The Smark Avengers - Vol 3, Ep 16: The Smark Avengers Talk About Updates to Characters That Didn't Stick Pt 2

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Last week's episode was so jam packed that we couldn't keep it contained to one part! Listen to Corey, Dylan, and Jon discuss Wonder Woman's pants, Jean Gray's pink bubble armor, Chamber's surprising bloodline, and more as they look back at character updates that just didn't stick!

Wait, John, are you hung over too? I mean, I had a few drinks yesterday, but I feel fine. Aside from, like, a light sprain of my ankle, it feels like, it's pretty hard to walk on. Oh, yeah, I did something to my wrist and I fucked it up recently. I feel like I've definitely either jammed it or sprung it. Dylan, is there a part of your body that you have betrayed in some manner? Oh, yeah, all of it. Yeah.

But body's like, dude, you said you weren't going to do this anymore. I'm like, yeah, well, what are you going to do about it? Yeah, we're falling apart as we get older. Yeah, it's fun. Someone to look forward to, everybody listening to this. You know, it's something else that's good to look forward to. Part two of our things that happened to characters that were completely forgotten about later on. Now, that's a segue.

There you go. It wasn't forced at all. Unbelievable. I'm believable. Hi, welcome to part two of this. This is our very first two-parter, which I'm very excited about. So to do a quick recap, the topic that we are discussing today are a change that occurred to a character that at the time seemed like it was a very big deal, and then it was either undone or completely just forgotten about shortly thereafter and never mentioned again. So last episode, we talked about some fundamental changes to the character of Spider-Man. that came and went, a completely rebranding of Superman that came and went, and then some stuff that happened in the X-Men world that always just gets forgotten about, like someone becoming a Lord of Hell or somebody becoming a vampire. I'm glad you did that recap because it's been a week and I've already forgotten what we talked about last week.

Yeah, you mentioned that you were hungover. You spent the whole week drinking. That's my life. Things are going well for me. So now that the preamble is out of the way, we can go ahead and hop into the rest of our picks. I have three more to potentially choose from. And I will ask you, would you rather hear a DC one or a Marvel one?

Let's go DC, I think. Yeah. Okay. So this is a character that, um, We have not really talked about a lot, if at all, but it's a character that I have enjoyed in various stents, and that is Wonder Woman. I have a very on-again-off-again relationship with Wonder Woman,

mainly dealing with whoever the creative team seems to be. I was reading her most recent run up until Tom King took over the book, and I fell back off. The last big time I was reading Wonder Woman, however, was in the early 2010s. because issue number 600 came out for Wonder Woman. DC always does really cool things for whenever their big three hit their milestones. So like when Batman hit 900 or Superman hit 900, it's like 900 issues because DC is,

even though they reset their continuity, they always honor their numbering. So with Wonder Woman, there was an announcement that I'll be honest with you, ticked off a lot of fans for some of the weirdest reasons I've ever. ever seen. We mentioned this writer a couple episodes ago, but JMS, J. Michael Strasinski,

creator of Babylon 5. And when we mentioned him, we talked about how his big, earth-shattering new storyline for Superman was Superman's going to walk across the country. Yes. And how it wasn't very well

received and eventually he just abandoned the project outright. and it was somebody else's mess to clean up. At the same time, JMS was announced the new writer for Wonder Woman starting issue number 601. Now, what was Wonder Woman's new, her new continuity going to be?

What was her new storyline? Well, first off, she was getting a brand new costume that was very poorly received because A, she got a leather jacket. And B, and this is still the one that gets me so surprised every time I mention it, they gave her pants. People were so upset that Wonder Woman got pants. So I'm looking at the costume now.

The top is a regular sort of like the Wonder Woman red top with the gold W. She's got the wrist bracers, but they're gold and red. instead of silver. And she, instead of wearing the star-spangled briefs or the sort of Roman-esque skirt, she is wearing black pants. You would have thought that somebody took these people's dogs outside and shot them in the head in front of them. The fact that they gave Wonder Woman pants.

It was unthinkable, the backlash. that occurred. And then to add further insult into this injury against Wonder Woman, they had announced they were filming a pilot for a Wonder Woman TV show that was also going to have Carrie Elways in it,

our friend of Princess Bride and Robin Hood men and tights. And in that, they revealed the costume and wouldn't you know it? Weren't pants. People were fucking so upset at the notion of Wonder Woman wearing pants.

I don't, just saying it now is so fucking wild to me. Now, personally, I kind of think that that was just the target that they got directed to. Because before this, before JMS took over and the character got her redesign, the writer was Gail Simone, who we've talked about previously. And a lot of people really enjoyed Gail's writing, especially when you get Gail on comics at center around female characters. That's usually where Gail shines for brightest, because you think of birds of prey. Even though the back girl run a new 52 was a bit controversial for one reason or another, she still wrote that character well because she loved Barbara Gordon. But so you have a fan favorite writer who's leaving the book and JMS, whose reputation is a bit spotty coming into the book.

They had Jim Lee created a whole new costume for her that was not well received. And in this new storyline that's referred to as Wonder Woman Odyssey, it's essentially a brand new Wonder Woman. So what we know about Wonder Woman is Themyskira, Paradise Island, for the home of the Amazons, is protected by the goddess Aphrodite. And there's like a magical ward that makes the planet unfindable and prevents like certain deities from stepping foot into it. So something happens in the book and all of the memories and the time. of all of this stuff has is just gone it's disappeared forever it's one day Wonder Woman woke up and she was younger and had no memory of her past whatsoever the Amazon the Amazons were living in like New York in like the subway system because Paradise

Island was compromised and they were killed off and like Queen Hippolyt her mother was murdered. And she didn't not really know that she was Wonder Woman. She had like no memories of her time as Wonder Woman. So she didn't even know her powers. And so it was like this book that would have made it like a really interesting elseworld title of like a young, angry, modern Diana figuring out what it meant to be Wonder Woman, what it meant to be, you know, a princess of the Amazons. discovering her powers, encountering her villains for the very first time.

