The Ringer-Verse - 'X-Men ’97' Season 2 Finale Instant Reactions, Plus Rob Liefeld! | Midnight Boys

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

The Boys are back to chat about all things 'X-Men ’97'! In the first half of this jumbo-sized episode, they share their thoughts on the 'X-Men ’97' Season 2 finale and the season as a whole before discussing the upcoming D23 expo and what they’re hoping to see revealed this weekend. Finally, the Boys are joined by none other than Rob Liefeld, who’s responsible for so many iconic X-Men characters. Rob shares his inspiration for Cable, his thoughts on Feige and Marvel, and so much more in this epic sit-down. (0:00) Intro (14:00) Spoilers ahead (15:22) 'X-Men ’97' Season 2 finale instant reactions (57:38) Midnight Meter: 'X-Men ’97' Season 2 (59:15) D23 predictions (1:29:04) Interview with Rob Liefeld (2:49:36) Outro Hosts: Van Lathan, Charles Holmes, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve AhlmanGuest: Rob LiefeldProducers: Devon Baroldi and Jamie YukichAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of the Ring ofverse is presented by Searchlight Pictures. More than ever, America needs a laugh. Enter Super Troopers to the rescue. The cult comedy classic returns with the most offensive installment yet with Super Troopers three. A debauchous bachelor party, an over-the-top wedding, and a dangerous drug smuggling ring, all threaten the troops' future. Fill your leader of cola and roll up to the multiplex for Super Troopers 3.

Meow playing only in theaters. Get tickets. Meow. Welcome to the Reiverse. This is, of course, Ringer's Nexus podcast. for all things, fandom. We are Steve, the architect, the builder, a tigger of things.

You're only the display of dinner on. You've got questions. You've got questions. You're your answers. Old man, band. He have the receding resurgent, hairline, Coke, baby chuck, the 24-carried clothes that together.

We are known as, I thought midnight boy. We'll be right back after this. I want to make an announcement. There's a midnight boys' party coming up. There's a midnight boy's party that's happening.

Okay. Might be in L.A.? Might be somewhere else. Might be somewhere else. Might be in New York. But there is a Midnight Boys party. I'll tell you why we're having this party. We're having this party to celebrate the fact that this fucking podcast is a 24-carat gold success.

We started this podcast six years ago, five years ago, whatever it was. And over the course of our evolution as podcasters, as brothers and friends, we are an entity in this space. It has to be said from us right now that the Midnight Boys have won and are continuing to win and are having a lot of fun. And we are going to party with you guys and have this conversation. We're going to do this party and it's going to be great. I'm just going to say I am about to switch up on niggis. Okay. Yeah, the day ones will not be hearing from me.

But this is my question for the party. I think this is an opportunity for an olive branch to various communities first. Byracials you are allowed in. Without doubt. But there will be a separate line for you. In the back. In the back session off. So you can't get to the, you know.

You will experience what our people have to experience. And I'm just a joke. Can't stop. Darkson. Skin sisters in first. Byracial. You might have to wait 15, 20 minutes. It might have to lay, like, we have corn dogs for y'all outside.

Corn dogs then. Nah, biratials, y'all, y'all welcome. The biratials y'all are a part of who we are at the midnight boys. Caucasians, you can try. A biracial summit, nerd summit. Yeah, why not? I can't wait to be on this council. You about to be racing a biracial.

Yeah, I'm about to say, you're adding to the problem. Right. Sure, shirt, sure. All right. All right. All right. I'm crazy. Come on, man.

All right. Files on socials at the Midnight Boys. Pod on Insta and TikTok at Ringiverse on Insta, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. Jummy. I just want to thank everybody for supporting during the House of the Dragon Run, man, the numbers went crazy.

And on our channel, Ringiverse, House of R. Y'all really came out of support. To continue that support through lanterns and the rest of the summer, I know it's going to be popping. Hey, they'd be working y'all during the Game of Thrones. season. God damn. Jomey was going through. I was fun for my life. The Game of Thrones is like our

NBA playoffs, it seems like. NBA playoffs go crazy. NFL playoffs go crazy at the ringer. It seemed like Game of Thrones our NBA playoffs. And then like there was the atomic bomb of just like, all right, it's Odyssey and Spider-Man. That was a that was a goal. Yeah, those, that month was it was great. And Comic-Con in between?

Fantastic. But, guys, we still got the house on Oak Street coming out. I've seen it this weekend. I got to see it. Is it the end? End of Oak Street. Apparently. You have me to do it.

Why do black people always be butchering? N. We don't really hear about that. The house on Oak Street. We're not worried about that. Can I say something now? The bitch is on Oak Street. That is true.

You did get the O Street first. So I will say that I didn't, I didn't, I didn't get the title right, but I didn't lie. The house is on OSTAT. Now, let's go back to this. I want to see it. I want to see it. I want to see it too. It's getting good reviews.

I was, I saw the thing. I'm like, I'm not watching no dinosaur movie, whatever. whatever. And then fantasy, everybody's like, yo, this is kind of a bang. It's dinosaurs? And it's 90 minutes. It's 90 minutes.

You like that. Oh, we get. Hey, midnight boys. Trip to the movies. And after, at the end of this year, we have to do, because this year, more than any other year, these actors was competing. Zendaya, Pattinson, Hathaway, Holland.

They all said it's my year to be in every movie. I got to put Robbie first. Oh, yeah. Aftaway? Dropping a number. Another. That Chris Hansen shit. Getting another meme off is crazy.

You see how this looks. I got to say something, though, man. Zendaya's there. Holland's there. You could make a very, very direct case for this year being a year of Hathaway. That's true. Hathaway going crazy in Devil Wears Prada, popping up in the Odyssey. She's on Oak Street.

She got this other crazy movie coming out. Mother Mary? Yeah. Yeah. Like she got, she going crazy. Is she closing out the year with something or no? I think she got the one with, she got the one with these crazy sex thing with Amanda Seafreed.

Do they, they're having sex or something? What? They're having sex. It's like this is scary sex movie with Anne Hathaway. All right. Before we get to X-Men 97, he's like, I will know that. Maybe it's another episode.

Yeah. Is Robert Pattinson, like, the greatest actor working? Like, not like the best, but, In terms of like he's on a heater where it's like, like, Timmy was there for a minute where I was like, Timmy was a little bit over him. And now I feel like our Pats is. We got to bring out the whiteboard and we have to do a 2026 actor power ranking. Oh. And we're going to do it here.

And we're not going to give a fuck about any other podcast that might do it. We're not going to care. Do you want to name them specifically? No, because I love them because I'm third chair. You're not third chair. Don't do that. I'm third chair. third chair.

The second chair. No, no, not, not, not, not, crazy you guys.

See, you guys, CR is my guy. Right. C.R. sent me a threatening message. Whoa.

About my claim of being third chair. And he's right. He sent me, CR intimidated. He, I liked it. Yeah.

C.R sent me a threatening message about my claim to third chair. I could make an argument that there is no more hated third chair. Like me being, me being,

me being hated as much as I'm hated by the big pick. Oh, no. When you go on there, I'm like, don't check the Reddice, bro. Don't check the, they're like, who invited this black man? They fucking hate me so much, but that's what makes a good third chair. CR is the lovable third chair. Tracy, I feel like, is the accomplished third chair. He's, I played Hamlin in Cambridge third chair.

And I'm the third chair that gets the shit. I'm the Skip Bayless. It's my turn. Hell yeah. I'm the skimmed of the big picture. I will just say that. That means something, though.

Mufferick's thing, like, C.R. is a wonderful human, very nice, but he'd be a little gangster. Like, you go on his corners, and he a little bit like, hey, yo, a nigga from Philly, man.

C.R doesn't. We got to respect them. Like, it's like, Ciar, man. But I'm saying, that can't stop me, though. Third chair, I'm with me.

I'm not going to let that slide, but I'm glad that you believe that. I should call up Amanda right now. Put her on the spot. We should have a, you know what we should do? A third chair power range? How about this? Hold on.

How about this? How about this? This is what we're going to do. Okay. Since this is a thing now. I'm proposing this. Okay. Since Tracy brought it up and now it's popping, I throw my hat in the ring.

I'm saying a third chair off. I'm going. There you go. Ringer wars. Fuck it. Because I say we were in, we were in VF. I'm like, hey, go get the third chair, dig it. Vanity Fair.

Go. Come on. I'm willing to go. Jesus Christ. Pod for pot for pot. With Chris Ryan? With Chris Ryan? Chris Ryan?

I don't know if you want that. Meen that boys, me like the nation of Islam right behind Van the whole podcast. Just standing there. I'm willing to go. You're holding a case. Yeah. By the way, put me on something non-superhero. Then put them on something superhero.

Right. See how they do. You're okay. Then put Tracy. Put Tracy. on the next fucking black movie that comes out. Put Chris on the fucking next cartoon. Don't Tracy on the Tyler Perry.

Put Tracy. And Big Pick, we want a Tyler Perry draft. Come on. Because look. Because look, if you think about it, if you think about it, I can go film bro movie. I can go Tyler Perry. Right. I can go comedy.

Oh, yeah. I can go all those. Man, how much you put Tracy on Medea's college reunion. Put Chris Ryan on the millions. Put Chris Ryan on. Minions. Ooh. Put Chris Ryan on a cartoon.

I could do the cartoon. I'm throwing my hat in the ring. Shout out. Skip Bayliss of the big picture. Third chair. I'm coming for it. And you know what? How about this?

Fifth chair. Let's see what are you guys. Come over here. Come to the... Let's see you guys go the crucible. Come through here. The crucible. Because we have Rob Leifeld on the show

later on. Hell yeah. And was one of the best fifth chairs we've ever had. Oh, dude. I will say, Rob was one of my favorite guests ever, but Rob Mahoney versus Rob Liefeld for the fifth chair. Rob. Rob. Rob.

Rob could be. The Rob Wars. You could throw Rob in there for the big picture if you wanted to. Why don't knickers hate on Rob. Rob is Rob. Nobody hates on Rob. Rob is a man. Mahoney's love.

Rob is the best, man. I only got 100% approval rating. Rob is the Nicola Yokicich of the ringer. I put bowling biscuits. Numbers, winner, doesn't want any to do anything outside of the thing but ride his horses.

What is CR? Huh? Is CR DeBron? Nah, C.R. probably the Steph. Oh. Bill is the bronze. Bill's the Steph. Ledg.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's your gym. What's Sean Finnerce? The Brunson. The Brunson. You're not just saying that for the Knicks connection.

Because of the Knicks connection. He's probably the Brunson. the championship. He probably won the chance. Sean probably won the championship of this recently. Probably won the championship. Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm the MB. Okay. You can stay healthy. Well, maybe. I go off. I go off. I don't know who I would be. Who's, who's the most hated player in the league? Oh, man. But, but, but can, oh, I'm KD. Uh, but you, uh, no, okay. Uh, no, okay. Uh, super efficient. Super efficient. Yeah. I'm definitely not efficient. And you two on line.

I'm the KD. You have to get off tour. By the way. And by the way, I accept that because I think that KD is now overhated, y'all, on KD too much. KD is a phenomenal player. I'm definitely the KD. I'm definitely the KD.

Are you got burners? You in group chats like, man. Burners, group crazy. I jump in the fucking Reddits. Right? Yeah, you do. I'm the KD. I fuck with it.

Fuck it. Get on the online and tell these people what the fuck you think, man. go out there and get a bucket. I also bring championships, though. All right, look. Snuff. Maybe, you know, I think that was a good comparison right there. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, we're on YouTube, like, comment, subscribe, share. You can watch the Midnight Boys and House of Our episode on YouTube. com, backside at Ring ofverse, and also on Spotify program. Reminders this Thursday. Butmash returns with Marvel's Wolverine and Star Wars Zero Company previews. Yes, sir. And this weekend, the Midnight Boys will be given our reactions to the D-23 Entertainment Showcase.

Okay, we have a mega episode today. Yeah, we're going to start off with X-Men 97, and then I was thinking, before we get to the Rob interview, let's just do a D-23 primer, because we need Vision Quest. What are we expecting with that? Black superheroes are down bad across the board, especially.

We got to talk about what happened with Wonder Man, Blade, X-Men news. Swaller. You see how this looks. We knew this shit wasn't going to happen. Yeah, you're right. So we'll run it the way Charles says. And then the Rob, stick around for the Rob interview. Oh, my God.

I tell you guys, I tell you guys, don't leave for the Rob Blackfield interview, the creator of Deadpool, the creative cable, the guy whose mind legitimately conjured. So much of the stuff that you're watching right now, Rob talks about his relationship with Marvel, very candid about his relationship with Marvel and Disney, why he rides so hard for creators, the creation of cable, the creation of image comics. I mean, Rob goes for like, 50. He's getting these sketches of casual sketches. We only had, we're supposed to only have for 30,

and we spent nearly like triple that time just talking to him about his experience, creating these characters and creating these worlds. He was getting these shit off. So incredible. It was amazing. Amazing, amazing. Okay.

We have to talk about X-Men 97. The season is over. Spoiler warning, please, Steve. We're getting ready to talk about X-Men. You're listening. Listening to a reaction podcast. The spoilers are coming. All right.

To begin our reactions, I don't know what manifest you're doing. I was just going to do a manifest for the finale. Because I feel like we're going to talk about the whole season, but probably the finale first. The finale, okay, cool. To put you in the need to know, Chuck Wagon, Midnight Manifference.

All right, there's your Midnight Manifest for X-Men 97, directed by Chase Conno M.A. Yonamura, written by Brian Ford-Sullivan. Our three X teams are in a deadlock. X-Corp, led by Scott and Gene, want to save Gambit, X-Factor and X-Fory's turn forces to kill Gamut and put an end to Apocalypse for good. Rogue Beeson Nightcrawler make it to the Celestial Shrine, where Rogue asks a celestial to give her powers to stop her ex-boyfriend. Ison is like, I got you, girl, but you're going to have to die for it. Cable gets trigger happy and shoots Gambit, awakening the dormant apocalypse sleeping within him.

Before Gamba, Apocalypse can kill all of his friends, Rogue saves the day. But before she dies, her brother Nightcrawler sacrifices himself and takes Roe's place in the afterlife. that has been your manifest for the season finale of X-Men 97. So do we want to talk about how we felt about the season first or how we felt about the finale first? I may start with the finale. I think I enjoyed this finale. I did.

Just bear with me on this. The season as a whole, I think, is different from the first season in the sense that there's like the straight line narrative. right last season like they take us through what jubilee was up to and what storm and ford drew up to this season it's like rogue night crawler uh gambit like those are like kind of our main characters we're rolling with and and cable obviously we're rolling with them i think this finale kind of like was the you know coming together of all of that especially with you know rogue going in and thinking she sacrificed herself to save gambit but eventually it's like no night crawler

went and took that for her right i feel like if you're going to make Apocalypse the big bag, actually make him the big bad, right? Like, let's have them fight Apocalypse at the end. And so, like, that was a little disappointing in the sense of, like, I like see the X-Men, take out of apocalypse, like, in this new show, in this world. But other than that, I think, like,

it was a serviceful finale. I thought Cable was going crazy. I love, like, I kind of feel like, if you Cable, your parents were like, hey, calm down. You're like, nah, I'm going to just beat the hell out. of you. That's kind of crazy. But I thought it was a good finale. This show has been able to really nail

the quirkiness and the dramatic nature of the X-Men. The X-Men's got a lot of drama to it. It's the soap opera element of the relationships between the cast. And these characters are odd. They're odd

and they're weird and their portion of the Marvel world is odd and weird. A couple of times characters from outside the X-Men world show up in this. Like Captain America shows up, like Widow shows up. They seem so normal when talking to a guy that, you know, has claws coming out of his hands, you know, and looks like a wolf, right?

And so I think that's the thing that X-Men 97 gets right, and it gets it so right that is difficult not to love the show, whether or not the narrative of the show is operating on like 100 or whether or not it's operating on 85. you feel, at least I feel, immersed into the world of the X-Men in a way that no other property has ever been able to quite give you. And that is, even if you read, even if you watch an episode and you didn't like it, it feels more like a comic that you didn't like than a television show that you didn't like. A comic that you didn't like, I saw it, whatever, they'll make it back up in the next one. Maybe the last panel gets you or something like that. But a TV show feels like a failed dramatic endeavor.

I said all that to say that I liked the finale. I thought using Gambit in this was smart. Although I would say that like there wasn't as much connective tissue from the death of Gambit in the first season to the return of Gambit. The show is so scattershot that it has problems sometimes building on even like really dramatic things that happened before. Because it's almost like new episode. Oh, now we're fighting the danger room. now we're doing this, now we're doing that. In that way, it does feel like a comic book,

and comic books sometimes are bad at that too. I think the, this was an uneven season. To me, the perfect, the perfect version of X-Men 97 was the Weapon X episode, where I was like, there's everything I love,

where you throw Wolverine, but then a bunch of weird characters together. Yeah. And there's, The brood and Morse relationship with Wolverine. I was like, all right, this is a 10 out of 10 episode. This is why I love the X-Men. And when I got to the finale, I'm going to be real with Shaw.

The celestial bullshit, the fucking rogue getting powers, gambit, like being apocalypse and then looking like him. I'm like, all right, this is where you get a little loss in the sauce with me. Where, like, the Polaris, the Polaris. Bishop shit all season loved I thought it was great it was just sometimes I was like I'm gonna be right I don't know if the Apocalypse shit worked this season like whenever

they went back to Egypt up in Apocalypse I was like I don't know it was strong in the beginning in the beginning when Manito was there yeah when he kills Magneto all that I was like I was like I think that's fair really really really strong start to this season and a

pretty solid middle. I really like the finale, honestly. Probably because I think the last two episodes, Dead Man's Hand and this, featured my goat, Nightcrawler, getting it in. Oh, man, he went crazy. Piecing up, like, the entire team. And they had that sequence where he's, like, bamphing,

and, like, you see, Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop, first person, that was cool. That was cool. Yeah, no, no. But I think the relationships that I have with certain characters in the X-Men, everybody gets that moment.

And, again, Nightcrawler being one of my favorites. him having several great moments in the finale of this is like kind of perfect to me. I loved it that a little bit more than everything else. I think the way that this ends, it doesn't really, not that I'm looking for too much of a setup, because we have the mystique intrigue of what could be coming around the corner, but it ends very, very quickly after like the resolution of like, okay, well, the sacrifice play is now made by Nightcrawler. I think overall this is pretty good,

but again, not as strong as the first season. I mean, I thought that while it might not have been as strong as the first season, to me, this season was proof positive that this show is real and can be around for a long time. Oh, for sure. Because it has something to say and a very distinct way of saying it. Gambit coming back maybe wasn't as emotional, resonantly resonant, resonant, resonant, resonant, resonant, as emotionally resonant, mushrooms, as emotionally resonant as it should have been.

