The Smark Avengers - Vol 3, Ep 34: The Smark Avengers Talk About Supernatural Characters

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

It's the third week of October and the Smark Avengers are still wading through the spooky, macabre, surreal, and supernatural for their favorite characters to talk about. Well... maybe not favorite. Listen, folks, it's hard out here being a monster! There's no union, no minimum wage, and the benefits? Not that great. Yet somebody has to haunt, stalk, creep, and hunt unsuspecting mortals and as the various living appliances on the Flintstones once said... it's a living! Join Corey, Dylan, and Jon as the Smark Avengers talk about some of the weakest, saddest, and most pitiful supernatural characters in comics history!

Yeah. The cool guys. How is my voice on, by the way? That sounds like you always sign. That's good. I've been sick the last few days and I didn't have a voice at all on Tuesday. Sounds like your normal voice. Yeah.

That's good. Yeah. That's excellent. Excellent. Well, good work for having your normal voice. Congratulations. Thank you. Dylan, you sound like you as well.

You've not been replaced by a changeling that I'm aware of. Yes, you're aware of. I have to throw you into a fireplace. No, I mean, if you want to, that's fine. And John, I think, has like a rumble still skin thing going on over there. We trick him to say his name or whatever. What's the rules? You have to say his name, but none of us know what John's real name is.

It's obviously not John. I'm still not 100% sure I've seen. a picture of John, so I think we're I think he's safe. Have you seen a picture of Brad Pitt? Yes. And you've seen a picture of John? John, you're in Thelman, Louise?

Yes, I was. Many, many years ago. Yeah. That's lovely. You did a good job. Thank you. You did a great job. Yeah.

I was hoping to drive off the cliff at the end, but they won't take in my script suggestion, so. Did they let you do that after the cameras to stop rolling? You just like, if you want to jump off the cliff, he can give it a shot. I mean, I didn't ask. Maybe I should have done. Maybe you should just adorn it.

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you get this could be forceful. You got to like assert your dominance. You know what you mean? Really show those guys who's boss. Listen, man, if I want to jump, if I want to drive this car off this clip, I'm going to fucking do it, all right? Film set or no film set.

I don't need the padding. I'm going off. I don't need a stunt double. I'm going off this clip. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Smart Avengers. My name is Cori. Here with me are Dylan and John.

Guys, how are you doing today? Hi, we're good. I'm good. Yeah. That's me. We're both good. Welcome to week three of the spooky episodes. very spooky

so week one we talked about the hobgoblin because you know there's nothing spookier than a goblin that is hobbed he is so hobb oh just hobbed out the ass so much hobb the hob coming out of his fucking porous you know what I mean

and last week we discussed just sort of a general conversation about spooky characters so this week we're going to get a little more specific, and we have been tasked with finding kind of stupid spooky characters that have existed in the realm of comic books over the last almost 100 years. Yes. So we were originally going to do this last week where we were going to get even further into

the weeds, but it was a very challenging task. So we decided to reevaluate, and we've just opened it up to the entire spectrum of comic books in general. So, guys, how do you feel about your selections? Well, I'm pretty confident because I am 100% sure nobody's picked any of the other people I've picked on my list. So if anybody in this show is to pick any of the characters that I picked, I will eat my own face live on this podcast.

Uh-oh. Yeah, that's a, what do you think of that? That's that, if that is an incentive to listen to this show all the way through, I don't know what is. kind of like that guy from Hannibal yes exactly the guy from Hannibal that thing I've definitely seen

the good news is if I happen to go first and say what I think and then somebody else has picked the same character as me they have to eat their own face oh there you go yeah well

well you know what some days you just got to fly with a seat of your pants man you just got to make declarations some days you're just going to drive off that cliff you know what you mean you got to start your dog dominance. You know what I'm talking about, John. You know what I'm talking about.

Well, I famously didn't drive off the cliff. And every day you regret that decision. I guarantee I won't regret not eating my face. Well, then just don't pick the same guy I picked, right? There you go. Corey isn't having this problem. Corey, I assume you haven't picked the same guy I have. We don't even know which guys we've picked. Yeah.

We literally have not said names of the people we've picked. Roll the dice. So John, now that there's this new incentive, how are you feeling about your list? I mean, I'm not going to lie, I did struggle a little bit with this, but I have some names, and I mean, that's sort of spooky,

so yeah. Yeah. It's all you can hope for us. Yeah. So, Dylan, because you want that reassurance that nobody will pick the same ones that you pick, Would you like to go first? No, I'd like John to go first.

But that's okay with everybody. Is that all right? Yeah, sure thing. Yeah. Well, in that case, then, I will get things started with not just one character, but two characters. Oh, interesting. I wonder who those characters could be. They are, in fact, a pair of gentlemen known as the Brothers,

grim. We're not talking Jacob and Wilhelm, the German brothers known for their folklore tales, but rather the Marvel villains who have popped up many times over the years. But this is the

original version of them primarily, which was I mean, they had sort of a spooky origin, where there was another villain by the name of Mr. Doll, who had a few clashes with Spider Woman back in the day.

