oh, it's so problematic. But I do like very naked and under his command. I do like the idea of Dr. Druid is a guy who's like powerful enough to belong on the Avengers,

but or to be on the Avengers, but not like a good enough like like an actual sort of imposter that probably wouldn't belong there. Like the RC Cola of mystics, mystic doctors. Yeah, he is. Now it ever mentions me. Hi, I'm Dr. Druid. Whenever be. I guess it's a good analogy because RC Cola is pretty delicious, but no one ever thinks of it.

Yeah, it's third past the post. Well, next we have Moon Knight versus Black Knight, which seems like should have been a good fight, but really brings up the limitations of Black Knight and that if he ever cuts somebody with his sword, which is his weapon, then like he'll be taken by some dark curse. And so that's how Moon Knight beats him. He like jumps on the sword and pretends he got cut by it.

And then Moon Knight is so disarmed by that that I'm sorry, did I say Moon Knight? Black Knight is so disarmed by that that Moon Knight, you know. Yeah, my notes, I had this as the battle of who could be the most useless. Moon Knight just throws stuff at him and he counters with not really wanting stuff to be thrown at him. And then he tries to stab Moon Knight, but of course he can't stab Moon Knight.

A guy with 10 weapons that are useless and versus a guy with one weapon he doesn't want to use. Yeah, it's like watching two LARPers that neither one wants to give up. No, I have a force field, too. There are zero stakes in this whole fight. But next we have Hawkeye versus She-Hulk, just a total wild card mismatch. Great fight, though. It's a classic comic fight where like Hawkeye wins

by doing something very clever, because he just has a million different kinds of arrows and he builds his own bow in the middle of the fist fight, which is great. Well, clever, if you're stupid, is Hawkeye's deal. Yeah, yeah. His whole deal is like what a stupid person would think is very clever. There were two things I loved from that fight. The first was that Hawkeye was flirting with her the entire time

because A, he's Hawkeye and B, She-Hulk is fantastic. Like you wouldn't ever not flirt with She-Hulk. She's awesome. You're not going to not mention it. She's six foot five. She's a very revealing leotard. I like strong women. What can I say?

Bright green. I mean, that's great. That's my thing. The second thing is much more mundane. And it's that there is wildlife in the realm of death, but it's all dead. I thought that was a nice touch. Even animals go to hell. Some of this little bunny rabbits go straight to hell.

So West Coast wins. It is the West Coast Avengers annual that we start with. So now that means Grandmaster wins the universe, maybe from death. I don't know. No one gets it. The comic ends. She doesn't seem to get it. She doesn't seem to get what the stakes were.

That was part one. The next one is the Avengers annual and they try to catch us up. And it just it's it just gets more confusing. Now they have to fight these dead supervillains for the sake for the the universe's fate. And there's five bombs set throughout the universe and they split up into teams. And if the good guys don't win, then one fifth of the universe blows up for each good guy loss. Those are the new stakes, which are dramatically increased from the last stage. There you have to also the artist phenomenal in this.

Yeah, like a rotating cast. It's like, yeah. Nolan did a section. Kevin Nolan, John Romero, the junior, like, yeah, yeah. Mitchell Nelson, I think was one of them. Yeah. So everything is absurd and insane, but now it's it's rad again because they're going to start fighting. And we're back in the role of the arrow when like being dead, like kind of

meant something, not quite, but there were a certain number of supervillains that were dead. And they were that year they published the book of the dead deluxe edition for the Marvel Universe, where it was like an addendum to their little encyclopedia of superheroes with all of the dead guys. Like that's how long they stay dead, that they could make encyclopedias of dead characters. It's not like that now. I think every single one of these characters has come back to life seven or eight

more times, but at this point, they were dead. Let's see, the first fight was Thor Hawkeye and Hank Pym have to fight. Like just nobody that had a prayer, like like a dark wing, some dude with like vulture wings. I can't even remember. They fought Carl Urban and then a bunch of people I forget. The swordsman was one of them, which is like a less useful version of Hawkeye. Right. I just like how easily it is to convince them to fight.

Like here are your dead friends. Like they don't question it. And it would have been perfect. They only know the things that are in front of them. Like, I mean, that's the time to bring in Black Knight. You got a guy who's dead versus a guy who sort of kills anything it touches. Like, yeah, I'd like to see what happens if somebody's already dead and Black Knight hits him with a short circuit.

Maybe that's how they all come back to life. Black Knight just pokes everybody. They're like, ah, we outsmarted this whole thing. Step into life. If you die in death, it's a double negative. And you know, earlier, I was talking about how Thor can do anything. What Thor does here is the bomb actually goes off, but he puts it in a Thor whirlwind. So it doesn't blow up one fifth of the universe.