But Gambit as the bad guy was pretty fucking scary. When I thought like when he, like a horseman, right, in episode, in episode eight, I was like, I see it. I can like feel it. In episode nine, when he's like, it's Gambit Apocalypse, I'm like, all right, bro. Gamut apocalypse, whatever. But when he's a horseman and he's, yeah, goes back home. and the thieves in the Assassin's Guild is there and he takes him over and he's fighting him.

He is a pretty, pretty fucking, like formidable villain. Then, of course, Roe goes with him, which was interesting that, you know, he's doing all this stuff and she still goes with him, she wants him back. That's true love, baby. I guess true love.

Gray skin and red eyes. She got no loyalty. The minute he did, she switches up with Magneto, Magneto gets pieced up. She back with Gambit. She switches up on Magneto when he was alive. Yeah, at the end. And I'll say about Magneto, there wasn't enough to me.

Once again, it's just like the comics. Somebody goes, they move on pretty quickly. But the drama, the dramatic weight, the anguish of Professor X and Magneto's relationship and Magneto being killed by Apocalypse was such a gigantic thing that worked so well to me. In Sabineur worked really well. All of that stuff worked really well. when he becomes apocalypse, you have the same problem that you sometimes have

with Apocalypse in the comic book, which is you don't know what to do with Apocalypse because Apocalypse is so fucking strong. Like, what do you do with him? He's going to be around forever. You beat him, you put him back in it. You contain him, whatever. The show went through that same thing a little bit for me.

It was the apoc... It's not that I didn't like... I like Apocalypse as a character. the massive failing of apocalypse to me is the same thing that happens when like galactus is there where it's like well galactus's power is to consume worlds but if he consumes all of earth the story ends and apocalypse whole reason for being as a character is like I'm ushering in a new era where only the strong survive but if I do that that's why age of apocalypse in the comics works because you're like okay they're in a new world where we get to

see what happens when Apocalypse makes good. In this season it's like, oh, he never really gets to do the apocalypse thing. Well, I mean, age of apocalypse also works because you stay there for a while. So they create a whole new narrative inside the age

of apocalypse and that becomes your world for a while and you read that saga as long as it goes and then you come out of it, right? And you're so happy to get out of it. The question is, if you're watching X-Men 97, do you want the age of apocalypse, but like a whole

season. Do you want it for two seasons? You know what I mean? Can I ask, and this was something that, because it works sometimes and then it doesn't with others, where X-Wan 97 does this thing where they pull from so many classic storylines, but sometimes I'm like, oh, it feels like you're not

lingering on it enough. Like, I like, I like the Danger Room episode with, like, when the Danger Room becomes danger and everything. But I was like, damn, I could have used two episodes of the setup because I'm like, like all of the mutants that I love, whether it's Quentin Quire or Sink,

or all of these new characters, and I'm like, oh, shit, they're gonna do danger. And then the kind of dispatch of her, like, immediately, and I'm like, you guys could have. But see, that's kind of the thing that I like about the show. Yeah. What I like about the show is,

hey, you go, oh, my God, it's over. It's like, it's like. But like, you freak out when Morph becomes Spider-Man for two seconds. It's over. They get right back. to it. That is the breakneck pace that the show is operating with. And I did not think that they would continue to do that after the first season, which I was, which is why I was really, really on edge about what an X-Men 97 second season would be. It's not quite as good as the first season,

but this was really good to me. I liked it. Oh, you think it was? I think, I think the highest, I think the highs of season one are better, but this season is more consistent. Oh, because... You think this is actually a winter season? I don't think it's better. I think the highs of the season are better, there's more consistent season.

Think about it. Season one, you get the Jubilee episode, right? What. And then you have, like, the... Let's be honest. And then you have the forge, storm stuff. Watt. Right?

Not terribly whack. That wasn't that way. It was kind of wet. Those were like three episodes. And you're like, all right, bro. This season, you have the, the first four go crazy. And then you have the Weapon X episode.

And then you still have another Jubilee episode. And then, I mean, the Jubilee episode is the X, uh, the X-Forst episode, which is, which is cool. We like, I like the X-Force episode. I enjoyed that. Um, and then you have the, do you have the Weapon X episode? Then you have the Dangerube episode. Like, all that stuff, like, that works for me. So I'm like, I'm watching the season.

I'm like, the magneto stuff missed. It's the apocalypse shit that like, like, I was like, every single time they have motion where I'm like, oh shit, X-factor, X-Force, hell fucking yeah. they go back to a pot. I was like, God damn it. But I will say we have to, I'm going to put this out here. I'm not trying to hate. If this is too sadgi-sodging, you let me know.

Does Jubilee suck? Like, this show wants me to believe in Jubilee. They're really trying to make it a thing. We've been asking this question since like 1987. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I always liked Jubilee. Jubilee's relationship with Wolverine.

I always liked always. There was one time where Jubilee got super busy against the Reapers and the Revers. got super busy against the Revers, and it was like, she's, she's cool. They've always been able to make her cool in a pinch. I never had that much of a problem with her, but there are people, since I've started reading the X-Men, and every time she shows up in the panel, they go, what the fuck are they doing with Jubilee again? So, because here's it, in the comics, Wolverine always has a sidekick.

At first, it was Kitty Pride. Then every other sidekick after, just to me, is like, whatever, because you have Jubilee armor and they try to do it with Pixie. I'm going to be honest. Kitty Pride is the one. Jubilee is just like lesser dazzler and dazzler already sucks. Lesser Dazzar. That's a crap.

They both have. Apologize to Jubilee, man. Apologize to Jubilee. They're better than fucking Jubilee. They both suck though. Wow. That's a perfect Charles compliment. Jesus Christ.

Name some male characters that suck. In the X-Men? Yeah. Maggot? Oh, you don't like maggot. Who's the bone niggott? Oh, that's Merrill. Spike?

Spike from Evolution. He was from X-Men Evolution sucks. Yeah. Havoc sucks. Oh, Havoc sucks. Havoc sucks. Havoc is a Fed. Yeah.

Every single time Havoc shows up, he is the Fed. He's always on the side of the humans. I mean, well, you know, we have other people that have been members of X-Factor before as well. I never liked X-Factor. I mean, X-Factor was, some of those books were fun, but like, they worked for the government, man. If I, if I'm being real, I'll say this. I think there are more X-Men, there are more X-Men in the male category that suck than women. Well, because Claremont came through.

Because you have Gene Gray, Emma Frost, Cylock, Storm, Rogue. Hitters. Like, literally just. Hitters. Hitters. Going crazy. Yeah. Going crazy.

But once you get out of, once you get out of, like, the big ones, like, Wolverine. Cyclops, Colossus, Nightcrawler, you start getting to the... Do you like Beast? Beast sucks. Do you like Gambit sucks? No, Gambit sucks. No, no, you're out of your mind.

Gambit sucks. No, no, no, no. You're all in... You're all in a rogue. You're all in... Gambit is cool because Rogue is cool. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Rogue works as a character on her own.

Gambit needs... Gambit is legitimately one of the most awesome X-Men to come, like, it is. Gambit wouldn't even make the top 25. It's tough. Gambit won't make the top 25. We did a list of top 25, X-Men. Gambit would not

make the top 25. I mean, 25 is like a lot of X-Men. That's too many X-Men. Yeah, that's too many. If you said like top 10, maybe, I might give you top 10. I might not even give you top 15. Not top 25. Gambit's in the top 25 X-Men. Come on. Let's be for real, man. Okay, do this. I don't say that. Jack Harlow

of the fucking mutant? Name 25-Harm. Name 25 X-Men better than Gambit, bitch. We're going to pull out. We're going to pull out the list. All right, off the top, we can go, all the original, all the original five better. Angel? Angel is better.

Archangel is way better than Gambit. Archangel is not better than Gambit. Come on, man. I might give you Iceman. I might give you Iceman. I might give you Iceman. Guys. Archangel is better than Iceman.

Guys. Guys. Guys, guys, guys, guys, maybe Iceman. I bet, wait, whoa, whoa, oh, wait, wait, whoa, Rick Remender, uncanny X-Force. That all that was, like, Iceman's second mutation, probably got Gambit, but like, it's, come on. Like, like, again, okay, keep going. Literally all of the giant-sized X-Men. Is Beast Batman and Gambit?

Yes. You're not serious. We're talking about characters with good storylines who are fundamental to the X-Men. Beast has way better stories than Gamble. He's calling right now. He's calling Kerm. Oh, God. He's like,

is this beast has not better than Gambit, bro. Beast is better than Gambit. No way. Beast is way more interesting than Gamby. Hey, yo, Kermen, man, you on,

you on the Midnight Boys right now. I got a question for you, man. Are there 25, are there 25 X-Men that are better than Gambit? 25 better than Gambit? Yeah.

Let's play the game. Fuck it. Um, 25. I'm thinking of, like, you can think of, like, deep up, like,

sink. You got to put sync over, Cink over Gambit? Sink over Gambit? All right, hang up on the other. Cink? No way, bro. No way, bro.

No way, bro. They explained to me. What are we talking about? So I, so. Power or relevance of character. As a character. As a character. Nobody.

Yeah, obviously, Gamma's top 25 character. Yeah. Top 20. Yeah. So there are 25 X-Men better than Gamby. Name them. Charles. Charles is trying to name.

25 characters that are better than Gambit. Everyone who's on giant size. Kitty, Katie fucking Pride. Silo. No, no. Not everybody that was on giant size. Colossus is not better than Gamby. Colossus is better than Gamby.

He's not. Yes, he is. No, no, bro. Not everybody that was on giant size. No. Crawler better than Gambit. No. Colossus better than Gamby. Storm better than Gamby.

Curbs trying to jump in. It's iconic. Gomi, like, yeah, Gamba's got to be top 25. He's just, he's an important character to the X-Men. is it mostly because of Rogue? Absolutely. Absolutely Rogue carrying it for that nigger. But you got to put Gambit on top of the time.

You got to do it. Thank you, Kerm. So I honestly don't think that Rogue is carrying it for him. Rogue is carrying Gambit. Like, legitimately. I don't, I don't think that Rogue is carrying Gambit. I don't. I don't think so at all.

I think if, so I think that I just got to be honest, I got to play old niggas shit. Man is old. Y'all were young when Gambit took the world by storm, man. Gambit was the one. Like, Gambit was the man, bro. In Louisiana, too.

Yeah, Gambit was the man, too. Charger playing card. Throw that ho. Talk like funny. Worst staff. Worst fucking superpower ever. No. Nineties bullshit.

Whenever they needed to give somebody a power, They like Bishop, oh, he got some energy shit. Gambit, give him some cards. Energy shit. Worst than giving everybody telepathy? Yeah. Yeah, but here's the thing. At least with telepathy, it's like, okay, they get the second mutation where it's like, oh, you got telekinesis.

Which is teleconnesis. Nope, but Andrew Diamond. Oh, we're giving you fucking knives. That's cool. We're giving you knives. Gambit has a staff. He can also charge. He's a fucking man.

A staff sucks. Just like Tim Drake's staff. sucks. No niggit in a line of fucking weapons is like, I want the boasted. That's why you hate Donatello too, man. Crazy, bro. We go one day, you know what, Middye Boys get to write the X-Men. Gambit was one of the most,

Gambit was really one of the most popular X-Men of the Ninthes. And then, and here's a thing. He had, he, you want to know what? Gambis the Jarl rule of the X-Men. He had a crazy run. I like some J-Rul songs. Nigger, I'm not putting a whole J-Rul album

wrong in my way. But if you're talking about the rappers of that era of that time, you can't talk with J-Rul is one of those ones? Is J-Rul a top 25 New York rapper? Yeah. A top 25 New York rappers? 25 is a lot. 25 is a lot. What are you talking about?

Yeah. Dog, 75% of the Wu-Tang Clan would make it over. And that's like 80. But if you just talking about you like J-Rul through the top 25. If you, if you just wait, if you just talk to

about. Gambit had one good era. We need X-Men who've had multiple eras. Bees has had multiple eras. Bees has not had multiple. Bees never had an era, nigga. What are you talking? Bees was an Avenger. Bees never had an era, bro. Bees was an an Avenger. He had his ape form. He was going crazy in the Morrison run.

There's evil fucking beast from the age of fucking apocalypse. What are we talking about? He got busy in the fucking movies. All of that stuff is cool. That nigga ain't got, that nigga ain't got, that nigga ain't fucking. Gambit, y'all are judging Gambit off one good, like he had a five years. Can I just give you something?

I just, I just, I just, I just asked Gemini this. Oh, God. This is Vand's AI of the week. First it was Claude, then it was Chatsy P-T, now it was Gemini. Okay, okay, okay, okay, listen to what Jim and I had to say. Family who can't drink water because of this. Because it is right here? Yeah.

It costs one of these. Just throw this away. Bitch, look, that's bad for the environment right there. Just shut up. Right, right, right, right. The most popular X-Men characters include iconic heroes and anti-heroes like Wolverine. Storm Cyclops

Magneto Rogue and Gambit suck me The minute you pulled out AI you lost them That's true I know Y'all don't use clot

No No I don't ever use Claude No I like to do my Damn they got maggot at 100 Okay so entertainment At 100

They got Magid at 100 Entertainment Weekly Entertainment Weekly Root Okay so Ken I can't No AI No AI you guys are too woke for that Can

Can I use Entertainment Weekly's list? No, we're going to make our own list. It is going to be our own list. They got Bishop at 63. That's crazy to me. Wait, who do they have at 60? Bishop.

Bishop at 63. Oh, that's too high. You're going to have siren at what, 12? Yeah. Wait, you go have siren at 12? Banshee at 15. Polaris at 9. Wulst Bane at 20.

See, y'all, Hey, Cabellon, with you, Cabell's with you? Ciphero. So, Entertainment Weekly has, this is the Entertainment Weekly 25. 25 is Jubilee.

All right. 24 is Shatterstar. 23, already in leech, 22, sidelock, 21, Legan. 20, the age of apocalypse edition,

Magneto, 19, Mero, 18, Kitty Pride, 17, the multiple man. 16, Emma Frost, the white queen. 15, Husk,

14, Mystique. 13, Xavier. Okay. Okay. All right. 12 havoc, 11 Colossus, 10, blink, nine, Deadpool, 8, Gambit.

Then Beast. Beast, they got Beast ahead. Then Beast, then Cable, the Nightcrawler, the Rogue, then Storm, and Cyclops, and then number one Wolverine. This is the worst list. This is kind of, yeah. That list is crazy.

Blink at 10 is. Multiple man even in there. Oh, what are you talking? Madrox gets, fucking. Man. Y'all think you're like, nah, bro.

Multiple men. See, y'all wasn't around at the height. Multiple men had a fucking hive, bro. Multiple men. Peter David, I think it was Peter David's X-Factor run with a Madrach, Siren, M, strong guy, Wolfsbane. Y'all not, y'all wasn't really in the field like that.

So according to this list, the only X-Men that are, there's there's gambit hating the word he is the 90s vision of cool like they were saying that he is the man and gambit was the 90s I can't literally I cannot respect that list so so according to his list though beast cable cable of course night crawler rogue storm

cyclops Wolverine outside of you know where was jeanette jean gray yeah let me see I can't with you, she's in there. Oh, shit. That's a lot of scrolling.

That's a lot of scrolling for Gene, man. Don't be bringing up that entertainment. I was thinking about it. Where's Gene at? Oh, she's 30. 30. Yeah, no. No.

No. No. Oh. No. E.W. You can't tell the story of the X-Men without Jane the Phoenix saga is the one of the most influential. They're just talking about the top of all time.

Hell no. See, y'all going through this list and you realize them like, damn, there are. It's not 25 people are better than Gambit. Because even if you took all of these people. Cyclops, Wolverine, Gene, Storm, Benito, Professor X, Iceman, Beast, Angel, Cannonball, no. Madra. No.

No. You got, you got to like eight or nine. Sunspot. I love Cannonball. Sunspot, no. Kitty Pride. No. No.

Even if I let Kenny Prize. Like that's like, nine or ten. Huh? Rogue is better than the game. Magic. Cylock? Magic?

Illiana Rasputin? You're bugging. She kind of, she's having a moment right now. She is having a moment right now. Magic. Magic is having a moment right now. She might be having,

okay. Magic has better comics. Okay. Hey, guess what we're going to do. This is what we're going to do. We're going to solve this. We should have did this with Rob, but we're going to bring somebody else on.

We're going to bring somebody else on and we're going to solve this. We need Simon on the pod. Kimberg. For the time. Top 25? Yeah, Kim Burr could do it, but Kim Burr going to do the top 25 in his movie universe.

All right, okay. No, we need the comics. We probably need the comics. Simon knows a lot about this. Simon knows a shit ton about this. But I think if we were going to do the movie universe, it would be better to bring Simon on, which we should, by the way.

We do an X-Men movie ranking because Rob Lifel was very complimentary of the Fox World, which is what Simon was in the market. And they're coming back in Doomsday. Yeah. But yeah, we need, who can we be? bring on? Who could we bring on? Oh, this might be a time for us to collaborate with our friends

over at the nerds at the cool table who have been asking to do this podcast for a long time. How many people we're going to have on? It'd be like 10 niggas. This is going to be the Joe button. Bring a couch in. Do you say we're going to be like the Joe button podcast? There's like 80 people on that pod. Yeah, it's good though. Yeah, it's good. The more to marry it. So like this will be an opportunity to do this, but we're going to do the definitive. We're going to put a lot of thought into this. Wait, so should we do time?

50 there. We'll just do 50. We'll need to do 100. It's not 100. But this is going to be the definitive list. Honestly, we got the website too. We want you to put this on the website too. Midnight Boys. Midnight Boys is the definitive top 50 X-Men list. And before we even get into the list, we need to come up with criteria and a metric that puts all of this stuff together.

So because I think it's like it should be relevance, like cultural relevance. honestly how cool the character is I think we should even put what's their best like moment best comment moment like a run or just like single issue like it could be a single issue it could be a movie or whatever what's the defining thing because y'all be bringing

up Gambit and I'm like all right drop the Gambit stories I can't believe they got Gene Gray at 30 Gene Gray 30's insane that's that's nuts that's crazy that would be like all right I'm ranking NBA players I got Luca Donchish at 30 I mean

I think that Gene is too important to be at 30. Gene sucks a little bit. But I do see how people. I mean, you got to put her like top top top. If she's not the best, she's certainly one of the most important. She got to be top 10. I'd say top 15. Top 10, top 15.

Top 15. I'm telling you right now. But one thing we do know. Who? You put blink over G? All right. Blink ain't even making my. Blinck?