And he could mystically harm people by using a doll whose features he could reshape to resemble the victims. And then all of a sudden he found his consciousness trapped inside two

mannequins. And you might be asking yourself, how the hell did that happen? And I have no idea. But yeah, so he he found himself trapped in these mannequins and able to like control them and maneuver them and stuff. And they had sort of like, you know, super strength and like a weird ability to conjure up like small sort of novelty weapons like strands of nearly unbreakable thread and. corrosive filled eggs and pies filled with blackbirds. Like, you know, all the weapons you'd really want in a fight against a superhero. And, yeah, basically, things went about as well as you'd expect for someone who could produce small eggs, which had some sort of corrosive in them.

They could also fly for some reason? I mean, that's what I've heard, John. that's what I've heard. Oh. I'm just assuming you have expert knowledge on these guys. I mean, that's just what I heard about the brother's graham. I don't know.

I haven't written any notes about them specifically, but I heard they could fly for some reason. And they could also emit poisonous smoke from their hands. But that's just what I've heard. Yeah. So I have never heard of these characters before. And I have to say, this is, oddly enough,

not the only comic book character that had previously been a mannequin. Right. Which is three more than you would think. One of the worst ones to be a moniker. Yeah. I mean, it seems to be a tie between them and Brother Power the geek, but yes.

Well, you'll be happy to know they weren't always mannequins. Like at one point, Spider-Woman did defeat them and then sort of cast out Mr. Dole's consciousness from the mannequins. and then two human brothers found the mannequins in some abandoned theatre or something and decided and decided just for you know a jape to put on their costumes and then found that it imbued them with all the powers that the uh the mannequin version

of the brother grim uh had so all the amazing powers such as eggs and pies full blackbirds and be able to emit smoke from their hands. Exactly. All of those amazing powers. Things that mannequins can just do. Yes. Yeah. Oh,

the things that the brother's rim were naturally known for. Thank God. They were able to replicate those things. It would be a crime if those things weren't, were just lost to time. No, we've got to bring those things back. How yeah.

Can I tell you they're featured quite prominently in a YouTube video called the top 20 Spider Woman villains? Oh, if they're in the top 20, then Hug bad with Spider Woman villains. well I'll tell you it's a five minute five and a half minute long video so Jesus Christ quick read oh boy that's not so good that's not so good they did get around though they were in quite a few groups like anti-arachnine

whatever that is they certainly did get around I'm like look at all these covers of them and like Iron Man and such. I will tell you they ranked number five in the top 20 Spider-Woman villains. So there you go. 25 out of harmony? No, five out of 20. They ranked five. Five.

Number five. Yes. The fucking Blackbird pie guys did five? Yeah. They certainly did. Dylan, do you want to go next? Yeah, I'm going to go next. I picked the brother's grim, right?

So. Oh! No. That is the sound of someone eating their own face. He fell down the pit of eating one's face. That's why he got quiet. How many jokes?

I didn't pick those guys. Why would I pick the brother's grim and write a whole thing about them on a piece of paper? Why? That's crazy. No, instead of doing that, um,

by the way, I feel like John missed out a lot of stuff about the brother's crib. Oh, yeah. You want to fill in the gaps? Yeah. So, because I feel like you might have focused a little bit more on like the, the, the, because there's two, there's two brothers, right?

There's the brothers to put the costumes on, but there's the brothers before that, right? So. What? There was brothers before that? The dolls, the mannequins. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But they, they weren't brothers technically speaking.

Well, I mean, they're brothers in as much as they're two mannequins. Like, how much more. I mean, they have this, okay, let me explain. So, Nathan Dolly, aka Mr. Dahl, he was a criminal. This is my pick, by the way. I'm just explaining more about the history of the Brothers Grimm. So he, like John said, he used to curse people

by making voodoo dolls of them and then twist them around. So he was in the middle of making two voodoo dolls to, like, hurt people whenever he somehow got his consciousness trapped in both of the mannequins of the doll. right not a mannequin like of the dolls the little dolls those dolls posted themselves mealed themselves to Nathan's wife Priscilla to Priscilla opened up her package one day and there were two dolls inside and the two dolls inside had the shared consciousness of her fucking husband and then she put the life force of the dolls into two full-sized mannequins, which she named after the Brothers Grimm, and then she, who she thought were her sons.

So I feel like, John, you missed eye on the best part, right? I'm not sure I'd say it's the best part. She, this guy has his consciousness spit into two and then mailed his whole consciousness in two dolls to his wife, who took those two consciousness and put them into two mannequins and then pretended that her husband's consciousness and there are two different monikins are her sons. It's a little incestuous, a little

edible complex starting in a weird way. That's the maddest shit. You could have got to that point way easier than that, right? So she made two life-size male incestuous sex dolls.

Yep. So the reason Spider Woman stopped him is because Priscilla tried to to transfer her husband's mind out of the two monikins into one living person and spider woman said that's weird and stop that whole transfer of happening

and she's not wrong so that's just off the top of my head okay that's the history of the public but my real pick is somebody I've been hyping up a lot Corey told me of this character a long time ago

and I feel like I had to talk about at some point because you know the name alone intrigued me. And it's one of the rare times I talk about somebody from D.C. but I had to find out more about this gentleman. As it were. And this gentleman

is gentleman ghost. He is a ghost. He is a gentleman. What more can you ask for? And again, Corey, I'm going to read through this my notes that I have written down here. Feel free to like add in more stuff. The way I added to John's notes.

