The Smark Avengers - Vol 3, Ep 15: The Smark Avengers Talk About Updates to Characters That Didn't Stick Pt 1

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

All new! All different! Earth shattering revelation! The world will never be the same! Blah blah blah... we've all heard this song and dance before, right? Some hotshot writer comes in with a new status quo that's going to change everything but is ultimately retconned and forgotten within two years. Join Corey, Dylan, and Jon as they discuss the electric blue Superman, Spider-Man's organic webshooters, Jubilee being turned into a vampire and much, much more!

be worried about. I think there's every now and then I look at the list of like topics that we have and like is that going to be enough? Like what if we just run out of ideas and then like you see a news article that's like new Canadian Korean juggernaut coming soon to the online only comics and you're like oh no, never mind there will always be more. Yeah they they have a real good habit of just fucking stuff up and let us talk about things. I didn't see that Marvel put through this notion that I think now they're like everything they put out is going to at least get 10 issues.

Like I don't know if it was a mandate or what because I think they were getting a lot of criticism because they kept putting out like four issue miniseries over and over again. And then not announcing they were miniseries was a factor in that too. I mean, that's not a bad idea because you want to give these things like a chance

to kind of succeed on their own. Yeah. Like a lot of stuff ends up getting cancelled way too soon. I have a perfect example of that. There was this Aquaman series they were going to put out that was going to be like focusing on Arthur and Aqualad who was a big character in the Young Justice cartoon and is like Black Mantis sun. Like they were going to be, it was like going to be a big focus on that. And it got canceled before the second issue came out. It's like issue one came out.

And like, I guess the sales were just so rotten that they were just like, fuck it, scrap it. Wow. That's pretty bad. You don't want that. Yeah, it's rough. You know, and it's always weird because it's like, you know, there's, there, these are some characters that, like, you know can sell.

Like, Aquaman had a long running series. Not even, like, not even just going to talk about, like, the 90s Peter David run. but like even recently with Rebirth and before that with the new 52 like it's a character capable of having a series but you know you get the wrong creative team on it or just no real good stories and it just

will fall apart real quick I think once they got rid of his magic hand people just lost interest the water hand yeah really now see here's the thing though we say that I really I really legitimately did love the hook hand I thought the harpoon hook hand was fucking sick yeah

what was it real like how did How do you get this hand back? So, all right. He lost his hand because somebody took away his powers to communicate with aquatic life and used it against him by basically having piranhas eat his hand. Really fucking gruesome. And that was the beginning, like, that was towards the beginning of the Peter David run. So then he gets a harpoon hand.

And then he meets the lady in the lake from your end of the world who bestows upon him the waters from the. mystical lake that gives him the ability to control it. So that's his water hand. And then he fucking died. He got turned into like a, he got turned into the weird underwater lovecraftian monster man. And when they,

when he got killed in that form and they resurrected him in the, at the end of the blackest night storyline, he just had his hands again. Cowards. Yeah. So he got it back via resurrection essentially. Which is how they de-aged Captain Boomerang. Because when Captain Boomerang was killed,

he was like a fat, balding, like, joke of a character. And then when they resurrected him, he was young and he had hair again. You know, that magic hand where they changed it and rack-conded it, kind of like, we accidentally stumbled into, like, a really good intro for this episode. We did. That worked up brilliantly, didn't it? That ties in perfectly to what we're going to be talking about today.

on today's episode of the show that we do. Yeah. So, hello everyone. Welcome to the Smart Avengers. I'm Corey. And with me are Dylan and John. And as we have prefaced, we're going to be talking about character changes that occurred.

We're made to be kind of a big deal. And then just fucking vanished without a trace. And are often, more often not just out, absolutely just ignored that they ever happened. With that being said, the thing that we're going to be doing today is each of us have gone through the annals of comic book history and found examples of an all new, all different brand new starting point, earth shattering change to a character or characters that ultimately was undone and never spoken of again and actually changed very little, if anything at all. Yeah. I have like five. Yeah.

When I started, I was worried I wasn't going to find any at all. And the more I started looking, the more of my memory was getting refreshed. So that's what a lifetime reading comics does to you. Yep. It's a good time. So, John, you said you had like four or five? Yeah, they're mostly Spider-Man related as well. I had a feeling it might be.

Yeah. Because Spider-Man is that character that has had a lot of those. Dylan, what about you? I had four and I just thought of one while we were talking, so I wrote it down real quick. Brilliant. So I might have five. I have one Spider-Man one and the rest are all X-Men.

So John might be using the one that I came up with with Spider-Man. I've got three DC and two Marvel. Okay. None of them Spider-Man related and only one of them vaguely X-Men related. Okay. So it's good that we're sticking to our regular topics. Our areas of expertise. But once again, talking about the X-Men for it would take this amount of time.

Children of the 90s. It's still not a full X-Men podcast yet, though. Not yet. I keep getting recommended X-Men podcast, though. On our YouTube channel, when I'm uploading the stuff, the algorithm is just like, oh, you should check these out. and it's all like X-Men videos. Also, real quick, I think it's really funny that we talk relatively little about the Avengers.

Oh, well, think about it, right? Again, like, we are children of the 90s. The Avengers were so irrelevant in the 90s. Yeah, like the lineups were like Hercules, Black Knight, Circe, Scarlet Witch, who wasn't a big deal until they started making her out to be one. these you know like these were not huge heavy hitter characters US agent like that's another

one that's a weird character I have a lot of love for I cannot explain why I love US agent as much as I do mainly it's like what if Captain America was a dick and potentially racist well it's the American way absolutely it's more American than Captain America

played by Kurt Russell's son too I'm not mistaken right indeed yes Wyatt I'd feel John would be will tell me that. That's why I bring you on here, John. You're my movie fact check guy. Yeah. I feel like that guy should play the big Lebowski

as well, or like the dude in if they ever did like a prequel or something. Oh, yeah, I've seen him with long hair and a beard. He absolutely looks the part. Speaking of John, it's time for our movie check-in with you. Where are you sitting at? Oh, I am on

326 movies for the year so far. That was a big jump from where we were last time. I can't even remember where we were the last time. It was a comedy about the mob, I think, was the last one you told us about. Yeah. It obviously didn't make a big impression. It didn't.