And instead, it was put in canon completely erasing the time, everything ever happened before in canon. And as a result of that, isolating Wonder Woman from the other books. Because she had no interaction with like Superman or Batman

or any of the other characters that happened because that would have required way too much explanation. Right. Like you would, like Superman would, would have been like, oh, weird, Themiscuit doesn't seem to exist anymore.

I wonder what happened to my best friend, Diana. And he goes and finds her and like, oh, she's several years younger, kind of has an attitude and has no fucking clue who I am. I just wear pants. And she's wearing pants. So it was a controversial storyline in that sense, because it kind of took everything. I mean, you always see it in the solicitations of everything.

know about this character is wrong. That's what they did. Everything that made Wonder Woman Wonder Woman was gone. And instead you have this essentially a brand new character. So a fun thing happens. JMS JMSed again and left the book before he finished the storyline. So another writer, I believe it was Phil Hester, had to come in and finish it, which is exactly what happened with the Superman book with Chris Roberson having to finish JMS's story.

So how do you clean this up? The past has been changed. The character's deaged. She's figuring out who she is. She's wearing pants for God's sake. How do you restore the character back to normal? Oh, I know. You turn into a vampire. More magic. No, new 52. Oh. So the earth shattering changes to Wonder Woman were completely undone by the earth shattering changes to Wonder Woman as a result of the new 52, where Wonder Woman Odyssey has never been mentioned or referenced ever again. I do like that. They're like, how do we fix this? I just will reboot everything.

Yeah. I'm just going to reboot the whole continuity. That's fine. Don't worry about it. I mean, that's a way to do it. you know what you mean that's what I'm saying they love their reboots man and I will tell you I believe that is the last time Diana has worn pants thank God for that they're comfy it easy to wear yeah somebody as uh to summarize it essentially the problem with this with Wonder Woman Odyssey is it exists in a vacuum

it nothing that happened before it mattered because they because they wiped that all the way and nothing that happened after it mattered because it was a whole brand new continuity with the new 52. So this this book just is out there and it's a thing. Is it worth reading? From my, I understand, Hester,

like, cleaned it up real good and, like, there was a lot of, like, really kind of nice moments. But for the most part, it was also a very graphic and violent book.

Like, this is an angry woman, uh, wonder woman who's beating a shit out of people. But yeah. Like I said, it was, it was a choice.

It sounds really weird. Hmm. Really strange to even attempt to do that. Like, what, like, why did you have no memory of everything? Like, what, how did that work? Was there ever an explanation for it? I think it was resolved, but even then, the resolution didn't matter because the continuity got reset.

And in the new 52, you know, Diana discovers her father is Zeus in the original continuity. Um, oh boy, how much do you know about Wonder Woman's original continuity? Because it'll be weird. Practically zero. All right. So Wonder Woman actually used to be a clay statue of a baby. And Apollita prayed to the gods for a child. And they brought the clay statue to life and made her a living, breathing baby, which was the first and last time there was a child on Themiskeia.

So that is the original continuity. And in New 52, they were like, we're not going to, we're going to do away with the whole Clay Baby situation. And she's just a kid that's part God. Oh, I like the baby one. All right, John, it's up to you. Okay, doke. Well, this is sort of a weird one because it's an element they brought in that I, it's not that it hasn't stuck, but it's like not really been. resolved. So it's a bit up in the air still at the moment. But

guess what, guys? Peter Parker has a sister. Oh, shit, I remember this. It's, yeah, it's a weird one. Does she wear pants? Yes, I believe she does. I hand her already. Hate her already. Get rid of her. So this didn't even like come about in the main like amazing Spider-Man books. This was in a graphic novel called Family Business, where Teresa Parker is initially introduced as like a CIA agent

who gets involved in this whole thing where Kingpane is trying to get into a vault or something, which has something to do with Richard and Mary Parker, which kind of puts Teresa and Peter Parker on the same side and that's where she sort of reveals that, I'm your long lost sister. Surprise. Yeah. And yeah, apparently, I guess after the death of Peter's parents, she was for some reason adopted and didn't go to live with Aunt May and Uncle Ben like Peter

and kept a secret for whatever reason. And yeah, and then, you know, she comes back in this family business arc, and they sort of team up to go after the kingpin and stop him from getting whatever's in this fault. But then sort of in the big final battle, King Ping reveals, oh, wait, you're not really Teresa Parker. You're Theresa Durand. I guess he's like manipulated the situation to make her think she's a parker so as to get close to Peter to get him to come to like Cairo I think it is where this is all kicking off and where this vault is which all it seems really you know convoluted and like okay whatever yeah but then after this storyline finishes like after seemingly suggesting that no, she wasn't Peter's sister, of course not. There's like other stuff that happens where they have like this other mission together, Peter and Teresa,

which results in them having to go back in time for reasons that don't really matter at this point. but whilst they go back in time, they end up in like an old safe house of Richard and Mary Parker, which seems to confirm that she is in fact Peter's sister, because they find a birth certificate and everything. And so yeah, Peter sort of accepts her as his sister. But then there's like another storyline that comes after this called the Chameleons Conspiracy, where it, suggested that oh no wait she was basically a sleeper agent who'd been trained like from a young age to be like a secret agent basically and yeah it's like suggested she she's not who everyone thinks she is or maybe she is the Parker's daughter or you know there's just that not very clear like what her true identity is and how she like fits into the spider-man sort of mythos so yeah it's at the moment it's one of those things which is just completely unresolved and

unclear um but it i guess it doesn't really matter because uh she's a character that doesn't really pop up that much and uh hasn't had that much influence on like the main spot Spider-Man books at all. Like, when was the last time Spider-Man ever invited her over for dinner or whatever? Yeah. I remember reading that one, the Cairo one. I don't know if I read the ones after that, but I remember being like, this seems like kind of a big deal that nobody's really taken like a big deal.