That's just the way we work. We all add to each other's notes. in a way that makes it clear that none of us pick the same characters as each other and therefore don't have to eat each other's faces you know it's fine. Yeah, we don't want to do that. No, that'd be weird and inappropriate

for a show that is audio-based and therefore would have no benefit for eating your face because you wouldn't be able to see it. We don't be able to hear it and it wouldn't be satisfying at all. So let's not do that. James, Jim Craddick, son of an English gentleman

his father abandoned his entire family and that hurt poor Jim Craddock a lot so he became a highway man as they often do whenever I mean John you're an English man your father abandoned you you turn into a hiring man

that's just what happens in England it's just what we do it's what happens right obviously this is way back of the day when highwaymen are a big thing they don't exist that much anymore So after making a lot of money as a highway man He thought you know what

This is good but why didn't I travel to America Where there might be more highways for me to plunder Are there do they still have highways in America? We don't know So he traveled to America He really fucked up Because then he was lynched In England

They let him be a highway man All the fucking time Work away Don't worry about it But in America, we ain't putting up with that shit. We're getting into the lens. We love hanging people. So the gallows.

As far as I know, American people love hanging people. Because, you know, they just got no chill. Or maybe they have no respect for a gentleman. I don't know. But at some point, he becomes a ghost, right? So the hook with gentleman ghost is that he has to remain a ghost until his killer moves on to the next pleading of existence. okay and he was killed

by Nighthawk and Cinnamon two characters who were like gunslingers in the Wild West and they later were it turns out those two characters

themselves were related in heritage to some Egyptian gods which gave them kind of like immortality or like the ability to be reincarnated

and so Nighthawk and Cinnamon Man and Hawk Girl. Nine Hawk and Cinnamon were reincarnated as Hawkman and Hawk Girl. So therefore, gentlemen ghost had a, you see, John's out notes. See this? It's just what you work. No face consumption here.

Nope, nobody's in nobody's faces here. It's a good podcast we have. So therefore, a gentleman ghost couldn't move on to the next plane of existence because the killers that killed him ended up staying on. Earth as Hawk Man and Herk Girl. Now, is that fair? Gentleman ghost didn't kill anybody. He was a highway man. And then the people that killed him

then got to come back as like cool people and not die and he wasn't able to achieve peace. How is that fair? He feels like he should be justified in, you know, wanting revenge on them. Exactly. I don't feel any sympathy for Hawkman and Hawk Girl at all. fuck him.

To be fair, it was Nighthawk that killed him. So Hawkman, he's in trouble. Yeah. Cinnamon, you're fine. Don't worry about it.

But Nighthawk, yeah, bad guy. So, he's been around a lot. The problem with, Corey, you can attest to this.

The problem with DC characters is you can pick a timeline for them and then they'll just reboot their entire fucking company seven times.

And then the story changes. So I, I just mind with the original story because that sounded the best to me. I don't care but Gentleman Ghost being re-corinated, a rebooted a billion times. I just, I don't have the time for that. So,

so do you want to, do you want to me to fill you in on those various regenerations of him? Real quick, I was going to say what his powers were, and then you can tell me all the other stuff I missed. Is that fair? Cool. Yep. So he's a ghost

so he can become invisible and intangible. He can teleport, I guess. He can freeze people with his touch. even though he's a ghost, so I don't know how he gets to touch people. Yeah, chill of death. That's not in, in most ghost stories, I talk about how, like, if you're in the presence of a ghost,

it gets really cold, so I don't think that's outlandish. Also, because he's a ghost, he's a ghost. And also because he's a gentleman, he, I guess, he hits bad manners. Yep. And he's vulnerable to endth metal, because, Corey, as you know, everybody in DC Comics has to be vulnerable to something stupid. It's a hot man special that, uh,

Basically, it's like, oh, he's intangible. How do you hurt him? Well, this alien metal will hurt him. Yeah. Oh, he's intangible, but not unless it's a full moon or not unless it's yellow. Like, there's always some fucking dumb reason why somebody, you know what I mean? Anyway, tell me more about Gentleman Ghost. All right, so all of the various reboots of Gentleman Ghost, they've never really touched his continuity.

It's pretty much stayed the same. They've never fucked with the ingredients of what made Gentleman Ghost, Gentleman Ghost. Why would you? Exactly. So here are two instances, though, where gentleman ghosts was brought back to life. One, to thwart a villain. A demon was brought to earth, and part of the ritual to dispel him was to basically defy the natural order of life. So somebody took some of Hawkman's life force because of the reincarnation powers and used it to bring gentlemen.

and Ghost back to life, and that caused this demon to not spawn. Okay. And then the second one was the most recent, and it was in the future, in the Justice Society of America, the, it was so bad because a lot of heroes were being murdered that when Huntress and Power Girl had to create their own lineup, they had to use villains to fill in some of the ranks, and Gentleman Ghost was one of the villains. So the story was that there was a character named Perdegaton. who was a Nazi who could control time was going through the timelines killing the justice society.

So he showed up into the future, used his time travel powers to age gentleman ghost backwards in time so that he became a human again. And then he shot and killed gentleman ghost. What? Yep. So he became a ghost anyway. No, his soul passed on this time. Because he didn't have that Egyptian stuff. So he kind of did him a favor.

