The Smark Avengers - Vol 4, Ep 2: The Smark Avengers! Talk About Bad Storylines

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Amnesia via gunshot, deals with the devil, and secret lovechildren between a teenage girl and a creepy supervillain - what do they all have in common? They were all hated by fans! Join Corey, Dylan, and Jon as they look back on three storylines that soured longtime fans of Spider-Man and Nightwing to the point that Marvel and DC had to actively work to win them back!

All right. Hi, everybody. Welcome to SparkVengers. This is just going to be a cold open on this one, I feel. My name's Corey with me, Dylan, and John. You want us to talk some shit real quick and then put that as the intro? I don't know. The last episode that just aired is the one that starts with me calling Elton John a scumbag,

and I think that's just a real fun way to open a show. Want to do it again? Yeah, Ellen John's a scumbag. Can we get them on the show? Yes, I would be actually very, that'd be very entertaining. Wouldn't it? It'd be amazing. Yeah.

Is this retirement store still going to tour still going on? No, that finished. No, I think so. A while ago. Yeah. All right. Well, so this is volume four, episode two of the Spark of Ingers, and this is kind of an interesting one to do because we're going to be basically doing one of our lost episodes.

Volume two, we had two episodes that the audio quality was just really bad because I was on an old laptop that was on its last legs. And as a result of that, the episodes never made air because the quality was just so poor. So this time, we're going to go back to that and discuss what we think are some of the worst storylines that we've ever had the displeasure of reading. So we're going to do one each because these I imagine will be kind of in depth to talk about why they are so bad. But anybody have a particular urge to go first.

I think the worst storyline was probably the death writers. That's still ongoing. John, what are you doing? Well, then the Youngbuck's taken over AW. That was the worst one.

What do you think, John? I would agree with that, yes. It was a very, very bad. storyline. All right, well, this was a great episode. Bye, everybody. See you later. Elton John, give us a ring. Goodbye, Yellowbird Road. Well, he's here. Oh my God, he's here. Oh my God. It's like, he'll get myself really hard in the mouth and I'll give myself a big gap. You can't snag off out of Elton John if you just accidentally punch yourself

in the life. Come on, no. Oh dear. Anyway, but yes, anybody, I can go first if that's cool with everybody then yeah go for it so uh i actually did this one on the last because when i think of a bad storyline i i think of one that overstayed its welcome that nobody enjoyed and that even the writers make fun of and i'm going to be talking about the time that dick grason got shot in the head and got amnesia and changed his name to rick grason and was an entirely different character for two years i mean just from that brief description it signs bad Mm-hmm. Yes. So, this kind of came about. Dick Grayson is, of course, Nightwing in the comics. He was the very first Robin. I know that. I know that. There you go. Two points for Dylan.

Yeah, keep track of that. We'll add that to next time we have a trivia contest, we're going to add those two points to immediately. You just get to start off two zero. God damn it. And they end up losing like 30, 50. 50. to like minus four. I'm like, how do they get minus points? That'll be the twist we add to the next one. You lose points if you get a question wrong. Oh, my God. Jeopardy style.

We would be here forever. But yes, so Dick Grayson's kind of a, there was a period of time, there's a very long period time, actually, where the editor of DC Comics was a man by the name of Dan Didio, or Dan Didio, depending on how you want to pronounce his name.

How do you want to pronounce his name? I like Dan Didiow. I like Didio. You like Didio? Yeah. It rolls up the tongue butter, I think. I think. Didi-do.

Whatever. Did-da-d-d-d-do. Did you do-da-da-d-d-d-do. Dan had this weird hate for Dick Grayson. That for years, it kept, like, coming up, like, this idea that he was going to try to kill off the character. The very first time was an infinite crisis, which is a storyline where a version of Superman from a parallel world crossed over into the comics world, the DC Comics world, and became so disgusted by everything, he started to unmake reality. And so the idea was that he was going to kill Dick Grayson, and then that got leaked, and the response was really bad, and so they kind of pulled away from it. The second time was during the new 52, where there is a storyline called Forever Evil, I believe.

in which the villains were to have one. And in that, Dick Grayson was captured. His identity was exposed to the world. And then a bomb got planted into his chest to go off if his heart stopped. So they ended up faking his death and ending his tenure as Nightwing. And the Grayson, Agent of Spiral storyline came about where basically for about a year or so, maybe even three years. He became a secret agent, and he was not a costume hero any longer.

