The Smark Avengers - Vol 3, Ep 33: The Smark Avengers Talk About Spooky Characters

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

The Spooky Month rolls on! It's time for all sorts of ghouls, ghosts, and goblins of all chromatic kind to come lurking out of the shadows to terrify the normies! The world of comic books have been blessed with so many monstrous monsters and ghoulish ghouls that are famous (or infamous) in one way or another. Join Corey, Dylan, and Jon as the Smark Avengers talk about spooky characters!

Corey, I want to talk to you about something real quick. You've been waiting this entire time? What? You've been waiting this entire time? Yeah. Okay. Corey, I don't know a whole lot about America. John, maybe you're in the same boat because we're in the UK.

But I didn't know that like all those immigrants were eating dogs and cats in America. In Ohio, specifically. Is it Springfield, Ohio? Yeah, I live in Columbus, Ohio. Springfield is a little ways away, but not terribly far. Corey, how many immigrants have you seen eating dogs and cats and pets? I'm just saying that anything is edible with the right preparation. But have you seen immigrants eating dogs and cats and pets?

I like how you always are essentially putting me in the spotlight to defend my country, and I have no idea why you insist on doing this. Because your country needs defending, and nobody else is defending. somebody asked well on the podcast who else is going to defend it John John why does America think that immigrants are eating the dogs and cats and

pets? Because America sucks. No, because he saw on a TV. Oh sorry, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. The best part of my this intro is for a month late. I'll tell you this, the beauty of this is

nobody's going to forget this. All right. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Smart Avengers. My name is Corey. I'm with me. Dylan and John. How are you doing, guys? Did you like that intro? It was something. I did. I went on the two hours. You certainly did. I was ready to go, man.

I was just vibrating. As soon as I saw that fucking thing, I had to talk to people about this. I'm like, did you see that Donald Trump just said? There's some really unfortunate news I have to pass on to you. Much like Dave Girl who just told the world, by the way, I'm a dad again. She did on my wife. Oops.

Don't you love how he used to be known as a nice guy of rock? And you're like, hmm, that one's going to take a hit. This isn't the first time he's done stuff like that either. What?

Yeah, I heard something like, first marriage ended in similar fashion. Similar as, yeah. Without a baby. The third marriage. This could be a,

this could lead to a third marriage, right? I don't think he's married. I'm sure that if it did, then it, you know, the pattern wouldn't. repeat itself. No, this is the end of it. This is the end of it. Yeah, yeah.

For sure. The third time to charm, right? That's what they say. Isn't it for me once, shame on you, for me twice, shame on me. I thought it was you can't three times can be fooled again. There you go. That's it. You go? I'm familiar with the this most topical intro to this show. Which is going to be three of date when people listen to this. What is wrong with us today?

Jesus Christ. We have never, we have never, ever done a topical intro. It's always been whimsy and wonderful, is it bullshit that we just talk about? It's never been like, by the way, I'm just into the world today. It fucking sucks ass. You think that sucks ass.

We'll hear what we're going to talk about some suck-ass characters in Marvel comics or whatever, you know? Well, so speaking of today's topic, Which is suck-ass Marvel characters. No, it's not suck-ass Marvel characters per se. So we went into this with kind of an idea of what we wanted to do and it wasn't really kind of working out the way that we wanted it to work.

So anyway, because it's October, it's the spooky month. We're going to talk about just kind of horror-related comics and what have you. So there's a lot of those kind of events going on at the moment. in the world of DC and Marvel, as well as the other publishers that are putting things out. So one of those things currently is the Venom War in Marvel. Have you guys been doing anything with Venom War? I think that we talked about the,

not the Venom War specifically, but like a lot of the old Venom stuff that was happening like a few months ago, and I checked out because I was involved with the whole, what was the guy's name John what was the guy's name the null

what what were you thinking of null the yes that guy the symbiating yeah yeah yeah so when he came back to earth

and he he fought venom and then they had a big thing and then then Bannon became him and then all that stuff and then Carnage got a big deal and then Corny just came after them I paid attention to a lot of that

and then all of that made me just check out of symbiates forever it was just too much. So at some point, I haven't kept up of what's happening recently, but I know in my head and in my heart that it's just not for me.

So I'm not 100% sure what's going on, but I don't, I'm pretty sure I don't like it. Well, if you don't like Noel, you'll be super glad to hear that it was revealed in the latest Venom trailer that was released earlier today, that Noel's going to be the bad guy in the third movie.

Here's the thing. It's not that I don't like No, that's not the issue. I thought that was a good idea. The way they handled it, I didn't like. I can understand where you're coming from because it's one of those things where Venom now

is so far removed from... From venom. You know, from, yeah, the guy he was when he was introduced or the symbiate or alien. Basically, yeah, it's just, it's not the same. It's a very, very different venom to what.

Right. Traditionist might, you know, prefer. But I don't know. I think it still has its merits. I think it's like that whole run has been interesting just to see how different it is, basically. Because like it hasn't just been like, you know, doing the same old stories as we saw on the past. that it's sort of built a whole brand new mythos for venom and the symbiates and all that kind of jazz. And, you know, some might say it didn't need that.