Yeah. There's a really great. There's a really great panel where gentleman ghost and a human body goes, I'm alive. And then Prodigiton points a gun out and says, you were. No. So, yeah, no, like I said, they didn't really fuck with the formula on gentlemen goes throughout the post-crisis and new 52 and Flashpoint. He's always been a highwayman. Which is cool.

And the gentleman. Yes, highwayman, but also a gentleman. So is it my turn? I think so. Right, cool. So when you think of spooky characters, you think of monsters. And one of the most prolific monsters in North America is Bigfoot or Sasquatch. So I went with a character that has been around since 1967. He was a villain of the Justice League, the very beginning of the Justice League, a being known as the Shaggy Man. Okay. So the shaggy man looks like Bigfoot, essentially. Just a big ape-like man with super long fur all over.

And he was, but here's the thing. He's not actually a shaggy man. What? He, yeah. So he was a robot created by Professor Andrew. Zagarian that modeled the Shaggy Man after a race of Homo prerectus that dominated an alien planet called Ran until they all died out a billion years ago. So using that historical footage, he made a robot that looked like a Bigfoot.

Okay. So the Shaggy Man has berserker strength. He's feral. He can heal. He's considered immortal and inviolate. vulnerable. He has high stamina, super hearing, super sight, super smell, and super strength. And he has been clashing with Justice League and all other groups on and off for years. There's not a lot of character development for The Shaggy Man because he is a robot.

That is a wild eight monster. So there you go. The Shaggy Man. What a great name. Exactly. So, yes, that was a creature from the 1967, I believe, was his first appearance. And, yeah, that's, like I said, not too much to the Shaggy Man. Not too much. Not too much. I will tell you, by the way, with a gentleman ghost, Ben around since 1947.

Wow, hot down. 1947. He was a golden age character. Good going, man. Yeah. He's still around to this day and very popular. Yep, popular in our hearts. Everybody loves them.

Everybody. John, we're back to you. John, don't pick anybody I picked, all right. I'll try not to, but no promises. Well, you didn't last time, so that's fine. Right, well, let's see then. For my second pick, I've gone for a guy who was basically all over, like a bunch of books in the sort of early 2000s to the early mid-2000s.

A career criminal by the name of Parker Robbins, aka The Hood, who was just a regular crook who stumbled across some sort of demon in its cloak and with some magic boots as well, because why not? Why not? And so, yeah, Parker shot this demon, thought he'd killed it, and then figured, well, I'm not going to let these cloak and this, these boots go to waste. So I'm going to steal them. And then it turns out that they have, like, supernatural abilities because they were connected to the demon Dormammu. So, yeah, it meant that his guns could shoot magic bullets.

he could levitate turn invisible and like sort of in times of stress like some and forth like a demon as well whereas his face gets all messed up um but yeah so he was all over the place like he was constantly fighting the avengers during this period um and even when he like lost his demonic powers then he got powered up with the gnawn stones and then briefly he got his hands on the infinity stones

as well and apparently now he's become like a spirit of vengeance too it's like this guy is all over like the supernatural side of things and yeah still being used like

quite heavily it seems despite the fact he wasn't that interesting a character yeah i remember like in the like 2010s i guess is that when they brought him in he was like everywhere he was really popular for a while he was it must have been earlier than that because he was definitely in like all over the uh uh brian michael bendez avengers run yeah yeah so i was going to say like i um so when i i took a break from I'm like comics because there were no places to buy comics when I was like late kid years or the teen years. I was just reading like stuff I would get yard sales.

So when I finally ended up being able to get comics again, I just saw the hood, as John said, everywhere. Like it seemed like every book the hood was making an appearance. And like it's so funny because you mentioned like, oh, you're still going strong. But I don't recall seeing the hood as often as I use. too. But I think it was just that kind of of Brian Michael Bendis was using him a lot and he kind of just got, you know, I don't want to say over exposed, but yeah.

Definitely over exposed. Yeah, he felt like he was everywhere for a while. So he, I just remembered like, so he was, so he's like a guy wearing a hood, a hooded cape over like a sweater. And he had like demon guns. and that's what I That's all I remember for the most part

Right, that that was basically his entire character I think technically he had some sort of Maybe he had like a child or something Or like a brother or a mother that he was trying to You know make money to provide for But Yeah, I'm was sort of lost in amongst him just being sort of generically evil and wanting to become like the the big uh you know crime kingpin of new york and yeah

but then like he had all these overpowered like mystical abilities where you'd think his ambitions might be a little higher than that but I guess, you know, like the dude got the infinity stones. Yeah. Why is he just aiming to become like the kingpin of New York? He's very small, very small-minded. Yeah. That's just what he thinks is a good idea. You know, like, isn't that kind of the point of the infinity stones?

Is it like it depends on the user to like bring out their true potential? because that's why people didn't want Thanos to have the stones because his true potential would have been like massive destruction. If he'd let a fucking slub like the hood take it. All he carries about it is himself and like making himself a big time.

He doesn't even think about like a cosmic scale. It's like why would he? All he thinks about is like proving himself to the other ganglords, right? So then he just thinks about like, well I'll just take you know, if I take over the kingpin territory. I'm the boss. He's thinking like small time when he could be thinking of big time.