Sends him back to its own country where it belongs. Deportation, Ray. That's that's how that fight ended. Then that we have Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Tigra and Midnight. And they fight Drax and Captain Marvel from, you know, their famous movie stars now. But this time they were dead supervillains, apparently. This is the battle of the green and purple people. Yeah, this one kind of ended in tragedy like everyone died,

but they still managed to get the bomb turned off. I bet you guys have some good notes about Silver Surfer versus Michael Korvack. I just I just have because look, I'm not you guys. I don't have every comic ever made. I I mostly just read Vertigo for like 20 years and then I stopped reading comics altogether. You mostly were just cool in high school, smoking cigarettes behind the dumpster. OK, keep going.

Right. I mean, I guess I guess I'm trying to say that I fucked. But I didn't, you know, I didn't want to say it because I'm a gentleman. Yeah, nobody who knows who Michael Korvack is. Yeah, Michael Korvack is the most powerful asshole. Right. And did I get that right? Is that the is that he's just like a guy in a pillow shit that can do anything? Yeah, just unimaginable cosmic powers. The idea of meeting the Silver Surfer and then having to mansplain cosmic power

and just sitting in a in a shitty like lazy boy and be like, Hello, my friends. I am Michael Korvack sitting in like a like a Shays lounge or something on an asteroid while he it's just he's just the best asshole. I guess he's the world's best asshole. And he backs it up. He does he has galactus level powers. He strips the server server of everything that he is. And then they they smash into the bomb and that somehow disarms the bomb,

which again, it's not even consistent in the same comic. Because when Thor smashed the bomb, it still went off and he had a container with whirlwind. This one, they smashed the bomb. That's it. The bomb, the bomb is fine. Maybe Michael Korvack didn't want to die. So he made a cosmic whirlwind. That's not I got a no price.

That's 100 percent within the possibilities. What's my supervillain name? It's Michael. Just Michael. Michael means strength of God, my friend. This is a formidable name. Welcome. You know, this podcast is just so crazy. And he's such a dick about it that I'm kind of a fan now. I've never seen him before.

He's such an asshole. It was like panel two. I was like, who's this asshole? Michael Korvack, cosmic asshole. I have a membership to two boat clubs. I don't even go to them. I don't know about. Yeah, well, now I do with my cosmic boat powers. So the next fight is Iron Man, Mockingbird, Black Knight and Dr. Druid.

And they have to fight Dracula like the Dracula, Tarak's, who's a Herald of Galactus and a different Black Knight and then the Red Guardian. And they lose. Like they have no shot against things. I love I love that the that the just the book reading pervert has to fight Dracula. That is the best match up.

Why didn't you get to fight anybody else? Like you could have fought the Black Knight or something like, hey, hey, pervert, you got Dracula. This is a battle where Dracula or the Dracula, a Dracula or the Dracula. This is very important. The one Dracula. And he just, oh, he just does not stand a chance.

I think five people have the power cosmic and none of them does half as well as Dracula, who is actually facing a guy who you like. Maybe it's presumptuous to think Dr. Druid would be able to beat a vampire, especially like the vampire. But like of all the people to face it, right? Man for the job.

Like this is your moment. This is when everyone stops looking at you like you're phesic. Well, he also does exactly nothing and then gets slapped into oblivion. Open-handed slapped into oblivion. Yeah, he just insulting way. That is about how I would imagine it. If you if you just put a street pervert up against Dracula.

So now you know Dracula is the most powerful villain in the Marvel Universe. He actually at the end of this is one of my favorite moments because Tony is trying to disarm the bomb, like full on hazard open. He's using his technical expertise to disarm this bomb that we've already demonstrated you can just punch while he's doing that, he gets distracted

because mockingbird is straight up just gets eaten by Dracula right behind him. And he's like, whoa, what's that? And then kaboom. And literally one fifth of the Marvel Universe is gone in this moment. Like that happened. Boom, they lose. Yeah, but it was a mockingbird. It was like the Alabama end of the universe.

Like, no, it's never sorry, Alabama. But yeah, they didn't even like list a single character that died there. I don't even think they did afterwards. Yeah, I don't think they care. It was just some like it was probably a wasteland. There's probably like a phoenix eggs hatch there and it wasn't even populated. No prize.

So that's the Avengers. So the very last fight is Captain America wasp Wonder Man and they fight Bucky and Hyperion, who is the Marvel Superman and Baron Blood, who is a Nazi Dracula. Everybody dies. It's just a clusterfuck because Hyperion is everywhere and beaten up everybody. And then at the end, Captain America just punches the bomb because we've demonstrated that's how you disarm these bombs to pause for a second and ask

because you guys would know. I was always of the assumption that Bucky had no powers. He was just like like a good fighting boy. Is that right? Well, he has one power. What's his power? He can reduce cats in America to a quivering, guilt ridden husk. Like all you have to do in a fight is like have a shapeshifter

and be like, when you let me down, cap. And then he's like, dear God, I never meant to let Bucky die. Well, that's pretty good power, but he faces off against Wasp and it lasts like half a second because he just punches her with his ordinary boy punch. He just does what we're all thinking and says, why don't you stop on the bus? So horribly. It's really ordinary boy punch, not only hits her, just mutilates her into oblivion.