Agent Grayson. Then, of course, that got undone. He came back to being Nightwing, and we end up with our Rick Grayson storyline after a few years. So this came about because of Tom King. Tom King almost got on this a separate time for the story heroes in crisis. Tom Kink's kind of infamous because for me, he does really well with small characters, and I think he does miserably with big characters. In that, like, he was doing the Batman and Catwoman are going to get married storyline, where for some reason they still calling each other bat and cat over and over again. Like, it was their nicknames, and it was really jarring for some reason.

That's how you tell them apart. Yeah, bat, cat. exactly and part of that storyline is Thomas Wayne who was the kind of dark anti-hero version of the Earth 2 Flashpoint Batman where in the Flashpoint world Bruce Wayne was when he was shot and killed in the alley Thomas Wayne became Batman and his wife became the Joker so Flashpoint everybody enjoy anyway he and Bain We're going to do one of Bain's favorite plot lines, which is I'm going to take Gotham for myself and remove Batman from the picture.

And they decided to do that by showing off how Batman's extended family weakened him and that he would be better off if he was alone. So part of that was a villain by the name of the KG Beast was hired by Bain. I love name of DC Comics characters just for Dillon's reaction alone. The KG Beast. That's why we switch to the video format. now. Yep.

Because you couldn't see the, the pain and anguish on my face whenever Corey comes up with this terrible name. But that has existed for 40 years. You know. So anyway, they hired the KG Beast to kill Nightwing and Nightwing gets shot in the head. And it's a big shocking. Yeah, it's a big shocking thing where Nightwing drops dead. except he's not dead.

He merely gets a, it gets amnesia. Because that's what happens when he gets shot in the head. Yep. The shooting, so this is somebody in a Reddit group called Hobby Drama, summarized all of this very well. And they provided a lot of background context, which I feel like is going to be very essential to this. So in Batman number 55, written by Tom King and drawn by Tony Daniel,

Nightwing had been assisting Batman on a case when he was shot in the head by KG Beast. The shooting was part of a greater elaborate plan by Bain to effectively isolate, hurt, and gaslight Batman into complete and utter misery. King's original plan was to have Dick recover in the following issues of Batman, as he didn't want to encroach on Benjamin Percy's plans who had just been announced as the new writer for Nightwing. Editorial, however, insisted on having that injury carry over into Nightwing. King first pitched the idea that the third Robin, Tim Drake, would join the first. the cast as Nightwing and he would help Dick recover while running around in the

nightwing costume. Editorial had other plans, however, according to former nightwing writer Tim Sealy, that they wanted to do a nightwing amnesia arc for a long time and they finally were getting their chance to do so. So why, why, why for a long time, but they're like, we gotta give this fucking guy amnesia? Every week, they're pitching it. Like, what about the amnesia bit? Like, again, Carl, I don't think, it's not right.

not the right time for the when he goes home to his wife and they're like did the unneged storyline work? He's like, I don't want to talk about it. It's unknown if Percy had refused to write it or if he'd simply been kicked off without second thought, but DC editorial had their man and they didn't care about

Percy's future plans. Shortly after Percy departed the title, DC quietly changed the listings for Nightwing 51-53 to reflect the status quo to be written by a highly despised writer, Scott Lobdell. Scott Lobdell was for a long time, one of the most hated writers at DC for good reason. His works had been widely panned for excessively juvenile dialogue, edgy plots it went nowhere, and creepy sexual situations.

Lobdell is also known for multiple acts of sexual harassment, some of which he's even admitted to. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's rough whenever he admits it and they're still like, yeah, let's have him on the show. Let's keep him writing our comics. According to Lobdell, editorial was originally interested in dedicating only three issues to the Rick Grayson storyline, is how we're going to refer to this as. But Lobdell insisted on making it last as long as possible, believing that it could be as impactful as Barbara Gordon becoming Oracle. It should be noted that Lobdell ended up only writing eight issues. He also expressed resentment that fans loved the previous Nightwing stories, in particular the Agent Grayson story.

line so much that he told readers that if they didn't like his story, stop criticizing my writing then. What? Yeah. What? Under Lobdell's pin, the amnesic dick renamed himself Rick for unknown reasons. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm Nietzsche Dick. I feel like you just crossed over that.