They got blink at 10. What are we doing? They got bleak at 10. But also we, here's the thing. If we're doing it, we also. When I say 25, you have to realize, I'm also counting villains. So it's like Magneto is better than Gambit. Mystique is better than Gambit.

Mr. Sinister to me is better than Gambit. I mean, first of all, I don't really, I'm not really counting those people. I don't really count them as much, but I really would not put some of those characters. Those characters aren't even involved in enough stores and not around enough to be better than Gambit. I mean, Sinister is around, but Sinister's gone for, like, runs and you only pull on Sinister when you need Sinister. Do you think, like, Mystique is more important? important than Gambit. I mean, sure.

Maybe. I think she's a better character. Yeah, I mean, Mystique hasn't really, like, sure, sure. I just, I honestly think that maybe Gambit's heyday was over

by the time you guys really got into the shit. Gambit's hate it. As a kid, I was like, me and Gambits, the coolest motherfucker ever. And then I started trying to throw cards. I'm like,

this is whack. Oh, so you just because you couldn't do it. Just because you couldn't do it. This is a hatred that I'm talking about, the hate you of heart. All right, we got sidetracked. Now, Gambit.

Gambit time. All right. Back to the show. Let's look forward. All right. I think that we all pretty much enjoyed parts of what we saw. I enjoyed the entire season. I thought it was good.

There were highs, there were lows with the way that they tell their narrative there's always going to be. What are the legs on X-Men 97? Because what's about to happen now, right? This weekend, we're going to be in Anaheim. Yeah, D-23. A D-23.

And when we're in D-23, what's going to happen is they're probably going to announce a new X-Men cast for the X-Men movie. What you're probably going to see, guys, particularly post-Secret Wars, is the MCU become the X-C-U. The X-Men world is so big and so deep with lore and so lush. There was almost in the 90s, almost Marvel and then the X-Men. You could just be into the X-Men.

and never give a fuck about nothing that was happening with the Avengers. Maybe you would get Spider-Man and you would get X-Men. At a point, when the Ultimate Carnage series run happened, I remember a lot of my friends,

we re-invested even into Spider-Man. I started recollecting Spider-Man through Ultimate Carnage and stuff like that and all of that. Spider-Man is never going to be a character that goes away. He's a Bellwether character for a comic book's period.

But the X-Men were all encompassed They had, we were in talk to Rob about it. It was X-Force, X-Factor, X-Caliber was kind of in there with, in the mutant world and everything that was going on. It felt different than everything that was happening. I remember the gold and blue team. I remember X-Men Gold. X-Men Blue. Yeah.

Like going against each other, fighting against Magnet. So much stuff was going on. And even if you think past that 90s run, I remember when Ultimate X-Men dropped and that gave them another fucking boost where it's like. Yeah. Astonishing X-Men, fucking new X-Men. God, damn. So if the MCU decided, if they were to decide that they could, that they wanted to get knee-deep into the X-Men and kind of let that be the world for a while, they could do that. I'm not saying that they could do that.

There's a random question. Do you think Storm gets a solo movie if Black Panther does what he, like Black Panther is going to do what it needs to do? But is Storm a character where you're like, hey, we couldn't get played right. to the job, but, I mean, do we, I mean, I guess it's different. I mean, you think about, like, solo X-Men movies. No, hold the, calm down. Calm down. Oh, man, they cast Jamie Lawson in the movie where she, the main character, she's

storm, I'm not going to be their front row and watch it a thousand times. What are you about to say? Do we what? Right, but like a solo movie, if it's like Storm doing her thing by herself, I'll be there, obviously. But, like, this is a big universe. It's just a massive world. If we're throwing people in there,

then is it still a storm movie? Is it just like an X-Man joint? You know what I mean? Okay, Jomey, you know what you're doing right now? Calm down. Listen, I'll tell you what you're doing right now. But you could have been like... Can I tell you what you're doing right now?

It could have been anybody. Is it okay? No, I'm not letting that slide. I'm not letting you get this off. I'm not letting you get it off. No. I'm not allowed to talk? No.

Okay. How about that? You could have said anybody. You could have been like, do we need a Wolverine movie? Do we need a... No, like, obviously, like, I don't know if... Are we past this, though?

The man is trying to set you up. Did the gentleman just say that we're past kneeling? Y'all see what I got to deal with? Jomi said what I did with? They were like, oh, Jomi changed. Oh, Jomi different. He lied on me. He said we passed kneeling.

Dog, he heard of African Queen was going to get a solo movie. Hold on. The Joe me said, do we need this? Oh shit! That's funny. I lost consciousness for a second. That's funny. Do we need this?

That's funny. Do we need this? So, look, put the X-Men in the X-Men movie. We're getting solo X-Men movies. I don't know what you tell you. Really? Yeah, we absolutely are. I think they could probably be a bit more interconnected.

Like, they're the main character of this movie, but I don't think we should be interacting with other ones. I don't like when we get solo X-Men books. like I like storm to me works the best when she is a part of a team not because she's not a great character but it's like the ex men only x-men who can really have his own book to me is wolverine the rest of them kind of are like name me another solo ex-men who can like really really carry a book was good just because of the nature of the character i used to always love his book and collect this book wolverine as a guy who was going all over the place searching for his past he had to me, the most lore surrounded his solo character. He didn't know who he was. He was part of this gigantic government experiment. He was trying to figure that out.

At one point, Wolverine's book was kind of like almost like The Mandalorian, being that it was like, Adventure of the Week type of structure. And it always worked for him just because of the mystique around the character itself. It would be harder to do that with some of the other X-Men who have all of these

like relationships and stuff Like, if Scott's going on, well, what is Gene doing? Well, Gene would have to be in every single Scott book. And these characters are very sectioned off and they're connected to the goal of what Xavier has going on. And I haven't said that, Storm, in all seriousness, would be one that you could do some different shit with because she has a lot of stuff in her past

and can go different places. She could be bouncing around Wakanda or whatever. Hang out with Ford. You could also do, like, the corny version of the Storm movie where like, you know, storm goes to a place where it's a bunch of niggas and it hadn't rained in a long time and she makes it rain

and then she gets niggas out the hood or some stupid shit like that. She cleans up the hood or something which is probably what they'll do. They probably do storm like in South Baton Rouge and there's environmental problems and stuff like that

and the people need help. She got to fight the EPA? And then it's like, yeah, she got to fight the EPA and it's like, oh, an angel has come down and helped us and like she's actually a mutant but people didn't know

they went to church, they prayed for an angel and the angel came in and it was storm and Storm helped everything. I hate whatever. The cliche, damn, the niggas need water. And that Storm is like, I was like, I mean, that's the version of Storm movie they make is like, you know, it's like, hey, man, we need somebody to come in and Storm an angel.

No, we don't know what mutants are, blah, blah, blah. She got power. She helps us all, but done it, all of a sudden she flies off at the end of storm. That's why I don't mind, like, people have been talking about this, like, in Black Panther 3. And then it's kind of like Gene Grains, Spider-Man, Spoilers. and then it's like set up for this wider universe. Like that part I can get with. But like, yeah, I don't really, I don't need a solo psychops movie.

I don't need a solo. No, we don't need no side. I don't need no. I don't need none of that. What we really need is X-Men, X-Force. X-Factor, nah. Them niggas is kind of wack. You think an X-Force movie, you're into that.

I think if you do a Deadpool cable X-Worse movie that is more, like not like the Ryan Ronald, like the second one, like, we're actually going to show you like X-Force, even if they want to do kind of the Remender run where it's like, all right, we're going to have Wolverine and fucking Deadpool and all these people. And I think that that could work.

So my question was going to be, now that we're going into a greater X world, is there room in this for X-Men 97? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Spider-Man comics, comic book shows have existed for eternity.

Because people, this is like, at least for me, was my entry point into this universe. was watching Justice League Unlimited and Spider-Man, spectacular Spider-Man and all these things, Batman anime series. Like X-Men 97 is like an elevated version of this,

but like kids can watch X-Men 97. I would not be surprised, and this gets to our D-23 of it all. There have been rumblings and reporting out, I think, Van and I, we maybe talked about it briefly at San Diego Comic-Con, how brisk they were when it came to even many.

something like Vision Quest, and I think the Disney Plus streaming service is in a different era where I'm not sure we're going to get that many TV shows, if any at all, until kind of like Secret Wars kind of puts a bow on this. And I could see, I think the problem with X-Men 97 is they might be like, hey, we want to do a Disney Plus X-Men series. Like something like that. What do you mean? I would say stay the fuck. Oh, I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm saying you don't think that there's going to be some type of mutant post that movie where they're like, ooh, who could get a series, who could get a blah, blah, blah, blah. I genuinely don't know if any major Marvel TV thing is on the table at all because of the way that they're scaling back TV right now.

Yeah, I think New Lakers owner, Bob Eager is moving away from all of that stuff. I think, I mean, we'll talk about the Wonder Man cancellation, but I think that era. of Marvel and Disney Plus using like, you know, long-form storytelling in TV form is dead. Yeah. Or at least like dying. I mean, aren't we all kind of over it a little bit? I've been over it.

Yeah. I've never on it. So then, so then if that's the case, then the X-Men are going to, we'll do this later. We'll maybe talk about this, which X-Men properties could live on television. It's impossible.

If that's the case, then X-Men 97, would be the X-Men's footprint on television. Right. But it's a good footprint. We love the show. We like, like, we, not you. But for the most part, we enjoy the show. Like, what, it took like a year off, however long.

It's coming back yearly now. Like, there's something that we're able to enjoy year after year. And they've got, there's so many X-Bent comics that could tell the story for God knows how long. Yeah. But I was on the, I was scrolling today because, uh, obviously the finale is out. It seems like people were having trouble.

with the finale. Really? Like, I was seeing some rumblings just about, like, I don't think there's that big of a gap between season one or season two, but I've seen a lot of people being a little bit like, why doesn't this feel like season one? Why is there so... I think the thing that I actually love about it

is that they're not afraid to do X Factor, X-Force, new mutants, whatever. Of course. If you're a casual, more casual X-Men fan, I could see how season two was a little bit like, who are these niggas? A lot of them from them. There's so much of that.

I was watching the finale with Kai and we're looking at the ex, the ex, Kai. Kai. Kai Grady. You don't know.

All right. Okay. Watching the final like guy. We're like, we're trying to name like, again, so many characters are on the screen and like,

that's got to be, that's got to be banned. You know that's siren. My fault. Like they just be like, and I love that about the show. Right? Like Maverick shows up in the,

um, I like the episode. Yeah. This Maverch shows up. No one knows. He's like, who's this guy? He's like, who's that? Great voice.

I don't know whoever. Pitch perfect. Like, the voice act was incredible. I was like, who's that? By the way, just to let you guys know, for a while, Maverick was some of the hot shit on the streets. All right. What?

For a second. All right, man. I know I can't be having an X-Men conference. We talk about Maverick was hot on the streets. I'm telling y'all. His name rings out. Maybe. For a second, people was fucking.

really fucking with Maverick. Some of these characters, they made splashes, and then they didn't, they couldn't, they couldn't swim, so they sank. But, like, Maverick for a second was some hot shit in the street. People was fuck with Maverick for a second. I'll admit, when Wolverine said

I'm getting the band back together, I thought he meant Alpha Flight, and I thought I was going to, like, scream. Yeah. Fuck Alpha Flight. Hey, but can I tell you something, though? You mentioned Cannonball, and I dismissed Cannonball.

Before a second, Cannonball was the man. Cannonball was the man. Our fucking dope. Like, Cannonball was the man. for a second. People was really fucking with Cannonball. Remember Cannonball fucking found out he was an external. People was really liking that type of shit.

You didn't like Cannonball in the In Avengers? I loved Cannonball. Cannonball was a cool character. I like I was like, I was like, bro, these they got good comics. Yeah, but they're not fucking with Gambit is the point though. Cannonball is better than Gambit. Yeah. All right, so

Garrison came in there. 23. What is this? I want to know, like, how are you guys feeling? like about the status of honestly black superheroes. Well, should we do midnight meter first and then get into that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, go forth.

All right. Midnight meter, y'all know what it is. One is obviously the worst. 11 and 12 reserve for true game changers. I'm going to start with the MIMP boys showing me. What are you giving X-N 97 season to 2? I think I'll probably, I get the first season of 12. You know, I'm going to give this one a 10.

I'm going to get this one at 10. Oh, damn. Nah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the season. Crazy. Again, first season at higher highs, but this season was consistently good. I enjoyed, I enjoyed every episode. I had a great time. It's a 10 for me. I think, I think it's a solid eight for me. Like, again, occasional stumble, tiny, tiny stumbles, but overall, awesome. I'm going to go nine, little baby. Oh, that's a lot. That's lower than I thought it would be. I'm going to go, I'm going to go nine, nine, 12 to nine is cool. Right. The third season will be the one where,

reclaims. Some sophomore snob always kind of a thing. Like, but but I really thought it was great TV, so I'm gonna go nine. Five, anyway. D-23. What? You're doing. You never, you've never liked the show. Okay.

We had Rob on and I love what he's saying. He's just like, hey, yo, sometimes it's okay if stuff is just good. No, it's good. It's okay. I would say five is not good. Five is not good. Hey, Charles, we're post-freaking out at Charles's ranking. You have your own way

You go your own way And there is his way And I respect it Respect it's five Tough Yeah I mean What I mean tough

Well we need tough Well we Hey hey That's Chuck wagon baby Yeah Brand is strong Yeah Shoot it from the hip

I fuck with it Um Okay so You were talking about D23 Yeah D23 D23 Just really quick Before we get to

Rob's interview I wanted to go over Some stuff with y'all what type of X-Men news A, is there going to be X-Men news? B, what does it need to be? Because for right now, we have officially Sadie Sink is Gene Gray, Kit Connor is Cyclops,

Samara weaving as the White Queen, rumors is Kaley-Spanie is rogue, and then we've gotten some rumors about who's playing Professor X. I'll start with you then. D-23, do they need to give us a cast and kind of like, this is where we're going. that would. Start the clock.

For real? Time to start the clock. Enough bullshit. Start the clock. We'll be in 27 next year. That'll be two years out. Sometimes Marvel likes to start two years out. I say start the clock now.

Start the clock now. Maintain the momentum that Spider-Man brand new day, which is the most popular movie of all time. I'm sorry, bro. People love this fucking movie, bro. It's kind of crazy. Like people are loving this.

Except for Ra. Except for who? Ra. Rob who? Mahoney? Lifel. Oh, Leifeld. Yeah, he said it was good.

That's why I fuck with it. Yeah. So, maintain the momentum of this into, you can, this is what they should do. You can ride this D-23 X-Men momentum into your re-release of in-game. Then ride the extra seven minutes or whatever that is into,

I'm going back to see that bitch again. We're going to do an episode about it. What? I'm going back to see that bitch again. I fuck what y'all. What are you talking about? Like, I'm like, it and ride that momentum into Doomsday. Charles, you got it.

Charles, we have to do it. What are you talking about? They're re-releasing Doomsday. We're not going to watch it and we not go pot on it? No, I mean, we will. God damn, nigga. God damn what? What?

Sorry, just give me an extra seven minutes. God damn what? I don't need to see a you. God damn what? How's saying? We gonna be there. Buy your ticket and then walk in three hours later. I'm not with the PR shit.

I'm not with the, hey, yo, nobody believes in us anymore unless Nadean and Tom Holland in it. So we're giving y'all scraps. Man, fuck you.

What's the scraps? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. What do you read? Okay, the nobody believes in this gimmick is funny coming from Marvel considering like everything.

Yeah. However, and we, Let's not lie. We've been like it's over. We've been like it's over for years. Yeah, we told them that. We told them it's over.

So you can't be mad at them for doing the nobody believes in this gimmick. When we've sat on this podcast and be like, it's cool. Oh, I definitely can. They're talking to you. They are. They think, talking to me,

they're just like, you know what's going to get, Charles? Let's put an extra seven minutes on end game. That'll really get excited. Nigger, no. No. That's not going to change the failure. No. You can't be mad at them for doing the nobody believes in this gimmick.

I can. I can. They like, damn. We don't got no IMAX screen, but you want a little Infinity Vision? Now, did you like the trailer that you saw at the, at Comic-Con? Did you like that trailer? The Arcoors Day trailer? Did you like it?

When they started with that shit, I literally was about to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, cowards. Did you like the trailer? No. So you didn't like the trailer with the Sentinels in it. Oh, I thought you were talking about the endgame movie. No, no, no, no, the Doomsday trip that we saw at Comic-Card. Did you like it? You didn't like it.

When Dr. Doom resurrected the Sentinels, I'm like, Keys jangling. He did say that. He did say that. The keys are like, come on. You didn't think, okay, Charles, let's say the K-Faib is broken. The K-Fa-Fa-Fa-yeah. No, wait, do you guys want, like, mask off what I really thought of that trailer?

Yeah, go for it. Of course. Right now, it just seems that they are searching for. any type of light at the end of the tunnel. And they're like, yeah, well, if Robert Downey is Dr. Doom and there's sentinels here and we got the 60-year-old geriatric X-Men, they're going to feel something. And yes, was it better than the other trailer we got?

Yes. But it's still just them throwing a bunch of shit against the wall to see what stuck. And it's like after Spider-Man, I was like, hey, not a perfect movie, but at least there's like, you could see the. life. You could see people who care about it. So this is my thing. All right. So I'm not going to argue with Charles's opinion because it's his opinion, but I'm going to contend with it because I think

that it represents something that exists outside of the movie. All right. So let's take the cynical look at Brand New Day. Oh. The cynical look at Brand New Day is that Hulk is in the movie for no reason. The Punisher is in a movie for no reason. All right. Punisher's not in the movie for no reason. No. And therein lies the genius of the movie.