Yeah, how has that not come up in all of her years of adventuring? Like nobody's tried ordinary boy punch. Well, God, I'm such a nerd. So in Ant-Man, the movie, probably the best example of it is when somebody tries to step on him, but his mass is still that of a 200 pound man. So it's the reason he's able to punch you. Although it's fuzzy physics, because if he was like punching you with a one millimeter fist, yeah, your jaw would just be.

Yeah, it would be like a nail gun, but apparently this doesn't get that because like again, ordinary boy punch is her is her kryptonite. That's how it is. No one ever thought to try it. Hank did. Sorry to tell you. So that was just round one. Twenty percent of the universe is gone, almost half a Thanos. No one mentions it. No one cares.

And then grandmasters like, hey, guys, that's only round one. You're just going to have to keep fighting until the whole universe blows up. And they're like, what? No. And this one Hawkeye gets this great idea to say about stupid persons. Clever idea. A stupid person's idea of a clever idea. Guess what I have behind my back. And if you guess right, you win. And Grandmaster just can't resist this game of chance.

This thrilling game of chance he like offers to draw straws. Like I think draws the ultimate gambler's game. We should all live in existential terror. And the only thing standing between a reboot of the universe is whether you can fool an old man who looks very much like like like a 1970s Republican with a gambling addiction. His gambling addiction. Who wants to play Kino?

But Grandmaster did put correctly. So Hawkeye had to cheat. But in that moment where he's like, he thought he picked wrong. Death escapes her her bonds and like just brings her one back to life. No questions asked. No mention is made of the 20 percent of the universe that exploded. I'd like to think that they undid that. But if they did, that is not explained to the reader.

And that's it. There is literally there is literally one panel where they come back to life and they the next panel, they say, let's play ball and pick up their softball game. Not even like according to Panologic, that is two seconds of like, well, we're back, let's play softball, everybody. And then they do 113 to 417. All right, because they're super powered goldfish. I do.

Superheroes are basically like ants. Like you can put them in the same box and everything's OK. But if you shake it even a little bit, they will just start slaughtering each other. I do think it was pretty cool that the Grandmaster was like round two. Now everyone that died in the last one is on my side. I thought that was a nice escalation of the end. That's a good way to cheat as opposed to Hawkeye's extremely stupid way to cheat. Yeah, I just I want to say I love that comic or those comics

and for how stupid they are, but how awesome they are. And I think it was probably my favorite comic for most of my childhood. And I'm glad I could introduce it to you gentlemen. You had that at home for giving me a piece of yourself. I'll try and I know Michael Corvac is going to be your favorite new villain. He really is. I just have some side notes where I need to study up on him. But before we get to our next installment.

I have been practicing nonstop. I have done nothing but read terrible books to get into the headspace. Just give me one second. I'm going to go learn how to read. I'll be right back. Perfect. I'm going to dominate this. I wish I had prepared some sort of wrestling style insulting monologue, but you're going down.

Broadway, your very existence is an insult to my entire self. I mean, you you outclass me at every turn. What can I say? You're a very humble guest, Brendan. Well, let's see if it serves you well in Sean Baby's book game. Today, we're recording this on the day where we learned that fascism will not get four more years in America, which was great news. And I think everyone's in a fantastic mood.

Everyone's very happy for four more years. Fascism won't get four more years. Yeah, we put it on pause and that's maybe congratulations to us. Probably. Yeah. Like it's looking good, looking better than it did a few days ago. Yeah. First step on the path. I'll celebrate it. It's a good day in America.

Legitimately in a great mood and have been all day. And so what I'd like to do is pick the saddest book from my collection the contest just to even things out. The contest will be Brendan and Brock, where you will both try to come up with the saddest entry in a book called Microwave for One by Sonya Allison. This is my time to shine. So you're looking for the saddest microwave recipe

to be eaten by yourself from a book called Microwave for One. And I'm going to try to describe the cover. I actually wrote about this book on crack because I have two books called Microwave for One. This is the inferior book. You should set them up. Put those books on a date so you can make a little. Oh, my God.

Can you imagine a microwave for two book written by the authors of Microwave for One and Microwave for One? When I wrote about this book, this woman on the cover, the other book, Microwave for One, the woman had 25, 30 dishes, beautiful, elegant dishes. And this one, the lady has like four gross things on a card table. And the way to describe during the article, I said, she looks like she just pulled herself out of a headlock at a cigarette smoking contest.