You know what you mean? Yeah. And then, like, I don't remember ever reading anything else with her and it. maybe like there might have been one other one but like it really felt like it was just a gimmicky thing they did because they needed to fucking sell some comics you know what I mean like yeah we have three issues that we need to fill ah just give my sister whatever you know so the the the the peter parker sister thing I remembered when that was a thing when it was first like revealed and it sounds like a very complex complex con that it's like, oh, no, she's a sleeper agent.

No, she's not. But maybe she is. Maybe she's trained actress. I don't know. Could be. Like, it sounds like they don't want to commit to what she actually is. They haven't had to, they haven't figured out the plan yet. Yeah, that's what it feels like.

Like, they were just like, we have this idea, but we don't have a conclusion for it. So now I'm curious. Like, you would think, like, so is she just supposed to be like constantly deep undercover and that's why he doesn't contact her? I guess, yeah. Because I would be like, I'd be like, hey, sis, I don't know if you've ever met him, but I have a clone who's like, I guess he's kind of your brother. Anyway, he is mad at me now because he lost his memories, which were my memories, but he's really upset about it. So you might want to look out because he might want to hurt you because of me.

Yeah. Hey, sister, remember my wife? Yeah, she's mad at me and through circumstances that I've yet to figure out. She's got a new husband and kids. And I don't know if the kids are his or hers or what. That's a whole thing. And, you know, if you see me at Thanksgiving, probably for the best if you don't bring it up.

I don't think he was married whenever the sister was involved. Oh, was this during the one man, one more day? I would say one more band. One man band. Was this during the one man band when she was with, hanging out with the Heath Slater? Boy, that's Spider-Man one-man band bit. did not get enough recognition.

No. Yeah, I think it was after one more day. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That is still, we talked about one more day a little bit in part one, but just the mention of it, it is so hokey that Mepesto is like, I'll bring your old on back to life in exchange for your marriage. And also, real web shooters.

Yeah. That's just a perk. Yeah, I'm taking that from you. You will thank me for it. I don't want to get into a thing. I don't know if I have talked about this or we will be talking about this at some point, but I fucking hated that whole thing. And that whole...

Use it as an excuse to bring back Harry Osborne as well. But it was so... It was just bad. And after it happened, yeah, like they just... Like, higher Osborne came back. There was loads of stuff that was left unexplained. Mm-hmm. Which was silly.

The whole thing happened in the beginning with was silly. It doesn't make any sense. I'm going to make a deal with the devil so that I can bring back my aunt who's probably going to die soon anyway. And he's not going to really add anything to the comic. This, you know, not going to add anything meaningful to the story. How could she? She fucking died in the 90s. Apparently, we covered that in the clone wall.

with Foonzaga where she didn't really die, but he got over it anyway. You know what you mean? He had other stuff to do. Controversial take. Maybe it's okay for the old woman to die. Yeah. Spoiler,

people die sometimes. You know what I mean? It honestly, it feels like it might be for the best for Peter if he had something he didn't have to focus on as much anymore. Yeah, you have to worry about his fucking, oh,

she's all old. She might fall in the stabs. He's got other stuff to worry about it. Yeah, but what's he? to get his supply of wheat cakes from. I thought for a second you said, where is he a bastard? For a second there, I thought you said,

where's he going to get a supply of weed from? And I went, wait, hold on. Is not May his dealer? That's why they brought her back because they're like, we need to make her cool and hip, you know? Exactly. Hey, Pete, want to smoke a dude with your old aunt? Yeah.

My time in hell made me. super cool. I realize that life can be taken from you, so I'm just going to get real weird with whatever time I have left. Yeah, in this continuity, Aunt May went to hell, and she hit that kid with a car once and drove away

without telling anyone. Yeah. Well, apparently everybody goes to hell. She was the Lord of Hell for a while, remember? She went out. Aunt May. Oh, okay. Dylan, that's a t-shirt.

Oh my God, that just reminded me of something where she ended up as Galactus's herald as well at one point. People won't leave that old woman alone. Yeah. I mean, you can see why they brought her back. Like, she's so good. Clearly, she's a fucking herald of Galactus.

She's got a lot of worth to the story. What's she doing now? Nobody knows. She's probably dead. Anyway. Will I do a thing? Yes, your turn. I only have two left.

And we kind of touched upon one of them. So we'll do the other one now. Do you guys remember whenever Gambit was death? Yep. I have seen, I've not read it, but I've seen the one panel reveal. Yes, you've seen the picture. So Apocalypse, after the M day, Apocalypse turns up at the Xavier school. And he's like, all right, all the mutants kind of got fucked over there.

So now is the best time for me to lead whatever shreds of mutants are left into the future. You need a strong leader like me because survival is fittest. you guys survived. Let's see how fit you are. Yada, yada. You know the same old business. Yeah, the apocalypse bit. He came, he turns up in like a spaceship that's like a sphinx with his face on it.

Which is, I love, you know, if you're going to do it, do it right. And he did. This is why I love apocalypse. He's, you know, he goes for it. He really does. But I would have to say he made some questionable choices. with his horseman this run. Gambit was going to be death, his horseman of death.

I think Gambit, like, volunteered to do it. It was very strange. And, you know, as a member of the Gambit fan club, I was devastated because he, they fucked him up. They, they, like, they inverted his colors. Yeah. Yeah, which was crazy. He had like dark skin and white hair.