But at the same time, you know, why not try and do something a bit bigger and more, I don't know, attention grabbing with venom? I mean, I'll agree with that. but like it's something I've said on this podcast before but something I've noticed about Marvel comics the last couple of years that annoys me is that they're not just out there to tell good stories they're right there to tell like this is the biggest venom story you've ever heard or this is the biggest

whatever they're always like one-uping themselves in terms of like bigness in terms of grandiosity and that always annoyed me because you can think about a guy like venom I know obviously his like roots are he's a he's a symbiative man alien planet but deep down he's just a guy that fucking hates spider-man and then you're like well why have he already told all of the stories we can with him hating spider-man and there's a lot of like marvel stuff like where it seems like the end goal is just to tell like a big giant grandiose story and it makes me sad because i feel like well have he just stopped

telling the ground level fun stories like do they always have to be like fucking galactic, grandiose incredible magnificent storylines can they not just be a little bit more sensible and down to earth and like

straightforward you know what you mean? Like to me the last couple of years it's just everything's just been so giant and big and magical and crazy and I'm like we don't have to do that. If I could interject real quick Yes, you may.

This is what annoys me about the spider world right now and why I can't read anything that's Spider-Man or Venom-related. Because it's just like Venom War, and it's like, okay, on paper, it's Eddie versus his son Dylan for who gets basically, who gets to keep the Venom symbiate. But it's also like, but Liz Allen's also involved, and she has a symbiate. And Black Widow's there, and she has a symbiate.

And then there's Flash Thompson with his symbiate. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. first of all, didn't Liz Allen die? And then also, why is Black Widow have a symbionate? I was looking at the Wikipedia article. And it says, Black Widow has the Widow symbiote. And Liz Allen talks to Flash Thompson, and she's misery and has a misery symbiate. So it's just like, it's just, and like there's carnages involved in this too, but it's like Cletus Cassidy clone.

And it's just like, why. This is why people, this is like why I can't get into Venom because like it's just, and it's like the movies as well, like, well, who's Venom going to fight? Another person with another symbiate. It's like the Marvel problem where it's like, who are the Marvel characters going to fight? Somebody with their exact same fucking power. Iron Man's always going to fight a dude in an Iron Man suit, except for the last movie where the guy had turned his body basically to an Iron Man suit. Captain America is going to fight. somebody else that's just as skilled as he is

and Thor is going to fight another godlike character and it's just styles clashes are so important and like the spider man world isn't much better because in the spider man world they keep doing shit in the spider verse but that's what I was going to say to you is like well do you like spider man because spider man fights like other animals

it's not a style flash so much as it's just like he's fighting an octopus or he's fighting a scorpion No, but those people have different power sets. Right. Like the spider is just like, these are just different versions of him from alternate worlds. And I have no interest in these other people. Right, but that's one part of it though. Like mainly, if you look at Spider-Man a lot, like, if you look at Thor, a lot of the time,

Thor is always fighting other gods. But if you look at Spider-Man, he's always spiting like other animals or other villains or other street-level crooks or, or mob boss or stuff like that. street level stuff, but he's not fighting street level stuff in these spider-verse crossovers. Well, in the films he's not. Well, no, and most the event comics, he tends to be

involved with these other universes. That's what I mean about the comics is that like he, it just seems too like grandiose. And it comes across way more of a spider-man than all the other ones. It makes it difficult for somebody to just start reading Spider-Man. Yes.

Plus every now and then I just pick up something like, who the, what the fuck's a jackpot? Yes, it's so much more grandiose with Spider-Man Because when you see Spider-Man do all this stuff You're like, why isn't he just Spider-Man? Like, why can't he just be like the grind level Fucking cool-ass kid?

You just like beats people off. Like they make Spider-Man too grandiose And that, to me, hurts that character. And like I said, they've done up with so many other characters and to a worse degree. Like, Venom is just one of them. But like they've done it to so many other marks. Carvel characters, they just try to make these epic

storylines that are really cool and end up with a crossover, but you're like, well, why just why don't just the ambition goes too far, I think. They just need to just make them like a fun character to read. So you aren't here for this, but in the episode that was just John and I, we were talking about the Marvel architects and like kind of

the things that they were known for, and we were talking about Matt Fraction and the big crossover event that he did something, what was it? Fear itself. Fear itself. We're just the gimmick was everybody got a Thorhammer. Yes.

So it's like, why is it like, we were going to do a review or a conversation about Blackest Knight, which was a DC event. And that one is everybody gets lantern rings. And it's like, why is this like the gimmick? Why is it just, we're going to devalue one person's thing by letting everybody have it now too. I agree with that. It drives me fucking crazy. Yes, I don't get why they were like, well, everybody can have magic hammers.

And they're like, well, if everybody can have magic hammers, what's the deal with Thor's magic hammer? And why don't they get to keep their magic hammer? Do they have with dolls because they no longer have the magic hammer? Like that's shit that you can actually make an interesting story out of. But also, if somebody else picks up a magic hammer, are they the only people that can pick it up?

Because Thor, he's the only one worthy of picking up that hammer. So if those other magical hammers can be picked up by the thing or the Hulk or whatever, does that mean they're the only people worthy of picking up those hammers? What happens to those hammers after they're done with them, right? So like it feels like it's a Marvel problem to me. It just feels like a Marvel problem to me because I honestly remember like their events where it's like all of the Hulk characters are going to fight together. And it just exposes the fact that you have way too many. characters that are too similar to other characters.

Like, if this is your big idea for how to incorporate them all, it's like, we're just going to have every character, like, Hulk and Scar and Red Hulk and She Hulk and Red She Hulk and Adam Ba or A-Bomb, which was when Rick Jones was able to turn to abomination, like, all of them are going to fight. Like, that just shows me you have way too many characters that are duplicates of one another. Right. It's not interesting storytelling to me.