The genius of the movie is, sure, you could say that it's key jangling to have the Hulk and the Punisher and all of these other villains pop up in the movie. But all of this is keys jangling. All of this stuff is,

here are the people that you've read about doing cool shit. The question is if you can make them do cool shit that also means something to the story. Now, in that trailer, I think a lot of people talked about him resurrecting sentinels with green eyes and it's time

to get busy against Thor, Thor's fucked it seems like. But more than that, I think what people liked about the trailer was that the trailer besides the other one, and I know people haven't gotten a chance to see that because a lot of you weren't at Comic Con, I don't know that

if it's leaked or not. Definitely as leaked. Okay. Well, in that trailer they craft the world that dooms they will have to exist in. Yeah. It seems as if that trailer was telling not just, it wasn't showing all of these characters back

together again, was telling the story of Victor Von Doom, which is the single story that they're going to have to tell in a compelling way to make the movie good. And at the end of the trailer where they're telling the story of Victor Von Doom, where it feels like you're getting a sense of who he is, you

see visually through filmmaking craft just how dangerous he is. So it tells you how broken he is, which is the line that I didn't really like. They tell you how broken he is. What was the line? The line was, I didn't know. I know Victor was

this, but I didn't know he was broken. I don't know. It's fucking got out of here. Like this guy, it's like, I don't like that type of shit like that. But like, it's like they tell Victor that they tell about, then you see just how dangerous this broken

man is. So, if he in fact has nothing to live for, because everything that he lives for is dead, then he can raise signals from the ground, then there's no reasoning with him. You have to beat him, and you might not be able to do it. That is kind of the thing that you do

to orient a villain that has to, like, undergird an entire movie. And they did not even try to do that in first trailer. The first trailer was like, oh, my God, that's Keith Jangling. That's all of our friends are back together. But, like, we still know what this is about. The second trailer is not only are,

is this about something, somebody's trauma, but also we're fucked, right? And so that's why I worked for a lot of people. But the thing that interests me about a character like a Dr. Doom or a Magneto, I don't necessarily give a fuck about the feats that Dr. Doom can achieve with his magic or his science or whatever.

He's always been the most interesting to me when it is a philosophical debate with him versus Mr. Fantastic or another hero. the deep brokenness of the man behind the mask, resurrecting sentinels or what magic is like, I don't. But you're reading that. That's different.

The philosophy is, is, they're like, you're talking about, Rob will talk about how comics is a visual art form, and that's very, very true. But you're reading a book on screen, they have to show you the danger. No, but what I'm not. I'm saying is from these two trailers, the thing that I was missing was I was like, okay, but why am I supposed to care about Dr. Doom? Like, the, and maybe we will get that. Hopefully we will

get that in the movie. They just have not shown me anything where, like, emotionally I'm like, like, I can see visually, oh, the Avengers are in danger, but the Avengers are always in danger. It's more so I'm just like, hey, we care about Doom because the character of Doom works. And there just hasn't been enough yet for me to be like, oh, gee. I care about him as character. We'll see. Just, I would say for everyone, the only thing that we ever talk about is whether or not we still have an open mind. Charles doesn't.

I have an open mind. Liar. Jomey doesn't want a storm movie. Jomey doesn't have an open mind to storm. And I saw that for the first time to black women, the African women. African women. Oh, I know why. she's Kenyan

damn there's no beef between if she was if she was Nigerian if she was Yorba if it was Oluo Oluo storm Olua storm Olua storm

Olua Oluo Oroo if she was then he would be fucking with it this is the answer shout to the 154 Africa podcast a lot of people are wondering right now I gotta say this by the way because the 154 Africa podcast put up

that they I have them going on the podcast and they put up the advertisement to give me on it whatever they posted it and they were like Van Lathen South Louisiana

man with Nigerian roots and so a lot of my FBA people are like what are these Nigerian roots that you're talking about we're basically talking about shout out to 154 we're basically talking about the fact that

you know I took the ancestry test and it said that I was 19% Nigerian and they wanted to just talk about that but when I was talking about my experience with Nigerian culture I actually talked about Jome Because that, Jomey is, has been my experience with Nigerian culture. Nigerians were checking you.

They're like, what's those roots? Where are you from? No, people, like, people hit me up. Like, what are these roots that they are talking about? And I'm like, I think that because they do a podcast where the people that are on the podcast are supposed to be African, you want to make a connection between me and, you know, I don't know if people know, but I'm black. So, there is some African origin there.

Okay. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Maybe. Actually, you got African origin, too. Hmm? You got African origin. We all have African origins.

Oh, well. What? We don't believe it. No, I do. I do. I know what you're saying now. Oh, special daddy. What do you think life originated from, Steve?

Jomey, tell Steve who the original man did. Right, yeah. Tell Steve who the... Africa, baby. Yeah, yeah. Cretal civilization. The new being man. The original man.

What's the... If it wasn't for Yaqub, you wouldn't be here in the first place. All right. All right. Right on. Right on. We didn't bring him to the new studio. Speaking of blacks, they can no longer have superhero shows.

Okay. They got Waller out of here. Out of here. They got Wonder Man out of here. Waller out of here. Wonder Man out of here. I will say, go. Myershala, we might not cover it here.

I'm seeing your mother, your mother, your mother. That's true. I'm going to see the shit. Phenomenal. I'm going to see the shit. I'm going to see. I'm going to support him. Yeah.

Because they jerked him around for the Blade situation. Are we in the dirt? Oh, you don't think. Another Jomi's like. Wow. Joe. What do you got against our Muslim brothers and sisters? Let's calm down.

Damn, you in church. What they say in in church every Sunday? You relax. He's like, I'm not saying. Nah, man. Don't do that. Don't do that. Al-Salam al-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-u-you-you- know what I'm saying.

We're fucking with you. This is not right. This is not correct. Don't do that. Look at you there. There's a Christian-Muslim thing, though. No. All right.

If you... I did the readings last night. Like, all the Hollywood reporter stuff, all the deadline stuff. And there's a little bit of push and pull between... I think there was, like, Faggy and Ali. I think Faggy wanted to make a movie and Ali wanted to make a different movie. To the point where he, like, brought in his own people. They did a page one rewrite the whole thing.

And I just think those two ideas were incompatible. right and so I feel like there's a little bit of it's a little bit of both sides to why I think didn't work now Marcia had the interview like what a week ago

two weeks ago where he was like talk to them why it didn't work out you know and we're like you know it's like because what Faggy went on the happy sad confuser he went on a podcast

it was like it's a shame that we didn't get played like I feel like it's my responsibility this and that and then on Lee had the thing where he was like yeah X them like it's yeah it's interesting that they made

make concessions for certain stars and not Oscar winning black man though Oh, talk about it Steve. Talk about it Steve. That's all there is. Talk to your boy. Talk to your men boy. I don't know. If you got a rec team, maybe you get

the brink's truck thrown at you. Okay, well, that's, I mean, we talked. They was letting Tom Holland run that whole shit. Yeah. Ryan Reynolds got a writing credit. Robert Donnie Jr. But when it's a black Muslim man. You see how this looks, right?

You know what I mean? Changing up whole scripts People doing all kinds of different shit But when she said I want to do Blade differently The question where we There's a clip Okay

From like we were back at the old studio Back in Studio Bill We're like hey man How hard could it be to make a Blade movie It's just a dude Fighting Vampires By all accounts That's the movie Faggy wanted to make

That's not the movie Ali wanted to make See this is this PR spin Maybe maybe maybe Maybe Maybe Because I'll just say this You know, if I'm a Herschelah, I'm looking at the output that that's coming out. I'm looking at the decisions being made.

I think for where Mahershala was at in his career, what he accomplished, you should have a little bit of power to be like, oh, no, we're not signing off on this guy. He's got to wait to throw around. Come on. Yeah. I mean, look, here's a deal. I saw Moon Knight. Do you guys have, do you guys have, do you guys think, should I say?

Is there any truth to the notion that Marvel is dropping the ball on black-led projects? Is it just Marvel or is it an industry-wide thing? Industry-wide, whatever. So Waller is getting canceled. That was black female-led. Paradise Lost. It was female-led. It was the Wonder Woman situation, if I remember correctly.

And then you have the cancellation of Wonder Man after having... being green lit. There's a lot of different stuff. Blades gone. A lot of stuff not around. I think it's a nuance. My take, if I'm going to be real, is we are just in a different era

where Spider-Man can make 2.5 Bill. Batman can make Billy. Everybody else kind of got a thing for their supper. And what happens is a lot of times it is black characters, female characters, Asian characters that get

Chong Chi. Whether you love the movie, hate the movie, or whatever, that movie made a lot of money. He didn't get a second at bat. I do, I think that this is all like racial and misogynistic because how long did it take those characters

to get their first step back? Exactly. And I think that there's like, it's not plausible or believable to me, but there's like a level of deniability from the powers that be in the studios that were like, well, we're scaling back

all those things in the first place. we're not exactly as powerful or as influential as we used to be. We've got to save money. We've got to make sure that the heavy editors are going to be the ones that actually get us money. We need a surefire thing. And season two of Moon Night isn't a surefire thing. I mean, Season 2 of Moon Night, I mean, Moon Night failed. Yeah, right.

So, I mean, Moon Night failed from the standpoint of Moon Night did not capture people's imagination and interest in the way that they thought that it would. and Moon Knight is not something that people are clamoring for a second season. They have probably the wrong take on Moon Knight, if you ask me. Interesting thing about the black-led characters at Marvel in terms of the movies, though. I mean, you have Black Panther,

and then you have Captain America Brave New World, right? So you have one movie that was one of the gigantic hits for Marvel, not just in dollars culturally. You have another film that is a testament to the dysfunction that existed in the intelligency of Marvel Studios when it came out. Like when Black Panther came out, everything was operating on all cylinders

for Marvel, right? Everything. The narrative, the filmmakers, the momentum, everything. Captain America Brave New World came out. Everything was in dirt in terms of what, and you could also put that and forget about Captain America,

Brave New World. Talk about the Marvels. The Captain Marvel movie, comes out, once again, she comes out in the middle of Marvel's golden era. Like a billion dollar franchise, a billion dollar movie in the middle of everybody caring about this. The sequel to that movie comes out in a different era, and it fails. It fails from a creative standpoint because they didn't seem like they could all get on the same page and also from a business standpoint.

So it seems to me that as much as these characters matter, it seems like the structure of Marvel probably matters more and what it is that they're doing. So when I look at that, I don't know if the decisions being made to cancel some of these things are led by anything more than them responding to the fact that 80% of the stuff that they was putting out was bricking.

And also the industry is different where Wonder Man critically was a success for them. When they're looking at the books, they might be like, this is less a Wonder Man decision and this is a more, do we want to keep investing money in these type of series?

And I think Wonder Man was just that weird coincidence of, they're like, oh, people really love this. But that not being enough, because this isn't just a superhero thing. Across streamers, you might have a critically, acclaim series and they're like financially it just doesn't

but in the past though if things were going well that wouldn't have happened right in the past if Wonder Man was a companion piece to another show that was doing great on streaming or to these box office returns that were

crazy that's why it's interesting to see Wonder Man getting cancelled after Spider-Man had done so well do you think that's just more illustrative of the fact that Marvel really doesn't care about awards and acclaim I think it's more illustrative of the thing that, because they definitely care about that. It would be hilarious if Wonder Man goes on to win the Emmy.

And that's what I'm saying. No, I think what it is is that they don't have a plan for Wonder Man, is that maybe the plan that they have for Wonder Man as a character to show up in Doomsday or whatever, or they have more of a plan for them. Maybe there's a Wonder Man movie coming or something. You can make this same conversation, have the same conversation around Armor Wars.

Which was going to be a show. Then a movie. Yeah, then a movie and then all of that stuff. Now, it's not so much that they don't want Don or they don't want Rode. They don't know what they want out of the character, out of the world. And so part of that dysfunction is another reason why some of this stuff is being ripped apart. But it's tough because it's like it's predominantly happening to black-led superhero shows and movies and female-led superiors.

heroes shows and movies. Like that's the unfortunate part. But here's the thing. And this is the failures of those when the movie is a success, well, Marvel, it's the system, it's whatever. When the movies and the TV shows are a failure, well, black people didn't show up. Women didn't show up. And I'm like, but was the product good? How come when it's, when it's successful, the genius of Figey and Marvel and everybody whatever. Whatever. Yeah. But when the Marvel does does bad, it's like, well, women didn't show up. Well, here's some real talk. You cannot criticize them for not making a sequel to a movie that you didn't go see the first one.

But a lot of women did go see the Marvels. What I am saying is that the Marvels did not make a lot of money. I don't know what the demographic breakdown or whatever. I'm saying in general, the question that I would have for the people that are complaining about, or bringing up, I don't want to say complaining, that are bringing up the fact that all of this stuff is getting canceled. The question I would have is, did you watch it? And if you did not watch it,

if you didn't go see Captain, if Captain America Brave New World, if Captain America being black wasn't enough to get you to go to the theater, they're not going to care when you complain if they don't make another one. I mean, I'm just being for real. But, and you can, because you can't have it, when you talk about having it both ways, You can't have it both ways.

You can't stay home or not engage and then be upset if they're not making the stuff. You are voting with your abstinence from it. That is how they make it. They could make a terrible movie, right? If that bitch make a billion dollars, they make it another one. They can make a terrible movie. If that bitch is profitable, they're making another one. If they make a great movie and you didn't watch it, whether it was black or,

or female lead or whatever. Doesn't matter how good it is. They're not going to make another one. But here's the thing. Wonder Man was maybe not the biggest show ever, but this is where the nuance happens, where Wonder Man, I think, overperformed. Where it was like, we were like, damn,

they're burying it. They're barely promoting it, blah, blah, blah. It gets all these Emmys and this critical. So I get what you're saying, but I don't know if it's that black and white because a lot of times black-led movies or women-led movies or all this stuff does overperforming, they're still like,

but it's not enough. I don't know, I mean, I don't know necessarily, what I'm saying is that if Wonder Man was a critical darling and Marvel was healthier, it would have gotten the second season. Yeah. Right?

It would have gotten the second season because you believe that the critical darling that you had could blow up. Some of these shows that you're talking about, that we're talking about, like that everybody loved that first season, they wasn't all that. The wire throughout its entire run.

throughout its entire run there was always wondering if the wire was going to be back because the wire never captured the type of audience that the sopranos and stuff did. It's very healthy. The show's reputation went on to buoy it

after the run of the show was over in a large regard, right? But HBO was an incredibly healthy enterprise and it had a show that it knew was one of the best shows not on television but of all time. So that's true. show can continue to go. These shows, to me, just have to have healthy structure and backing to

them for them to exist and be successful. I mean, in a healthier enterprise, like, mark it on your bingo cards, your free space, but Aege of the Shield got seven seasons, got 130-something episodes from 2013 to 2020 when we were, like, really into this stuff, right? To your point on, on the wire, like, from like season four on, we were like, well, they might give us another season. They might not. Who knows, right? The last, like, two or three seasons, only 13 episodes each from, like, 26, because the, like, it was just like, we got to go smaller.

We got to go smaller. We got to go smaller. And a healthier ecosystem, we were getting season seven of, like, whatever. We're getting this season of whatever. Now it's kind of like, does this model work for us? Does the Disney Plus model work for Marvel Television? Let's be honest. Does it actually?

Do you guys think it works? Probably not. It doesn't seem like it is. This is what I'm trying to say. I'll boil it down to this. If they have a responsibility to make it because it's black or because it's female-led, you have a responsibility to watch it because it's black and because it's female-led. You cannot, bro, like you're setting yourself for failure.

You cannot bemoan the fact that all of these black female-led things are being canceled if you did not watch them. Now, if you watch them all and you know that they were great and they were all of this stuff and then they come along and then they're gone, well, why is our stuff getting cold first? Echo's not coming back. Like, there's a whole bunch of other shows that aren't coming back. We have what we heard about, a new season of this. All of this stuff is not coming back.

There's a chance that a lot of these shows should have never been made in the first place. I mean, there's a chance, but... She all not coming back. She, like, a lot of these things are not coming back. I'm not giving them an out because the fact of the matter is, It's funny to me that people still recoil when our stuff is the first stuff that doesn't make it. But the way we talk about these things, the way we critique these things, the way that we support them and watch them, they're going to be like, oh, okay, well, they don't even like the shit anyway. They're not watching it, get rid of it, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then on the backside, we tweet about it when what you could have done for Wonder Man or any other stuff is just ran play on it. Play it in the background of your shit. like you could have you could have you know what I'm saying so I mean that's tough for wonder man because people I mean I don't know like the number man cop is because I'm like wonder man overperformed and they were still like so once again with wonder man I get it like with Wonder Man what I'm saying is I wonder how much if they have different plans for the character if they announce a Wonder Man movie if they announce if or or they just phase Wonder Man I don't know what happened or even if we take something like Ironheart I don't

actually think that that is, I can't put that on the audience. I feel like a lot of black, a lot of black fans, a lot of women fans did try to support it, but it wasn't, we remember how they released that shit. It was a very much like that. Did you like the show? I'd not like the show, but I watched it. I know. You didn't like the show.

Like, you watched it. A lot of people liked the show. They didn't want. So what I'm saying is that like, I want to be artful in what I'm trying to say. But like, don't be surprised if a show that wasn't good doesn't get a second season. Right. Right. I agree with you.

I agree with you. You know what I mean? So, like, I actually thought Iron Heart was pretty cool for what it was. Was it cool enough? Let's be honest. Was it cool enough to you where you're like, I'm super invested in a second season? I wasn't. I was like, in a healthier ecosystem.

Remember, like. I still think it could have done well as a movie. I think if they gave it the Iron Man, the Iron Man movie treatment. Sure. I think a lot of people would have been like. oh, a black woman is going to be the next Iron Man. Ticky. When it's on a streaming service, you're a little bit like,

there is a ding where you're like, this is kind of less. It feels ignorable. Same thing with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a TV show I liked. I feel like that set up a Black Captain America to fail because he debuts on a TV show versus a like. I loved that show.

No, but what I'm saying is I think TV still culturally is not, it doesn't cut through as much as a movie can. But we were ready for it then. We were. We were, we absolutely. Like, we were, we were excited for it then, which is another thing is some of these lessons are being learned just about what works on television and what doesn't work on television. I think, I think the math that they said was that the Disney TV stuff is cutting the product.

Right. The movies are where it's at when you put the stuff on TV. I mean, they learned this. This is like the Star Wars thing. where Star Wars is going to the movies and it was movie only. You put it on TV and people go Ah, Star Wars not really important anymore.

They thought that they was going to be able to have a whole universe of stuff on streaming and that that would make Disney Plus compete with Netflix. They gave us Obi-Wan. They gave us Bob Fet. We was like, say, Assoca season two though. You know what I'm saying?

I'm into Assook season two. All right. At some point. Are we ready, guys, we've been parted for a while. Are we ready to get into the Rob interview? We're getting to the Rob. Yeah. Talk to Rob.

Guys, I know a lot of times y'all see that there's an interview on a podcast. Like, do I need to listen to it? Do yourself a favor. Listen to the raw interview. He's hilarious. Hey, y'all's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up?

That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.cair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Okay, guys, we have talked about the finale of X-Men 97.

In that finale, Cable plays a very important part. And if you guys notice, there's a fifth chair to the Midnight Boys right now. A guy who knows a little something about Cable, might have even created Cable, might have created Deadpool as well, two of the most relevant comic book characters right now

in all of comics culture. We are joined by a legend and a pioneer. Rob Liefel, is today. Oh my gosh, you guys, I'm so excited to be here. I'm so excited. I can't believe it. This is like an out-of-body experience.