And that's kind of why like despite their like incest and pushing of this guy, he's never going to be like a big, big time villain. Like never like an Avengers level villain, really. Yeah. Because an Avengers level villain thinks like beyond the world, really. They think about themselves more. But he's thinking more about his reputation. and maybe he's thinking if I

rule the entire world, that's a lot of responsibility on me. I don't know if I could fill that responsibility correctly. All I can do is turn invisible, I guess. Is that what we could do? Yeah, he could turn invisible.

Yeah, so he's like, I don't want to do that. That sounds like too much work. But taking up the kingpin, I can do that, you know? So maybe he just he set aside to something realistic. Maybe he's like a realist. And we're giving him a hard time when we should be on his side. That guy understands what he's talking about, you know?

And he also has magic guns. Yes, he has magic guns. Yes. I also think his design is just kind of crappy in general. I mean, he's just got a hood. He's just a guy. He's like, he's like, we're like on Horde again. Yeah.

Yeah, but he's cool, though. So my next one is one that I find. to be really weird, but also kind of fun in a strange way. And that's the ten-eyed man. Oh, can I guess what his ability might be? What or is it? Go ahead. He's really good at Scrabble.

Potentially. So the ten-eyed man is a guy named Philip Reardon, who was a U.S. Special Forces soldier in Vietnam, who got hurt in a grenade blast. and then he once coming back from the war he was like working as a security guard and there's a bunch of thieves who showed up

and Batman was there and a bomb went off again and blinded him permanently so he went to see this doctor who had this experimental surgery and that doctor took his

optic fibers from his head and put them in his fingertips, allowing him to see out of his fingers. So he has like, depending on how the character that you're looking at, like which version, he might actually just have 10 eyeballs in his fingertips. Okay. So because he blamed Batman, because of this accident, he turned to crime as the 10-eyed man. So he has a super sight because he can see in any direction at any time just by moving his hands. He is an expert marksman. He's great at unarmed combat and he is considered a weapon master.

In the pre-crisis continuity, he was just like this weird like gun for hire guy. And then he got killed in crisis on infinite earths. So when the new 52 launched, they launched a new version of the Ten-Eyed Man. And they just made him a straight-up freak. So this is the version that actually has the eyeballs on the fingertips, and he wears a mask that covers his entire head. He's kind of like Ragdoll-esque. And he also can do magic now. Like there's like a ritual spell that he was casting, and he needed somebody's jawbone.

so this guard that had found him was approaching him with his weapon drawn and he's like oh I need that and he like cast his hand and he like took the man's jaw out of his face without having to rip it off so the guy just had all this loose skin and 10-eyed man was just holding this jaw in his hand he's like great delicious I will I will tell you that as the 10-eyed man despite being creepy and unnerving he has a very obvious weakness and that is his hands Get out of time. There's a, in the pre-crisis continuity, somebody threw a plant at him,

and he caught the plant, and it blinded him. Because the plants, leaves poked him in the fingertips. And in a mini-series that was a couple of a year or so ago, he came face to face with Asriel, who burned his hand and blinded him in that hand. Because Asriel was not fucking around.

So there you go. That's the ten-eyed man. Just a weird guy who can see out of his fingers. Wait a minute, though. Are we including his thumbs his fingers? Yes. So then wasn't he have, wait, was he blinded? Yes.

Okay. So he can't see out of his eyes. But he can't see out of his finger eyes. But he can see out of his fingers and his thumbs. Okay. his finger eye is cool yep so he's just kind of unnerving

because he's he's got eyeballs in his fingertips that's a normal thing for people to go through yeah all right so Dylan back to you okay so I'm going to pick a guy that I definitely researched before

we started the show and didn't just come up with him as soon as John told me isn't it Johnster No, because I've only done Gentleman Ghost. Okay, you went first. Yes. Right? You guys have done two each?

Yeah, yeah. I've already done Gentleman Ghost, right? Mm-hmm. Yes, you've done Gentleman Ghost. Yeah. So it's my... I get a... I get a... A shot of talking for a little bit. If that's okay, but you guys. Yeah, I'm a hound. If it's no good, you can just...

You can just push me into some chairs. Yeah. Post-match kick. Yeah. It's like, give me a glancing blow to the head. Please don't do that, though. I don't want a concussion. So I picked a guy called Digger.

John, have you heard of a character called Digger? Is he a Hulk villain? He might be now. He was a Spider-Man villain when I read him. But from what I've learned, he might have come back as a Hulk villain. I'm going to talk about the Spider-Man stuff because that's what I know. Okay. Yep.