Yeah. And the whole point of the Hulk was he was fucking alienated and like alone. He's the fucking Hulk. That's the point. So we're doing very badly talking about horror characters

because it just turned us bitching about event comics. No, that's the whole episode now. We've changed your minds. Yeah, yeah. That's what happens when you get to talk about whatever episode. But yeah, I just

I'm thrown off by it. Because we were talking about like other events. that we could talk about too. I mean, you have the... You have Venom War, which is currently going on. They just did that event. God, I can remember the name of it. But it involved Blade.

Is it Blood Hunt? Blood Hunt. Blood Hunt just wrapped up. That was all vampires. DC has the sort of Elseworld miniseries they keep putting out, which is like DC versus zombies, or DC versus vampires. Have you guys read a lot of horror comics that may not necessarily be big two?

Nope. I read a Spider-Man comic that was about Morbius. It was really, really good. I wish I could remember what it was. But the idea was that, like, there was this, like, a disabled character who would go up to his rooftop and they would look out onto New York City and would see Spider-Man swinging around and was just amazed by it.

And one day, I think it was Michael Morbius or some kind of vampire-esque character creeped up on him because he was disabled and was an easy victim, I guess. And Spider-Man came and saved him. And he always remembered that. That was the whole issue. It was just, you know, the whole, like from his point of view. And it was drawn really well. It was written really well. I always remember that, like, a lot.

but I don't that's that that is pretty much the extent of my horror comic book style experience how are you John I mean one of my

favorite sort of graphic novels that I own and I've read like several times is from hell that Alan Moore series basically you know

like putting forth his theory on the identity of Jack the Ripper and like the real sort of like reasons that a guy

was going around London in the late like whenever it was 1880s or whatever like murdering prostitutes and yeah it's just a really creepy comic book like uh but it's also so detailed and so like well thought out

that as creepy as it is to read like it sort of makes sense as like a you know a theory on what was going on uh like where the origins of this murderer came from and yeah it's really well put together highly recommend it. And then they made a really bad movie. Yeah, I was supposed to say, didn't that make an adaptation with Johnny Depp? Yes. Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. It was called From Hell as well.

Oh. Wait, did I see that? I saw this really bad Johnny Depp film in the cinema one time. So I remember I went there with a girl and we were the only two people in the cinema and we were like, this is bad. and then we watched the film and we're like, this is bad. It was a bad film. Was that from hell?

Might have been. Maybe. Was Helena War I'm Carter in that too? No. What am I thinking of? Well, God, it could be anything. If it's Johnny Depp and Helen of Vonham Carter. Yeah, there's a, yeah, what's your flavor?

Bad films. Maybe it was, Sweeney Todd? No, it wasn't It wasn't Spini Todd. It's not Sweeney Todd. But anyway, the point is I saw... Did it involve him being in a cabin?

It had vampires in it? Oh, was it something shadows? Maybe. The adaptation of dark shadows? Yes. Dark shadows. Yeah, Dark shadows was like a soap opera

from back in the day. was infamous because it was only done in one take. So if the actors fucked up their lines, they just fucked up their lines. And the main actor who the character that Johnny Depp played was notorious for stumbling over his words. And yeah, no, if you ever get an opportunity to look at some like old, like 1960s like soap opera shit, it's completely enjoyable for that reason. Was that part of the gimmick?

Because I remember watching that film and being like, this is one of the. worst films I've seen in the cinema. No, I think it was just Tim Burton trying to be quirky. Okay, because it was, I like Tim Burton, I like Johnny Depp, I like Helen Bond Carter, bad film. Yeah, no, I think it was just him trying to make a Disney-esque movie. Okay, well, it was not good. Gotta give him credit for that.

I don't have to give them any credit. When we were like talking about events, we mentioned Blackest Night, which the gimmick with Black night was the black lantern battery appeared. And with it, black lantern rings were going out into earth and other areas in resurrecting the dead to

fuel the black battery. So like that's how they DC like ended up bringing back a lot of characters so you could like see them once more like, you know, the like Aquaman who'd been dead was resurrected as a black lantern. and chasing after his ex-wife so that he could rip her heart out to feed the Black Lantern battery. So it was done as a zombie movie, essentially.

But that was around, and then shortly after that was the X-Men storyline, Nacrocia, which kind of had a similar deal, if I'm not mistaken, John? Yeah, basically. I think it was sort of Celine was involved somehow. she was, I think, bringing back all the mutants who died on Genosha possibly to

and like feeding off the power from all of these dead people coming back to life. Something like that. Yeah, that's familiar. But it wasn't very good. I was not a fan of that storyline. I never read it

but I heard about it. The Crocia thing. Yeah, it sort of crossed over with like X-Force that was going on at the time. Yeah. Yeah, that was the Black OpX-Forse, right? Yeah. That was a good book. Black ink on black paper. It was

dark as shit. Yeah. Is it Eli Bard stuff? Yes. Yeah. Vampire. Which ties into our spooky theme. So, let's bring up

an interesting character in the Marvel world. Dracula is a legit character in the Marvel continuity. Yes. What are your thoughts on Dracula for Marvel? Dracula and Marvel? Yeah, Dracula and Marvel. I don't care much for it.