You got to understand how that signs to us. It sounds like a great band name. I was going to say, um, need you. Amnesia Dick is going on my list of bad names, because that is phenomenal. I'm going to expect the next time we start a Skype call that your username is going to appear as Amnesia Dick. I'm annoyed. I'm, I'm getting close. Pretty close. Dick renamed himself Rick for unknown reasons and took a job as a taxi driver in Bloodhaven while also squatting in people's homes.

He was written as a smarmy jerk who constantly rejected his family's attempts to help him, as his new identity as Rick was a life choice and not the result of a near-fatal gunshot wound. To further drive this point home, Lobdell also introduced a new girlfriend named B and pitted her against Dick's longtime love interest Barbara Gordon in an awkward love triangle. In addition, to all of this, a group of police officers found Dick's old costumes and made themselves the new, quote, night wings to well circumvent the law. So essentially that is what happened. A group of police officers, like three police officers and a fireman, were frustrated that Bloodhaven was so corrupt

that they inadvertently found one of Nightwing's old layers where some of his costumes were. So they went, aha, I will put on these costumes and we will be Nightwing. So there's these four people dressed as Nightwing running around, two of them with guns, one of them with a police baton, and the last one with a fucking fireman axe.

I'm Nightwing, and I'm here to save the date with an axe. Yeah. Fan reaction, suffice to say it was highly negative. Fans didn't like Lobdell. They didn't like the gaps in logic, such as Rick returning to Bloodhaven despite having no memory of it or him suddenly being homeless. They didn't like how Lobdell tried to present Dick's brain trauma as if it were a life choice or how the bat family were portrayed as being in the wrong for wanting to help

him heal and recover his memories. The storyline was hated by virtually everyone outside of a small but aggressively vocal group of Scott Lobbdale fans. Fans grumbled on Twitter nonstop, frequently yelling. at official DC accounts. Vitriol was directed towards Lobdel Didio or Didio or Didiio and King, though Tom King later explained he had nothing to do with the Rick Grayson's storyline. It also didn't help that Kelly Sue Decomics, Aquaman was going through an amnesiac arc at the same time. The difference though was Aquaman's amnesia lasted only a few issues and was additive towards

future story arcs. And also, he didn't get shot in the head. No. The Anisha plot interfered with several other books, too. Dan Abnett, who had been writing Titans, dropped some thinly veiled meta-commentary about his book suddenly losing direction without its lead character. Batgirl writer, Margaret Scott,

was excluded from Bat family meetings and had to rewrite her own scripts due to sudden unspecified changes that were passed down to her book. To the point where she quit. Peter Tomasi, who had expressed excitement in bringing Nightwing for his run into Detective Comics, didn't end up doing so outside of a special funeral issue for Alfred Pennyworth, in which Rick spent most of the time awkwardly saying things like, I don't know Dick, but if he were here, he would have said this. Things turned a bit nuclear when a Nightwing number 58 was solicited,

and another infamous name was attached to its co-writer Eric Escabel. Just a few days earlier, allegations of sexual misconduct and a few days, abuse had come out against him as well. Oh dear. Fans were enrage questioning how the hell did DC manage to put not one but two sexual rasters on the same book? Supposedly DC had planned for him to be on the book long term, but quickly dropped him in response to the allegations and backlash.

A month later, Scott Lobdell was replaced on Nightwing by writer Dan Juergens. Dan Juergens is an industry vet, but one with a much better resume. He was instrumental in Death of Superman. He created booster gold. So he's very respected writer. He was brought in with very little fanfare, and most readers expected him just to be a stopgap until the next big change. In interviews, Juergens did not express any enthusiasm, usually preferring to talk about Superman instead. Still, he did attempt to do some damage control and ironed out some of the worst aspects of tenure by attributing all of this to a conspiracy by the Court of Owls.