Those you got to do for us, then. If you're excited, you got to give us on three. One, two, three. I do it at home. I'd do it at home. All right, so, you know, Rob, let's just start off talking a little bit about cable. Cable figures very prominently in this season of X-Men 97. What did you guys think?

What did you guys think of how he was in the season? I loved it. He was the man. I mean. And when he throws, okay, spoiler alert, when he throws his parents around, I'm like, oh, damn, they showed. Like, because for like several episodes, they keep going, don't make us, you know, spank you, son. Right. And he always kind of looks at him like, like, see a try.

Like, and then it was like, I'm going to take you out. I'm going to take you. When he gets deflecting Cyclops beans and then take Cyclops out, and then it's like, Gene Gray, I'm going to put you in the floor with my, you know, telekinetic powers. I'm like, oh my God. Like, honestly, you guys, I was, it was an out of body experience. I was like, what am I watching? And then at the end of the episode, I'm like, they're really gonna let him walk up to Gambit?

He's getting closer, okay, the gun's coming out? Is he gonna, is he? What just happened? I'm like, that is pretty violent for a cartoon, right? Of course. Big moment, big moment. And I was just shocked. So I was flying home from being overseas, vacation with my family.

And right when we got into the Wi-Fi range, because that X-Force episode where they had their own credits. Yes, episode too. And that is something that I discovered along with the rest of the world. And I'm like, hot damn! It's X-Force with the D-L-L-L-E-N-U-D-L-L-Y-D-L-L-Y. Now, do they come to you when the creators of the show are going to involve X-Force and cable, do they come to you? No.

Okay. They just, they hate the fact that they got to write the checks to Uncle Rob. So they don't even like talking to me, okay, you know? So my tenure with them is, I would say. say over. I mean, I think there's burning the bridge and then there's setting a nuke to the bridge. It can't be that burned if they're still involving your

characters. No, no. That speaks to the, look, that speaks to the characters. And I am super fortunate that these characters took with the audience. And you know, guys, when I go two weeks ago, I jumped over to

Baltimore in Long Island. Two places I haven't been in 20 years. And I'm getting families. These guys are coming up to me and introducing me to their 10 year old, 9 year old daughter, sons, their wives, and they were 15, 12 when they were buying these books. And it is like

a title wave of, whoa, like, and they're like, I just want my family to, you know, see like, you know, the guy who made the comics and created the characters that I love so much. And it is super humbling, overwhelming. And yet it's like these guys, what I tell the studios, I was like, I'm I'm like, my fans have the Amex cards, okay? They grew up, and I met, like I met one of them 25 years ago, two of them, three of them, five of them,

and now they're executives at their positions. They started at low-level management. Now they're upper management. I'm like, my fans have a lot of credit, and they charge those cards. When they go to the store, they're buying all the cons. They're keeping stores. They're buying tickets to the movies. So it's just a testament to the characters.

If you get a character and the character hits, it's a special relationship. So, no, they don't call me. They don't need to call me. I just expect that, you know, I get my compensations, which makes me, like, there's a version of me that doesn't have that. That's the most miserable mofo on planet Earth, okay? Like, I'll be one of those guys like, whine, wine, wine. But I'm always like, yeah.

You got to get paid. But since we have you here, you know, the fans didn't get mad at us because I think I, as I was like, damn, why is he named Cable? Like, wasn't, we have you here. We have a creator. So both in universe, but as you were creating. What was it about the name cable? Prepare for disappointment.

Okay, these answers I'm sure are not going to land. First of all, like when they first revealed Wolverine's name, Logan. Logan's a cool name. Like, my wife and I, on every one of our kids' names, we had it out for months. There's a list. She has a list. I have a list. And we're like, no, no, cross out, cross out.

No, no. You know, like, I canceled your name. My kids, Luke and Chase and Olivia, like, like, those were battled for. and especially with the boys, you want cool names. Yeah. And at the end, like, we were down to the last name, and I said, Chase Manhattan Bank.

That's a big-ass institution. We're going to call him Chase. He's going to be important. Wow. Because I think I knocked out, like, some Southern names she wanted. I'm like, I ain't have no kid with that name. But, so with Cable,

first of all, it's a care, it's a name I had for a tough guy. Because he sounds like that. If Cable walks in the room and he's 90 pounds, you're like, disappointed. But cable needs to look like Alan Ritson, but also, here's the thing, that arm of his has gears and wires and was exposed from the first minute. So I thought like it also reflects like that he's a technological kind of being cable with cables and gear. It was better than gear.

And so cable sounded cool, but it also would cover up his true identity for at least two years, because I needed that. I needed them not like to know, but. But the pitch was there when I went to pitch him and I had a great editor and, you know, I bang on bad executives all the time. I believe we don't spank them enough. We don't call them out for all their horrible, terrible decisions that give us crap and knowingly crap. And we should praise the good guys. And there was a great executive named Bob Harris who before anybody realized it.

Like, honestly, I look back, he started calling us. And the X-Men was the number one family of comics, except for the New Mutants, was the lowest on the totem pole. but he called up myself, Jim Lee, Willis Patasio. He's like, I want to do a changeover. I want to do like a class changeover in the X-Men office. And if he doesn't make those calls and see like that the X-Men, I don't want to let them get stagnant. They weren't. But they might have like maybe lost their juice.

He knew like, I need to replace all these guys. And you know, I was on a panel with Mark Silvestri at San Diego Comic-Con, which is why I couldn't go to your guy's panel. Because I'm like, I have a panel. I have a panel. You can't. You can't. No, no, no, no. I tried.

The, uh, Mark was up there going, I lost my job to Jim Lee. He said that in front of, you know, 5,000 people and whatever the hall was. And I'm like, oh, man, Mark's still feeling it. But they gave him Wolverine because they thought like he'd be happy on Wolverine. But, uh, so picking, picking us was Bob was acting like a great GM. And look, look at you guys loved Jim Lee's X-Men. You loved Wolfs Portasio. You loved Larry Stroman's X-Factor.

And that is because that one guy, Bob Harris was. was like, I need to change it up. He came from editing the Hulk and G.I. Joe. And so when I pitched him the new mutants, I said, because they offered me X Factor, I couldn't do it. No way am I following Walt Simonson, who's one of the all-time greats. And also, I'm just, those characters don't do it for me. You don't like the original five.

That's a hot take. You kind of like, what's your take? You have a good take on them. Yeah, what did you say? So the original X-Men, and I'm going to tell you right now, there's a reason they went into reprints in the mid-70s. For five years, Marrins. just reprinted old comics because they are temple touchers and armcasters.

They come into a room, Xavier, and Gene, and they're all like, stop, stop, okay? And then Warren Worthington, the third flaps in like, I got my wings, I'm a bird. And you're like, in the age of the Avengers, when I'm buying Avengers around the time, Avengers 1.45, George Perez just gets on the Avengers, has this incredible squadron supreme storyline. The Fantastic Four is banging at the time. The Defenders is cool with Dr. Strange and Hulk. I would as a kid go, these characters are boring. Like I got a dude in a wheelchair.

I got a girl who looks at people. I'm seven. You got to Chuck, I'm seven years old. I'm giving you the thoughts of a seven-year-old. You know, so when I'm nine, I see Star Wars. And I see this old man who looks like a prophet. My dad's a Baptist minister. So I'm like,

Alex Guinness looks like Elijah coming down. And he's like, oh, but I have a laser sword. I want weapons. I want stuff. And the X-Men were like, everybody. Stop. And like I told you, giant-sized X-Men number one, they're taking Wolverine from the Hulk appearance,

that epic two issues he was in. And now you got a guy with six knives, and he's just stabbing you. Boom, boom, boom, stabbing, stabbing. And you're like, I like this. And then Colossus is like, I am a strong man that can throw buildings at you. And then Storm is a babe who controls the weather and shoots lightning and can fly real high.

A little bit of the armcaster, but super hotness. And then you got, um, that gets it out. That's it. And then Gene Gray, I mean, I guess. But the thing is, then you got Nightcrawler who looks like a demon with a tail. So are you worried about the X-Men movies going with the more traditional five? You guys, you already know my answer to this. I'm too old for this.

I'm too. The X-Men, I'm gonna be 61 when that comes out. There is no way I care. I just have to get on. Wow. All right. You're gonna be in front row. Rob, it's not-

You're seeing the X-Men movie. Van? If you get me up, I'll see it with you. I'll come get you. I'll get you. You'll come to the screen with you. People go crazy. Guys, guys, like, Samara weaving is fantastic.

She is exactly the white queen. But I love first class. And like, you guys, if you've been watching the agency, you just go, Why didn't we get more fast bender in everything, including Magneto? We have somehow forgotten what a badass Magneto. In first class, when he's, like, using his magnetism to throw, like, impale people with fences and, like, knives in the restaurant.

And you're like, he's got, like, Wolverine, like, rage. And he's using that power. But, I mean, I just go, guys, I just, it really is a byproductive age. And so I will applaud. But, like, with X-Men 97, like, just make that. Roll cameras. Show live action. You live action the last three episodes, that's a $2 billion movie.

So people were concerned about the run of X-Men 97, whether or not it would be able to live up to the highs of the first season. Did it for you? Well, yeah, and clearly, and I know you guys have scratched this itch, but clearly there was some lawyering going on because I see Bo's name on everything. Right, yeah. And clearly, because I think he has like Baldoni's lawyer. I think that's who was representing him. And eventually, because I know this,

Marvel loves to do this. And then you go, hi, here's my attorney. Let's talk this out. And then eventually they're like, there you go. Because I'm like, because his name is like writing these episodes. He got just, because I was like, oh, his name is on the producing. And then a lot of writing. So I think they did build around his vision.

Now going forward, I know his vision didn't go beyond. And I was talking to him. And then he's been dark for a year. He just went completely, he's gone. Yeah. And there's no communication. Because I was thanking him in season one. Like, dude, this is great for any X-Men fan.

Because here's the thing. We can talk about cable till we're blue in the face. I'm a Wolverine guy. Wolverine, like, is the reason I'm in comic books. He is my favorite character. I will die that he is my favorite character. And I think, like, when those characters are jelling, because Wolverine made Scott and Gene more interesting.

Because obviously Scott's going, wait, you got to be. the hots for this little run with all the hair and Jean's like I can't kind of deny as a kid I'm 10 years old I'm drawn into the soap opera like I think jean has the hots for Logan so I think the cartoon did a great job just just I know I've read people now like dissing on season two so you tell me I loved it I thought it I thought it did a really great job I do want to come back um to the creation of cable yeah because you brought some stuff with I did and I cannot believe that you brought this this is amazing I got this out of the safe. This is the original

cable. This is my ballpoint pin. This is like 30. I don't know how many years old. This is 37, 1989. But this is when I was starting to build him out. You can see the proportions. You can see all the different gear I'm giving him.

Explain to us where cable came from. Like what was the vision? So like I'm growing up. So if it's 1987, 88, 88, I'm 19, I'm 20. Okay? And I'm going to see everything. you know, people forget about red heat and all the other lesser Schwarzenegger movies.

But man, those were like appointment. Me and my buddies, we would go see every action movie, whether it was Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Von Dam, all those guys. And people, you guys know, I mean, the Rock was starting to kind of, like, form a career around what Schwarzenegger did.

But that Schwarzenegger run is one for the ages because he worked with such incredible talents. Like Cameron and, I mean, McTiernan, these guys, Predator is like an, like, does not get enough run. The original Predator is like an A plus, plus, plus, plus 10. And I remember just looking at all that and going, this is what the X-Men need. And look, here's a great thing. I nailed it. New Mutants was barking like a dog.

They said, Rob, why would you want the new mutants? This book is about to get canceled. You'd make such better money on X-Factor. And I'm like, and I'd never work again if I did X-Factor because you don't ever want to, You don't want to be the quarterback that follows the Hall of Famer, right? So you're like, that's a thing in comic books and in entertainment. You got to know one to say no. Right.

Okay, this looks good. There's some money there. That's not going to do it for me. I'm going to step away. And with new mutants, it was just I can bring this new guy in who's going to cause a lot of chaos. He's going to create a lot of questions and he's going to look at those kids the way I look at those kids in the comics and say, you're all a bunch of, I'll just say cissies. I'll keep it g-rating. You're all a bunch of sissies.

and you're an embarrassment. You're an embarrassment to the ex office. But I'm here to toughen you up and make you warriors for the battle that is to come. And he's like, you know, when he tells him, I'm from the future, I know shit, and I know how things are going to play.

And this is what I said to editorial. And Van, they just said, go with it. Let's do it. What else? The book, X-Men was selling about 500,000 copies. New Mutants was selling 100,000. There is a giant gap between them.

And my proudest moment was New Mutants 100, no gimmicks, no scratch and sniff, no acetate cover, sold a million copies. Went back to press. There's all these different, the silver print, the silver version, the gold version. They had to keep going back. It was just a comic. It was just a comic that now we have shed new mutants and created X-Force. Because the other thing I was like, new mutants is hard to say.

Say it five times fast. You're going to bite your tongue. New mutants, new mutants, everything else is X, X, X, X. I'm like, we got to get X in this title. And we got to get X in this title fast. And so finally they turned it over. But I showed on social media the other day. the cable trade paperback went back to four different printings.

A trade paper. People now go, my comic book's going back to press. I'm like, my $20 trade paperback kept going, kept selling out new printing. And they're delineated by green foil, purple foil, blue foil, like orange foil. They just kept making different versions. And it's like this was, people forget what a big deal cable was, right? But I think this. Yeah, I am a man of a certain age, 46 years old.

This was my willhouse. When you were discovering characters in the mid-70s and it was, you know, giant-sized X-Men, this was the X-Men that I was discovering. And I remember one of my cousins went, hey, this dude right here, this is Scott and Gene's son from the future. But he got powers, but this is his power. And it was the big guns and the leadership. Man, I had strife strike file when it had all the different cable strife. All of the, what was Stripe's team name? It was the MLF, the Mutant Liberation Front.

Mutant Liberation Front. Like, I had all of it. That entire X-World was what immersed me into this entire thing from a comic standpoint. Aesthetically, why, because you guys, it felt like punk rock where you pushed the aesthetic so far with cable is bigger than life. Just massive. Like, you're breaking all the rules that Marvel and DC had at that point had for how you draw heroes. See, you know, I was just telling my family other day, I go, it's been 35 years, but it feels like yesterday. I mean, I can access these memories where I'm sitting, where I'm drawing.

And look, I was drunk on MTV. If I woke up, MTV went on, I draw all day long. It's what I do with the podcast now. And the ringer is now the MTV. I just listen all day long. And MTV, people forget, man, David Fincher was making those videos. And Michael Bay was making those videos. And, like, video was this kick-ass language.

exciting and there was again great visuals coming from that end and I think we just were the younger generation and we represent we all came in in our I was the youngest of them but everybody was in their 20s and I think we just had a different vibe than what was going on we also they they called it this is embarrassing that they called us this because but but there was the you know west coast rap thing and so they called us like the west coast they called us the west coast artist mafia and like don't call us that that that's not that's that's that's that's That's not good. That's why I've never said it until now.

I'm embarrassed. I said it. A bunch of guys in New York would call us because suddenly we're not in New York coming into the offices. And we're all, Jim's out here in San Diego. I'm in Los Angeles. Mark's in Los Angeles. Eric Larson's in San Francisco. Everything's on the West Coast.

I think we just brought a different energy. I was personally into just younger stuff. And I would, look, man, I say this all the time. Go back and look at those new mutants. for me. It's 1989 and boom boom is dressed like Madonna in 1982. I'm like, she took the bow out of her hair in 82.

And she's, and, and Richter was dressed like Billy Idol in 1983 and I'm like, the rebel the rebel yell period is over. Why are these, like you could tell that older men were drawing these comics. And they weren't into the stuff that we were into. So having strife

so New Mutants 87, page one, the MLF. You get 10 new villains then you get strife, add onto that, and then you get cable. And it was kind of an announcement like, this book is changing. And like I said, I'm just so fortunate, blessed that they let me do whatever I want. And because the sales started going up, by the time I introduced Deadpool, the book's at 700,000 copies. Like we have in one year just jammed.

And so at that point, they were like, whatever you want, Rob. I said, hey, I'm going to have this domino. And whatever, whatever, it's working. It's working. So it was working. And so now seeing it move and seeing cable kick everyone's ass in the season finale is like, yeah. And he's dressed. That is his gear from X-Force 1, the green straps, the buckles.

I'm like, damn, that's my man. So I have a question. So you're having all of the success with cable and all of these other characters. You have an assent going on at Marvel. You've said before that like secret to success is also knowing when to say no. Is it getting harder to say no to the things when things are kind of getting thrown? at you and all of these things are nobody's saying no to you what are you saying no to at that point well the first run of x-force is great because it's just we're connecting we're connecting and the readership is

digging it and you feel it especially i was booking a comic bookstore appearance every week no month with every issue and i'd go to pomona and i'd go to l.a and no matter where i went in the southland uh i was there was larger crowds and more enthusiasm and so you know like the people like what I'm doing. So they're literally like giving you feedback in real time. I didn't know about the mail for Deadpool for about a month, but they said it's the largest amount of mail that they had received on a new character in over 20 years. I think they said since the Punisher. And you're like, wow. And they sent me the mail. And I've told you, I've said this on different like podcasts and stuff. I thought they sent me like a washer dryer. I thought like, well, Tom Cruise gets a Porsche for

his big movies. They sent me an appliance, and instead I open it and it's all letters. Right. I read those letters. Like this, a box, way taller than this table, but about that is suddenly delivered to my studio, and I read every letter. And you're like, wow, that's back when people wrote letters and it was fun. But then, about at the end of year one, they're like, we want to kind of control some of the direction here and they're like, what? And that's when you're like, maybe it's time for me to exit. Say more about that, though, because this leads to a revolution that's like now legendary in the history of comics, which was the formation of image comics,

when you guys became, for the first time, you guys became rock stars in your own right. Young creators that had changed the aesthetic of comic books, that had brought new characters, and you guys decide, we're going to do our own thing, and you leave and you go to image. Yes, and everyone thought we were crazy.

Like, I can still remember, and when I forget, one of my other guys is, somebody will talk to us at, like, San Diego Comic Con, and they'll leave and I won't say who else is. That guy said we were going to be out of business three months. Don't forget that, Rob.

And I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot. That guy. Like, everyone said, you're lunatics and you're going to fail. You're never going to get along. It's not going to work. And the fans had something different to say, but literally, like Todd's told his story. They started editing his art and saying, you can't put the sword through that guy's eye. And that was Shatterstar.

He's printed it. Shatterstar, Todd called me up and said, let's do a Spider-Man X-Forse. I knew the fans would dig it. So we did it. and Todd had Shatterstar put a sword through Juggernauts Eye, and it's fantastic. They edit it. The version you get is completely not what he drew.