He turns up every now and then. Yeah. But like the thing about the Marvel universe is that they have so many other fucking crazy ass characters that they were like, no, we're going to just incorporate Dracula into our universe and you're like, well, cool. but if you think about it, so many other characters are like way more

impactful and powerful and interesting than Dracula in the Marvel universe. That you're like, well, why would you introduce this? Like, what benefit does it have you other than to turn Jubilee into a vampire to have Dracula as

one of your characters? Like, it's a fun um, oh, he's a popular character in pop culture, and now he's in the Marvel character universe, we get this, this is a fun

crossover kind of thing. But really, like, what benefit does it have to have the actual Dracula in Marvel comics, you know? That's what I think anyway. So who is your favorite comic book vampire? I guess Morvious.

You guess Morbius? But he's better than the film, though. That's what, we need to establish this. Yeah. We need to really establish the fact that we've been pretty hard on the film based on the character of Michael Morbius. And for good reason, because the film itself, not good. But I've always enjoyed the character of Michael Morbius because I feel like that's a really good modern interpretation of the Dracula. character. That's somebody who is a scientist, somebody's very smart, that's somebody who wants

to try to change his own problem that he has. He's cursed with this issue. He tries to make himself better and he ends up making it worse and he ends up making himself into a kind of Dracula person where he has to suck people's blood. He becomes a vampire-esque character. And it's a really interesting kind of play. And then him working by Spider-Man, the good thing about Michael Morbius is that he's never like a villain villain, but he's always a guy that needs sustenance. He needs to live.

He needs to exist. And the way he has to do that is because of his own machinations, he has to have human blood. That's just the rules. So it gives you a lot of. of moral questions between him and Spider-Man where Spider-Man's like, you're not a bad

man, but he also can't allow you to suck blood out of people for no reason. You know, don't you be sucking people. I don't want you sucking people right now. Whatever you do in your private life is whatever, but in the public domain, it can't be having that.

And I always like that as a character trait, because you always see Michael Morbius as like never a fully fledged villain because what he does he does from like a necessity point of view he does it because he wants to still exist and from a Spider-Man point of view

you can't really deny that fact you can't willingly kill this man but you also can't willingly let him kill other people to let him exist so you have to try to find a good balance between keeping Michael Mervis alive and stopping him from

just indiscriminately sucking the blood out of people. John, do you have a favorite vampire in comics? Not really, because I don't tend to enjoy the vampire storylines.

Like, you know, you brought up Jubilee, getting turned into a vampire. There was, like most of the comics I read that like cross over with the vampire world like I always kind of dread those storylines because it's not that interesting to me but uh I mean you like obvious not especially I wasn't a big fan of his character on the uh animated show back in the day and I think that's sort of bled into my uh comic book reading

You know what? I give you credit for that. I didn't care for him in the cartoon either. I did. I did. His little sucker hands. Oh, my plasma. Yeah, I love that. Yep.

I was on board. It's so hard to be a vampire, my plasma. It is hard being a vampire with a plasma. The hands were so much worse than just having him have sharp teeth. Yeah. How much harder it must be for a vampire to be stuck in blood out of you from your hands. and throw out of your neck. You know what I mean?

Does that mean he can't pick stuff up without his hands trying to suck it as well? No, only if he's picking up bloody stuff. He's a nightmare to go grocery shopping with him. He just goes to the produce line and rinsing the place. If he's getting a steak, bad, bad news. But if he's getting like milk, fine. That's fine.

You know? I tried to squeeze the watermelon to see if it was ripe, but I just drained it. Oh, that's so bad. No, but he still's just plodew. There's no plasma of watermelon. No, there's just water. But what is water but the plasma of the watermelon?

I won't think that science we're able to be able to accurately depict in this podcast. That's okay. I'm not going to read any textbooks about watermelons. Good, because neither are we. What is plasma when it comes to fruits and vegetables? Well, I really, it's water. So let's divert from vampires and we'll go with werewolves then. We'll hit the classics.

Do you have a favorite werewolf character? Werewolf by night? But because we talked about off camera, off mic, I guess, we talked about silly names for characters. I was just thinking that. Warwolf by Night's real name is Jack Russell. Like, fuck you, man. Unbelievable.

If I were to pick a real werewolf character, I would say John Jameson. It was going to ask about him. He was, he turned into a war, warwolf. But that's the only one I've ever, like, property read. What? With a moon rock, right? Yeah. Because he went to space.

But he wasn't a wolf man. He was a man wolf. He was a man wolf. He was a man wolf, correct. Important distinction. We have to distinct that, because. A Spider-Man Spider. No, there's two different characters.

Fight him on a Monster. So then you have Man Wolf. So, yeah, they, that was the only one I ever, like, property read. So, all right, let's throw this out there then. Traditionally, it is just somebody who turns into this lichen-type character through things that are outside of their control. Maybe they're totally normal, nice person, but something happened to them and they trans. form and are unable to control themselves. Would you count the lizard

as a werewolf in that sense? Even though he's not a wolf. But in that kind of like where character. Exactly as I'm saying. He's like a likeness or the likeness character.

Then would you count the Hulk as a wear character? No, because I think it has to be like animalistic. Well, no. Well, isn't the anger of a person and animalistic characteristic. What are the zoos like

in the UK where you just have men in cages? No, no, no, no. I know what Devin's saying, though. Like, it... I understand what he's saying, too, but I feel like we're splitting hairs at that point. No, I don't think we are spitting hairs.