So he originally turned up in 1957, classic year for villains. There was a meeting between a lot of mob bosses. One of whom was Morris Ferelli. And he didn't like six of his other contemporaries. So we thought, what's the best way as a mob boss for me to get rid of my other six people I don't like? Kill him. so they had a big meeting and Morris Ferelli

ends up doing a hit on the six crime bosses Freddie Cornival Santo Costanelli Jimmy little man Desanti Louis Fredone Tony Mascoponi

George Sims and all of their various detentants and seconds they're all dead fuck him they were then buried in a big hole in the middle of, but not in the middle of Las Vegas in the desert surrounding Las Vegas

and forgotten the white because that's the end of that, right? What else happened after 1957 that would necessitate any kind of issue or quandary? Probably nothing, except at some point the United States decided to test a bunch of gamma bombs

in the desert as they are wont to do. Boy, they love fucking testing their gamma bombs. And wouldn't you know it, hot damn gamma bomb is tested right around the place where all these six guys are buried so it turns out because this is comics and this is how this works the gamma radiation somehow fuses all of their corpses together and then brings them all back to life as one body

so they all come back to life and decide they want revenge on morris ferelli Morris Farelli, of course, is an old man by now and doesn't want to die at the hands of some weird-ass gamma-radiated Frankenstein corpse that he already killed. So, like any other person, he naturally goes to Spider-Man and says, hey, dude, can he protect me from this weird-ass fucking thing? And I'll give you $100,000. Well, I guess $100,000. He was this to Spider-Man. Spider-Man accepts because at the time Spider-Man had no money, and he thought, that's a good way to make some money. just doing what it would do anyway.

Hello. Easy. Now, I forget how this comic ends. There is some way that Spider-Man is able to disassemble Digger and just kind of like inerts him back into, you know, a group like corpses. He's death. I don't remember the way that it comes about. But Spider-Man is somehow able to figure out a way to kill Digger

in a way that I can't remember. Now, John, the thing you might be talking about is in The Incredible Hulk recently, they've come up with this thing called the Green Door, which means that anybody ever that has suffered from gamma radiation is able to come back to life whenever they go through the green door. And because Digger was the catalyst of a gamma bomb test in the deserts. of Las Vegas, he was able to come back to life by going through the green door. Therefore, he probably has had some kind of interaction with the Hulk once he's come back. He only really come back to life a couple of years ago. Because I think this green door stuff didn't happen that long ago. So the last I heard of it, because me and my brother, remember Digger, we were raised Spider-Man

at the same time, and he sent me a message going, why did this one random-ass character just suddenly come back to life. And it turns out it's because he walked through the green door which is not a great explanation. You know, it's a little bit, if I made Smart Avengers

us a little bit. It's like, why is Bray Wyatt no longer burned? He walked down the magical corridor. Yep. That's all the explanation we need. So. Like you do. That's what happened. So I don't know what

happened to digger after the Spider-Man run, because I read the Spider-Man run. I have no idea. He might have plot the Hulk. Why not? But he was strong, durable, quick. And he had the combined smarts of all the criminals that made up his entire body.

So that was his deal. That's Digger for you. Why was he called Digger? I don't fucking know. They never explained it. They never explained it. I would assume it's because he dug his way out of the pit that he was buried in.

But, like, again, they never explicitly stated why. so who knows. But that's Digger. So do without what you will. I have nothing to contribute to Digger. Why would you? It's a shitty card. Exactly. Sounds perfect.

I will say the art was pretty cool, though. Like, I think it was... It was J.R. Jr. Yeah, yeah. The original art was J.R. Jr. That's why we liked it. Yeah. Indeed.

Yeah. But also, there's only so much the artwork can do. Yeah. Yeah. They did their best. Anyway. All right, John. It's your third and final one. You got? Okay, cool. In that case, this guy, I don't know, this feels like a bit of a cheat, but I'm going for it anyway. He is... The brother's grim again? Yeah, it's the other brother's two of them.

Yeah. This is Morland. who was like a Spider-Man villain as well. Seym Ron. Seymourn is bigger, isn't it? Indeed, yeah, yeah. He was basically a totemic vampire who was like feeding on totems

who bridge the gap between man and beast along with all of his brothers who were basically known as the inheritors. but yeah he was like their whole deal was like any character that was like a totem for an animal like say you know the rhino or black panther or spider-man they would be able to feed off them and grow powerful from like sucking their life energy basically and so morland was very much focused on Spider-Man. Not just, you know, the 6-1-6 Spider-Man either, but like it basically spawned all of the Spider-verse stories with, like, you know, the, you know,

Spider-verse coming together to try and stop Morland and his brothers and all these different versions of Spider-Man and stuff. and yeah so he's played a pretty big part in the comic books over the last 20 years or so and during that entire time i've found him incredibly boring as a villain and yeah like he doesn't even have any like super duper powers or anything it's just like super speed super strength super uh super super super durability and like all the just like generic powers that you'd expect from a villain basically except he's dressed like he's wearing well he's sort of wearing Samuel

Shaw like style sort of regency clothing yes like you know like Sebastian Shaw sorry yeah what I say Samuel Shaw We are Samuel Shaw. That feels like a slip I would have made. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, I get that. I was reading comics when the Moreland thing happened.