And it's the most accurate thing I've ever written. So that's why I'm repeating it here. And she just, she looks like life has kicked the fuck out of her. So you're going to choose a number between one and one fifty seven. Brendan, you're a guest to go first and you're trying to land on the saddest recipe. Fifty nine. Five nine. OK. Malay style chicken. Preparation requires a bit of effort.

It's authentically flavored and quite delicious. Eat this with rice or pasta. So let's see, it looks like you take three tablespoons of peanut butter and two chicken thighs, one tablespoon of desiccated coconut and some milk and then you microwave that. So I hate it. I'm very sad, but Brock, you might be able to beat that. Yeah, I like everything that goes in there.

I feel like that that involves like ingredients. I think I think we can beat in anything that involves ingredients. This is like microwave your own hand. Microwave, I don't know, like bread, microwave noodles with ranch dressing, but you don't drain all the water that comes out of the noodles while you're microwaving it. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I feel like I probably had that. I didn't say not delicious.

I just said sad. Yeah. Oh, it's definitely sad. It was it was a suicide. Brock, where you have to be. Hank, you have to beat milk and peanut butter. Chicken soaked in milk and peanut butter and then microwave. I mean, good luck. Forty two.

Forty two. You guys are going early in the book. You're like, these are probably her best ideas. OK, lemon skate with mushrooms. Skate. Oh, it's a splendid specimen of fish hood. I can't beat microwaved skate and microwave fish. That is just yeah, you win. This is this is the saddest thing.

OK, so you're going to put breadcrumbs on this fish along with a can of mushrooms and some lemon juice. And then you're going to microwave that fish. And that's you're going to microwave breadcrumbs because that's why we put breadcrumbs. Microwave bread is the worst bread. So you guys. What old fish bread?

You guys both may be very sad. But Brock Way, I think he won that far and away. Chicken thighs, coconut, peanut butter are awesome. You you just that means what that means. Twenty percent of the universe just exploded. Oh, I hate it. The whole time I was Michael. I want to say that explains why you're such a dick.

The real sadness of microwave skate. Cosmic asshole. It's not when you eat it and you're like, yeah, that's not as bad as I thought microwave fish would be. It's like the it's like that's like your Saturday night. And then Monday morning, your kitchen still smells like stale microwave fish. That's yeah, this ruins like at least a week of your life. But you live alone, who gives a shit?

You live you're alone with your sadness. This really rubs that in. It's just going to mix with the other microwave smells. That's OK. So that's very sad. Let's get back to something happy. Who wants to go next? You guys both have some some pretty fantastic entries in.

Brendan, as the guest, you should go since we're getting all right. So I have been writing a comic series that is steeped in the Golden Age. And I have become strangely fascinated with this publisher, Victor Fox, who is basically this Murdochian figure, just a bombastic, egotistical, megalomaniacal piece of shit. And he's best known for getting sued for ripping off Superman. But he did everything like it was tax fraud. He was like skirting the government during the wartime effort.

He was ripping off artists. He was like cheating on his wife, all this stuff. So I've become obsessed with the Fox feature syndicate characters. And that is how I found Captain V, a.k.a. the puppeteer. And this guy is basically like a Golden Age Superman, but with like a patriotic bent. But because Fox was ripping off all of his creators, I think there was a lot of there was like all the characters end up changing their names after one issue.

And I think it's because somebody just like came in with another script and was like, I'm not putting the effort into this, which is how Captain V became the puppeteer. So he still has this red, white and blue, totally jingoistic uniform. But now he travels by a V beam, V beam, which doesn't sound. I mean, you know, Thor does the Rainbow Bridge. Cool. Let's roll with it. But he travels on on Patriot. It makes it hard to sneak up on a crook on the red, white and blue.

Because crooks always can detect patriotism because they they fear what they flee from. The puppeteer is an actual puppeteer named Gentlemannard. Definitely not mild mannered because he gets sued by DC. But Gentlemannard Allendale, you could you could sell puppets back then. That was like a real sustainable career. I actually have this in my notes. It is Gentle Carver. Gentle. Yes.

The puppets will know the soft touch of his plane. It's just the craziest thing you could call somebody, right? Like, that's that's something you say about someone in hindsight after you learn that they're a serial killer. You seem like such a gentle Carver of puppets. But you know, it makes sense. I never realized that all of the dead I was noting that the puppets he makes are of the puppeteer. Yes.