As established in previous storylines, the Court of Owls had been wanting to recruit Dick Grayson into their ranks for years. Here, they took advantage of the gunshot wound to manipulate him and suppress his memories, making it, easier to indoctrinate him. They had infiltrated the hospital where he'd been taken and lied to the bat family about the extent of his injuries. With the involvement of the court of owls, fans found reasons to be excited again, especially since the court of al's plot was trying, tying into a greater scope year of the villain event in Justice League. Under Juergenspin, Rick embraced heroism and protecting innocence more readily and wasn't so hostile to the rest of the bat family. Readers thought the dick's return was imminent, and there were numerous

teases scattered throughout. However, year of the villain came and went to The court of owls were defeated by Rick Grayson, and yet he was still Rick Grayson. This time he had two sets of memories, his real memories, and a conflicting set of memories in which he was raised by the Cord of Al's and assassinated Bruce Wayne. For some reason, it never occurred to Rick that he should just type in, is Bruce Wayne dead in a Google search to find out which one was through. By this point, fans had lost their patience and rallied against DC on Twitter. On Reddit, fans protested by posting their favorite Nick Grayson moments, often under the hashtag, Quote, we want dick. You know what?

It's not a terrible place. Not 100% terrible. There's still some jokes going on there. Much of the anger was directed at DC and Dan Didio, specifically with Juergens more or less being let off the hook. On Twitter, frustrated readers tweeted at Juergens telling him that they despise the story, but still appreciated his attempts to make the most out of it. Funnily enough, I couldn't find any interview that stated whether or not Dadeo personally

pushed for the amnesia arc or if he just signed off on it. with indifference. After the ordeal with the court of owls came yet another event tie-in, this time with the Batman title called Joker War. And once again, there were teases of Dick's return, but fans were too cynical to get excited. Ironically, the return was real this time. In Nightwing number 74, late 2020, after a weird plot in which the Joker mind-controlled Rick Grayson into beating up the other Robbins, Dick finally recovered his memories with the help of Batgirl and Rick's girlfriend, B, and everyone was happy again, except for B, who was the then dumped and put into the front zone two issues later.

Juergens ended his run shortly after some cleanup duties, just in time for D.C. to do a soft line-wide relaunch called Infinite Frontier. By the time it was over, fans were left relieved, but also disgruntled. Fans noted that this hated Rick Grayson saga lasted two years around the same length of time as the highly acclaimed run like Batman Reborn and Grayson, both of which were considered to have been ended prematurely thanks to line-wide company relaunches, the new 52 and rebirth respectfully. My guess, which is just me spitballing and not based on anything gleaned from interviews,

is that DC would have ended it earlier but decided to extend it because they were going to do another line-wide relaunch. In March of 2021, fan favorite creative team of writer Tom Taylor and artist Bruce Redondo took over Nightwing. The new direction takes something of a grounded slice of life approach, and the reception has been very, very positive. Rick Grayson saga has just become a weird pastime that other writers take shots at. Comic readers who resist any sort of change in Sasquil are quick to point that Rick Grayson is a prime example of why any change is bad as opposed to poor management or nepotism. Dan Didio was fired in 2020 for reportedly fostering a poor work environment. And Scott Lobdale has not worked at DC ever since. Bob Harris was laid off. and since then even more sexual harassment allegations have come out against him and there you go

a lot more sexual harassment in that story than I thought there's going to be yeah 100% gonna be honest with you yeah so uh the important thing is how did how did rick gracing get his memories back uh well they find them in a shoebox under his heise you're not far off The court of owls stole his memories from him Because again, a gunshot wound To the head Wouldn't make you lose your memories

It would kill you, most assuredly But it wouldn't make you lose your memories Unnecessarily I would say that if you shot In your head Part of your brain would be removed So there's a good chance Yes, you would technically lose your memories

Yeah, if you survive The initial gunshot room Yeah. But what if it was the glancing blow with little kicks? Thank you for that. That one was just for us. What was it put? We said it done this in the last episode.

What was the podcast where we first brought that inside joke to the people's attention that you don't understand? God, it's been, I have no idea. It'd have to really go back. When was that? That was probably like September, I think. A bit, then. Over. is a while yeah yeah so so the court of owls when dick grason was in the hospital with the gunshot wound and they were treating it used a crystal to take his memories away from him and then during the joker war joker got his hands on that crystal used it to rewrite dick's memories again this time making him think that dick grason was adopted by the joker and his new girlfriend slash sidekick punchline uh and you

used that to make Dick Grayson attack all of his friends and family. I like how you were like, oh, the Jigger just got his hands on it. Like they left the fucking memory crystal line around. They bought the memory crystal and he got it. Is this a memory? It's just a memory's memories. It's that week's memories. How do you know?