Yeah. And he could make poisonous gas just like coughing from Pokemon. That was part of his death thing. He could like release. He could like, it wasn't that he released toxic gas. He could like manipulate the air around him

to make it poisonous or something. It was, you know, typically like, ill-defined it didn't make any sense and so like that's a major radical shift for this guy in that he no longer looks like gambit he looks completely different and that kind of that run ended with like gambit and sunfire just going away to kind of um find themselves now that they've both been altered significantly by apocalypse they had to go and uh run away for a bit but after that they were really

obviously somebody in Marvel was like what the fuck did we do why did we allow that to happen which I agree with why did they allow this to happen I don't know so they tried to fix it and they kind of had it where he could revert

in and out of it like a human form and death form you know and then I think they just dropped it yeah I don't remember how John do you remember how they resolved that um not off the top of my head I think they did just basically I feel like they just

yeah they just dropped it yeah no because they were just like why did we do this haven't there been times where it seemed like his his death abilities were coming back I remember that was hinted at at least once or twice I feel like there was a situation where it was hinted I just have to say

if that's the case he really needs to talk to fucking Warren and help Warren out because he's been struggling with that death transformation for like 30 fucking years right and again knock that shit out quick

that never really gets met like if you were writing that that's a story you could write you could talk about the interaction between one of the least interesting X-Bet of all time and Gambit. Yeah, it would be a great storyline because you have that juxtaposition of like, you have the rich kid and then the guy who steals from the rich kid, you know? Yeah.

The billionaire and the thief and they're how different they are and how the millionaire needs the thieves help because he's struggled with this thing that happened to him, that the thief was able just to fucking shrug off apparently. that's a story. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. I would have. They've got stuff in common, complicated, got complicated relationship stuff with Warren

and his on again, off again thing with Siloak. And yeah, no, man, there's stuff you can do. Yes, exactly. Like, the whole process of being fucked up by Apocalypse is something that you would have something to say. It would leave, like... It costs to fucking cheat on his wife. Right.

Which, I don't know if that holds up in court. No, I don't think it's. No, legally, I don't think that's a great defense. Why did you kill that guy? Oh, well, Apocalypse fuck me up. Oh. I mean, well, if anything, Warren, he's been worried about that one because he's killed a lot of people as Archangel. Well, that's true.

But, you know, like, clearly there would be some kind of trauma to it. It's, it's a messy business. You could see why those guys would have something to talk about. But instead, they're like, ah, you know, whatever. Forget it. Just drop the whole thing. And, and it's weird that the, the Archangel thing has. has stuck with Angel so much that it's,

it's literally like the only thing people talk about or think of with Angel. Like that is his identity now, is that years ago we got fucked up by Apocalypse and he can't let it go. But Gambat has so much other shit going for him that like, why would they ever have done this if it's not going to go anywhere? It's got no purpose, you know? Yeah. Very strange.

You know, I didn't like it. I blame you. It's weird. It was weird. Well, and I feel like enough time has passed between when this episode comes out in X-Men 97 that we can we can mention very freely. It does seem like that is a direction that they're going to be taking Gambit in the future. So it'll be interesting if they do a better job of it. Well, hopefully they do.

And Archangel was in the original X-Men cartoon, so, you know, maybe they could have that interaction. Yeah. well I have another Marvel one and a DC one what do you last I did DC you see yeah okay so tell me guys what do you know about the character speedball

oh I know I know I know exactly where this is going yeah cool cool because we're not we don't need to go into a whole bunch of juxtaposition or not just musician, but of exposition. So to give a little bit, Speedball is a character. His name is Robbie Baldwin. And Speedball, his power that he got from a lab accident that his parents were conducting is he's super kinetic.

So anything that hits him bounces off of him, essentially. And he can, like, create these little orbs of light that basically he just bounces around. That's his deal. and his characterization was always really like carefree and young and whatnot. Yeah, very happy go lucky kind of. Happy go lucky guy. Yeah.

And let me tell you something real quick. A writer I have always enjoyed is Warren Ellis. And a reason why I enjoy Warren Ellis is he does things like, let's take the guy who's happy go lucky and he literally bounces off of stuff and let's rebrand him as penance. So. So Robbie is a member of this. the new warriors. He was like one of the OG new warriors. And that was the team that Marvel had of like their teenage young characters in the 90s. They were meant to be kind of like their version of the Teen Titans. And the characterization for Speedball was about the same. Young, happy, go lucky,

whatever. In the early 2000s, one of the rebrand relaunches they did for the new Warriors is they made them reality TV stars. So they were superheroes who were doing reality TV stuff. And that segued really nicely into Civil War. the new warriors inadvertently started the whole mess. There was a superhero fight with a villain named Nitro. Things got out of hand because the new warriors were showboating for the reality TV show. Nitro, as the name would suggest, blew up, killed 612 people, 60 of them being children. Yep.

So Speedball survived because the nature of his powers. he was the, like, I think the only one who did. And he, uh, comes out of his coma and is arrested for his part of this. You know, he basically, um, caused a whole lot of death and a whole lot of accidents. And, you know, Robbie, who was this happy, lucky character was shattered because he was dealing with survivor guilt and regular guilt and straight up PTSD. So naturally what you do with this character is you put him in a secret. government black ops hit squad team called the thunderbolts and so Robbie's powers go away he

doesn't have the ability to create the little bouncing balls of orbs anymore but Robbie does figure out that he can absorb pain and put it right back out kind of like cable or not cable but bishop right he takes he takes pain and he redirects it back out so because um Robbie is a mentally sound person at this point. Robbie gets a suit commissioned. And the suit is basically like it looks like a fucked up synabyte-esque uniform. It's part metal. It's covered in spikes. There's 612 spikes inside of the armor. He's a walking iron maiden essentially. And 60 of those spikes actually penetrate his skin. So he is constantly getting cut and stabbed wearing this uniform because it helps him use his powers. And he rebrands himself as penance. And he's this very troubled,

very unstable individual who Norbin Osborne and the, uh, the Avenger, the, uh, the, not the, well, the initiative are using to round up superheroes who are not wanting to register for the Super registration act. Um, it goes to great lengths. I think Norman Osborne when he eventually takes over in dark rain. They go to. to even further lengths of like the therapy that they have to that members have to go through. They intentionally make Robbie's mental illness even worse to keep him in line because they they like basically having him as this weird attack dog. And yeah, that is that's Robbie in penance.