What you're saying is a man has some kind of change in his body that turns him into another character. And if you're the Hulk, it's when you get really angry, you turn it into the Hulk, if you're a werewolf, what you're saying is, if all it takes is you look at the moon and you turn into

a werewolf that is not how far away is that for me getting angry and turning into the Hulk. And it's a physical change as well. It's a physical change that you can't control. The Hulk is a better representation of Jekyllen Hyde though, because his was like, it was

that science experiment that went wrong and he's a completely different person. When Connors turns into the lizard, it's more of a primal animal instinct sort of driven thing. person. I feel like you are being so combative today for some reason. No, but no, but whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you not, I, am I, I, am I wrong?

No, because I, I would consider Hulk more of a Jekyll and Hyde situation. The lizard doesn't, doesn't traditionally speak very much, whereas the Hulk does. He does, no, the lizard does speak. The Hulk didn't use to speak. The Hulk speaks now. The lizard does speak, but he speaks in a very much. very lizardy kind of disjointed way.

Not the same as an educated man like Kurt Connors would talk, but the lizard does talk. No, but like every, every lizard issue I've read, he's like obviously animalistic, but he talks. He does talk.

And you can see the difference between the Kurt Connors side of things, the very educated man and the more animalistic side of the lizard that still can talk and communicate. it, but it's a little bit more primal. And it's the same with the Hulk.

Whenever you look at the Hulk, you look at Brie Spanner, a very educated, smart man. Then whenever he becomes a Hulk, he is a little bit more primal, more simplistic with his words, because his words aren't what's important. It's his actions. So in that case, you can see the parallels between Brie Spanner and Kirk Connors and the Hulk and the lizard, right?

I guess I just, if we're going with that route, then that I would say that Connors would be more of a Jekyll and Hyde situation than he would be a werewolf character then. Because I think to me it's the classification. I don't think I could make an argument for the lizard being more Jekyll and Hyde than I would say like the Hulk being a werewolf. I agree. I would say the Hulk is closer to the lizard.

I think those two guys have a very similar. Like the thing about a werewolf. is like the whole idea of the world is it comes out at night the full moon that's the gimmick whereas with the Hulk and with the lizard it's more situational

it's not the same as like if one thing happens this is what happens with the Hulk and with the lizard it's more like we have to balance things appropriately and then if it goes over that that's when

you know the other thing happens So you mentioned werewolf by night and just mentioning the full moon. It does remind me when Moon Knight was first introduced in a Werewolf by Night story. And the original thing was that he would get stronger during full moons. Like he would still be a crime fighter. But for some reason, like when the moon was full, that's when Moon Knight would be really fucking rocking. That just reminded me of that for some reason. It's a moon though.

Yeah, it's a moon thing. John, do you have any thoughts on where creatures and or Jekyll and Hyde situations? I mean, I think it's a good source of story material. Like the whole idea of like man sort of losing his humanity and given into his more bestial side. But yeah, I mean, in terms of what you guys are talking about, like I'm sort of on the fence, I can see where you're both coming from. But yeah, I wouldn't

necessarily say well, I mean, I think the Hulk probably is he tends to be more of a a Jekyllyn Hyde type character, like most people would consider him that more than you know, like a aware character.

But Um, yeah. But wouldn't you consider the lizard to be the same? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So that, that whole conversation kind of turned it for me on that because I was like, the Hulk's not a werewolf. The Hulk's more of a Jekyll and Hyde.

And then like as we're talking like, well, the lizard is definitely more of a Jekyll and then he was a werewolf. Because then that also makes Manbat from D.C. a Jekyllen Hyde situation too, which I would also agree with. So it definitely has to have that thing of man pushing science too far and dealing with repercussions of it. Well, that's the thing. You think about, you know, Jack Russell or the werewolf by night. And then the same with John Jameson as the man wolf.

Those are very situational things. They're very much like, you know, full moon. This is what happens. Like a certain time of month, this specific thing happens. So like you can time it. You can regulate it. Whereas with the Hulk or with the lizard, it's not a regulated thing. You can manipulate that to trigger the other action.

You can't manipulate John Jameson to become Man Wolf because it only happens if there's a full moon. You only mean? I think that's the kind of difference. If you can manipulate it, it doesn't. at the Jacqueline Hyde thing. Would you like to move on to like Frankenstein monsters? Yeah, we should be? I think we should.

Because there's a couple of them. Marvel has their depiction of Frankenstein. DC has had two different versions of the Frankenstein monster. There's a, well, third if you count, brother power the geek, which I reminded you guys of very

recently. Which I feel like we're going to have to talk about it more on the show. Brother Power the Geek. He existed for five issues. Five. The writer pissed off the editors with it. Hi. Because Brother Power

The Geek was like a hippie. And he was constantly running into Nazi bikers and judgmental police officers. And they were in D.C. was still under the comics code at the time. And they were like, hey, part of the comics code says we cannot depict the police as villains. So you need to knock that shit off.

I am always coming into contact with Nazi bikers. Yeah. Like every day, Nazi bikers. Can't get rid of them. Why won't they leave me alone? So, yeah, Brother Power is a mannequin that got struck by lightning and came to life. I hate when that happens. All the time.

Yeah, there's a whole two movies in the 80s about that called mannequin coincidentally enough. John, you've probably seen them. I've definitely seen the one with Anthony Hopkins. Oh, wait. There was, oh, yeah, there was, yeah, there was that mannequin movie with, what's her name? Yeah, from Sex and the City. What's her name? Kim Cottrell.

Jim Cottrell, yeah, that's the one. In fact, I watched that a few months ago. What did you think? It was okay, better than I thought it was going to be. That's a, that's a 1987 movie for you. So, yeah. My, my favorite big Frankenstein person, have a tattoo of the monster and everything. I really enjoy the Grant Morrison Frankenstein Agent of Shades, Slash, Sless Seven Soldiers version.