They edited it because they thought it was too violent. And that's when Todd, I saw a statement from the other day, he said, that's when I knew it was, I'm done, I'm out of here. How much, you know, commerce have I created for these people, but now they're starting to meddle. And for me, things suddenly, I'm like, they're like, Rob, can you come to a creative meeting and jam with everybody? And I'm going to tell you why we didn't do that?

because everyone's going to steal your ideas. They're like, you have to, the reason I didn't tell anybody who cable was, I'm like, I'm letting any of these people know what's up, because they'll steal it. They will absolutely steal it from me. And so inside the building. In the building. And it's happened before, I'm assuming. It's, dude, creators are just like musicians.

And everybody else are like, oh, I heard that riff, but I can lay that riff down maybe three months earlier and I'll own the riff. So, I mean, the thing is, I, especially the competitiveness in the, in Marvel Comics was crazy. the, but we became friends through it. Like myself and Todd and Eric, they were the Spider-Man guys and then Jim and Will's. So we were very competitive. And look,

if you don't think that there was huge brushback within the building, there was because it's like we were the punks. You said that we were called the punks. And I think they thought we had these giant egos when we were just excited. There's, I am exactly who I was at that period.

Just excited. But, and I'm like, shit. I didn't, I never said this, but I'm like, Todd did. He said something like this. Shouldn't you guys be thanking us? Like, we took your sales to the next level.

We, like, for a, for a book that you turned down three times, and I've shown it online, the head of sales sent me a fax. I still have it. I've showed it on my social media. I'll certainly show it whenever this airs. And he says, Rob, we're going to stay with it. I know they've turned us down twice to change new mutants into X-Force, but we have one more shot. Then I'm like, oh, I'm getting nervous because our window's closing.

our window is closing. And so we finally, and I think what happened is they looked at the sales and I'm like, we can't deny that this, like, you should sell 100,000 copies now. It's selling 700,000. And X-Force was the little, like, surprise. It just wedged right in there between Spider-Man and X-Men and sold five million copies. And I did fall off my chair. I was like, what, what is this?

This is crazy. But you would think they'd be like, let's, let's make things easier and more. But suddenly it became more of a grind because they wanted. to take back control. And it's very much, right before I got here, Amazon delivered my last Kings of Hollywood book. And we are not Spielberg, Coppola, and Lucas. We are not, because comic books don't have the bandwidth that movies do. But that's kind of what we were doing. What happened when those directors changed film is what was happening with us. And just like the studios were very eager to take back

control and not let the auteur's run the place, it was happening to us. So we decided to band together. Now, some guys took a little more convincing. Jim Lee took a lot of convincing, but they loved him the most. We shared this at San Diego. We found out from Jim and good on you, Jim. Todd and I were like, oh, damn.

They flew out like a contingent to meet with Jim and said, please don't go with these nutbags, please. And Jim's like, did you fly and meet Todd and Rob? And they're like, no, those guys are lunatics. We want nothing to do with them. Tough. And they're like, but we love you. you're you're special and uh i think jim was like i really should this i think that was like they're

scared he even said he goes i could see how intimidated they were by the idea of what image was happening and and you guys when the sales kept coming in on young blood preliminary numbers half a million were up to 700,000 you're breaking a million and you're like what is this what is like we didn't see that happen i told my dad god bless him he came to me because he had seen like the success and he had been kind of sidelined by a lot of cancer and a lot of illness. And he was super proud of me. And he would come to me and he'd say, son, I'm concerned. Like, you're doing really well at Marvel.

What are you thinking? I feel like you're doing. And I said, dad, I've done the math. I believe I will sell 100,000 copies on my own. I am leaving a book that's selling a million a month in X-Force. But I will sell 100,000. But if I keep all of 100,000, then I'm, making more than I am making

five cents, you know, a royalty, whatever. And he's like, okay, well, I did the math for him. And so then you're like, oh, I did not have it on the ledger that I'm going to sell a million copies. Like, and Todd, and then, and trust me, I think that may have been the exact time. Jim's like, I'm doing an image. Because he's like,

I'm going to sell a million too. Because again, we'd all look at each other. One guy, won't say which. It was like, we're going to reset this, we're going to reset the hierarchy. It's not going to be you and Jim and Todd anymore. You know it wasn't Jim or Todd or me who said this. And when the guy left the room, Todd goes,

oh, it's not getting reset. It's staying the same. And I'm like, yeah, I think so too. But like there was this, you know, on our own, we'll reset it. We didn't. It just continued. I'm talking too much. You guys talking.

My problem question for you is, is it, are you honored or is it bittersweet? Where it's like, same in music, the 90s are back. Yeah. When I look at something like absolute Batman or the absolute line, I'm like, this is them taking. what worked at it means like when i see absolute batman that is a rob lyfeld inspired he's jacked he's big are you honored or is it like damn there is this level of like fuck totally honored and every 10th person will say that but there's a an entire group that goes we can't say that this is rob lyfeld it's that's

to me i'm like that's a little damn head big shoulders giant pecks i see myself all over that shit and i love it because i think what nick dragoda is doing is fantastic it's big it's loud No, no, no, man. Game respects. Just stabilizing, too. And, and one thing I'm not bringing into all of this is, I am a manga crazy kid. We had a Korean market near my house. And if you don't think I was dining out on a healthy diet of apple seed and ghost in the shell.

Wait, you was really, because your art reminds me like this of the North Star. That too. Yeah. And just a huge fucking. But if you go, look, I wear my influence on my sleep. You go get apple seed. That was the best of all of them. And you look at Apple Seed and you'll be like,

I see every X-Men, I see every X-Force and Youngbud like influence right here. Shiro was one of the best. There was bubblegum crisis. Later on, there was one called Bastard that was fantasy. I mean, manga was my complete, like I didn't understand why everybody else didn't love it as much. It seems like absolute Batman, especially the Joker, their version of the Joker and Bain. Like, I love the Bain is 20 feet tall. Like, that's rad.

Like 10-foot Batman, he's a 20-foot Bain. Even Wonder Woman, she has a huge sword now. There's all, it feels like the 90. It feels like image. And it's like, I do see like kids online thinking like, it's not a continuum of a history. I'm like, dog, I remember. But, yeah.

If I could come over there and hug you right now, I would hug you. Thank you for saying it. Because we see it. But we're like, it's so weird to chill. Like, like, I think I used to, as much as I get in, excited, like there's just a calm that you go, like, this is great. I'm so happy for them that that's happening because Absolute Batman is good for the business. You're the legend now.

You're the George Perez. You're the Dave Cockram. You are the guy that, like... We are the old men of the sea and we're happy, but we're also hungry too, man. I love getting out there. But see, here's the thing with Absolute Batman and stuff like that. And when people are like, do a Absolute Batman, that would be I don't have much more time. I've seen the guys who are my age and passed a middle 60.

The drawings aren't the same. The eyes, the hand coordination starts falling. So right now I really like one of my works at. I still feel like it's very strong and it's connecting. But I need to pour all that into my stuff and be able to, you know, look, young blood has completely overachieved. There was no demand for it. It was gone for six and a half, maybe seven years. And when I brought it back, I didn't know if people.

People would dig it. But now we have four action figures out this year. We got art editions, trade paperbacks. Youngwood number one was the number one book for Image Comics. In November, our 100th issue was the number five book because I'm up against Robert Kirkman, who I loved your interview with him. And he just rules that chart in Image Comics. So the fact that you can even wedge in there is like a giant success.

But like that's the kind of stuff, you know, calling up working with the toy companies, the video game companies, and be able to work with other talent and take your stuff to the next level. As great as absolute Batman is, when they close the doors at night, it still stays on the Warner Brothers lot. It doesn't go in the car with them

and drive home with them. And that's where you, when you create something that's yours and you can manage it, and that's exciting. It's an excitement. And there were guys before us who we saw do that to,

Neil Adams, and other seminal talents that had shown us. Frank Miller, Sin City, was out about a year before him. comics. And I'm like, Sin City's doing like crime noir. I mean, Frank Miller's doing crime noir. Holy crap. And he's cutting people's heads off. Like he was taking it to the X R-rated level. So we were just following the great example. So if we're setting an example, that's

awesome. I mean, your legacy, I mean, we have cable. We have Deadpool. Right. I mean, we haven't really talked about Deadpool. Like, when you're creating that character, what's the thing that, like, when did it all click for you? Like, this is what this character is. going to be. This is what it's going to sound like. We all need to go back. It's a great question. I appreciate this. Let me tell you, man, you go back with me in a time machine. Okay, what is Todd's number one influence when he's doing Spider-Man? When he breaks out and does his multi-million dollar Spider-Man, he is super influenced by Frank Miller like we all were. And what did Frank do to Batman? He turned him dark and dark and dark. And so Todd's like, he literally, you can see even the amount

of blacks on the page, the heavy shadows, the amount of he suddenly, even the way he, the way he draws Spider-Man in the regular Spider-Man book is totally different than how he was doing him more open and poppy in Amazing. And then he's got like craving guts are coming out. The lizard. There's voodoo magic. There's people with their heads being chopped off. Spider-Man is bloody.

It's dark. And he and MJ are having marital problems. She's going out dancing at night going, if you don't got time for me, the boys at the club do. And he would do like Mary Jane and her like kind of miniskirts and fishnets. And you're like, man, Mary Jane's grown up. And then like, you know, and then like he's getting like, he's having marital problems. He's having job problems. Like, and I'm like, this isn't the Spider-Man I grew up with.

I grew up with was like fun and bouncing and an asshole and would like say funny things when he was punching you. And that's not really where Todd was going with that. And so I felt like, and also Todd McFarland, that Tim Miller, the director of the original Deadful said to me, he goes, if you tell me this Spider-Man story one more time, I'm going to think we need to give a special credit to Todd McFarland. Because Todd would call me up and he would do his taunt. And he loved it.

He's like about six, seven years older than me. So he thought it was a funny little punk. And he'd be like, Rob, how are you doing with the new mutants? And drawing the eyes and the nose and the mouth and the ears and the hair. He goes, I just drew Spider-Man. Took me 10 minutes. I'm done for the day. He said, I did a big splash, full page, big, I big, I big, oval webs, done.

Have fun, buddy. And I'd be like, and he's like, I'm never doing a team book again. And I'm like, damn, he's got something. So when I said, it's time for me to write. They told me when I took over, I could write the book. And so they finally let me write the book. And I'm like, well, this is a lot of pressure. cable has put a lot of pressure on me

so that's why when people say why is like three new characters introduced and I'm like well two out of three ain't bad I'm like Deadpool Domino Gideon okay two took one didn't okay the guy with the ponytail didn't exactly No no I do too but

but but Deadpool and Domino so I said to and it took until this last year I put it on my socials as well a guy said Rob this is what's in the letters page of New Mutants 100 the fans saw it I pitched him

I said, hey, Deadpool is going to be a mercenary because I love Boba Fett. I love mercenaries. And look, I've told people, cable is Hans Solo. There's a character named Tolliver that's hired Deadpool. He's Jabba the Hut. Deadpool is Boba Fett. He's been here. He's come to retrieve.

But I said he's Spider-Man with guns and swords. He's funny. He's going to be like an asshole. And again, like, he's black and red. Deadpool, like, if I were to start drawing webs on his costume, you'd be like, oh, crap, he really is. Spider-Man adjacent.

And so he just doesn't have webs. He has guns and swords. And in the first letters that they printed for new mutants, said, I love this new Deadpool. He reminds me of Spider-Man with guns and swords. I'm like, damn, I nailed it. That's exactly the pitch.

And I've watched over time his legend morph. I'm like, oh, I guess he was based on death stroke, which had nothing to do with this character. But like, so that's not true. There's none of you are a fan of it. Titans. There is it in the back of your mind, you're just like, Deathstroke is so cool. Right.

I would tell you. I could not keep it from you. I look, and I'll give you a picture of death stroke number one is coming out. Yeah. From Marvel, the same month, New Mutants, 98. And he is bigger than Alan Richardson. Mike Zek of Punisher Fame does this cover with Deathstroke badass. He's got one foot up on the ledge, and he's got this giant gun.

And he looks meaty and big and thursday. thick and I'm like yeah these characters Deadpool even moved he jumped around he bounces around in the air doing kicks and stuff that you just didn't associate death stroke honestly I think Slade when you take his mask off I think he's closer to cable

I think he's more of an influence on cable than he is on Deadpool but it's cool to say the death stroke and I'm like I you know look my one of my friends his name is Chase and one of his best friends is Jace okay people can have names that sound like

Peter Parker, two-piece, okay, Bruce Banner, two B's. Wade Wilson was WW, but of course it was slay. Like, I've dealt with this and I don't care. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't affect me. It's tossed my way. It gets tossed my way, but I just walk through it. Like, if that's, like, I can't go

to every single person and go, look at, intervention, no, Spider-Man. Like, but, but he just, Joe me, he just took off. He just, he was the right character at the right time, and you cannot ever discount, right place, right time, I think, for anything. You say that.

You say you're not going to be at the movies when X-Men come out. They put Spider-Man and Deadpool a movie together. You'll be there. I'm going to be first in line. Are you kidding me?

I want to see Tom Holland and Ryan. Heck yeah. To see Deadpool, and now, you know, obviously you got cable and Deadpool in the movie, but to see Deadpool become a character that legitimately has gone

from being a character that was an A-list comic book character for comic book fans to now being an A-list superhero period. Yes. A billion dollar a record setting superhero.

First of all, financially, how does that sit with you? It's all good. It's all good. I bet. He's not going to believe this. But did you know when the first movie,

because like people forget that first movie, it took Ryan and Co. A long time. I remember they had the latest video. Did you know because you were the creator,

like, if they get this right, it's going to be huge. So the first script was phenomenal and it really is what you see in 2016. Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick were the only writers on the script at the time and they sent me the screenplay and I'm like they gotta make this as fast as they can

because it was so the way that it's told in a non-linear way it kind of really screamed to me like the Quentin Tarantino superhero movie I mean you just go to that first movie the non-linear, the jokes, the action, the violence and so Tim Miller I'm gonna tell you right now. I don't know if they've, like, you can go back, Edgar Wright, turned it down.

Robert Rodriguez turned it down. The director of Zambiland turned it down. We were, like, dealing with nobody wanted to make this movie. And Fox was definitely very hesitant. And so Ryan went on and, you know, made all these other movies in the in-between time waiting to see if Fox would greenlight it. Tim Miller comes on, late 2010, and I am a, a... co-coach to my kids like flag football league and I get this you know 818 number I pick it up say hey Rob name's Tim Miller got your got your number from Jim Lee uh wanted to call and introduce myself

I'm going to be directing deadpool I'm like hot damn and he's like there was a DC a DC video game that had come out and the my kids were super into get video games and we had it and this incredible superman versus Lex Luther all Tim had directed that and his company had produced it and and he tells me I did all these Knights of the Old Republic, like, video game, like shorts as well. So I'm like, wow, so this is going to be his first live action thing. Tim is the most generous, like, just welcoming guy. It says, come on up to my studio, to Blur.

And so I went up there and I started hanging out and I saw, I saw the storyboards. I saw that leaked footage get filmed. I was there in, like at Blur. and then it just sat and sat and I'm like, why aren't they Greenland in the movie? Like, you are not kidding when you say that they just would not, they just did not believe that it would break through. Guardians of the Galaxy, 2014 was a huge, huge part of it.

And the president of Fox said, Rob, that Monday we had, after Guardians of the Galaxy, 2014 made all the money. We had a meeting and said, maybe we need to put Deadpool back into consideration. And so I really believe Guardians was key. A lot of humor, a lot of music. And I think it because all the music in Deadpool is in the script. Now the script got chopped down.

They probably cut $15 million in the budget. I remember right before casting about five weeks before they were going to set. Tim goes robbed. Garrison Kane has been cut from the movie because Kane had these two giant battles with Deadpool in the original script with all his cybernetic. and giant action, but he did not survive the budget cuts. And I think the,

and I'm like, like my wife says, suck it up, you know, cry in the inside like a winner. And I went, it's okay, Tim.

I'm, I'm, I'm okay with Kane. Okay. And I'm like, shit, I love Kane. But I'm like,

getting the Deadpool movie made finally, just cheer it on. And being the creator of the character, the character coming to the big screen, what is the role that they have for you?

Like, do they use U.S. counsel, do they come back when they're stuck on a what would Deadpool do situation? How do they work with you on that? So over the 10 years, multiple emails, can you tell me more about this character? Can you tell me more about that? I was everybody's cliff notes. I got, I got, I can, I pulled them up the other day.

I pulled up Ryan's inquiries, Rett's inquiries, Paul's inquiries, the studio's inquiries. And look, I had a really special position there. The president, his name was, I call him Jimmy G. It's a Giannopolis is the guy who was running the company at the time. and he replaced Tom Rothman, who was, God bless Tom, but he is the one who was not going to make Deadpool under any circumstances. He's part of the reason it didn't. And he's a funny guy.

He came up to everybody at a party, an industry party, and put his arms around, Paul and Red, and Tim was right there. Ryan wasn't in the room. And Tom goes, see, I told you guys it wasn't ready yet. You should thank me. It wasn't time. It wasn't time.

And everyone's like, go away. Get the fuck out of it. So the thing is, everybody would always ask me but Tim was a giant when I went to Blur Studios Tim has a floor to ceiling giant like one of those

bookshelves you'd see like where the dude has the giant ladder that pushes on the wheels down from one end it's all comic books it's all comic books no books it's all comics and Tim's like I can grab this here

and he is a legit like super you'll have him on the show one day he is such a comic book fan and I think he was able to really fight for all the right sensibilities. And I mean, again, I was, I was on set for all three movies and was able to watch the magic come to life. And I would get in trouble

on the first set. Because back then, you guys, 2015, when they're filming it, 60 million dollars would be a big opening. And I'm like, I'd see the dailies. And I'm like, this movie's open to $60 million. And they're like, shut up. You're not jinxed. You're jinxed in the movie. And I'm like, I did because it opened $118 million. I did.

I did, jenks it. I made it better. No, I just, it's, so I was, they could not have been more inclusive, uh, that, especially when they brought in cable and domino on the sequel, man, I, I, I, I, I, they, what were having me up. I was able to go to, like, marketing's like, we're inviting you up for the marketing, you know, meetings. And, uh, I'm just, I can't believe them sitting at this table. This is so fun. And also, I knew it would all end 1,000% when Disney bought fine. I'm like, well, that trips over. Say more. Yeah, we're here. Wait, so I, I do have to ask this, because some news dropped today, and I'm a comment.

comic book nerd where they announced that they're breaking the glass star wars Avengers Marvel is crossing over and I'm just going to give you the floor because this is I think this is maybe the fear that I had and maybe you had when Disney Bart Marvel where it's like tell me you I don't want to hear me I want to hear you I'm with four fans tell me what I thought in my opinion right now Marvel has lost their way the comics creatively because they let the MCU lead them. But in the beginning, the great thing about the MCU was like, no, no, the comics are leading.