Oh, boy. Well, I wish you should go ahead and get started. Like I said, I have a feeling this one could potentially turn into a two-parter. the aspect, the prospect of that actually kind of excites me because it means we have awesome, cool stuff to talk about. Do you guys want to go first or would you let me to go first? Do you want to go first since you have a lot? Do you think you have a lot to talk about? I do. So when I first started to think about this topic, the first thing that came up, because I didn't think we've been, this has been something we've been talking about doing an episode on for a long time now.

and every time it would come up, I had a, like, clear idea of what the top one would be. And then we started talking about the Clone Wars. And it was my discovery that the Clone Wars was really influenced by a random issue from, like, what, the 70s or the 60s? Yeah, 70s, I think. 70s, okay. So have you ever heard of the Electric Blue Superman?

I don't think so. Is that one of the Superman that came about after the death of Superman? No, it is not. So the reign of the Superman storyline takes place a little bit before this happened, what I'm referring to. But no, he was not one of the Superman.

Okay. So the root of this comic is from a comic from the 1960s. And Superman in the 1960s was just a series, a series of like fantasy like what would happen if storylines like if you ever I think there used to be a website I think it was called super fuckery that would be like random

panels of like old Superman comics where weird shit was happening and they were always vaguely funny like a baby Superman like punching out a grown man you know like stuff like that the side like right up my street it sounds like that thing we were talking about before we start recording actually. So there was

a comic in, I think it was 1963 and in it to describe something about the city, do you know what the city of Candor is? Is that the one of the bottle? Yeah. Yeah. It's the one of the city in a

bottle. Okay. So in this particular storyline from 1963, Superman was trying to figure out a way to enlarge the city in the bottle so that it could be its own thing again and the inhabitants weren't trapped inside of this bottle so he created a machine to make himself smarter in order to do it and as part of the problem is that the side effect of using his machine while it did make him smarter it split him in two so there was a superman that was wearing all blue and then a superman that was wearing

all red and they were superman red and blue and in the comic they were like They save Candor and Superman read Mary's Lois Lane and they go to live on Candor and have a family. And then Superman Blue stays on Earth with his old high school sweetheart Lana Lang and they get married and have a family. And it was just, you know, ha ha. It was not a quirky little thing to happen in a comic book. Superman's split in two. So we're going to fast forward in 1990s. And I have never seen.

a concrete explanation as to why this happened. But the most logical example I've ever received was there was a period of time where the Siegel and Schuster families, the creators of Superman, were having some illegal issues with D.C. And there was always that idea of like they could get the rights back. And if they do, they can do whatever they want with Superman. And D.C. would be in a pickle. So Superman started to go through some changes.

There's a villain that, and this will be a callback to our overrated characters, a villain was not, he was not the sunfucker, Dylan, but he was a character that he was a character that blocked out the sun. And if you, that is one of Superman's weaknesses. His strength comes from the radiation of a yellow sun. So he blocked out the sun. Superman lost his powers. They were able to save the day regardless. But something happened in the intermediate period of time where Superman starts. to change.

He started to lose control of his powers. At one point, there is a, somebody shoots a gun to Superman, he goes, oh, just bolts and bounce off. And they go right through him and strike a pedestrian. Like as if they just went right through his body. What?

Yeah. So, yeah, the bullet just goes right through him. Like he's a ghost? It's like, kind of. It is discovered that Superman's body, his chemistry, has changed. as a result of what happened. And he's losing his material form and being turned into a being of pure energy.

So he starts to, he turns blue. His skin turns blue. His hair glows blue. His powers change drastically. And he has to wear this containment suit to basically hold a physical form or he could disappear entirely. What ends up happening with this whole thing is right. is it seems to me that that lawsuit thing makes sense

because he can't wear the red and blue costume anymore. He loses his super strength. He loses his ability to like have heat vision and cold breath and x-ray vision. He can no longer stop bullets from bouncing off of his skin. So a lot of what makes Superman Superman is drastically changed as a result of this. He has a whole new look, his whole new power set. And I'm going to, I'll do it. quick little readthrough of what his powers

are at this point. He can turn himself into sentient energy. He can become lightning essentially. He can alter his molecular form to change his appearance at will. He can change his size and his density because

he can alter his body's chemistry. So he can make himself like intangible like Kitty Pride. And he can also make himself larger or smaller if he needs to. He lost the ability to have x-ray vision, but he has gained the ability to read radiation and radio wavelengths. He can control magnetism.

He can absorb energy around him. He can convert that energy into different forms of energy, so he can absorb, like, lightning and turn it into, like, a kinetic energy, kind of like Bishop. He can project these sort of energy blasts out of his hands. my favorite one which I think you would find the most entertaining Dylan and John is he can interface with electronics. So there's a panel of him before his body changed where he puts his hand through a computer like his hand phases through it. And his eyes turn red and you see binary code like flashing over his eyes or his pupils are. And he is the little thought bubbles are information.

I'm accessing the computer directly with my mind. so he can like he can plug into the computer and pull information out of it that way he gains the ability to teleport and like travel quicker than flying by basically like lightning strikes essentially but the biggest one is he lost his vulnerability to kryptonite so crypto has nothing has no impact on him now but what does have impact on him is when he's not in his energy form and he's like he's like he's like he's in flesh and blood as Clark Kent. He is completely a regular human now. He can be shot. He can be stabbed. He can get sick. All things he never has had to deal with, which was an aspect of the character in the

comics at that time, too, is you have a, it's like a brand new Superman who is now having to deal with the problem of being a regular human. Like he's never had to worry about a cold before. And now he gets, yeah, we get sick. That the whole losing the weakness to kryptonite also lends a lot of credence to the idea of like this was DC trying to get around a potential lawsuit if it were to go that direction of like it's still Superman it's still Clark Kent but a completely different like look and power set well first off do you have any questions so far about this no this also

is pretty logical to me yeah that's I've never heard this before this sounds bananas yeah yeah it is it was wild it was wild like there was a bit where you're like oh the bullets went through him like he's a ghost right? And then you were like, oh, he can get stabbed now. Like, why? Yeah. Well, it has to do is like through him. Well, so it has to depend on like that was the, the bullets going through him was when

these powers first started changing because he didn't know what was happening. So when he is like converted into his electric persona and he's in the containment suit, then like he, that stuff doesn't phase him because like he's absolute in control of his energy at that point. But when he's outside of that and he's like basically dropped all of his powers to take on a human form, he's just entirely human. So it's like if there's an equivalent, I would say it's just like it's the difference between going to the savage land and not if you're a mutant. Like the second you step over that line, all of your powers are gone and you, but you can just easily step back over that line and your powers are back. So he has the ability to turn him on and off. But then why would you want to be human?