Because it feels very classic, and they've done a lot of really fun stories with it. All right. Now, this one I know, well, there have been plenty of. Do you guys have a favorite witch? Scarletop? I mean, that's the go-to. Now, mind you, Scarlet Witch's powers are just bending reality, though, right? Yeah, but that's still, like, witchy.

Is that really well-established? I can't remember if an age of Ultron that was super established, that's what she was doing. Well, they've sort of messed with her power set and origin so much over the years. It's hard to keep a track of what is. like official line at this point. I'm pretty sure she did have magic base powers as well. And then obviously there was like the bit with like Magneto being revealed as a father.

But then, oh no, he wasn't the father apparently and all this stuff. I think they even, have they even said that they're not technically mutants as well? Her and Quicksilver. They have come up with that again. Yeah. So, yeah. I think they have. Or at least

I think so. I think they've gone back and made them like part inhuman or some nonsense. I'm going to have to look that up now. Talk about yourselves. Well, I think they did that. I feel like they did that at least with Scarlet Witch. So they must have to look at the Cook Silver, but they're like,

not technically meetings. And you're like, well, what are they then? What are you talking about? Yeah, because I think they were trying to establish why they weren't on Krakawa. He cares, that's why. And then when she was on Krikawa, they killed her. Well, that's just what happens. So they killed her and then they resurrected her. Well, the problem of Krikawa was whenever they were like, we'll bring back every single beating.

You're like, every single mutant. Because then that means somebody at some point is going to be like, what about this guy? Why didn't this guy go back, right? And then you're going to get into a big hole where you're like, I can't be bought. to write this. Do you mean? Like, as a writer, if you go, I'm going to bring about all the mutants,

just to bring back the mutants you want to bring back, you're going to get some kind of comic book nerd that goes, oh, excuse me, but what about this guy? What did he come from? Like, I actually talked to him, my brother about this. Did they bring back Tyler, who is Cable's son?

Oh, that's right. I forgot about Tyler. He was a mutant. He had a big deal where he stripped, or he tried to put the Adamantium back on a, Wolverine's bones he was genesis did he come back I know

that you know a lot of other very important and very popular X-Men characters of villains and and heroes came back after Cocoa did Tyler Dayspring I'm going to guess it probably not

because that would be complicated whenever cable turns up right well that's what's interesting about it because like what I was just looking up, like trying to verify whether or not she was still considered a mutant or not. It did mention that after she died and was resurrected,

she used her powers to update the Krakawa resurrection protocol so that they could resurrect mutants that did not have a cerebral backup, which included like all 20 million of people who died in Genosha. So she's now the redeemer of

Krakawa. It just felt like such an unnecessary story, like looking back. I feel like they felt like, well, you know, she did no more mutants and they're bringing back all the mutants so I guess we got to have her address this in some manner it's not weird how like she was no her mutants and then she became all of the mutants? What a weird story

arc that is? I mean no I see where they're coming from. It's a bit like... Yeah, you kind of feel like you need to. Yeah, it's like Gene Gray as the Phoenix wiped out an entire planet of

aliens like an entire civilization and so like they had to kind of change the game a bit when they brought it back and say, oh no, it wasn't really, Gene. It was the phoenix in like a copy of Gene's body where Gene was in a egg on the bottom of Jamaica Bay or whatever it was. And then, yeah, so it's like sort of making, trying to make it right.

So the hero character didn't wipe out millions or billions of people, or in this case at least given them an out to sort of bring some of those people back. I mean I guess, but like that's not quite what I said though. I mean, the thing about the Gene Gray thing is it was somebody else.

They said, this is a woman that killed loads of people and then it turns out the woman who really killed people was a different entity and then the woman that we thought killed that people was just in a cocoon in the bay. So they're fine. Were we talking about it before Jean Grey?

we're talking about our favorite versions of witches which is what got us on to Scarlet Witch Oh yeah Scarlet Witch That's not the same thing because what we've established with the June Gray thing was that was a different character

Whereas with the Gene Gray thing It's a same person So it's not really the same comparison right No I'm not comparing them I'm just saying like it's a similar situation in terms of how they try to redeem those characters by having, like, a way of them not carrying the blame anymore. Right, yes.

Okay, that's fair enough. I think that Marvel did a very good job, like, trying to, like, absolve of stuff. If they have a character they like, they try to, like, absolve the blame of it in a very blaze way. And you're like, well, does this... I mean, we've talked about this in the Gene Gray episode, but you like... Does this count as a good way to absolve Jean Grey of the murders that she did? She didn't want to do it. It was just somebody that looked like her.

I'm like, well, that's fair enough. You know? Well, I mean, it didn't work because that was the Claremont's way of trying to write her out. And the editors came back and said, you're still going to have to kill her off. Right. So that's the thing with Scarlet Witch is that she killed all the mutants Well, no, doesn't kill, but like she got rid of a lot of the meetings And then when she came back to Kikoa

Everybody everyone but 200 of them that's a good bit dude It was more than 200 I think wasn't it No, it was 1-9-8 Wasn't that one? No, we all know there wasn't 1-98 We know that it wasn't 198 Well, yeah, but we're not going to give them credit for sloppy accounting on their part. Correct.