And they have. Hold on. They they the puppets he makes are of himself and he gives them to girls he likes. And they're hidden microphones so that he can listen to it so much worse than that. There's a reason all puppet themed comic characters are bad guys. You do not trust a puppeteer. And it's because they do this puppeteer because they make this is classic puppets. Puppet shit. So we meet the puppeteer in this issue

and his phone call goes something like, hello, puppeteer, the museum. Yes, your daughter wants a puppet next panel, panel two. I'd better put a listening device in this teenage girls toy. Like, there's nothing for trust. Where the reasons just happened yet for moist sounds. Certainly not that strictly. Just I'd better make a network of radio listening devices across the city. Then he gets the museum that I exclusively give to teenage girls.

Here's the thing, though. Like if a little girl says to her father, could you please use your position as a museum owner to leverage a puppeteer into giving me a puppet? I would think we need to figure out what the fuck's wrong with this girl. Like, let's just put a listening device on her just until we figure out what's going on with her. Right, I thought she was going to be like seven, two. And that wasn't even a problem, but she's like 14. And it's it is not OK.

There's a scam going on here. I haven't figured out what it is yet, but there's definitely like a density. I want a puppet and then she sneaks out to go smoke cigarettes by the river or something. So the puppeteer, whose secret identity is a man whose career is a puppeteer, and it should be noted here, looks exactly the same as a superhero and has no mask shows. He also makes puppets of himself like just no one specifies what kind of puppet she wants. The puppeteers, the puppeteer's secret identity is a puppeteer who makes puppets of the puppeteer. And no one's specifying.

He also has the same face as the puppeteer who travels by a V-beam, where the narrator actually says like everyone looks up and sees the grand site of the puppeteer traveling by a V-beam. Like, it's like a rainbow. He's a very visible superhero. You can see he goes right to his office. So I'm plainly my thought to follow it. My selection is plainly on the the bizarro side. And I'm counting on Brockway to give us the awesome side to balance out the force.

So the other thing you need to know about the puppeteer is this. He has a pet eagle named Raven. And oh, that was supposed to be an eagle. Yes, I thought it was a Raven because I just because his name is Raven and because he says Kaka. But he is a bald eagle who says Kaka and also talks. It's never explained. He just has a completely sentient talking bird pet. OK, golden age.

And nobody he interacts with other people who can hear him talking. And nobody's like, holy fucking shit, is that fucking eagle talking? Yeah, this is all like at no point. I mean, when a man jumps into your studio on a red, white and blue rainbow, honestly, the talking bald eagle named Raven is probably like the being named Raven is probably weirder than the talking bald eagle. Right. You know what? I hate to get political on this day, but I think this is the same strategy

that has worked on us through the Trump administration, where you just throw so much shit at them all at once that you're just. Yeah, OK. The logic is out. It just feels right in my pantry. Is this the next thing we're doing? To me, this feels like like a toddler story. Like my my girl is three now, so she can talk and she can tell stories. And oftentimes the stories will just have details like that, like, oh,

this eagle's here and he's a Raven and he says this. And and it's and she'll just move on from it. But like that's what Golden Age comics often feel like is they can be very awesomely insane, but sometimes really meandering and boring. And like that's what we have in this comic. Like the puppeteer is a very awesome comic because it's insane in exactly the right way. But so many of the other stories in this comic like Rick Evans,

Red Robbins, Pussycatnap, all these other characters in this comic are just stupid. Pussycatnap is actually Tigra's great grandmother. So I didn't know if anybody knows that. The first Pussycatnap has like one of those fake butts that you get in an adult bookstore for a face. She is a regular cat in a banging cartoon body. It's it's the first furry for sure. You know what I think it was?

I genuinely think we did not invent the concept of drafts until like 1970. So you just when you wrote something, you're committed. Is it I can't do anything about this. I'm sorry. I called him an eagle earlier. Like I wish there was some way to go back until somebody invents editing. So kind of a deletion, something like that. Do you know how much work it was to to replace something on a typewriter? Like you had to get white out.

You had to wait for it to dry. That shit was hard. No, I don't blame it. I don't blame him that everything they wrote was just to get deadlines. So if anybody wants to read this, it's on comic book comic book plus dot com under all good comics. And it is unreal is here's where things get crazy to turn into the puppeteer. Gentlemannered puppeteer Alan Dale sits down at a pipe organ.

Excuse me. Did you mean gentle carver of puppets? That was what you wanted you to think. You make fun of how the eagle is a raven and you're getting all this. He's a gentle carver of puppets. Come my puppet friend, let me free you from that block of wood. The puppeteer will gently eat you into existence. So never explain. Wow, you went Arlenauts at the that's true.

I did the creepier voice. Motherflesh. Shout out to our theme songwriter. We know that the reason the puppeteer can turn into capitals of the puppeteer is he sits down at a pipe organ again in his Jim Henson Dreamatorium. He has a pipe organ and plays Beethoven's fifth backwards to become patriotic superhero, the puppeteer. And that's we join you, gentle reader.