You see a crystal. You pick it up, you go, I think there's memories inside here. You're like, what the fuck? There's a little sticker on it that said Dick Grayson's memories. Joker went, oh man, it's so convenient. It's in the box and it says, Dick's memories, do not touch. Yeah.

So, yeah, they, he used it, had Dick Grayson attack his friends and family. They got to be his ex-girlfriend, or his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, and his ex-girlfriend, future girlfriend, Barbara, got the crystal back, destroyed it, Dick got his memories back and Nightwings back to normal. He destroyed the crystal. Yeah. And that brought his memories? back? Apparently.

If you destroyed the crystal, wouldn't that destroy the memories? Listen. They were just looking for a way to end this shit. I'm convinced that was it. They were like, Dan, you got three issues to wrap this up, and Dan went, thank God. Yeah. Get me off

of this fucking book. He probably did the best he could. So my favorite part about that as well was what happened to the night wings, the three police officers and the fireman dressed up like Nightwing running around. Well, there was Rick Grayson decided he would help them become better crime fighters because he had all of his muscle memory as being Nightwing even though he didn't want to be Nightwing. So he would like help them out while dressed as a civilian.

Because that's what you want to read. You want to read the hero of the book, not actively being the hero of the book? And then they had an encounter with the Joker that terrified the shit out of them. And then they all stopped being Nightwing. That was the last time anyone ever heard of these kids. characters. Why don't I just have the Joker beat the shit out of them like he used to do? I think he did one of them. He didn't kill any of them, but he beat the shit out of

them for sure. He should have killed them all, I think. Because then the guy's like, don't worry, everybody. I got this fucking fire axe. Yeah. I'll stop this clawing. Do you think Joker saw that and he went, what the fuck? They're fighting with fire axes now. What do you guys doing? This is, this is crazy. It says that mine dress up as a clown.

he was clinically insane. With his girlfriend, Punchline, right beside him? I don't like, I don't like that. You don't like Punchline? No. She's meant to be like, if Harley Quinn wasn't cute and silly and funny.

Like, she's like more of a sociopath. Oh. Well, no, I do like it then. Yeah, she's not a bad character. She's not a bad character. I don't like punch. I don't like call it Punchline.

You don't like the name Punchline? No. Fair enough. I don't like. Well, you would really hate Clown Hunter then. Yeah, this is not related to this particular story, but the writer for Detective Comics for a period of time was James Tinian the 4th.

And he decided to create his own characters, including, I think, ghost killer? He can't kill ghost, Corey. They're already dead. Yeah. Clown Hunter, Miracle Molly, and Punchline. These were the four characters that were going to be the future of the Batman franchises.

Not a single one of them are used anymore. I hate them. Baby Punchline will get used, but everybody else is not so much. Baby Punchline. Baby Punchline. Nobody gives a shit about Miracle Molly or Clown Hunter or any of those other bullshit characters. Why would you care about a character or Clown Hunter? That sounds awful.

Yeah. What do you do for a living? Well, I hunt by Clines. I don't want to brag, but pretty good at it. I've tied a batterang to a baseball bat and I use a, it to beat clowns to death. Yeah. So can't get your number or?

What do you think? Well, stay away with me, Clown Hunter. So that's the tale of Rick Grayson. The Nightwing book, after that by Tom Taylor, got, it was, it was a fun read. It was incredibly fluffy. Like, there was not a lot of, it never felt like there was any, like, real heavy-duty stakes in the book. But after two years of Rick Grayson, I feel like the Nightwing fans deserve, deserve something.

something a little nicer. Wait will we start writing it? Yeah. Guess what's coming back? Memory Crystal. Memory crystals. Rick Grace is back and he brought his ex-girlfriend B. with him.

She's now a pirate queen. I'm not even joking. They decided to do that too. That's good. She's a pirate. Yeah, she was a bartender, but her dad was actually a pirate king. Yeah.

Yeah, don't worry about it. Pirate king. Pirate king. Yeah. So John, Dylan, who would like to go next? What do you think, John? I mean, I'm not looking forward to talking about mine,

but maybe it's best to, you know, rip the bandage and just do it. Get it out there. Do it. Well, listen, part of it involves something that you like talking about. Well, I would say I like talking about it. I just happen to, you know, bring it up in the conversation, yeah. It's just a natural, you know, response. It is. It's a natural thing.