And you're thinking, wow, that is this a profound shift in character. So he goes back to being speedball one day. they keep them having the PTSD he struggles with that a little bit they put him in um they after dark rain ended they had these new Avengers titles uh end up and there was a an Avengers team that was put together by Hank Pem I think was Avengers Academy and uh Robbie was one of the teachers there and Robbie's whole deal was like teaching the kids restraint and he would constantly have like the like flashbacks to what happened to him because you know even though he was better enough to stop wearing the suit of, uh, suit of spikes and shit and his powers returned like normal.

Uh, he, he still was dealing with the psychological fallout of being responsible for hundreds of deaths. And then eventually when that series ended, uh, there was another mini series that he was a small part in where it dealt with the, the general public not forgiving him for what happened and him having to deal with like angry mobs. And then there was a new Warriors comic that came out shortly thereafter that featured Cain, a scarlet spider, to tie back to an earlier episode. And I think they may have mentioned what happened in Civil War. And that was really the last time Robbie Baldwin slash speedball had any sort of involvement in anything. So did they give a reason why he like went from penance to speedball again?

I think eventually, like his mental health just got to a point where it was discovered that was a mental block that was keeping his powers from working that way, that it was just like all of the guilt and stuff that he was feeling that was blocking that aspect of his powers. And then he was learning to like move on and forgive himself for what happened because, I mean, it was an accident at the end of the day. It was Norman Osborne and the others that were basically keeping him in that state of like profound deep mental illness to keep him in line. Because in a lot of ways, like he was like a secret.

because I remember there were some issues of like Thunderbolts where he was encountering like old friends and then they found out it was speedball and they lose their mind like what the fuck what happened to Robbie but yeah um Penance was a playable character in the second Marvel Ultimate Alliance and I think that was the only outside of the comics appearance that character ever appeared in I dug Penance though because I thought it was an interesting idea to take a character like that and shift it in such a hard direction and like I said what Warren Ellis is the kind of freak that would be like, yeah, put him in a suit that stabs him 612 times every time he moves. Why not? Yeah, I was a big fan of that Thunderbolts run that Warren Ellis had. Oh, that it's an all-timer. Yeah. All-timer.

The follow-up after it with the dark rain stuff was okay. But that run with like bullseye and everybody, just a team of sociopaths hunting down, like, former heroes and loving it. Yeah. Brutal stuff. Do you think the story for penance to come back again? I don't think they'll ever bring penance back. No.

I think too much time is past. Well, I think the things that are hindering it is it's been a long time since penance was around. It's been over a decade probably. And also, that would mean speedball having to be prevalent in stories. And that is just not going to happen, you know. That's true. Fair enough.

Okay. Well, on me go. Wow. So my next one, rather than talk about Spider-Man, I'm going to talk about Gwen Stacy, who didn't wear pants. She wore mini skirts famously. So let's get that off the table right away. Good, good. Important. Yeah. So, you know, Gwen Stacy was. like Peter Parker's dream girl and then she got murdered by the green goblin

yeah you know you can't fight these things you just got to accept them he's got to accept that a man dress of the flying goblin will throw your girlfriend off a bridge and she'll die when you try to save her using your sticky webs it's just a thing that happens in everybody's life

at some point yeah um but uh you know there came a point many, many years later where someone thought, hey, maybe it'd be a good idea if we reveal that Gwen Stacy had an affair with Norman Osborne, the guy who killed her.

And not only did they have an affair, but she gave birth to twins as well in secret. And then those twins managed to grow up super fast. And because of Norman's

horrendous influence, on them, blamed I'm so happy you said that and not what I was thinking. Because of Norman's dot, dot, dot, dot, I went, oh God. His evil seaman. There it is.

That's where the goblin serum is. Evil semen. So, yeah, they they came back and you had Sarah and Gabriel and they well Gabriel especially was a bit crazy and

became the grey goblin for a while and yeah that was like this whole new thing which in of itself like after this storyline had happened in the comics like it was not referred to again by anyone

which is totally understandable because why would you want to bring this stuff up until Nick Spencer's run a few years ago where I guess he felt the need to try and restore some of Gwen Stacy's honor by revealing that no actually she didn't have an affair with Norman Osborne but it was a case of I think like an AI version of Harry Osborne from when he was obviously a bit mad thanks to the the goblin serum in his veins. Like he had manipulated his dad into believing that he was the father of Sarah and Gabriel and he had this affair with Gwen Stacy when really it was just like Mendelstrom had helped clone these two kids and like, you know,

managed to make them grow up extra quick and stuff. So it was, yeah, that was basically the reveal. And I think they ended up playing some part in the whole Kindred storyline as well. Yeah. But it was all a confusing mess, which I didn't like at all. no i didn't like the end of it it was so confusing and like i like that he tried to fix that you know um he tried to fix that and he tried to fix the also aforementioned harry osborne just back from the dead after one more day thing so i admire him trying it but i think it was

so convoluted to begin with that like you know this probably might be best we just ignored it yeah also i really liked about that when you were talking about the buildup Gwen cissy give birth to twins in secret and you're like that's not easy to do that's a really hard secret to keep he's fat all of a sudden don't worry about it yeah about it how can be not fat anymore uh

don't worry about it it's fine you know what you mean We did talk a little bit about that with the sinister six episode that we did because of the reveal of the Grey Goblin being a thing to me. Yes. And of course it did give us, you know, that amazingly horrifying Norman Osborne sex face, which is funny. This is evil seaman. Yeah, this is evil seaman.