And honestly, like, I read that whole run as Alfred Mansion with the Digger Belt business. I really liked that. I love the Moreland Run. The problem I had was all the shit that they did the Moreland after that. and maybe John knew me of different opinions and that

but like the way they portrayed Morden to begin with badass and mysterious and coolest shit and then

they I feel like they mudded the waters with like giving them a family and then the family like traverses the fucking web of time

or whatever and it got really like part of it was good I didn't hate that storyline I hear that brought it back

a second time they keep bringing it back they keep bringing it back and it's really boring and I'm like and the problem with that is once you, like you said, more than the character basically

is just a standard like tough, strong guy. And once you have a family of those characters that are all, their entire trait is just, we're just tough, strong guys, right? Then at least when you had Moreland by himself, he seemed unique

and different and interesting. But whenever he's just one of six, you lose all mistake for that character completely because he's just one of the family and he didn't like that because then you're like well why is Morland more interesting than the father or the daughter or the twin son

or like any of the other ones you know what I mean like how do you tell the difference between them whereas when morning first came in everybody was like whoa look at this guy he beat the shit out of Spider-Man in a way that we hadn't seen in a long time

I feel like what Venom was the last guy to really beat the shit of Spider-Man I don't even know who was the last guy to really like go to time and Spider-Man like that and that was fun to read and it was fun to read Spider-Man's

reaction to it and how he got through it all of that was fun and I feel like they've definitely I love that they brought him back I don't love the way they brought it back and how they treated them. But I agree that there is a lot of supernatural elements to Morlin.

And yeah, he's a character that we should have talked about at some point. So why not let it be this one? You know? Boy, do you know, more than all? No. Not at all? I do not. Nope.

Okay. I'm so jealous. He looks a bit. Wow. I'm no familiar already with this character. Okay. Well, I feel like we've described it pretty well. I think so too. Yeah.

Mine is a Batman villain whose real name is Humphrey Dumpler. And, yep. And Humphrey Dumpler is known by the name Humpty Dumpty. What? Of course. Are you sure? Yeah, I am very sure. So real quick about Humphrey Dumpler, he has no powers.

He is just a large man. He's a large man with an egg-shaped head. And he is compulsively driven to speak and rhyme and disassemble and then reassemble anything that's broken. So he is a villain because most of the first of the same. of the time, what he's doing is not malicious. He really thinks he is trying to fix things. However, those things tend to cause tragedy, like when he derailed a train because he

doesn't know how to reassemble the rails after disassembling them. He tries to fix a clock tower, and that causes a chain reaction of things that ultimately led to a couple of deaths. and the most gruesome one he murdered and dissected his abusive grandmother and then sewed her back together with bootlaces because he wanted to fix her and make her nicer.

That's nice. But yes, he was incarcerated, not because he's cruel or ill intention. He is because he's just simply a danger to everyone around him. My third guy is a character called

Harold Hitch Harold. That's his name. Harold H. Harold. H. Harold. Harold. H. Harold. Harold first appeared in Tomb of Dracula. In 1975. He is a writer for the magazine True Vampire Stories. So you know of it true. At some point, he comes across an unconscious Dracula, which is a bit rude. Quickly wakes up first. And he, so once he finds this Dracula, he decides to steal, blood from other people to give to Dracula

in order to entice him to give an interview to his own magazine. Pretty sly. It's kind of like blackmail, you know what I mean? I'll give you blood if you give me an interview. It's a bit much. Yeah.

At some point, he helps a guy whose name is Quincy Harker, who is apparently biased on somebody from the book, Dracula. I haven't read the book. Jonathan Harker was like the guy who goes to Transylvania to conduct business for Dracula.

So maybe Quincy Harker is like his brother or son or something, I don't know. Yeah, played by Ekeanu Reeves and Bram Stickers. Yeah, maybe. So Harold Hitch Harold

ends up helping a guy called Quincy Harker to fight Dracula and after this experience, he ends up writing a novel called the Vampire Conspiracy. pretty good good way to keep your job alive you know what you mean

then he ends up at some point he tracks Dracula Dine to Cleveland core you where Cleveland is I do have been a couple of times how far away is Cleveland from you about two three hours

how many times you've been encountered Dracula there I have not encountered Dracula at all there well how'll hitch Harold find Dracula there so you gotta up your game buddy because this guy with a terrible name find Dracula and at some point when he find Dracula Dracula was appealed on a wooden fence wooden fence post who do you think impealed

Dracula on a wooden fence post I'm gonna open the floor blade okay core do you think uh Van Helsing. Incorrect. It was Howard the Duck. This is true. While impealed on the blade, Dracula persuades Harold to free him. And then once he does,

Dracula bites him, turning Harold H. Harold into a vampire himself. The one thing he's been writing articles about all this time. However, Harold H. Harold manages to become a successful Hollywood producer, despite being a literal vampire. So that is the story of Harold H. Harold, a man that I guarantee you in no other time or form or ship has ever been mentioned on any kind of podcast ever.

I had to look up what the H stood for in his name. What do you, I probably Humphrey. You're incorrect. It is Harold. H. Harold. H. Harold. H. Harold was really called Harold, Harold, Harold. Yes. I'm surprised. I got to say. The original Triple H.

Exactly. All about the game. And Triple H was a vampire in Blade 3. There you go. Bingo. Which Harold, Harold, Harold probably wrote. He wrote Blade 3. He produced Blade 3. He's a very popular film producer.

It all comes full circle. See that? Yeah, Brian Reynolds plays a character named Hannibal King, right? Hannibal H. Hannibal? Yeah, exactly. He was like, you know what I've been a better name? Hannibal H. Hannibal. Exactly.