To have us all of us. Yes. You know what you mean? Maybe we should stop teasing people and get to the substance of this story. We're going to talk about the substance. I call it my substance, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So for mine, I went with a story. storyline from 2004 in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man issues 509 to 514. It was all the way in 2004? I thought it was a little closer than that. No, unfortunately. My God. So, yes, this is a storyline by the name of sins past written by J. Michael Strzinski. That legend.

JMS. Immediate eye roll, fucking JMS. you can see again why we do the video podcast to see cori get really annoyed susankee you know not just fucking i you're gonna get a clown hunter and to hunt this clawing well um so the basic jest of it is basically uh Gwen Stacy Peter Parker's first love uh wholesome Gwen Stacy who was like you know basically an angel in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man to begin with. It's revealed that right before she was killed by the Green Goblin,

she had become pregnant and given birth to twins, Sarah and Gabriel. And who was the father of these twins? Peter Parker, his close. It was in fact Norman Osborne, Peter Parker's sworn enemy. and the, you know, real-life identity of the green goblin. I just see that face. It's just, yeah. That's funny because I know what face you're talking about,

but like whenever I'm thinking of this, I'm thinking of the thumbnail of the... You know what I want to? You know what I'm talking about. I know. That's the face I pictured. Continue. So, yeah, basically it all came about because Gwen was like having a bit of a fallout with Peter and I think Harry at the time was in a bit of a rough place as well.

So Gwen ended up going to see Norman about something and then one thing led to another somehow, which makes, I mean, like zero sense. again he says where would this come from but either way um yeah so she gets pregnant she goes off to france for like three months but for some reason uh and i'll reveal the reason in the second that the pregnancy is like is uh it's speeded up for some reason so uh it turns out that you know Norman Osborne's love custard was That was the worst way you could have been phrased What Basically

You know Being infected with the goblin serum and everything It managed to you I call it What was it I called it I don't want to know what you called it The substance Substance I call the substance

John calls it Love Custard. Corey, what do you call it? I just imagine it's chunky for some reason. The expression of love custard. Yeah. Infected love custard. Yeah. It's got some chugs to it.

Imagine it's like an egg salad. Yeah. Well, making it worse. Yeah. We didn't think we could make it worse. So we're thinking about textures. So anyway. Yeah, these twins got given birth to and then Gwen went back to America and then she died shortly afterwards.

And there was no one to look after the twins. But Norman, you know, famously kind of faked his death when he got killed in the aftermath of killing Gwen and went off back to Europe. And so the story was that he'd gone back there and then sort of overseen. them growing up I started manipulating them from a young age as you'd expect someone like Norman Os born to do and yeah basically made them believe that Peter Parker

was their real father and he was also the one responsible for Gwen's death which again go back to like what you were talking about Corey like surely they could just Google it and then see like you know yeah Green Goblin kills teenage girl on George Washington Bridge.

I imagine that was in the news. I imagine that would have been an article. Yeah. Peter seems like he would have had some pull of the fucking Daily View to get that ram. Who's going to write this story? Where are we going to get the photographs from? Possible. So yeah, basically a few years go by. And these twins, again, like the growth is all speeded up because of the the goblin baby gravy and they turn into adults and then come back to New York to try and get revenge

on Peter Parker for killing them. But you know obviously Peter's like not believe in their story. He's like, no, no, you can't be Gwen's kids. She didn't get pregnant. But then like they start trying to like sort of of go deep into it to try and make it. So no, there's no way that this is fake. Like saying that Peter digs up Gwen's grave to get DNA from her corpse to test against these kids. And then having Mary Jane, who apparently was like privy to all this information as well, confirming that she knew that Gwen and Norman had like this affair.

It's like, what? Wait, I don't know enough about, I don't know enough about Spider-Man to know this offhand. Why would Mary Jane know? Because wasn't Mary Jane introduced after Gwen Stacy died? No, no. She was introduced way before she died. And they sort of had a bit of a love training. Yeah, basically.