Jesus Christ. We're getting so many good T-shirt, I think. he is. Oh, dear. I think that the top seller there. Imagine the picture for this one. I mean,

is it just going to be that panel of Norman Osborne's face is if like, if we do, we just don't say anything to Mike Diadado and we just cut him out of the proceeds. I mean, that would seem to helping to draw

some kind of representation of Norman Osborne that he will see him. All right, Dylan, it's your turn. What are you got? You want to move on? You don't want to keep talking about it. We have,

this is the second time. I think we've mentioned superpowered semen. Both times from Spider-Man, right? Two times is more than we, than I thought we would. They're both from Spider-Man. No,

the other one was the Flash, remember? Oh, no, we talked about, oh, we talked about Spider-Mons, really hit a semen, I guess. That's the third time, three times. we can't be the Cumb podcast. We're trying not to become the X-Men podcast,

but we can't become the Cumb podcast as a result. Well, we've got to make a choice. But, you know, we're going to stick to our values. What do we want to be? Oh, well, you know what? Speaking of X-Men, I think it's about time we talked about the X-Men again, right? Yeah. It's been five minutes since we talked about the X-Men.

So I'm going to do it again. We talked about, we very briefly mentioned this kind of, I think it was on last week's episode so far away. But Corey very briefly mentioned Chimber at some point, who was an ex-man, who his power was that his face and chest blew apart. Just the once, though. Yeah. It's all good for one trip.

Yeah, you get one go, so make a coin. But he had like, he had like psionic powers or something and he could blast stuff with this big chest hole, you know? Yeah. But like the part of part of what was made chamber very interesting was it was it was such an interesting. It was like, yeah, an interesting power because a lot of the time you think mutants are. you know, they're very specifically set up like, this guy can shoot ice out of his hands. This guy can fly.

Like they're very, um, pretty, like most of them are pretty cool powers. This guy had his fucking face blown apart. Like, it was a really interesting look. It was an interesting concept.

I really liked chamber. I thought it was a really cool character. Very expansive to film evidently. As we talked about. But a really cool concept. except. So after the decimation, which we have talked about again, after M-Day, obviously, well, Timber lost his powers in M-Day. So obviously, not having a chest. Internal organs. Yeah, that would, that would damage you if you lost your ability to survive without the use of that. Because he had, like,

some kind of telepathy and some kind of like it was like some kind of sonic energy that people people were like is he actually human or is he just kind of made up of energy and that's just like a shell that's containing the energy again very interesting but if you were to turn into a human and you don't have half your face or most of your chest and internal organs you might be in trouble now this is where it gets sticky because they say beast was able to look after him and then they brought him to hospital and stuff like this. I would argue

that if you didn't have any internal organs, you probably you could bring him to the hospital all you wanted. Yeah. He's already dead. You still bring a corpse to the hospital. Yeah. He's already dead. I don't know how he can be like, oh, we got him just in time. Like, there is no

time. There is no time. He's dead. He's 100% dead. He is basically, when he lost his powers, he turned into a jackal lantern. There is no in his inside of him. There's nothing inside him. We've made this clear, guys. Just a large gaping hole where a chest and a jaw would be.

So the hospital were able to save him or keep him on life support because I guess they've seen this happen before. Right? They were like, oh, right, this happens all the time. Bring him, bring him to the no internal organs room. You know what you mean? We'll fix him up good. So he was in hospital for a while. And I think he was kidnapped because he was kidnapped by the...

Plenicaba. Yes, the guys who worship apocalypse. And they did some kind of thing. Well, they didn't, did they reveal that he was some hard. related to some kind of lineage to... He came that his... Yeah, he had lineage to apocalypse

and that would make him an appropriate vessel. Yes, because chamber to his credit is a vassal for the energy at the moment. He's a chamber for it. So they're like, well, if you want to be a vessel, we'll make you

the new apocalypse basically. So they somehow have the power to make other people into apocalypse, which I don't think that that's cool, right? Do what you mean? Like, if you, like, Christians don't have the power to just make another Jesus.

Yeah. That's not how that works. You can't, you can't just, I love this guy so much, but I haven't seen him in a while, so we'll just make a new one. You know, that's, that's. Maybe they were hoping to make their own personal Jesus, like Depechevich. There we go. See that? There you go.

A little music joke for everybody. So they fix Chamber They give him a new mouth And a new chest But the downside is He looks kind of like apocalypse Like he's got grey skin And

It's all weird, right? So the idea is now That Chamber lost his old powers The shit that made him interesting But now he's apocalypse Which is stupid because there already is an apocalypse To do something that radical, that, you know, game changing.

One would think that there is an end game to that, right? That there's a story to be told and the story will be told. But that didn't happen. Instead, Chamber was Apocalypse. They didn't mention it again. And then he went on to the new warriors with Jubilee. Because he had no powers. Even though he did, he had the powers of apocalypse.

They're like, no, no, no. He's got no powers anymore. So he goes on to the new warriors. And then he went to Utopia, the island of Utopia, that the X-Men used as their haven, safe haven for a while. And something happened with Legion, where he kind of like warped reality or something. and whatever so everybody

in that spear was affected by it and then whenever reality returned to normal chamber was just fine ever was chamber again because again that's not how this works but that's it

so the whole apocalypse thing never brought up that didn't go anywhere it was completely pointless and then chamber just got back his powers anyway. So the whole him being one of the X-Men that lost their powers in the

decimation, also pointless. I thought that was such a weird way to handle this character. And you know, it's all kind of come around where like it made no difference whatsoever. Absolutely no difference. And it'll never get mentioned. Nobody's going to be like,

you remember that time of your apocalypse? it's just gone. So I was reading an article of CBR postage. CBR wrote an article about this before of like one of X-Men's characters have a surprise connection to apocalypse. And it mentioned like X-Men read being like the book it's going to focus on O'Rocco

and like all of the mutants that are like from and revere apocalypse. They're like maybe Chamber will play an important aspect in that because of his brother related to Apicca. Nope, no, we will not. Forgotten the book. Yeah, he was, so when they first announced the new mutants book in the Krokoa era, Chamber was a member of that team.