They're taking these great stories and we are adapting them. And I'm just like, yo, putting Star Wars in this universe isn't going to fix it. Reinvesting in the creators, reinvesting in the stories, being more daring is where you get the awesome movies. It starts in the comics. So I need, come on, everyone's got to win here.

I mean, to me, to me, Obviously, it's a bad idea. I mean, like, Star Wars has its own lore, its own galaxy, it's on everything. It'd be like, you know, Lord of the Range, you put the Terminator in there. It's not, it doesn't work right. I thought, oh, my gosh. Avengers vs. aliens was good. That's fine.

But the aliens, to be honest with you, is a very actually versatile. Like, alien aliens and everything. You know, it comes around. Alieners. It's different. Obviously, it doesn't work. but when we get to late stage, whatever, whatever,

this is kind of the kind of shit that you get. That's the stuff that sells, right? People are going to see Star Wars and Avengers and X-Men all together, they're going to buy the comics.

That's what I think. I mean, that's what they think. I think it's an abomination. I mean, I don't disagree, but they're like, they're kids, man. They're going to see Luke Skywalker and Wolverine.

They're going to be like, oh, man. Come on. I got to hear it. It's going to be to the point where it might not mean anything because of the fact that they just think that these are things that they can just mash together in hopes to make

something that's appealing but not good. I mean, I don't know if it's going to be good or not. It's going to be hard for it to be good for me because I just don't like that type of shit. It's really bankrupt, yeah. But if it's entertaining and it's entertaining, but I'm a purist when it comes to stuff like that. See, the Star Wars fan in me, because I'm an OG 9-year-old, 1977. What am I just watching?

What am I watching? I mean, across all the Ringervverse, I see all these old cats. come in and I'm like, I'm as old as that dude. Me and Tracy Letts, I'm not dude. I was nine years old. I went to Star Wars. I saw the commercials and it babysat me. If you don't think I bragged to everybody that fallen,

I saw it with every single friend and family member, umpteen times, 35 times the summer in 1977. And my parents could not have been more happy to let that movie babysit me. And we would go with our friends, like the whole neighborhood. My best friend's name is Mondo.

And then there was Eddie and there was two crakes. And we would go and be like, all right, you watch the left of the canteena. I'll watch the right and you watch the center and see what we're missing. Because it was for that time, that was a jammed, you know, a lot of stuff in the frames, right? And we were just, oh, man, and we just lived for that movie. And so now I go, huh. Now I'm going to tell you, like, they've been taking pitches on this for two years. And I'm going to tell you, like, I actually, right before I came here, I read more of the article.

I'm like, I was kind of holding me. back. I'm like, the Star Wars characters are coming to Earth? Oh, this, like, that's nasty to me. And I'm going to tell you something, my buddy's pitch, I'm not going to give out who this brilliant writer had told them that his pitch began

with Tony Stark in the Ironman armor, but holding his helmet, stumbles into the canteen and goes up to the bar, a little disoriented and asks for a drink, and people think he's possibly a mandolarian. And I'm like, that is a great story compared to this.

They're going to come to, like, marvel the unit. Like, I'm so unnerved by it. What happened to a galaxy long, long time ago? So you think that it can work. Look, here's what I thought you were going to say, so I'm going to say it. It's going to sell millions and millions of copies. Because it's the FOMO book of a lifetime.

I got to have it. I got to have it. Did I maybe make plans to order 1,000 copies of the Deadpool cover? Yes. I'm like, oh, oh, they put Deadpool on cover. So you're not out on it? I can't be. Right.

You know what I mean? People are going to like ask me to sign that book. Right. So I'm like, that's, my daughter's in nursing school. Hello. So, uh, Deadpool and Obi-Wan, I got to be, I got to be realist. Deadpool and Obi-Wan. You know?

I mean, and he's being spooked by the jaw. The jaw was on the covers. Like they're like, they're like, frank. See, this is how they get us. I am not looking forward to it at all. I cried on the inside. But you said like a champ. I'm doing it like a champ like my wife said.

Cry in the inside. That's what winners do. She got that from a movie and she says it to me all the time. But the thing is I just, I'm so glad you brought it up because I got like just a sad face. I'm like, we're here. It's happening. But comics have been here before.

And I think... Not with that. What I notice about y'all is it feels like Marvel kind of said never again. We are never allowing what happened with image to happen where it's like you guys had the power you realized that you took it into your own hands. Spawn. Youngblood.

And it just seems like it's harder. Like Robert Kirkman is the only other creator I can think of who's been able to say, I actually don't need Marvel or DC. I'm going to bet on myself. How do we get the direct market and superhero comics to a place where we can have more? I think there's more right now. I think I do believe that the comic industry, is waking up and there's incredible success.

I do want to mention because I was so excited to see Robert talking to you guys. Because like I said, I watch all the episodes. I'm like, oh, damn, Robert's on when you guys interviewed him at San Diego. And Robert, when I first met him, there was about eight issues of Invincible Out. And I had no idea who this guy who came out of nowhere was. And Corey Walker, spectacular, came out of nowhere. Who are these names I've never heard of who are so refined? And he came up to me at a Chicago Comic Con.

It may have been 2003, and he said, hey, I'm Rob, Rob Laffield. I'm Robert Kirkman. I'm like, what if I stood up? I got so excited. I can't believe I'm meeting the guy who is invincible. It's one of my favorite books. Get out of here. We then spent, I think the next 48 hours together, just, we ate together.

We went and saw movies all weekend in Chicago. And eventually he says, New Mutants 100 is a giant book to me. He goes, when Strife takes off his helmet and it's an older cable, he goes, I freaked out. And you know, Jeff, John, he says, he's a little bit. John's, another genius, brilliant writer who I think we're going to see all his influence on lanterns, said the same thing to me. And that's when you go, A, I feel super old that you're telling me this, but I was also like just in my early 20s, but like just bringing it full circle with cable, like that, that the stuff that we were accomplishing and I've seen people freak out over

just Todd Spider-Man, like that is the greatest Spider-Man of all kind, of all time to them, right? So what I think is going on, the fact that image has stayed around for 30, we're entering our 35th year. I just got to want, the publisher sent me this great idea for image and the 35th anniversary right as I was getting in the elevator. And I'm like, oh, damn, this is a good idea. Because now everybody's kind of thinking, like, this is time to party. This is time to celebrate. Outside of Absolute Batman, you've got a guy named Brett Bean who put out a fantasy book called Dork.

I love Dork. It's so great. It's so fun. It's fresh. It's completely creator-owned, creator-vision. and then there was there is one badass cat in the business named dania warren johnson and he did the he he just won an award for absolutely yeah yeah that's it and uh i thought for sure marvel or dc was was going to gobble him up and they were just going to show him the greens and get him to cross over

and he's doing his he's staying in the independent world and i think his comic that's coming out called chain cada and and it was the hottest book to get so so just just like wednesday night preview night San Diego, I have to pay just like everybody else, because that's not my book. The money goes to Daniel. I was at the image booth right before 5 o'clock,

I said, where's the chain caught us? And they said, they're right over here. We haven't broken out, you know, we haven't put them out yet. I'm like, I need one. They're like, good, because you can only sell, buy one. And they brought me the reader.

I swat my card. I took my chain cotta. I double bagged and boarded it. I'd probably take it out of my bag three times a day to look through it because he's now influencing me and showing me like, yo, you're getting influenced by Daniel Warren Johnson.

That's what you're saying, bro. I see him looking at manga. I see him looking at Frank Miller. I see him. And look, man, he did a signing for Transformers when it came out, and he has an X-Force shirt on. He has my X-Force, and I'm like, oh, damn! But, like, we old dudes need the young dudes to stay fresh.

Keep you all. Keep you on. You know? I mean, it's, you know, I mean, like, it's just, like I said, sports. Fresh new guy off the bench, great new rookie, great new quarterback, and suddenly you don't think those receivers are like, damn, we finally excited. Chicago Bears. You don't think they're like, wow, we have an A-plus-plus-plus-class quarterback now.

Like, they're just so excited, and it juices the whole team. I think the line's like, I think I'll block for this guy. Right. I'll ask you something. So on Twitter a lot of times, Rob, you be going at the MCU and Disney. Yeah. All right. Let's get into it.

Let's talk about this. Hell, yeah. This is my guy right here. I fear no one. What is the crux of your criticism of the MCU, of your criticism sometimes of Kevin Feigy, or every criticism of Disney? Where does it come from?

Kevin Feigy and Disney do not treat the comic book creators in the way that they should be. And you know what, this isn't about money. It's not financial. So that's a different lane. That's a whining that probably shouldn't be brought to light. But I've told you guys, and I said this on my, the first time I brought this to light was on a podcast.

And I had to wait until I did not feel, although I felt this way the last. two years I was at Marvel. I wanted to be out of Marvel before I said anything. I think it's disrespectful when I'm doing work with them, working with them day and day out. So about two months after I was no longer there, I decided to tell, share my feelings. And the original Superman movie, which my dad took to me in the porn rain, Christmas, 1970, 1978, and there's a big name's Jerry Schuster, Joe Siegel, man, they come right at you. Full giant font. along with all the other important.

That's a company that says, we're going to honor the guys who put Superman here. Downey Jr. is not putting on the Iron Man suit without the people that created him. Ryan Reynolds is not wearing a Deadpool costume without the guy that created him. So on, so forth, all through the land. You know, Benedict Cumberbotch, all these guys.

We have created roles that are transformational to these talents and have brought them tremendous this notoriety and success. And yet the creators are, like, you know what? Guys, I've been in about 10 X-Men 97 scrolls. You don't see me share those all crumbled together where, like, I need to get like the freaking inspector gadget,

like magnifying glass. Is that my name? Is that my name? Printed like, yay, big. I got a big-ass TV screen and it's still this big. Like, you're like, oh, I'm so excited to be lumped in with everyone. Here are all the people that we took ideas. from. Treat us better. And you know what? It's not going to get done. And I realize I'm the

sole guy in the wilderness because let me tell you who's not going to do that. The people who are doing the X-Men right now aren't going to be like, we would like to be treated better because they need that check. They need that check that comes from writing the X-Men and Daredevil and Spider-Man. So they're not going to do it. And the DC people aren't going to do it because they want to get hired by Marvel. So all the people in the work for hire is true, man. They may be talk about it. They don't know. They may be right in Green Lantern right now, but they have slipped a Spider-Man proposal across the table. So no one's going to talk about it.

So then the creators talk about it. And guys, like myself and Todd, are not afraid of the brushback. Because what am I saying that's wrong? Treat creators better. Increase the size of our names, okay? Why do you think that they don't? Because Kevin Feigy likes hanging out with actors and stars and doesn't give the same. Okay, so here's a famous story, right?

I've told this on, I think this is the funniest shit that I'm going to tell you. And you can go back and source it because it was shared on social media. So I said at the time that at the Deadpool Wolverine, I was told that my family and I could not attend the after party. And none of them, not only that, who cares? You know, my kids are awesome. They're like, dad, we don't care. Let's go have fun in New York City.

We were all flying back to San Diego the next day because the convention was the next day. So I'm like, my family's so cool because I didn't want to let them down. I thought maybe this means something to them because they've been to a lot of these. And we were treated much different by Fox, which was nice. I never demanded it. It was just they just did it. They were polite and kind and wonderful.

But so it wasn't just that. It was at the premiere, not one Marvel person came up and shook my hand and said, hey Rob, hey Rob. Like, this movie doesn't exist but for me. And this one isn't just Deadpool. You got Lady Deadpool on the Deadpool core. Like you took me and went to the... Because, like, that is macro life-held stuff is all over this.

Now, they gave me the storefront. I approved it. They called me. They said, well, you approved this. I said, I, a year earlier, sorry, I knew it was coming. I thought it was fun. But when I went and said this publicly on my podcast, two of the people that have worked on Deadful said, we were, literally, they said it like, well, we were invited to the party.

What does that say? And then they should have just shut up. but they went further. And they're like, we were on a sectioned off area where we couldn't interact with the talent. And he's like, I went to the restroom

and I saw Sean Levy washing his hands, but I was scared to say hi to him. And I'm like, okay, you were in a segregated area for you're not really that important. Don't look at us. You can be in the room. Don't look at us. Like telling me that you're in a roped off area

that you can't interact with the talent, that's just insane. That's just like, it's like, we're going to do this, but we're going to do it like, like, that tells the creators we're kind of icky. We're not icky. We're the dreamers.

Like I've said, like, and I, look, maybe the greatest thing I ever did was hang out with Jack Kirby. When he said, Rob, I'd like you to come to my house and have dinner with me and my wife. And I'm like, all right. And I'm like, oh, that was an hoax. Shit, that's two hours from my house.

Start at the car. I started going all the time. And I'm like, I'm sitting at the foot of the greatest comic creator of all time. And he's telling me war stories, comic book stories, and I'm just drinking it in. And I'm just drinking it in. And he shows me his art in the different drawers. But Jack was sad.

He was sad. He had a sadness because of how he had been treated by Marvel. And so this is kind of what they have done. If you're talking Jack Kirby, you're going 60s 70s. So think about how long that culture it is. Steve Dick Cote. Yeah. And here's the thing.

I know I see the Kirby family. God bless you guys. You're at the premieres now and you're so happy. but you sued them for 20 years. You sued Marvel for 20 years. Steve Ditko's family sued Marvel. The guy who created Ghostwriter sued Marvel. And so, like, these are just facts.

You can Google it. You can follow it. Marve Wolfman said I should get something for Blade. He sued Marvel and, you know, got blacklisted for a while. So getting completely out, you know, I consult. I'm like, so I don't have like a clause in here that I can't talk about this. And my attorney is like, nope. I'm like, okay, because I don't want to.

want to, you know, put anything in danger, but I just think, why don't you treat the people that created the stories that you used to be very faithful to? Why don't you treat them better? And there are some guys who make, who air this and they attach a financial component to it. And I understand that's then a different matter of business. Mine's easy. Just put our names in the front, like the Superman creators were. Like, just treat us a little better. And, and I think, look, somebody like me doing this, they either double dog down and like, we're going to not do it because life owns out there, which is fine. And I know it's cost me some relationships, but it's the wrong thing. Access. And that's fine. You know, it's like I did a panel this last weekend at a show with the

producer of the X-Men. And I'm like, are they nervous to be next to me? Because they're getting money from Marvel right now. Marvel signs their checks. That's their gig. I don't, I don't do anything with Marvel. And I think they were nervous and God bless, they were super sweet people. But I even said, I'm going to say something about executives here. I don't want to make you nervous. And they're like, they literally like physically went, oh boy, here he goes. But it's like, it doesn't matter. See, when I go and I set up a movie. So I had a couple of movies that never got made because in the 90s, they'd get you right up to the threshold and they'd be like, the only thing that works is Batman. I was told that so many times as were about a dozen other comic creators. But

when you got Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg and Will Smith saying, hey, come over to the house, let's jam on these ideas, let's work this out, here's these storyboards I've done. And you're like, these people are so cool. They're so not scared to be with creative people. But then you get these executives, and I'll tell you one of the other reasons is if they open the door for one, they got to open the door for everything. And I'm telling you, I think Figey's like, I want to touch these people. I don't want to be anywhere near these people. Now, now, the new cast of whatever, I want to be around.

them. These are the people who I assembled and created, and I'm sure in his mind, he is the savior of Robert Downey Jr. But how do you exclude Ironman from that? And there's a CBS this morning interview with Stanley that I keep going back to. He did it maybe 2017 where he's like, you know, I don't have a good deal with Marvel. That's why I'm out in the road signing, you know, autographs all the time. And you can see that that turned out very badly for him. So it's just, It's sad. It's sad to me because you know what? We do have voices.

And with the advent of social media, we are connecting with people more than ever. And you're not going to silence us. And I like this. That's why I like this show. You guys just talk. You just talk the truth. And it's so fun and it's so refreshing.

I'd be talking to the truth. But no, but I honestly, this is what? But I do think like, I grew up loving comics. And when I would read books about the history of comics, I was like, yo, it ends. the same for so many creators, whether it's curvy,

whether it's Dicko, whether it's the Superman family having to beg and plead Batman, where I'm like... Bill Kane. Oh, excuse not Bill Kane. Bob King. Bob Finger.

Yep, yep. Where I was always like, damn, these are the creators who made it, and it's almost like, once you, what's the company's ring everything they can,

they're like, get the fuck out. Now, they just, like I said, we're just, I guess we're not sexy enough. We don't matter enough. Now, look,

if it changes, I'll call it out. You know what I, you make a good movie? Like, I thought Spider-Man was good. I didn't think it was great. It was too long, my opinion. The new movie.

The sweet spot of the movie. Look, good is... Why isn't good enough? That's why I said it something the other day. Good is mad. Good is like, good is good. Great is, is a... Is verified it.

It's aspirational. What was the gap? The movie's too long. Okay. And I did not love the Jean Grey stuff. I didn't love it. What did you love about it? I don't...

That the entire movie was about... a character that he's never had any interactions with, but suddenly she was the, the catalyst for everything that was going on. I love, look, the reason I enjoyed it so much is we haven't seen Spider-Man move like that. And look, Tom Holland

and the chemistry he has was Zendaya is fantastic. I love him, him, and Bernthal and Ruffalo, Hulk, Punisher, that's the sweet spot of the movie. Come on, you know, that's when you were most excited. That's what you are. I do agree with you. It should have been a Hulk Punisher,

Spidey movie. But, but, so, so let's go on record. I said the movie was good. I'll even go very good. The movie was good.

Rob-life-ville. But people are dragging me on lines in. You can't say, well, if I don't feel it's great, but it's good. And good is better than most of the other stuff

that's been coming out from Marvel. It's good is an achievement, okay? And so, um, all right, so we, we,

I have to ask this question while we have you because, go. You've worked on X-Men. Yeah. grew up loving Avengers. this happens a lot. I want you to go power set, cultural.

Who's more powerful as a team are culturally important? Avengers X-Men. Even with the success of the Avengers having those big track records, X-Men's been bigger and longer. You are the number one comic book in... What are you talking about in a fight?