Now in my favorite part of this comic and the rest of it's pretty standard. I mean, he just he he like he looks like he's wearing a diaper. But otherwise, he just takes the V-beam and he like the daughters have vanished and everyone's like trapped in statues and he saves them before they suffocate. And the real hero of the story is Raven, the bald eagle. But there's a moment I love where he's chasing the bad guy in the truck and the bad guy's like, he'll never take me alive. And he like means it.

And he straight up tries to kill himself by driving off a bridge. These artists apparently he just started in the river. And like they don't mention it because he's a horrible Jewish. He's like a horrible Jewish stereotype for no reason. I kind of wondered. I didn't know if he was like is with the little Yomica hat and the hook nose. And he looks like a whip for that. Yeah, yeah, I didn't mention it.

But I I definitely sense that I didn't know if they were being like, OK, this is just some sort of artist's cap to keep plaster out of your hair. And also he's meant to be like this, a feet European type. Or just straight up anti Semitism. And I was reading it and I like I was catching up like it was like catching up 10 minutes before the podcast of my girlfriend is Jewish and I'm reading it and I'm like, please don't look over. Please don't look over. Don't don't break up with me.

You didn't get her opinion as a son of a honey. No, this is actually funny. The irony of it is that I know more about Judaism than she does. And I'm like always explaining because as a Catholic, you have to learn all this stuff. And so you're telling me you mansplain your I go explain Judaism to her. And she tolerates it because she's a saint. So the puppeteer is basically dragging this guy

across town on his rainbow bridge and everyone like it. They're kind of slow to work it out. They're kind of like, hey, there's a new statue that came from nowhere that looks exactly like your daughter. What's up with that? They bust it open and the guy is like very wisely got a chisel. And he's like, let me let me just like get the shell off. And he's like, you'll never do that.

And he punches through it with his haymaker with no regard for the young woman inside. But it works out unconscious. Yeah, she has not started up pretty good into a coma. Yeah, or you don't normally see that kind of thing. Like you would think all these comic book heroes would have accidents like that all the time. Like Colossus would pick up a young child to hug him and just like rip him in half.

But like this is one of those moments where he punches a girl out of a statue and she goes into a coma. Like they show this mistake. They didn't have to show. It's just very, very real moment in the life of the puppeteer. I must have to all day. I'm convinced this comic is like some Charlie Kaufman shit. And and he's really the bad guy, but we're seeing it from his point of view.

Right. Like, come on, the puppet thing, the bugging young teenage girls, knocking them out with his crazy powers. Right. Attacking Jews, like his enemies. This is our villain. This is our villain. And this is how he sees the world. I like your take. It's a good take.

We cut to the studio and this is where things get kind of like weirdly uncomfortable politically. But Raven breaks into the studio and no one notices. And this guy, who is an unsuccessful artist, but also can afford to henchmen is is arguing that his skills as a sculptor are also just coating people in some kind of like expanding foam and and he suckered punches. Sucker dumps a bucket of it onto the puppeteer, who is really just on this completely.

Yeah, like in a plaster of Paris on the puppeteer, he's just stuck. Prior to this, I was like, the puppeteer is like esoteric, but he gets the results. And this is really the moment where I lost a lot of respect. They load him into the car and Raven, the real hero of this story, attacks everybody, which breaks the puppeteer free. And he starts breaking dues, jaws and like launching them across the street. And that's when our villain, who I don't even know if he ever got a name, just straight up commit suicide.

Yeah, he doesn't even try to fight. He's just like, well, suicide for me. You know, I can't fight a man who can summon rainbows. That's like, come on. And you're a bucket of plaster at him. I mean, that's what else could you do? That was my one thing. I covered him in my strongest plaster and he still was set free by a bird.

Like they that's not honestly a realistic assessment of your odds at that point. So it reminds me of my favorite cartoon, which is the 60s Birdman cartoon, where Birdman would always just get immediately caught in a trap and an adventure. His bird would come in and rescue him. And so like, I really like this structure as this. Yeah, maybe birds used to do shit back then. Maybe like back in the day, we had pet birds that actually helped. In the 60s, you were either a falconer or you were dead.

And that's about the end. It's just, it's just, you know, it's all done with the act three. After that, he just saves the girl and delivers a stern lecture on morality of trusting puppeteers. It does just kind of end, huh? He just kind of, that's how comics used to just stop. I mean, you you killed the villain, saved the girl. See you next time.