And then like after six-ish episode, or episodes, but issues, the book just became a new war, a new mutants book. And it just focused on like, you know, Danny and karma and, you know, the regular cast of characters that were in the new mutants book. And, like, Chamber just got forgotten about. again or chamber but yeah

when you were looking stuff up did you find anything like suggesting there was going to be a storyline and it just never came about or no nothing I don't think so I really just think they did it

and then just immediately dropped it like they had no way like the writer was just a really big fan of chamber and they were like I don't want the character to just be on life support I'll make one issue That way he's like walking around fine And then I'll feel better for it

What What if that's like They kept bringing him to like fights and stuff And they just wheeled him out in a big hospital bed And he couldn't even do anything Like he has no powers But they're like it's just nice to have him here I just feel better with it being around

Yeah I like I want Chamber to be part of the action So I'm going to bring him into a war zone He's almost dead You know he's practically dead yeah it just really like him all right i got got my last one okay and this one could be considered the biggest one of them because it ties into a thing that almost happened but didn't but it still happened to a degree so have i ever talked to you guys about 5g

no i don't think so i don't know so the the COVID pandemic took a lot of things from us. Many people lost years of their lives. Some people lost their lives entirely. But the one thing we did gain was that 5G didn't happen. So,

DC Comics had this idea. This was as the 50, the new 52 had already been undone, and rebirth had launched, and it was looking like it was going to be a good thing. Dan Didio, who at the time was the chief

editor of DC Comics, had this idea of we are going to move the time scale forward. We're going to fast forward through a few years. And in the intervening years, all of the heroes that you know today have retired and new people have taken their spots. And they had already been kind of hinting at it and suggesting it. But the big ones were Jonathan Kent, Superman's son, was going to take the place of his father as the Superman. Yara Flores was a character they created as the new Wonder Girl as she was an Amazonian, but a secret tribe of the Amazon's that actually existed in the Amazon rainforest. So there was like a secret group of Themiskirans that actually were in the Amazon.

And she was like the best and strongest of them. She was going to graduate to become a Wonder Woman. And the last one, Batman. So what we know about the Batman is that there have been multiple Robbins. Each Robin seemingly the one that could eventually replace him. We've seen Dick Grayson act as Robin. There was a time where Jason Todd was wearing a Batman costume, even Tim Drake. And of course, there's the future that Grant Morrison wrote in Batman issue number 66,

which is in the future, an apocalyptic future where Danian is Batman. So who is going to do? be the new Batman. You have all these different options. What if I told you it was going to be Lucius Fox's his estranged son, Jace, Fox, was going to be the new Batman. It's got to be somebody. It makes sense.

Do you guys know who Lucius Fox is? Yes. Yes. Morgan Freeman. Correct. Yes. Morgan Freeman. Cool. So Lucius was the guy who basically helped Batman, Bruce Wayne create like all of the gadgets and shit because he was like this very intelligent inventor who worked for Wayne Industries. He has children and most most the better known of them is he has a son named Luke, I believe. And Luke is a character who's known as Batwing. He kind of has like his own suit.

He's a part of the outsider's team with Batwoman. That's the whole thing. however jace tim timothy jace fox because they started they called him jace because there's already a tim in the batman lore uh jace was and the rebellious kid he partied he drank he did drugs he apparently joined a a crime group called the terrible trio uh where he was the vulture and um when infinite front here, which was part of the reboot for Rebirth, came about Jace was

brought back. So he was mentioned he was in the 1970s and then he stopped appearing entirely for about 30 years, 30, 40 years. He comes back here as Lucius Fox's disappointment son.

And through a series of events, Jase finds one of the old bat suits in an abandoned area of Wayne Enterprises, takes up the mantle of Batman, goes to New York City, and starts to fight crime in New York as this different Batman.

And so that was supposed to be the future of Batman in 5G. Was Bruce Wayne's retired. The Batman is Jace Fox, who at the time of the series that he was introduced in was operating on New York, but I presume was going to be operating

out of Gotham. And, you know, a bunch of other characters were going to be changed as well. But when that plan fell apart due to the COVID pandemic and DC writing, you know, basically undoing whatever plans there were, Jace stuck around because Jace was being written by John Ridley, who is a very successful writer who actually has won Academy Awards for adapting screenplays. So he's a very, like he's a very accomplished writer. And you do not want to go to this person who you got to come writing for you, who, who.

won like the highest of words you can get for writing and telling him actually no plans change we don't really need you after all so Jace stuck around for a series of miniseries and a title so we have Future State the next Batman

Batman by John Ridley the next Batman second son I am Batman and I am Batman volume 2 so he was around for about 20-ish issues or so. And the last mention of Jace Fox as Batman

was in March of 2023, and there have been no announcements for him, no new series for him. Would you like to take a hazard and guess how many times Bruce Wayne has interacted with Jace Fox? Four. Zero. Zero.

That's what I was going to say. Bruce has had no interaction with Jace Fox despite the fact that there is a guy dressed like him fighting crime in New York which you think would be a bit more of a problem for him but it wasn't so this was essentially like DC's weird attempt at like having their cake and trying to eat it too

where like we have this acclaimed writer we want to like we want him to put something out so we can say that with this Academy Award winning writer is written for us but we're not going to honor these plans anymore because it doesn't fall in line with what we're doing. So he existed in a bubble, kind of like Wonder Woman Odyssey. Nothing that came before it mattered.

Nothing that came after it seems to have mattered. It's just a thing that occurred. And nobody said anything about Jace Fox ever since. That's weird. Incredibly. But he just, just find a Batman costume. Like, oh, that's all you need. Yep.

Yep. So, I mean, there's some more to it. like how he was involved in the Wayne family and why he decided to put on the costume and how he felt it was his fault and whatnot but at the end of the day he's a guy who found the Batman suit yeah

I don't think that qualifies you to be Batman you know although I don't know what does qualify you be Batman he just did it one day he's like I'll be Batman and be like all right that's fair work away Yeah. I think the only character that had any sort of major interactions with him was John Kent, who at the time was acting as Superman because Clark was trapped on an alien planet that had neutralized his powers.