No, I'm talking about both. No, I'm first-time answering culturally. Then a fight, here's the deal. Who's on each team is going to matter. Okay, Rob, we want you, we want... Okay, so, because we're going to do this,

but you tell us which Avengers team you would face off against an X-Men team. So Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, especially in the Marvel MCU. You got Ruffalo. So Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Scarlet Witch. I'm going to say Captain America for his leadership acumen,

and who am I going to round out? You know, you're going to say Iron Man. D-2 more. You don't do hockey. Oh, I have to do seven? Wait, wait. Thor, Hulk. Hulk, Iron Man Cap, Scarlet Witch.

I'm gonna go... I'm gonna be honest. These five can take the rest of the X-Men. That's alright. Okay. What? Xavier and Gene Gray are your two like Omega-level X-Men.

Icemen. Storm? Storm. Okay. Storm and Thor, I believe Storm is not as powerful as Thor. Thor at his apex in the comics has not now. Now, I understand Jonathan Hickman had her re-terrorforming a planet. So you're right.

There are now power scalings. The teams that I grew up with, I'm just giving it to you. And look, here's the deal. When Hulk goes off, he's going to cost you three to four people. He's just going to call. People will get knocked unconscious. Colossus, fist to fist is going down. You think Hulk can be Phoenix?

No, no, no. Hulk is not a factor. Scarlet Witch and Thoree. Thor are the two most powerful people. And I'm not going to, okay, Tony Stark is going to figure when they enter, he is going to emit a sonic disruptor that the waves get in the way of Xavier concentrating and Gene Gray. And while that's happening, fucking Thor brings the lightning down, okay, summons the thunder of Asgard. And then I really, Scarlet Witch, so people, I grew up with one of the greatest Avengers writers, Jim Shooter, and the Ultron was. their most formidable foe. Ironman, Thor, and Cap could not dent him. And then wandering into the

room, she'd been bound and gagged, because Ultron knew how powerful she was. Wanda raises her hands, and she starts breaking Ultron. He starts, Adamantium starts to break, and he drops to his knees, and even they go, girl, like, wow, they leveled up her power. And I think a fully engaged, not wacky, crazy, Wanda. Fully engaged Wanda. Fully engaged Wanda. can bring the X-Men to their knees. She's a mutant. She is a mutant. And she's the daughter of Magneto,

and she's extremely, she is an omega-level power. That's my take. I can, but the thing is, you could convince me that there are moments that the X-Men- I'm just sad, bro.

You create a cable deadpool and you like, come on, God. Scarlet's packing them up. Scarlet, which is sick, like, sick level. You go get Avengers 167 and you tell me, like,

and there are other times along the way, she's taking all of them. One year before Dark Phoenix, John Byrne, same artist, does Dark Scarlet Witch. It's that incredible cover. She is, her name is Scython, C-Y-T-H-O-N in this dark form, and the entire Avengers team is upside down behind her.

She has got Iron Man Vision, Captain America. She subdued all of them. And, like, it is a- Reality Warper. Yeah, I mean, so she is the- X-Men got a reality warper. Who? Well, no, you got to go to Dark, you got to Dark Phoenix.

Huh? Professor X-E-S-E-S-E-R-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-R-E-E-E-R-E-E-E-L-E-E-L-G. does not get to fight for the X-Men. Ligian Fries. Legion is old. Legion does not get to fight for the existence. Wait, why not?

If Legion doesn't get to fight for the- If Legion walks in the building, he's like, I'm killing all you. He's like, oh, he's like, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. He's got too many, his personalities are like, like, he's. But we're talking about people who can go against. So, but my man, Dark Phoenix, Aided a planet. Okay, there is no. when I was a kid, I'm like, she just stayed

a damn planet. And that's when like, when they suddenly show up and go, she has to be brought, like, to justice for her crimes, you're like, things got real. Like, Dark Phoenix is a different Dark Phoenix, I believe, can wipe them all out. But is she going to activate Dark Phoenix? Go crazy. Because if that happens, she's wiping out the X-Men too.

She's wiping all right now. But if she's lost, well, I think technically X-Men win. If the Dark Phoenix comes. So we're just going. And at that tame, it scorched Earth and who won? I think it's a cultural war, really, because Avengers, you know, coworkers, you know,

at the end of the day, they all go home to their families and live their life. X-Men, those, that's a family, man. If in the trenches,

I want family. That's a straight line of omega-level mutants. What are the Avengers? I got to X-Pen-4. If you do Omega-Level mutants, then you're going outside of what is on the X-Men team.

Then you're putting Franklin and Richards on there. You're doing all kinds of stuff. But we're talking about people, because really, with the Avengers, I mean, you could put Hyperion on the team.

You could put Centri. You could do all kinds of stuff if you want. So we're just doing classic. We're just going to win. Yeah. But this is going to be very controversial. Rob, before we let you out of here, I want to say one thing. I ask you one thing. We've talked about your present.

We've talked about your just incredible past, the future. Yeah. What in this industry, what with your characters, what do you still want to do? So as I think I mentioned, I've been around the country and you meet these people who are there for eight and a half hours and whatever, and every single person says, when are we getting image comics movies? When are we getting image comics movies? So I was on the phone with my agents yesterday and I haven't tried to sell anything for two years. Because here's the power Kevin Feigy had and I say this with all due respect. He convinced the industry.

If it's not Marvel, don't try because only we can do it right. D.C. help that tremendously. Don't rock you gotta get off their necks, bro. This is crazy I'm pro- I'm pro- You're not lying I'm not lying I have gone to bat for DC

Okay I have gone to bat I respect I'm like that I respect No no no I That movie I'm like that's crazy But like I am legendary For not moving on my

Off my position of man's still I can't believe they did Kivisville as well dirty as they did. But you know what? I was one of those guys. I'm like, I'm here for the Superman movie. I'm here for James Gunn.

Probably following it up with Supergirl was exactly not the best idea that we all kind of wondered. But look, guys, lanterns? No, I haven't. Really good. Six o'clock, my wife knows. 559.

559.5.5.5.5.5.5. 6 o'clock. Boom, HBO. Pacific Time. We're watching. Every Sunday. We got locked in. But you were saying. I just believed that D.C.

didn't help matters by having as many stumbles as they did. And I could have gone and cheered them and argued for them. But ultimately, the audience just kept favoring Marvel. And Feigey convinced the business, only we know how to make Marvel movie. Only we know how to make comic book movie successful. And that's, and I mean, because you go, why haven't there been all the, I mean, Youngblood has a giant audience penetration. Millions of, those weren't being flipped.

Those were getting into the hands of people. Spawn. dragon. And so I talked to my agency as I think it's time. I think there's, I think there's, there's a window for this because again, the fans of this stuff want this very badly. They want a spawn movie. They want a young boy movie series, whatever. And so as this happens, I've had two studios call and been like, we want to make blank. And so I'm negotiating with blank and also for some other stuff, and we'll see how it goes. Nothing happens until that green light is given.

And that is a long journey. But again, having a catalog that's now 35 years old that we continue to add stories to, it feels very promising. It feels very exciting. There's just a different, I think there's been an executive turnover as well. I think there's fresher, younger people who are willing to take these on, who grew up with them, who liked them. Because there's only so many, and now with Marvel, again, publicly saying we're going to pull back wisely on, on, you know, the amount of movies that we're making and make them

more quality, right? I mean, I think Feigey said that last week. And, and so, and, and if DC can just, DC has great stuff. The Patinson, Batman is going to be double the last patents. It is going to do the Dark Knight Heath Ledger type business. It's going to go from Batman returns to, no, no, what you saw with Brand New Day is coming for the second Patent's movie. I couldn't agree more. Hell yeah. That, that is going to, because Batman, is Spider-Man and Batman are the two biggest characters

in business there's nobody who can touch them I love Superman but even I know he just doesn't have the Batman I feel like if they do it right

could get could get around there Spider-Man and Batman they are yeah even with this now like you kind of can't yeah

Spider-Man and Batman are just so yeah but bottom line is I'm gonna keep making comic books I love getting up every morning

and filling a blank page with storytelling and, you know, interactions, drama, those page flips. I think doing comics, I've truly, it's a disease. I've talked to Kirkman and others about this. It's like you can't shake it. You're sick with it.

I do not get up to make comics for a living. I do, I get up to make comics because at this point, I just, I literally go, there's going to be a day where I can't do it anymore and I want to do as much as I could while I could. And it is an absolute passion. And my wife knows, man, she goes, I can tell you got some good pages in today. back from the colorist or a good, because I'm so much more happy.

I'm like, oh my gosh. And I, like said to my family, you don't understand. When a page comes together, that's like, ask me anything. You can have extra today. You're like, I'll be like, okay, I'll sign that lease for you in New York City.

Okay, I'll, I'll do that. But, man, if my heart's struggling with me, don't talk to me. I don't want to talk to you. Don't ask me for shit. The bank is close today. Good comics? Business is open, okay?

Before you, because we got to let you go, but I talk a lot. No, you're a legend for the creators out there. Compa creators who want to do what you, Todd, Jim, did. Like, can you give them any words of wisdom? Yes, I do it all the time. Thank you so much. Social media has opened the door. You know, I had to drive eight hours, not a big deal, to go to San Francisco, to wait in line, to get my portfolio, to get hired.

I saw it in a newspaper. Oh, my gosh, there's an ad. 1987, I'm going up there, it's April. Do you know that every other publisher wouldn't even take my samples? I said, not hiring, not hiring. I was crushed. I'm like, I had slept with my, I had an aunt and uncle, I slept the night over there, got up there the night before, hit the show, all these different common companies,

and they're not around anymore, but they all were not accepting, we're not, they wouldn't even look. And the one guy from D.C. said, he chased me down and said, give me a packet, I'll take it with me, but I'm not doing anything at the show. Marvel was reviewing portfolios. and I was about to just get, I said, they're never going to hire me. And my friend said, go stand in line.

What do you have to lose? You have nothing to lose. Come on. And so I stood there, and the guy looked at my, it was a young blood story that I had drawn, and he stood up and he put his hand

across the table. And I'm like, what's going on here? He goes, welcome to Marvel Comics. And I felt, I remember, I think I put my head out of the window because my friend drove, like with my tongue out like a dog for eight hours, just letting the wind hit me like,

I'm in comics. I'm in comics. You don't have to do that anymore. You can load up all your crap, all your great stuff. Good stuff is crap. I'm just talking to the content. You can open up. You can put it on Instagram, on TikTok, on X, on Facebook.

You can say this is what I do. Right now, the guy who is drawing my new Evangeline comic, I discovered online. The guy that is coloring, I discovered online. The guy that is drawing my Bad Rock series that's a spinoff of Youngblood, I discovered him online. We are looking all the time. I'll go. I'll look at that guy's work.

I'll message him. but you got to do storytelling. If you want to be a cover artist, show your work, show what great single images you can do. Be loud. Get them out there. Push them in front of eyeballs. That's what we didn't have.

So I think the advantage lies with the talent that they can expose themselves on a macro level across all these different platforms now, which is different than us having to wait until ChicagoCon, San Diego Con, you know, to go and show our portfolio. So online is your friend. Get your work out there. As a writer, I tell everybody, get an artist.

cut a good deal, share the proceeds, share your vision, and go make the next saga or the next walking dead or the next invincible. You know, Robert Kirkman, he's a, he's a really good cartoonist, but he's not like publishing level because he hasn't really focused on that. But I saw some of his drawings, but he went and got great. Corey Walker and he were buddies and they made Invincible and it has become a phenomenon. But if they don't get together, they don't have that incredible success and we don't have these great stories. this great show. So I just, you know, it's different rules for everybody, but writers, this isn't novels. This is comic books. Comic books rely on visual, the visual component of storytelling. And so you got to get an artist and team up. And that's my advice.

Man, man. Rob Lafell, thank you so much for joining us, man. Thank you. I can't believe I can't believe it. I literally can't believe it. Pleasure, bro. I appreciate you, man. With me up. Rob, class act. That was awesome. Hell yet. Amazing guy. Dude, the cable, dude, the original cable. Come on,

we'll throw that up there, too. That is so cool. Insane. Also, Rob got to get off, got to get off D.C.'s neck. That shit was. That was so funny. That was so funny.

And is he wrong, though? Did he lie? Hey, see. Yeah. All right, this Thursday, Butmash returns with Marvel's Wolverine and Star Wars Zero Company previews. This weekend,

the Midnight Boys will be given their reactions to the D-23 Entertainment Show. case. We're going to be there at D23. All the way down to Anaheim. Our producers are layers in there is Jacob Cornett. Devin Buraldi, Jummi, a dinner on social. Don't do that hashtag. I missed it. Okay. This is my hashtag.

The Perfect Storm. Hashtack, the Perfect Storm. Jamie Lawson, if you free, call me. Yeah, Jamie Lawson. But don't be in a movie. A solo. An additional production from Arjuna Ram Gapal. Chuck, take us the house. Rob is a legend. The Midnight Boys Party is going to be groovy. And unfortunately, Jomi doesn't think.

black women should have movies. So this is the boat. What's the boat? That's the boat. That's still a big ass boat. That's a big boat. That's a small cruise ship. It's a small cruise ship.

It's a very small cruise ship. That bitch don't look crazy like that. It's a small. It can pick 200 people in it. What's the inside look like? I'll put you this way. Would Logan Roy go on a yacht? Exactly.

No. I mean, he would take like a, he would take that with like, He would take a boat that side. Okay, now how much you guys think it costs to go on here? Oh. Like for three nights? How long is the trip? So they got, they got 12 days.

And they go different places. Right. They got 12 days in the Greek islands. Uh-huh. They got 10 days island hopping in, in, um, they got 10 days island hopping in seashells. Okay, okay. Fucking really nice. Yeah, that does sound nice.

Eight days and the French and Italian. Riviera's with Corsica. This is very... This is all one trip? This is all one trip? No, no, these are different trips. Okay, different trips. And what's included...

They may have one that's eight days Eastern Caribbean with St. Bars. All right, so what's included with the crews? Like, are there shops... I mean, I'm sure there's levels. Apparently, inside the cruise ship, they got special fucking nice bars and different shops. Yeah, yeah.

Caryoki bars, stuff like that. Money shit. This is... This is... I'm gonna say the Caribbean elegance, Barbados, St. Lucia, and the Grenadines. I'm gonna say like 15 grand. Okay, so the most expensive one is the Greek one and that's $10,000. 10,000, okay.

Per person. Yeah. That's 10,000. Actually, that's way cheaper than I thought. My dad's a huge cruise guy and that's like around. 10K's not cheap, but I thought it was going to be more. Yeah. And me and Kaliko went to Greece and that dude, bust a nigga.

I'm about to say, you guys complain about the stairs. Like crazy. Like we bus a nigga. No, I'm just talking about the price. So compared to what you did in Greece, that's pretty reasonable. Yes. What? My question is, how do you get here?

Like, yeah, you got to fly. So you got to fly there. Okay, so then you got to add that on to it. Exactly. Like, you're not going to fly there. What you want to do, because my dad likes doing this is door-to-door cruises. It's like you pay for a certain amount and they pick you up. Your plane is paid for.

They fly you. You go to the cruise. You do the cruise. They fly you back and drop you off at home. That's real wealth. Wow. Wow. But look, if you do this one, though.

Pensioner. If you do this one, shout out to him. That didn't work for it. If you do six days Caribbean elegance, Barbados, St. Lucia, and the Grenadines, that's three grand. Only three grand. That's three grand. All you got to do is fly spirit to Miami.

Seriously. I'm about to say, is there Karna? Can I get Klona on that? Like, you can, that's three grand. And then the red sea wonders of the ancient world, that's in the Middle East. I don't know if we're going there. That's like 500. Nicks, fuck that.

They put you, I need a helmet. Nah, we are not. Who are, fuck, I don't. Oh, fuck that, bro. We all need a helmet. We're not doing this. Hold on. This is the thing about the red sea wonders of the middle.

They don't put the country. Yo, come on, man. They don't put the countries on this bitch. Tell us which countries we're going to. What are you going to do? I'm going to look at it right now. Every other one put the countries on here. Tell us what the countries is.

Going in there, you get fucked up. But, yeah, so this is supposed, because they have them, these Emerald Cruises feel like they're the affordable brand, because Rich Carlton also does these crews too. This is the new way. to do a luxury cruise. Because this is what people are about to start paying because let's be honest.

Too many niggas is taking the cruise ships. I remember that, I remember that discourse when they were like, they cut the... What discourse? No, there was a huge thing where like Carnival Cruise cut off something. I can't remember what part of it.

He's locked in. No, he's not locked in. He's on the emails. I'm not on the emails. I'm not on the emails. Oh, my God. I'm not... Hey, bro.

You ever... I don't have any influence. Yeah, too many niggas was taking cruises. And it was like, yeah, I know. I know. Bro, you ever wonder? We were talking about that in the group chat. Me and my dad used to talk about this.

My dad would be like, how all white people know to complain about niggas the same way? Is it the same way? It's an email list. For real. It's an email list that goes out. It's like, today in white news. Black people have taken over cruise ships. They beware.

They've been a polling dance line. They got the talking point. Level three threat assessment on Carnival Cruise line. But, Jeremy, your people go on cruises. We go on cruises, family cruises. They're never that expensive, right? But, I mean, it's a good time with family, man. Fuck, I can't fuck with her.

I got to ask my dad. Nah, it's kind of sick, though, because, like, you just partying with your homies, you're drinking all for a week. Ayo loves them. Ayo was talking about the fact, Ayo loved the cruise. We have a good time.

You know who doesn't like the cruises much? Nathan? Which one is named? Yeah, my sister-fiance, yeah. He's not fucking with the cruise like that. That, do they be, like what?

Do they be fucking on the cruise? Of course they do. Who's they? Oh, you're talking about his sister? No, no, no. I'm like, you're going with the damn. It's like,

is Iowa getting it in? Like, oh, is he meeting everybody? Is he, oh, right? I mean, I don't know about all that. I don't know. You be there shooting. Absolutely.

You're on a boat, man. You know, you see. You got dancing. You got drinks. You got drinks, man. It's not like a club club, but you go to the spot every night with the music, man.

You see somebody chop it up. Yeah, you shoot. They got a club? Yeah, of course. Of course. Wait, what, what liner do they, do they cruise on? So, no, so we did carnival the first two times and the last time. No, not Carnival, sorry.

What's called? World Caribbean. Or Royal Caribbean. We did World Caribbean the first of times. That's my dad's Brent. It was good. Honestly, I'll just will say, I can see, you know, some nice cougars on the carnival. Come on.

Come on. Come on. Come on. We're not, like, the problem. Norwegian, that was the wackest cruise we went on. And that was the cruise that Nathan went on for the first time. That's why I can understand why you wouldn't want to go back because that cruise was whacked. We all were like, man, that wasn't the same, you know.

So we got to figure it out for the next time. We might just do some all-inclusive, go to Mexico or something, you know, whatever. But that last one was whack. I'm mad at them.