Well, I mean, he's at this point, though, he has an identity that's established. Like, Clark Kent is a known person. Like, he is a prominent writer for the Daily Planet. He's also married at this point, too. Oh, yeah. So, like, the 90s. So the 90s was really big for Superman in a lot of ways because he had the death of Superman. You had his return.

He got married to Lois Lane. And then, like, his entire anatomy shifted. And he became this entirely new character. wacky time for a lot of characters but Superman really didn't seem like you had a great time honestly though this is kind of my favorite period of comics and like I'm gonna bring up some stuff towards the tail end of this and it brings me joy

so remember how I mentioned Superman Red and Superman Blue Mm-hmm Superman has a villain called Toy Man and basically he is a mentally insane person who creates killer toys I would never have guessed that. Yeah, right? Can I tell you, like, my favorite weird version of Toy Man is that he's a sentient

marionette. Like, that's fucking creepy shit. So anyway, Toy Man decides that he is, he builds this contraption for Superman to destroy him at a molecular level, but not fully understanding like him, Superman and these new powers of his, he doesn't destroy him at a molecular level. he splits him in two, a.k.a. call back to that 1963 comic of Superman Red and Blue.

So now we have an electric blue Superman and an electric red Superman. And that brings a whole new spend to all this shit. So now they're two Superman in the world. Superman Blue was the Superman that was in action comics. And Superman Red was a Superman that was in, the regular Superman Man of Steel comic and they were given different personalities Superman Blue was calm

and the strategic person side of Clark and Superman Red was the aggressive and brash side of Clark and they did not get along in fact they fought often about basically who's going to be Clark Kent today because there's only one Clark Kent and I have to tell you my favorite part of this whole thing was Lois Lane kicking them both

out of the house because they were fighting over who was going to be her husband essentially. Which one was her husband? Well, they both were. It's the same Superman. He's just two different. He's just the same person twice now. So I don't know what a problem is. So the 90s weren't, I mean, this is not Crocoa era Wolverine and Cyclops both have indoors that lead into Jean Gray's house. Even though they're the same person, I don't think Lois was into the idea of having two husbands. But it's the same person.

Yeah. But, well, it was the same person, but their personality is conflicted. So it's kind of like, so let's say that like John has his calm, rational, peaceful side and his erratic, mentally unstable, genocidal, homicidal, suicidal, saboo side of his personality. And they coexist in the John form that we know and love right now. Right. But say that Dylan, you have built a creation that would destroy John on a molecular level, but instead it separates these two sides of the personality. It's still John.

It's just the two different sides of John that we see merged together as two entirely different individuals that are going unchecked from that other side. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Sounds scary. Does. So I guess the question that you may be having now, is how did he go back to being the one Superman that we know and love today yep um this is the one

big criticism about this whole thing it kind of just got hand-waved there was like a big event comic that happened in justice league and as a reward this omnipotent being basically just said oh hey you're fixed now and he he merged the the red and the blue Superman back together and made you know Clark Clark again so he got all of us powers back. He was back in his regular suit. I think he lost the mullet that he had in the 90s as well. So I think that's like that was the side of him that changed as a result because Superman had a mullet for a period of time. How long was he like this? About two years. Wow. And the electric blue Superman power set just was featured again recently in a mini series for John Kent,

who's Clark's son, he lost control of his powers. And for this like six issue run, he was dealing with the blue Superman powers. This all seems very complicated. So this has never sort of been referenced again since it all got like hand waved away. So in the new 52, there is a,

you go to, I think there's like in the fortress of solitude. You see in that new 52 Superman is a different. Superman as well like it's not the same Superman it's currently Superman that's a complicated thing as well that maybe one day we'll never talk about in his trophy room the blue Superman containment suit is like in a glass case like the Jason Todd Robin outfit in the Batcave right and aside from like I mentioned you know the the the power set and the the costume came back in that mini series for his son John not really he doesn't seem to acknowledge he's like oh yeah that was like that period of my life life where there were two of me and I had electric powers and I could like read the internet by touching a computer screen like not doesn't come up so that's my number one right there yeah that's kind of wild to me that such a profound change can be made to the character and it's like pretty much ignored in all the other books around it it's yeah self-contained well so here's a here's a spoiler for you one of my other

other ones, same fucking deal. Yeah. So John or Dylan, you want to go next? You want to go? Sure, why not? So, yeah, for my first one, as hinted before, like, they're pretty

much all Spider-Man related. And I figured I would talk about how his webbing suddenly became organic. Yes. The years and years and years of the backstory, basically being Peter Parker using his scientific genius,

came up with the webbing, which he built a little web shooter for, which he could use to, you know, shoot it and swing across the city or capture crooks or whatever. But then, yeah, like I guess Sam Ramey's, Spider-Man movie came out in I want to say 2001, 2002, something like that.

Yeah. And obviously that was the big change that they went with in that movie was having an organic web shooting ability where it was produced by his body. And yeah, so

at the time there was like a mandate that obviously came down and said, well, we want to align with what's going on in the movies and make it more familiar for potential new comic readers. So they did this storyline with the other, which was sort of coming in the aftermath of Spider-Man, sort of embracing more of a like symbolic nature of like being a spider-totum, and like there being, different totems for different animals and stuff like that and like all this stuff about the web of life and which is something that's kind of been a big part of all the various spiderverse stuff that they've done since then and yeah basically he he went to stop this villain called the queen who invades New York and she's got all

all these like, sort of powers which allow her to manipulate insects and like she has telepathy and like super strength and all this kind of stuff. And she basically wants Spider-Man so that they can mate and she can create like a new race of super spiders or something. It's pretty unclear. But she basically turns Spider-Man into like a giant. Spider, at which point... Like you do. Yeah. He dies from the transformation because it's too shocking for his body to handle.