There was a lowly miss. I know for fact, Marvel editors did not just sit down and have a big group puddle and decide, like, a draft on what were the mutants that were going to keep their powers. Which they should have, because that would have made that story that make sense. They missed a lot. Yeah, but we wouldn't get to talk about Johnny D or Blue or whatever that guy's name was. Yeah, yeah, we got to, yeah, exactly. We've got to keep Johnny D. Right.

We got to keep, um, what the fuck was like a blue? guy's name? Jazz. Jazz. Jazz. Good man. We talked about him before.

We did. We did. We did. Yeah, we did. On the weird Powers episode. We talked about, we talked about,

we talked about, jazz. Because, yeah, was like, well, one of the 198 is this guy whose powers is blue. What's one of the

worst X-Men? Blue guy. There he is. But his redeeming feature is he sells drugs, you know? But,

like, you could see the parallels between, like, you could the difference in that Scarlet Witch, like, she condemned the mutants and then

she's come to the Quakoa, and then she's like, well, you know what? Let's redeem myself. Let's let the meetings, like, live. Let's let's let the be there. I think that's different from like the whole Gene Gray thing, is what I'm saying. We can move off in this if you want.

I hope we had. You're a way of exiting the conversation. I feel like we should move on from this. Do you have any witches you want to talk about? I mean, Agatha Harkness is the only other witch I can think of. Good one. And as we all know, it was Agatha all along. Is that going to be a good show, John?

I trust you're taking it. I mean, I have no idea. It looks pretty disconnected from like the main. MCU stories and everything so who knows maybe that means without being weighed down by all that it can sort of do its own thing and have a bit of fun but at the same time maybe the fact that there aren't that many recognizable characters in it might mean people just don't care so I think it starts pretty soon so probably by the time this episode goes out it will have already started so it'd been critically

panned yeah or critically acclaimed who knows I mean there's also what Morgan Lafay yes she's got up a lot she was in she was wasn't she like the main villain in the uh teeny Howard Excalibur run it was like her in like

the clan of Caba cult yeah that rings a bell but it's okay because teeny Howard is a boring writer so you don't remember that you feel totally fine completely inconsequential that's most of what her work has been. So are we talking about

like supernatural characters here? Yeah, yeah. We're talking about like specifically at the moment we're talking about witches, but if you have another one that you want to bring up by all means. Well, do we have any more witches or do you want to talk about somebody else?

We can talk about somebody else. Yeah. Because I'm like, if we're talking about like supernatural characters, right? Surely we should talk about at some point we should talk about ghostwriter who is a fucking

skeleton on fire that rides a motorbike? Mm-hmm. When are we ever going to talk about this guy again? So my thing about that is kind of Ghost Rider falls into where we were talking a little bit about earlier. Like, wow, there have been way too many people with symbiates.

There have been a lot of different ghost writers in the last few years alone. So you think the technically Ghost Rider is a symbiate because he's being taken over by a spirit of hell Well, I will tell you this. We had Johnny Blaze for the longest time on his own.

And then we got Danny Catch in the 90s. And then we got Robbie Reyes, not in order. We had Robbie Reyes, who has a hot rod. Yeah. Then there was the cosmic ghost rider. There was a woman that was part of like an Aztec cult that became a ghostwriter. Lady Ghostwriter, pretty much. during fear itself a Nicaraguan woman named Alejandra Jones

became the ghost writer through a ritual performed Now we also have Helverine which is Dakin Is he still the goal one? Yeah They just announced a whole new series for him Good I mean it's good they're still alive Yeah that's a lot

That's nice you can't say that about all Wolverines children That's for damn sure How many children does he have? I know he killed almost all of them Because of... Who's run was that, John? Was it Jason Aaron? Yeah.

Feels like Jason Aaron. Where, like, he had to go through this sort of John Wick-esque revenge thing, only to find out that the people he'd been killing were his children. Yeah, so why did Woolray kill his children? I mean, he didn't know they were his children. That's... He just thought they were mercenaries and assassins that have been sent to kill him. I'm pretty sure it was someone messing with him as well, like making him kill all of his children and then revealing they were his children to kind of try and break.

Whatever Dachan came out of him originally, did he know that it was his kid? Well, I think Dakin announced it. Yeah, yeah. He's really like, I'm a son, bitch. And they stabbing the head. Yeah, pretty much. All right. All right.

Well, that's what the kids. I like to think all of Jack did the mistake. They should have done that. I like to think that all of Dacken's character traits are just to involve him screaming it out very loudly. I'm Dackett. I'm Wolverine now. I'm joined the Dark Avengers. I'm also bisexual.

So feel that way about stuff. I don't know if you knew this, but I love girls and dudes. I have a claw that comes out of my wrist. It's functionally useless, but it looks cool. It's weird, but it's cool, right? And I don't think it's cool. I don't know if it is cool. It looks really awkward, like to swing with it, but okay.

It's definitely weird. I don't know what benefit that has, but you could... Weird, it's cool now. I mean, if you think it's cool, I'm not knocking you, but, you know, you work away, kid. He's like, yeah, I will. Fuck you. And like, don't, don't, no. All right, we're on one tonight.

It's a good show. It's a good show tonight. Yep. I think. Yep. Anyway, here's ghost character. We're talking about ghosts. We will save the best for last Dylan, because I know where you're wanting to go with this.