You got to get the word H in there a lot. I know I said the word H and the letter H. Don't worry about it. Unimportant. Anyway, that's Harold for you. So pretty impressive. very so do you guys have any alternates that you would like to discuss um i mean i wouldn't really like to discuss it for very long but uh no the expectation is that you're not going to discuss it

very long the batman who laughs who's uh basically bruce wayne of earth 22 who uh after the joker found out that he was dying he decided to go on a mass killing spree and and, you know, murdered a whole bunch of people. And finally forced Batman to the point where he had to, like, kill him to stop this rampage. But then when he did break his neck and kill him, he got infected by the Joker virus or Joker toxin, whatever you want to call it. And, yeah, it basically became like a jokerized version of the Batman, where he somehow gained all this. like multiversal powers from a demon called barbatos and assembled like a bunch of rabid robins from different worlds and just basically made a massive nuisance of himself all across the multiverse

and sucked. I was super confused about that whole Batman who laughs saying like real. I was reading the books that he was getting. introduced in and I thought it was fucking confusing. So, yeah, I'm not a fan of the Batman who laughs. It felt like a Scott Snyder bullshit thing. And it was.

Well, there you go. Dylan, you got an alternate? Yes. Headpool. He's a zombie head. Basically, he was an alternate version of Deadpool that at some point gets his body decomputated

and he returns as just a head. He is encountered and captured by the original Deadpool of our universe and ends up becoming a member of the devil corps And he also whenever he becomes a member of the devil corps has one of those little propeller hats You know little hats with a little propeller on the top and then that lets him fly somehow Doesn't let normal people fly I've tried it doesn't work But too much body weight Yeah it's because he's just a head basically just skeleton just like a bones But he is a Deadpool head that can fly.

So that sounds supernatural to me. It's very supernatural. He was in Deadpool and Wolverine as well. It was. Was it Nathan Fillion? Yes, I believe so. There you go. So topical.

All right. Even though by the time he comes out, this was like two months ago. Yes. So this is mine. This is another Brian Michael Bendis. creation along with Alex Malieve. John, you might be familiar because it is from

the Daredevil run. Mm-hmm. Demon Baby. Demon Baby. Does not ring any bells. So Demon Baby is a demon

baby. What? That was summoned by a man named Lawrence who got kicked. out of the hand and demon baby possessed a villain called the jester to give him supernatural powers and ultimately he the the jester was defeated and demon baby escaped and yes so the demon baby is able to possess the bodies of human beings and grant them superhuman strength endurance and agility and the ability to fire green energy out of their eyes.

Once the host body had experienced a certain amount of stress, though, the demon baby is vomited up, and it would immediately seek out a new host. So that's a, he was in six issues. And a demon baby, honest to God, fits our pantheon of characters of, Oh, yeah. Armless Tiger Man, Gun Bunny, baby juggernaut, demon baby.

Why didn't you go more into the demon baby lore? Like, you just put him as your alternate? We need them no more about it. There is not much more to the demon baby except that. He was in six issues. Oh, but they could, they can't bring him back?

Well, so he was killed when he possessed Lawrence and Lawrence shot himself in the head, which killed both himself. and the demon baby. But the demon baby is a demon, so he probably just returned to hell until he is inevitably summoned back into the land of the living. I see. Which can be any day now. Any day, you know, there's somebody named Bernice who likely has summoned the demon baby who will, you know,

live inside of their belly until it's vomited up and then he finds a new host. That's a normal thing. Yeah. The Alex Believe art of Demon Baby being vomited up is amazing, by the way. It sounds like it. Alex Belief is a great artist to begin with, so he does well. Certainly signs are a good time.

Yeah, it does. So folks, that's going to do it for us in this episode of us, just talking about some of the weirder or lame or stupid, spooky characters that we could think of and or find. Guys, John, what movie are you at right now in your movie watch for 2024? And what was the most recent one? I am on 608. And my most recent one, which maybe ties in a little bit with Demon Baby.

I don't know. It was Constantine. because he was fighting demons and that and I can't confirm if they were babies or not so that's true I thought you were going to say for a moment that you

watch Possession the Sam Neal Great Oh yeah That's a great movie So John If they want to see your review Of Constantine as well as any other movie you've seen recently of the 608

where can they find that stuff they can find that on letterbox at Big John Bowsky or one word and Dylan what's going on the world of Exploity plays I don't fucking know just go to

the YouTube page and subscribe and if you see videos there are great and if you don't see videos there it spots the old ones that's it There might be videos on there by the time this video goes up. There might not be. It's a roulette.

You'll find it out. You'll figure it out. It's a surprise. Don't you want to be surprised? Yes. And if so, subscribe to my channel, ExploityPlays, YouTube.com,

whatever the thing is. I think that's it. I think that's it. All right. And if you want to hear more of my nonsense, you can check out my weekly podcast, Large Old Cup on Spotify. It is a stream of content.

where I just talk for about 28, 29 minutes. Stop recording and upload it immediately to Spotify. So it is unedited and a little unwieldy at times. However, that's going to wrap us up for close on week three of our spooky celebration. Next week is our final spookiness before we move on to the month of November. we've got something that potentially could be a lot of fun going on. I'll talk to the guys off mic about it and get their insight. But until then, goodbye.

Goodbye. Oh, my God, that was so spooky. Is it a demon baby with us right now? Demon baby, get out of here.