I would hope so. Makes sense when you think about it. Now my skeleton's on the outside. Yes. I would not do well with this. But as it's comics, like, no one stays dead forever. and he like like the human spider man

or Peter Parker like emerges from the husk of the spider's corpse and all of a sudden he's got this new ability to produce webbing. And that was basically the status quo for a few years until the one more day arc

sort of came around where that was where they sort of did kind of a big reboot of things it was sort of in the aftermath of Atme getting shot and like Peter basically willing to do anything to try and save her

and he eventually made the deal with Mepesto and that cost him and Mary Jane their marriage and all that kind of stuff but yeah basically without any sort of real explanation once one more day kicked in he was back to using mechanical web shooters again. And there's, yeah, like no explanation.

Just there it is. Now, if I could ask, from your personal opinion, as the three of us, no doubt, are very familiar with Mepesto in the ways that he goes about doing his business, do you think that he tacked the, I'm going to get rid of your weird, gross, glandular thing of being able to shoot your own webbing as like a side, like as an add-on to the deal? Or do you think Peter kind of asked for that too? I would like to think that Peter asked for it because maybe he was a bit freaked out about spewing all this sticky stuff all over the place. But yeah, I don't know. It's a weird one.

It's a weird one that has never really come up again. since it happened. I have so many thoughts on this. One, the big one, I really, Marvel really does irritate me with their insistence on trying to make their comics line up with the movies because I feel like there has been no concrete statistical evidence

to that have shown that the people will read the comics after seeing the movies or TV shows. Like it's not, it's not a negligible number, but it's not a massive enough number that you need to completely fuck up your creators by forcing them to editorialize these pieces.

Right. Yeah. Like, I think the most glaring one that I can think of and this is not a point against Bindus on this one. This is actually a weird point for him. Uh-huh. When the guardian, when they put out a new Guardians of the Galaxy

comic after the movies came out, they tied the Peter Quill character more to what his comics origin originally was, which was he is the son of Jason of um jason of spartax and that his family his uh his father

was actually like a cruel dictator over this entire world and like uh like an emperor essentially and peter like had was like kind of armor and stuff on that was more akin to what his original appearance looked like in the 70s and then the movie came out and they completely changed the character's stuff where i think like i think the jason of spartak stuff was originally it was like phased out gradually. And then they got rid of all of his armor and gave him the red trench coat and everything. So like Marvel does shit like that.

And it's so weird to me that they do. Not the DC is immune to it either because suddenly when Jason M. Mo was playing Aquaman, despite Aquaman still being a white man with blonde hair and a white and a blonde beard, he started, he got covered in sick ass tribal tattoos. Which felt a little weird. Felt a little cultural appropriationy.

Yep. Um, something that, all of that aside, all of that aside, it's always been weird to me that Marvel insists on that, a good bit, actually. The other thing is, I can understand why that could potentially cause problems. I mean, I don't know if it was in the movie or if it was like a cut scene or not, but the Toby McGuire Spider-Man talking to the Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man about his organic web shooter as opposed to their like devices. and they ask him like, do blockages happen? And he's like, oh, yeah, they're kind of painful. Like, when you change something about someone's biology, it does raise those weird questions. Like, what is that like?

You know, like, because pores get blocked sometimes, you know? So, I mean, I imagine something like that has to occur. Yeah, yeah. But like, let's say Spider-Man gets into an accident and he has to go to like to a hospital and they give him an x-ray. Are they going to be like, why does he have glan, in his wrists. Why is there a hole there? I understand

in the movie maybe not wanting to like dedicate a whole section of oh yeah and then Peter invents his own web shooters but they did that in the other movies and I guess that's fine but like yeah I honestly I'm a bit grossed out at the notion of being able to produce your own webbing.

Yeah I don't like it. That's funny enough as we probably guessed. John that was one Spider-Man what I was going to talk about too because I didn't like it I don't think anybody really liked it no I get if you're if you're trying to make him like an actual spider-man you know he would shoot webs and stuff but I always liked that he invented his own web shooters that was like a really cool thing and it felt weird to see him really shoot webs out of his fucking arm, which, you know, if you are going to be a literal Spider-Man,

spiders when she webs out of their fucking arms either. Like, that's not how that works. So are you arguing that Peter should have just, you know, shot lighting out of his ass then? Wouldn't that be a better comic? We'll throw that on there with Baby Juggernaut. Okay. It's just a weird level of body horror. Mm-hmm.

And the thing is, as well, like, a big pot of the... early comics and like the animated show as well was like spider man would you know run out of web fluid and then yeah that's how criminals and stuff will get away and uh you know or he like find himself in a bit of danger because he hasn't got like the right web uh fluid to be able to uh fight them or whatever and yes you know that's like a yeah a big part of the comics and everything so like doing it reds i'm not reds spider man in a while is that's something that still happens in the comics? Are there issues that come up with like, oh, I can't, I don't have enough, you know,

ammo, essentially? To be honest, I haven't read a Spider-Man comic, which has had that happen in a long time. Okay. Like, maybe it does still, but like I'm sort of only halfway through the latest run. So, yeah, but it has been a long time since I've seen anything like that. Dylan, what do you got? Okay. Do you remember the time that Jogginaut was a baby?

I do. It was crazy. And they never talk about it anymore. If you read an X-Men comic, they won't even mention. Some people at X-Men pretend it didn't even happen. You talk to them. Do you ever have a panel and there's an X-Men writer on it? Ask them about the time that Jugg-Nout was a baby.

And they won't know what you're talking about. So this is this is bullshit trying to Rec on history But if we don't want to talk about that We can talk about something else Whenever this topic came up The one thing that I thought of immediately Was

Jubilee being a vampire Oh yeah Because I heard about this I assume everybody When they heard about this Had the same question which was just what and then possibly a second question which was why it seems like such a weird

first of all I don't know why Marvel were like we got to do a Dracula X-man crossover we got to get Dracula into the X-Men guys it's just the only way to keep this this character relevant to the kids I don't I

It doesn't make any sense. Do you guys know how Jubilee became a vampire? I don't remember. I vaguely remember, wasn't she depowered at the time? Like, she lost her powers during the decimation. Yeah, I can tell you she did because she was one of the characters in the new Warriors comic where it was all former mutants who had like tech stuff to help them. Yes.