Bye. I mean, it's the puppeteer. Well, what else can you say? He he gives little puppets of himself to teenage girls with microphones in them so you can listen to the masturbate. And then he plays the organ to power up. I like to think he's still out there. And he's the Avengers story is completely insane, but at least to have little little denouement, you know, it was self contained baseball game to sort of like what you didn't

see was the puppeteer was actually in the nosebleed seats at Astro Stadium. I don't want to join the Avengers, nor was I invited. I am having a lovely time. However, if a young lady is encased in plaster, I know who they'll call. He's just got like 40 speakers of all the puppets listening to the girls. All my good girls know to tell me when there's a crime. Just just a creep, just a probably founded classic. That anxiety and hope.

You just they don't make them like that anymore. Yeah, quality, quality creep. But what do they make them like these days? Brockway, why don't you show us a 21st century example? That was a really nice transition. That's our excellent. Look at Segway. Thanks, man. I'm a pro. I will not be Segway.

You piece of shit. Talk about the puppeteer. What's his motivation? Who's his mother? You dare Segway me? Are we doing both? Remind me of my failure. You're going to go first again as a loser, Brendan.

One through one fifty seven. Oh, man, I'm the trumpet today. OK, one through one. Let's go big. Let's go one fifty six. Oh, you're going to love this. Jelly sunshine. I think I win. It says the preparation is child's play.

It's a fresh tasting golden yellow dessert based on jelly and fresh mango. Question, how much urine is in this recipe? It says seven gallons. Oh, that's a lot. That's a big one. It reduces. It's a reduction. So here's how you make it.

You take four cubes of lemon jelly and a mango and your microwave. It's a fucking crazy shit. Eleven days of sad dessert for one. I dare you to beat that. That was that strong. God damn. No, no, confidence.

Confidence was working for me. There has to be something sadder in this book. All right, leave it. What a terrible way to end. You're supposed to go big. That was that was big. Reduce it into just a burned husk that will never come out of your microwave.

Mom, you microwave my Jell-O. A one on one. I'm a page one on one. OK. Cheese sauce for everything. Preparation fairly quick and trouble free. Here it is. You're going to love it.

Two large slices of processed cheese. Four tablespoons of milk. A teaspoon of powder mustard. And you microwave it. God damn it. Oh, man. You win. Microwave.

Is anybody actually microwave cheese? I can't believe how bad both of those ideas are. It separates into like solid and oil and coagulant. It's the worst thing. And then there's also two worst things to microwave are jelly and cheese. I found a way to process your processed food some more. Those are both real bummers.

I'm going to call it a tie. We're going to have to do a third round. Every one of these recipes is the last thing you would find when inspecting a suicide in an RV. Hey, there's a cold Jell-O mold in the microwave. God damn, that makes me sad. Yeah, that is classic RV tragedy. I give up on life after that recipe.

All right, well, let me let me bring you back with I'm bringing X-Men. Holy war. I'm bringing in this. This. Brendan, were you familiar with this storyline before we know the last X-Men storyline? I really read it was the Grant Morrison stuff,

which was right before this one. So when this when I saw Mr. Brockway selection, I thought, how bad can a 21st century expect? Oh, it's Chuck Austin. Yep. That is. You see, I knew you were a Catholic, so I wanted to pick something that would specifically target you.

This story. Well, I'd rather be the nightaller than the truck. So let's go. I have no idea how this story got published. It's like almost a hate crime. Basically, it's so unpleasant. It's so bad and it starts so bad. Here's how it starts.

Most people are sorry, more people have died from religion and cancer and we try to cure cancer. OK, this was 2003, so you could just Google how many people have died from cancer versus religion. And I promise you the author is not right. Like he's wrong, even for a 14 year old, like a 14 year old said that to you, you would not roll your eyes and be like, that's normal 14 year old shit.

You'd have to be like, this is pretty fucking stupid. We are one panel into this comic and we already have Sean baby defending organized religion. That's the power of Chuck Austin. Sean was the first atheist I ever encountered on the Internet in like 1998. Yeah, I think I mean, I'm definitely an atheist myself and I'm going to jump to organize religions defense

because this is the dumbest way to attack it. They're just throughout this comic, all throughout. Like I swear to God, 30 percent of the word Canada's comic is just barely relevant Bible quotes Yeah, that are said in like a shitty voice. I don't know how you I don't know how you do that in a comic, but you can just sense the text is meant to be read in a shitty voice. Right, like his nightcrawler is a Christian character

and that kind of comes up a lot. But then Havoc drops the his knowledge that like, oh, I also have the Bible memorized. And so they have like dueling Bible quotes throughout, like not not once, just constantly Bible quoting at each other. Like like a fucking Mensa meeting at Denny's, it is unsufferable. It's an interesting concept as be like, what if we had the X men but everyone was speaking entirely in Bible quotes?