Are you guys familiar with Dead Man? I think I know the name, but I don't think I've actually read him in anything. So Dead Man is a ghost, and no one can see him because he's a ghost. And the only way he interacts with people is he has to possess someone to do it. He just recently turned up in Nightwing to help Dick Grayson get over a mental block, where Dick Grayson was suddenly afraid of heights. So dead man would possess his body and then take him up somewhere very, very high, and just leave him and be like, all right, figure your way out from here. But Dead Man was a circus performer who was murdered, and in order to, was basically tasked with a circus performer. who was murdered

and in order to who was basically tasked with assisting the injustices of the world in order to redeem his spirit. So he's a fun character. What's his name?

Dead man. His real name is Boston Brand. You're going to leave Dead Man to last? No, I'm not leaving Dead Man to last. Okay, cool. because we I think we have other characters talk about well yeah

it's like you said I knew that there was a character you were wanting to talk about I think we're going to talk about that guy later though that specific one of talking about the boy we'll talk about him later

all right we'll talk about him later okay but I do I do have another one we want to talk about right quick tonight if we want to talk about him go for it well yeah

go ahead what were you to say Corey well no go ahead what's a character called Dorman Torian? Have you heard of a character called Doorman? No, I can't say that I have.

John, have you heard of a character called Doorman. I was going to say, isn't he a member of the Westlakes Avengers? The Great Lake Avengers is correct. Yes. Well, they have a lot of different names. So it was the Great League Avengers and then they were the West Coast Avengers, but that they change your names. Yes. Something else.

I think they change your names again to something. else. But yes, he was a founding member of the Great League Avengers. He is a guy that kind of like phones people to like

the dead zone. I don't know what what the name of it is in Marvel sense, but like he has death sense,

dark force manipulation, he can fly, superhuman durability, immortality and stuff like that so like I feel like he's the kind of guy that like he is a lot of like

that supernatural element to him or he's one of those guys where his powers come from not like a like a human kind of based idea

his powers are very much like he's a dead guy and he represents the dead. You know what I mean? Part of him being part of the Great League Avengers is because it's all of a joke. It doesn't really matter what his powers do.

But he's kind of there, I think kind of there to guide people to the afterlife because a lot of the joke about the Great League Avengers is that most of those people die. Yes. I think we have talked about the Great League Avengers before on the show, right? Um, maybe vaguely.

Yes, I feel like there's been some reference to them. But part of it is one of their characters usually dies in some of their episodes. And the character of Dormand is kind of, uh, not a very good representation of death, but like a way to like transition you from life to death, if that makes sense. Does it make sense? Like he's the door between life and death. He's the doorman. He's the doorman.

And that's where he kind of like plays in. He's a little bit like we've talked about ecstatics before. We're like in ecstaticics, everybody died. Like every single episode somebody died. And in West Coast Avengers, a lot of people died and they would just end up going through Doorman. That's just the way it went, you know? so I think if we're talking about supernatural characters

I feel like Dormont's a very good character to talk about because he's he's supernatural really he's that character between life and death John what's your movie count out I am up to 570 very nice yeah so John

so John you made a Big jump from where we were last time. I think you were in like the 530s, 540s? Yeah, it was like 546 or something like that, I want to say. Very nice. It should be an even bigger jump next week because I've got the week off work. So guess what I'm doing? So what was the last movie that you watched?

It was a Ridley Scott movie by the name of Body of Lies starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crow. Oh, there you go. And it wasn't very good. John, if they want to read your review of Body of Lies or any other review that you have done, where can they find you? They can find me on Letterboxed

at Big John Balski. All one word. Very nice. John, what's going on in the world of Exploity plays? It's all good, man. and this goes up in October like we assume it will do then you will see

A, Pickman episodes and also B, a couple of episodes about a show called a deep simulator that should be up in end of September, beginning of October. So it should be Deep Simulator and then

Pikmin and then you'll see more magic stuff at the end of October slash November. So follow ExploityPlays slash YouTube.com forward slash exploityplays. com forward slash

YouTube.com forward slash exploityplays. com forward slash YouTube.com for us slash Exploityplays. com. Yeah, just keep putting in in and hitting intermitedly.

You're bound to get there. If you just write Exploityplace. you'll probably get there. Yeah, you'll figure it out. We trust you. Yeah, you're smart. Have you who have any questions? Just email Corey and he'll happily answer

this question. Yep, you can email us at Smart Avengers 52 at gmail.com. Yes, we do actually have an email address. We do. Please email us. If you have any suggestions you want to see for us to talk about or if you want to say that one of us is an idiot, please send us an email.

We would love to read them. we mean Corey. Corey would love to read those emails and tell us about those emails. Me and John Will Dapney listen to them 100%. I'm like, well, that's a great email. Thank you for that.

And then we'll forget about it and then go on with their lives. So please, feel free to email us. And by us, I mean, Corey. All right. And if you want to hear anything else of mine, I do a short podcast every week called Large Old Cup,

about 28, 29 minutes long, stream of consciousness. I just start talking and we end up somewhere that we may not originally have intended to end up. So what's also great is because it's so stream of conscious,

I very rarely remember what the last episode was about. Chocolate. Well, probably not because I'm very allergic to it. Oh yeah, you can't drink. You can eat chocolate. No, or peanuts.

Pean butter. You hate a stickers. Yeah. You fucking hate a sniggers. Yeah, it wouldn't be very good. But folks, that is all for us. We will be back next week with another spooky topic, which I think will be what we had intended for originally for this one.

You know, it'll be interesting. We're going to find some really weird and unique and odd spooky characters to talk about. Yes. But until then, goodbye. Goodbye. Bye. Was that your ghost noise? That was my ghost noise.

Very nice.