Yes, she was. Now, you're two very intelligent men. You probably know how people become vampires, right? Mm-hmm. You're familiar with the lore of vampirism. Typically, to become a vampire, you get bitten by a vampire. Yes. They marvel, because they're clever.

They're like, no, we're bringing vampires into this, but we need to do something different, something you need. something really clever. So Jubilee doesn't get bitten by a vampire which all the other vampires did to become vampires. Do you guys want to hazard a guess real

quick? I think I have an idea but I have a feeling I'm wrong too. Okay. John, you want to take a stab first? I mean magic. All right. So my guess has to do with the X-Men's weird use of like

how blood works. Because I remember they discovered Angel had healing powers in his blood and they would just give people blood transfusions from Angel and it would heal them. And I thought that was really gross and kind of weird. Did she get her powers from a blood transfusion with a vampire? You were both incorrect. Damn it.

Okay. So Jubilee is out in the street somewhere. I think she's like at a coffee shop or something. and then man explodes and the man's blood like you do some of the blood lands on her

and then she's a vampire wait lands on her not in her on her yeah because the way like the way you set up with the coffee shop I was like oh landed in the coffee she drank the coffee and now she's a vampire via coffee but no if she just got like a

fucking rude-esque blood bath Yeah, as far as I know, this is what happened. It makes sense, doesn't it? Sure. So a man explodes. I assume that man is a vampire, but also, because it's a during the day, so he, like, explodes.

But, like, that's not how vampires work either. They don't explode in sunlight. That's what happened. So there was some kind of virus in this man and his explosion spread the virus to the people that were in the square or in the town that he was in in the vicinity. And Jubilee was one of the people. I don't know specifically if it, if the blood that landed on her gave her the vampirism. It could have been some, you know, it was a virus. I'm like, okay, that's, again, I don't think that's.

how viruses work. I don't think how any of this is how it works, but it ended with Jubilee becoming a vampire. So what would you do with Jubilee as a vampire? Nothing,

because what the fuck, right? Why would she be a vampire? It doesn't make any sense. So then they retconned it or they went back on it, as it were.

So there's some weird kind of, I don't really know. I don't think I was reading X-Men at this time because vampires don't interest me at all, I guess. But there was a point where, was it the Phoenix Five? Like a bunch of people had like the sliver of the Phoenix in them? Yeah, Phoenix Five. Right. So Quentin Quire has a sliver of the Phoenix in him. And.

You didn't remember the Phoenix 5? Well, he had a sliver of the Phoenix in him. That's part of that is because in the Grant Morrison run, when they introduced Quentin Choir, Kid Omega. In the last story that they did was like set in the future. And Gene Gray is. He was the Phoenix in the future, wasn't he? Yes. I think so.

Gene Grego is to the White Hart room and Quentin Quire is there. He's in it, which hints that he either was the Phoenix or had been the Phoenix at some point. Because, you know, the rule used to be you were attached to the Phoenix to get into that room. So he obviously has some kind of ties to the Phoenix. He had a sliver of the Phoenix in him. And he sacrifices his sliver of the Phoenix. to put it into Jubilee to save her from like a fight

that they were having with somebody else and when he did that it also cured her of her vampirism and also made her a mutant again because once again that's not how this shit works so like this whole run was just like completely pointless it didn't make any sense

it just showed an awful lot of holes in like their own logic you only mean like do you know if she had the baby while she was a vampire. She did. She did. She has a baby. It's not her baby, but it's a baby she's adopted.

Yes. She did. Yes, she would. I keep waiting for that baby to disappear one of these days, to be frank. Yep, we're going to be talking about that baby. I would have disappeared during Krokoa, but no, they took it. She was part of her and she was with Excalibur. We'll be talking about that baby in a future

episode of things that didn't stick. I imagine. Baby Avengers. Baby Avengers. And who are they going to fight? They're going to fight the baby juggernaut. It all makes sense. It all comes back.

See? It's a really good idea. We should get on it. Can we, if we ever make merchandise for the show, can we just make a baby? You know what we could do instead of our own? Who could baby juggernaut team up with?

Because remember, Juggernaut always was teamed up with Black Tom Cassidy. Yeah. What if instead of like a baby version of Black Tom Cassidy? Hear me out. Armless Tiger Cub. I thought you were just going to be like baby Juggernaut and then just regular armless target.

No, no. Armless Tiger Cubs. He's just hanging out with a baby for some reason. I think I get you put on a list these days. So to bring it back around, there was this period of time. I think that happened in also where, like, they were obsessed with putting the X-Men with, like, the supernatural stuff. Because was that also around the time of what, was it, necrotia? Yes.

Where the black queen, it was it Celine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She raised a bunch of zombies to, uh, to attack the X-Men. Because, like, why? Yeah, I feel like that was around the same kind of time. It's silly, zombies and werewolves. Like, what are we doing? Well, you're going to mention werewolves.

I remember Ronnie. from the new mutants and her child that she had with the Asgardian god of wolves so I mean yeah, werewolves are in there too Well yeah, there's been werewolves I guess But no, Jubilee was a character

Jubilee kind of suffered the same fate that most of like sidekick characters did in the that were like you introduce a sidekick character in the 90s and then as time goes by you reintroduce the person that was around before them and then that new

character that you invested time in because it kind of gets put on the sidelines. Jubilee was around a lot in the 90s and then as we moved out of the 90s, that's around the time Kitty Pride started to get featured more prominently again and she was the Jubilee before Jubilee. So

they had to do something with her. Take away her powers, turn into a vampire, make her not a vampire and give her powers back. And give her a kid. Give her a kid. Take care of two. It was strange because all of the characters in the 90 CD show

stuck around a lot in the comics because they had such recognition like they were so popular because of that cartoon like that that got a lot like whatever that lineup was like that's what a lot of people think of as like classic X-Men

so it's strange that Jubilee who was featured very prominently in that show didn't at all catch up with the other ones she was like forgotten about it pretty much yeah John John, what do you think that is?