I set a rule for myself because Chuck Austin is kind of known for being like he writes heroes who kind of make you hate them really quickly. Like he's kind of like a Mark Miller, minus the big moments. So I was like, I'm not going to just like take a swing at anything that's in here. I'm going to like make it work. I'm going to have to be like, take everything in the in the benefit

of appreciation and then only what sucks will remain. So the first issue kind of went OK for me. But wow, shit blew off when that Bible code competition started to. You're skipping way ahead, though. I still want to talk about the very start of it. We are right at the start. Yeah, religion killing more people than cancer is ludicrous.

But more ludicrous is when they introduce Wolverine, and it says Logan, often called Wolverine because he's short, tough and has these hundred inch claws that shoot out of each hand. And that's a direct quote. Hundred inches, which means at like the author thinks those are eight feet long. That that's what a hundred inches is. Chuck Austin. Well, well, the whole introduction of this is done through Nightcrawler's mental monologue.

So it is possible that Nightcrawler is just rock fucking stupid. See, I thought this was Chuck Austin because it doesn't sound like Nightcrawler. Well, no, because Chuck Austin's a bad writer and can't. Well, OK, that explains it. But there's a clue a little bit later after they they find all of their mutant friends crucified to death on the front lawn. Nightcrawler narrates himself. He says, I'm your narrator.

Nightcrawler and the women that I have sex with call me Blueberry Muffin. And he says that as he's looking at the crucified corpses. Right. That's the other thing. The tone is very off because they do find some crucified corpses and they're they're real cute. The captions are really cute. Yeah. And the artist knew to attack the scene with some sort of like shock or at least, I don't know, surprise.

So these all the characters are like gaping at these dead bodies of their friends. And and then Chuck Austin came in with these little captions of like, you know, loves tuna fish. It's very Chuck to be like, this doesn't quite fit what's happening at the moment. Everything's strangely like, have you met a human being kind of? But it is also very Chuck to not like the women very much and to put words into their mouth because like this guy hates me. They ask they ask her they asked Jean Ray to telepathically.

Oh, my God. Cyclops asks her in the first thing she says is like, totally bitches out on him. Like, well, you could say please. Yeah, she's she's a way to say, she goes, how can I refuse such a polite request? You're the only one with telepathy. Half a dozen of our friends are hanging in front of us. Just do it like this isn't this isn't about our marriage, Jean. He's the leader of a paramilitary group.

She has to be she has to be a bitch to him. Follow the chain of command. We need to know that. But can we at least give it to the Church of Humanity? They managed to crucify half a dozen people on the X-Men's front lawn without them noticing. That takes a certain amount of skill. Zero powers and zero apparently training as we'll see as we'll see later.

Anyway, several, several of the mutants are saved by a blood transfusion from Archangel, which is how on the nose this comic is going to be for the duration. The shirt, like you said, the Church of Humanity is behind the tax. And they they track them down because Knight Crawley tells the team like, oh, yeah, I didn't mention I became a priest to which like I would like to pause here. You're skipping over another one of my favorite parts where Angel, while he's giving a blood transfusion to like 20 different people at once, tells the nurse that chamber loves you and chambers the mutants

that doesn't have the bottom half of a face. He's like seeping energy out of his head. And the nurse screams, what? The kid without a mouth, please, there's nothing to kiss. If you knew anything about women, handsome, you'd know there's nothing more important than a man who can kiss. Right, because he's a woman and they are bitches. He is 15 feet away, not behind a wall, listening with energy,

just juicing out of his face in every direction. And I just love that so much that this woman is loudly announcing how she could never love a man without a mouth while he's standing in her eye line. Anyway, that's Chuck Austin, Chuck Austin views women. Just even the superpowered ones, the generous nurses, they're just ceaseless heartbeats. Just way to remind Shaber, you can never go down on a woman. Just your your complete inadequacy. He would blow her pelvis off.

Just he has no choice but to fuck like a monster. No, no backup plans for him. He has to go as to ask like a frog. But not like Toad, who actually has a very long tongue and can do a great many things. Welcome back to the X-Men sex hour. I'm your host, Brendan McGillie, Chuck Austin. I guarantee you Chuck Austin has has a long pitch that he's prepared for exactly the storyline, like how all of the Brotherhood of You Mutants fuck.

If we had if we had any comedic sensibilities as a podcast, we would just end it right there on as to ask like a frog. And I want to thank our Hot Dog Supremes at this point. Cue the theme song. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred hot dog. Our podcast slams with maximum hype.

Say hot dog podcast word. Thanks for listening to the Dog Zone 9000 podcast. Please visit one nine hundred hot dog dot com. Love this job and the business model only works because of your support. We'd like to thank our hot dog Supreme Patrons, Doug Redmond, Jamie Gordon, Benjamin Saranen, Dr. Awkward, Ken Paisley, Josh S, Yosarian, Zachary Evans, Adrian Hisbrook, Aidan Lwatt, Mike Stiles, Toasty Guy,

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