So the only interaction with him was the character that was supposed to originally replace his dad but didn't. Okay. Yeah. It was just a big old nothing. And to be honest with you, like I said, everything I've seen from him. 5G, it was going to fail. Because here's the thing about like, the thing about comic book writers, especially DC comic book writers, we don't handle change well. We're not crazy about it. So like the new 52 was rough as it is for some characters. And like,

you're suggesting that like every character that we like is going to be gone. Because like that was, I mentioned the Aquaman miniseries in the last episode. They got canceled after one issue. That was supposed to be leading up to 5G as well because it's all about Aqualad in his journey to replace Arthur as Aquaman. Just mental. Like they thought this was going to be a great idea and it just, no, not at all. Yeah. Well, yeah. So John, your turn.

So this was like one I haven't really fleshed. out much or done a whole lot of research for, but this is my like, keeping the bag pocket in case I need it one. And this isn't Spider-Man related, but it is X-Men related because, of course. But yeah, this is Gene Gray, like, during the era where the original five were brought to the future. there was a lot of weird stuff that happened during this period but one of the weird things that happened was she was basically put on trial by the Shia

who wanted to punish her basically for her future crimes as the phoenix and I guess like prevent those crimes from happening if they could find her guilty and then sentence her to death while she was at this young age. But yeah, she was basically put on trial and I guess she randomly has this new power appear

where she can absorb psionic energy and she turns into this like pinky purple energy creature basically like still in human form but like just she's completely like purple I guess and it gives her extra power which she uses to beat up gladiator um and for gladiator he's like the jobber of all like x-men characters he's presented as this big fucking deal but usually everybody beats the shit out of them to show how tough they are yeah well you know he shouldn't have that mohawk in this day and age so true you got against punk rock he he doesn't listen to punk rock look at him nah the poser are you calling him a poser oh shit yeah

yeah he's listening to fight him everybody else is fighting him i'll fight him right now so yeah yeah he's got a bubblegum psychic energy monster form now yeah something to do with combining her telepathy and telekinesis, but who cares? Because it's never factored into any books after this run. So, like, what was the point of giving her a new power in the first place? Well, we talked a bit about, yeah, well, because there was also Angel from that period of time. He got his wings removed because he went through, like, the black mirror, whatever the fuck it was called, and came out with, like, cosmic wings that,

made him fly faster. So I was looking this up for the Cyclops episode for like just the the history and stuff. When cable was like sending the like young cable was like sending people back in time, apparently he did surgery on Angel to give him his feathery wings back in an explanation that I did not ask questions about because I knew that there were not going to be sufficient answers. Cable operated on. Yes. Archangel. No, no.

He, he, he, he, so young. the one that came from the past to the present went through a cosmic magic mirror that he came out with these like cosmic wings that were like kind of metal and made out of like light or whatever yeah and before he could be sent to the past young cable like the 13 14 year old cable apparently surgically replaced the cosmic wings with regular wings but then where the fuck did those come from yeah my question whose wings? Did you just steal? I like with regular wings. I'm like regular wings for humans. Like what do you mean? Just a pigeon. You found a pigeon.

Yeah. Like little wings. Yeah. Like airplane wings. What are you talking about here? Anyway, that's besides the point. No, I had never heard of this, this Gene Gray thing before. That's interesting.

Yeah, why would you have heard of it? It happened in one book ever, and then... Never again. Yeah. What book was it? You think someone would have brought it up to Gene when they ran into her in the present day? Like, hey, by the way, have you ever tried doing this? Yeah.

This is going to sound weird to say. It feels like the only thing that happened in the young X-Men book that stayed in continuity was the reveal that Iceman was gay. Yeah. None of the characters seem to have retained any, like, or feel any impact of what happened. No one's, like, physical appearance was altered in any way. Like, you would expect, like, you know, let's say that, like, I don't know,

Angel got punched in the mouth and he lost some teeth. Like, present day Angel would, like, cough and his teeth would fall off his mouth or something like that. Yeah. Like, there was no, there seemed to be no impact except for, like, Iceman realizing he liked boys. Like, in those books as well, Beast, uh, becomes like almost like a mage as well. well he's uh he's

getting to magic yeah and then you know no mention of it whatsoever right wouldn't beast in the future no magic yeah although I guess beast is a problematic character as it is so maybe

yeah he had some stuff going on yeah he's busy yeah that was a whole thing that's wild as if Gene Gray wasn't like powerful enough exactly

Yeah, she doesn't need any new powers. Let's stick around with this. Give her some more stuff to do. She's got a lot of stuff today. She's really powerful. Like you said, there's plenty of other fucking, you know, the things people could talk about. So if you're listening to this and you've,

one that we haven't said, which is likely because there's so many of them, leave me in the comments and we'll definitely read them. Absolutely. I read every single the comment, single comment that gets left every i've read every comment that's been left on our video so far yeah so just you know stay at it keep leaving his comments give us stuff to do yeah uh let us know what's going on and remember to uh post semenor marriage under a limp biscuit video today if you

haven't already you got to do one today now john we're breaking the canon here because i always ask you what number of movie you're on and you know not to break the immersion, but we did immediately start recording this one after this. So by chance, have you been watching a movie the entire time we've been recording? No, but I mean, I can predict how many I'll have watched in a week, so. Yes, go ahead and do that. I'm going to say, I'm on... And ignore the fact that we're going to be recording more tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah. I'm up to 339 movies. There you go. Yeah. There you go. Well, everybody, this has been fun. We will hear back from you soon, and you'll hear back from us even sooner. So behave yourselves and enjoy.

Watch up for evil semen. We really can't become the Come podcast. Bye, everyone. Goodbye. Bye-bye.