I think maybe because she was sort of seen as like an annoying character in the animated show. If I was going to compare it to Star Wars, he was sort of the Jar Jha Binks where it was like

sort of geared towards the younger audience maybe and she was supposed to be like, I don't know like the cool one that we could relate to but instead she just just ended up becoming the annoying little bratti one who shot fireworks. And that was it. She was really annoying.

Yeah. So, yeah, no, I agree. Vampire Jubilee was certainly a fucking moment in time. I do remember that period. I just, to show how little it mattered, I don't even remember they making a big deal when they fixed her, you know? No, just happened. Because if you had told me, I would have assumed it was like how they fixed chamber where they had like, there was like a couple of issues. where time like time got broken and they got put into a different reality and then when they shifted back chamber just had all his powers and stuff again yeah it's just there it is yeah but no quinn choir giving up his phoenix shard to save a woman he probably didn't know that well that makes sense well at the time she was teaching at the school this was whenever he had the schism was he still a student there though yes okay

Okay. Because like Quentin seemingly has been aged up a little bit. Like he's still a dick, but he's like, he seems more like he's his early 20s now as opposed to being 15 or whatever. Yeah, because that feels like he was in the school for a long time. And you're like, he's like the smartest fucking guy. Why is he in school for 15 years? Do you want another DC one or do you want one of my Marvel ones? Why don't you surprise this with the Marvel one? Yeah.

I'll go ahead and knock this out of the way. This is my one X-Men related one. So I do not feel like it is a surprise when I tell you guys I'm a big fan of Jamie Madrax, the multiple man. I love Peter David's work with him in the 90s X-Factor book, in the 2000s X-Factor book. I have the miniseries that he wrote for him. I even read the terrible miniseries they made for him to explain how he's alive again. I just really love that fucking character because there's just something about that power set and the way they've used it over the years and how unique it is. The thing that this is about, it's not been retconned or fixed.

It's just been kind of ignored. So Jamie Madrox was a character that came out in the 1960s. And he was a surprise, like, villain of the week for the Fantastic Four. Madrox the multiple man as he was billed as. So, you know, as the name would suggest, Jamie has the ability to create duplicates of himself. And as years have gone by, the duplicates have gotten a little weirder

and a little more interesting. But the Fantastic Four basically find him and after the classic Marvel misunderstanding fight, things are cool. So at the time, Jamie was wearing this containment suit because any sort of kinetic impact would create a duplicate. So like if he like stubbed his toe on something duplicate pop out the side of him. So he couldn't control it without this suit that was kind of absorbing the impacts for him.

In the comics, Jamie was living alone with his family on a farm. His family died in a freak tornado and he was left on his own on the farm. And eventually the suit started to malfunction. It started driving him mad and he was creating all these duplicates uncontrollably. So eventually, you know, Fantastic Four do it. They find out he's a mutant. Xavier comes in, says, hey, come with me, and that's how we get Madrox involved in the X world. But Jamie's weird because the established rule has always been for the X-Men.

Your powers show up when you're a teenager. Like the second you hit puberty is when your power is going to manifest. That's where you get stuff like chamber, like, you know, making out with a girl in the closet and then his chest and jaw explodes and severely injures her. Like that's something. It just happens, you know? with Jamie though it happened when he was born like so the doctor did the age old smack the kid on the butt see if they react to it and they're not you know still born and boom second baby popped up in the doctor's hand so Jamie's powers manifested from the moment he was born that is not a mutant and for the longest time that was not addressed or talked about it's another it's another clone wars thing it's another electric blue Superman thing so in the early 2000s Peter day David was given a mini-series to write for the Marvel Knights line, which was Marvel's version of Vertigo.

That is also now defunct. But the comic was, I think it was just called Madrocks, the multiple man. And in the comic, it's kind of a noir mystery, but the big reveal towards the end is Jamie's fighting another mutant who has the ability to duplicate himself. but in the midst of this fight, the mutant reveals that, you know, he's not a mutant and he's like, you don't even know what you are. And that kind of kicked this mystery off

that continued over into the X-Factor book that Peter Davis was writing afterwards. And in it, through, it was revealed through the very first big bads of the run that Jamie Madrox is not a mutant. He is what's referred to as a changeling. And that mutants are different from changelings, and the villains were, like, obsessed with basically getting Jamie to work with them.

And, like, the, the villains were kind of interesting because it was the same person through three separate timelines interacting together. So it was like a young version, a middle-aged version, and then an old version. Their storyline revolved around that about Jamie not being a mutant. He's actually a changeling. We want Jamie to work with us so that we can better understand it. And it has revealed that they're actually the ones who created the tornado that killed his family because they had originally appealed to Jamie's family to let them take Janie in when

he was young so that they could like have him and when I tell you that after that storyline wrapped up they never mentioned the shit again they never mentioned it again Jamie Jamie Madrox a changeling the fact that his powers manifested at birth and not through puberty all of that stuff is just never brought up again he gets killed by the Terrigan Mists like mutants do. He's able to access the portals on Krokoa like mutants do. It was a thing that got mentioned and never followed up to and never got a conclusion. That's that's my, that's my Jimmy Madrock's story.

It's like the one glaring flaw in that in Peter David's work with Jamie. It was just that the changeling thing went absolutely fucking nowhere. All right, John, do you want to go next? I was going to talk about when Peter Parker became. the CEO of Parker Industries and basically became Ironman 2.0. And this sort of came about as a result of the superior Spider-Man run, where Dr. Octopus, you know, basically was dying in his original body and managed to put his consciousness in Spider-Man's body and basically vowed to become a better.

a Spider-Man than Spider-Man was. So part of that was he went back to college and finished his doctorate and then started this company called Park Industries and basically turned it into a huge tech company overnight, massive success. So when Peter eventually does retake over his body again, he comes back to life and then suddenly finds himself. in charge of this massive company that's spread all over the world. And yeah, for a while that leads to some sort of like globe trotting adventures where he's off to the UK and China and like putting all of this money and technology to good use. And it's, you know, as far removed as you can get really from the whole sort of friendly neighbourhood.

Spider-Man origins. He's basically gone global now. Just to hammer home, like, the Ironman comparisons as well. Spider-Man is basically Peter Parker's bodyguard, like Ironman, was Tony Stark's originally in the comics to, I guess, explain why Spider-Man is always where Peter Parker is. But yeah, this goes on for, I don't know. how long in total but like at least a year maybe two years um until peter basically has to burn the

company down to the ground because uh like join the events of uh secret empire uh dr octopus was back again and a member of hydra and i think he was looking to basically take control of park industries and that he helped sort of create to start the company. And rather than let it all fall into Doc Ock's hands, Peter's like, nope, we're going to basically blow this company up. And yeah, and so he goes from rags to riches to rags again. And it's amazing how quickly, like he goes from a CEO of a company to basically begging for a job at the Daily Buegel again, like looking to be, I think he becomes like a science reporter or something

for a little while until in typical Peter Parker fashion, he kind of ruins that opportunity and gets fired. But yeah, like since then, it's just this weird thing which happened, which doesn't really get referenced at all. Like, you would think that's a, like people would recognize him in the street from being the CEO of this famous. company where like a large part of the certainly in New York population were like using the webware stuff that he had where it was like sort of easy free access to the internet like on your wrist and everyone was using it and then all of a sudden yeah they can't anymore because he blew up the company but yeah yeah I don't know it's just a weird one yeah I never liked that

Ron, I think we kind of talked about why. Like, it doesn't seem like a very Peter Parkery thing. Or he's suddenly the fucking CEO of a big company. Like, that ticks away a lot of the reason people like Spider-Man. Because he's, you know, he's like an every man, basically. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's historically been the down on his luck character.

Yeah. But then again, to your point, like, it's, it's such, it's quite a jarring kind of, to go from the CEO to back to that kind of Don your luck character with no, you know, they really haven't referenced it much after that. I have a lot of questions. So one, is this the big time story arc? Because I was listening to a podcast at the time. And when they announced big time, they just,

the way they would talk about it made me fucking laugh every single time. I don't know if it was or not, but it's still, yeah. I don't think so. That was his own separate thing. Yeah, big time, I think, came before that and that was... Oh, okay, that makes more sense. It came before that.

Yeah, that was, I believe, when he was becoming, like, a scientist at Horizon Labs, which was, again, like, him trying to, I guess, like, make good on his scientific know-how. Like, you're talking about how his... His, you know, he was always smart. He created the web shooters and stuff like that, but he never really capitalized on it. Like the horizon stuff was him putting those skills to good use.

And they had like arcs where he would make, like, different spider suits or technology to help him beat the villain of the week to kind of like play into that stuff. So that has only raised more questions. Yeah. one, this can be rapid fire. One, isn't Horizons the name of that company that had been Riley act of Spider-Man while Peter was in a radiation coma? No. That was a different thing, okay.

Yeah, I can't remember what that company was called off the top of my head, but it wasn't Horizon. Okay, cool. Question number two. More of a statement. It takes a long time for corporations to, like, establish themselves. and grow and be profitable. And how did Dr. Octopus accomplish that and how long was he in control of Peter's body? Because like if Dr. Octopus could have done that, wouldn't he have already done that?

Well, you think so. But I guess Dr. Octopus had more interest in villainy than, you know, yeah. you know, why, like, start your own company and wait for it to get off the ground when you can just, like, rob a bank? Yep. Yeah. Do you know how long it takes to become an LLC? A lot of time. So it does seem like a bit of a jump in that regard of, like, that would have taken time to accomplish that.

Was it ever remarked on if he was seen as a competitor from Tony Stark or, or, well, I don't think Reed Richards did shit like that, but definitely Stark did. but definitely Stark did. Yeah, I think, well, I'm pretty sure they had some crossovers at some point where Does that have anything to do with the superior Iron Man story arc? I can't remember what period of the Iron Mine comics this would have been, because there was a time sort of in the, like, I want to say the early 2010s when Tony's, well, Stark International was like down on its luck and he basically had to rebuild it from scratch. But then I don't know if that was around this time or like you say, the superior Ironman where as a result of the access storyline, his personality got flipped around and he was even more sort of like like egotistical and like money hungry than, you know,

he was before. Yeah. But yeah, I can't remember for sure if that was the same period. Was this Dan's slot? Yes. Yes, it was like I guess you can say in terms of continuity, like it. At least he'd sort of built up to this point with the horizon stuff. And like Dr. Octopus trying to, you know, be a superior spot.

but a superior Peter Parker as well and finishing his degree in trying to, you know, do what Peter never could be bothered to do, I guess, or maybe he was too busy being Spider-Man to do stuff like that. But yeah, at least there was like a logical progression, even if it was like a big jump to get from starting your own company to being like, you know, yeah. a massive company. Yeah. It's a strange one. But like you said, you know, it just, uh,

they totally forgot about it. Yeah, yeah. Straight up, just like, whatever. Like he just went back to, that's the thing that really

bums me out by Spider-Man sometimes is that big stuff happens and then it gets resolved. And he, he just, it's like, you know, it never happened. He doesn't,

he, as a character, he just seems to go back. to where he was before that big thing happened. Yeah, yeah. Which is, I feel like that happens a lot in Spider-Man, which is frustrating, but is what it is. Dylan, you got number three.

We're not number three, number two. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to say this is the one I thought of while we were talking on the show. So there's not a whole lot of research behind it, but Corey, you're going to be able to help me out with this one. Cool. Do you remember, because it relates to your life,

last, your last pick. Do you remember whenever a strong guy was the Lord of Hell? Yes, I do. Oh, yes, I do remember when strong guy lost his soul. John, are you familiar with this?

Vaguely, but I'm sure I've seen like it pop up in other books and be like, what the hell is strong guy doing there? Yeah, so. There's so much about this that bothered me, but I will absolutely allow you to do what you need to do. Well, I just wanted to talk about, like I said, I haven't done a whole lot of research for this one. Okay.

I reckon Corey's going to be able to fill in a lot of the blanks, but... Yes, I should be able to do. There was a point where strong guy died. Mm-hmm. And then he came back to life, but... I can explain that. You won't be to explain it? I can...

Well, how he came back to life. I can do that. Okay. Well, he came back to life and he lost it. his soul. Yes. I can tell you why that happened. Okay. Let's let's let's do that. So in Peter David's X factor very early on he introduced the character Layla Miller, which you guys, I don't know if you would be familiar with her or not. She did some crossover stuff. So Layla's whole defining characteristic as she would constantly say, you know, I'm Layla Miller and I know stuff.

You know stuff. Yeah. So in the there is a she gets trapped in the Messiah complex storyline. she gets trapped in an alternate future. And she eventually finds her way back to the regular present day as an older woman, as an older person. She's now like in her early 20s, maybe mid-20s, and starts a relationship with Jamie Madrox. Totally not weird at all that this girl that the last time Jamie saw her, she was maybe 16 years old. Now she's in her 20s and they're a couple. Nothing weird about that at all.

That's cool up. But Jamie got sent to the future where they got. got reunited, and he learns from her what her real mutant power was. Layla Miller, her power was not that she knew stuff. Through time travel and some fuckery, she implanted her memories into the child version of herself. So she always was, she basically created the loop so that she always knew what was going to happen because she had lived through it before. Layla Miller's real power was she could resurrect things. they and there was like a panel early on where you kind of saw that and forced some foreshadowing there was a dead putterfly and people remark on this that she's just kind of playing with this dead butterfly and then it eventually flies away

uh Layla has in the future the character Trevor Fitzroy is there who is a very big villain and he dies and Layla because she is stuck reliving the same you know reliving the things that she knows going to happen She uses her powers to resurrect her. He comes back without a soul. So that's the drawback to her power. She can resurrect people, but when they come back, they've lost their soul. So they go back to the present day. Strong guy gets killed. Layla resurrects him.

Not because she wanted to, but she felt like she had to because of how important Guido was to everyone. And he comes back without a soul. Okay. That's, thank you for explaining that bit. The bit I really want to get explained, though, is the next bit. the next bit where he is in hell

like I don't know how I don't know how this happens and then he becomes a lord of hell he just runs hell and then like he just comes back at some point I don't know if they ever explained strong guy coming back

because you know what he mean like first of all he's he's alive he's not dead but he has no soul right So how does he get into hell if he's not dead? Okay. Right?

So he lost his soul. Yes. And because of that, he basically has lost his empathy. And, you know, basically he stopped. He became callous and more violent. And Mephesto recognized that. So Mepesto, second appearance for Misfesto in this episode so far. So good for him.

One coincidence. Right. Mepesto says, all right, you're with me now. I need to fight against the other hell lords in order to keep my spot. And in the resuming and like a bunch of other shit that happens, Monet, who he revealed to having a crush on early on in the run and had gone on a date with, she ends up dying. And Guido kills Ronnie's son, Tier, who is a little wolf boy. and that results in him being a supreme ruler in hell and to get the power to revive her.

Because there's something about Tears birth and him being half Norse god and half mutant that made him like important to hell. So yeah. So he basically gets hell powers. And that's how they wrote strong guy out of the book. Towards the end of the X Factor book, Peter was like gradually getting endings to character. and having them drop out of the book until the very end where it was just Jamie and Leila. So that was how they got Guido out of there. And that's when I last saw it.

Now, I looked this up to refresh myself on it. And it looks like there was some stuff that happened in the Thunderbolts book that Red Hulk was the leader of, that Guido being the Lord of Hell came up again. Right. But then, how does that resolve? because he comes back he's back on Earth yeah so it looks like

and this is from the Marvel database Dylan okay at some point Guido's soul was restored with help from magic one sentence

there you go magic you know what no magic with a K this is the Colossus Oh okay that's that's it

I mean It is with help of magic, I guess, really. Yeah. I was going to say, I wondered if your thing when you mentioned Strong Guy was how they got rid of his little tuft of hair, because that really bothered me as well. Yeah, that's just defining. Yeah, little sunglasses, tough to hair. Tiny sunglasses, yeah. Yeah.

And they gave him big sunglasses and no hair. That's not cool. So I have a question. Was Strong Guy the ruler of hell before Puck was ruler of hell before Puck was ruler of because that happened as well. Hawk was ruler of hell. The ruler of hell? Yeah.

It was a point where... How easy is it to be the fucking ruler of hell? Well, the last time I checked, the ruler of hell was Johnny Blaze, so it's a revolving door. It's a tough gig, you know, they're letting anybody give it a go. You know,

I gotta be a little more strict on who gets to be a ruler of hell. It's so, it's tough to like, oh, I don't want to do it anymore. or anybody, you know, whenever you're in the job, you just want to get out. You don't care who your replacement is. You're like, anybody, you can take it. Just, I got to get out of here. You know, would you want to do it?

I don't think so. I mean, what are the perks? It's really warm. Good, dental. I'm out. But yeah, the problem is like clearly no, no job security at it. You know what you mean? You can't retire on it, I don't think.

You could be out the door the next day. Especially if Puck can take your job. You know what you mean? And just for those who are listening to you have no idea who Puck is. Oh, right. Puck is a member of a team called Alpha Flight from Canada, whose power seems to just being really small and durable, I guess is the best way to describe it.

Yeah, it sounds right. He's like a hot, what, three feet tall? He's a little dude. Yeah. He's a little dude. Wow. And hell, he's a big deal, though. Yeah, yeah.

So also he died and went to hell. What are these guys doing where they're going to hell? I mean, it's comic books. Everybody dies and comes back at least once or twice. Yeah, but like they don't go to hell. There's another place to go, right? Yeah. He wants to go

or someplace where everybody knows his name. Yeah. Boston. All right. Well, it looks like this is going to be our very first two-parter, which is exciting because I still have like three more to go and we're at an hour and a half in.

Yeah. So we're going to do a bit of, we're going to do a little bit of time travel because we're going to end the episode here, but then we're going to immediately start recording the second half of this like right now. so pretend that a week has passed between well no it's we don't have to pretend we're going to pretend that a week has passed between

yeah you can pretend too you can pretend if you want you'll just be two weeks ahead it'll be really easy for you to pretend because it'll actually have happened yes yeah so in conclusion uh electric blue superman was the thing spider man had organic web shooters and his own company jamy madrox uh may not be a mutant. Gwito may not be a ruler in hell. And Jubilee was a vampire. It's a pretty good way to sum it up.

That's, yeah. So, tune in next time where we will talk about other things that you may not remember have happened. Yeah. Goodbye. Goodbye. Bye.