Like, I mean, Mary Jane was sort of the flighty one who was just having a good time. and, you know, she wasn't really, she don't have much of her personality. I'm very familiar with the concept of St. Gwyn. Yeah. But yeah, apparently Mary Jane knew this the whole time, and she just didn't say anything to Peter. Not her business.

It would be weird. Not her business. You get married to a guy, be like, hey, I have something to tell you. You're your old dad, girlfriend. The girl that you were devastated about. Well, I know something that you don't know, you know. That no one wants to know. But let me tell you anyway.

So do you know what love custard is? When a man loves a teenage girl. Ooh. But anyway, getting back to the story, Gabriel goes crazy. He finds one of Norman's hideouts. It becomes great goblin. and yeah he tries to kill off Spider-Man but Sarah why grey though

does this whatever suit the business building so why did Norman have grey costumes he was saving for his son yeah maybe it probably was actually I can't remember I'm trying not to think too deeply about this all right all right fair enough but anyway yeah so this this all happens and then Sarah like intervenes when

Gabriel's about to you know, like kill Spidey because she has believed Peter's like, you know, protestation saying that he didn't actually kill Gwen and it's all Norman Osborne. And then Gabriel ends up

losing his memories, like a certain Dick Grayson. Remember crystal? No memory crystals involved in this one, unfortunately. They just didn't find it. They just didn't find it. It's not. It's there somewhere. But yeah, so that's basically

the gist of this since past storyline, but then it had like far-reaching effects further on. In the last few years, during Nick Spencer's run, we had the whole Kindred storyline where

you know, this weird demon with creepy quarlies coming out of its jacket was sort of making deals with all of Spidey's villains and was kind of manipulating events to kind of conspire against both Spider-Man and

Norman Osborne and it turns out that basically Sarah and Gabriel weren't really Norman's kids they were sort of clones I guess

made from DNA from Norman and Gwen by I believe it was like a Harry Osborne AI which was the same Harry Osborne AI that had made the like robots of Peter Parker's parents and like made them reappear to kind of like fuck with him back in the early 90s Corey looks puzzled over something I'm not quite sure what he would be puzzled about because this all seems to make perfect sense to me.

Why can't they just fucking leave some of these characters dead? They keep fucking with Harry. I feel, I just feel, I've never felt worse for a fictional character than Harry Osborne. It seems like his entire life was miserable. And then they just fuck with his corpse all the time. Well, that's, that's part of this Nick Spencer storyline was that he was trying to tie up a lot of different loose ends. Yeah, sounds like there were a lot that needed tied up. Because like after the a storyline that may or may not be coming up later,

Harry Osborne just turns up again and nobody questions it. Suddenly alive. He's just alive. But like they're never like, I remember like he died 20 years ago? Yeah. Like, so I think this storyline was trying to wrap that up as well.

Yes. You know, again, poorly. But, right. I don't think like, I don't think that it ended spectacularly. It had a lot of potential at the beginning.

the end of it, because he was trying to type a lot of messy loose ends, it all ended quite massively. And it's like, it's done now. Let's move on with our lives. It's like Corey was saying, though, like, you know, you could have just not done that. Like, just the Sarah and Gabriel's storyline had basically finished after JMS left the book. I think there's one of the, like, brief appearance where Gabriel came back and stole the American Sun Armour and kind of went after Harry, who turns out wasn't Harry.

But, you know, like that was the some existence of them in the comics. And people could have just like brushed it under the carpet, forget about it, you know, never refer to it again. But instead, we have to tie it all back in and try and explain away the fact that, you know, St. Gwen didn't really have an affair with Norman Osborne, which, okay, that's a course correction I can get behind. But then to, you know, tie it all into like Mephesto making a deal with this Harry Osborne AI and Mendo Strom and the chameleon and Mysterio and like all of them kind of conspiring together to create these twins and then put the AI in, you know, the twins' brain. So,

they've also been possessed by like Mephesto's demonic powers and it's like what this is what are you doing? There's so much going on here. This is a lot of work for a guy who gets fired from his job frequently. Yeah. When you think about like Peter Parker and you like just think of him like it's just a guy,

a character you're like this is a lot of work for a dude whose powers are can do whatever a spider can. Right. That's one of the things that bug me was the Mephisto thing and there may be Mephisto coming up again. You're like, why why would he give a fuck about

Peter Barker? It's like they're treating him like he's Dr. fucking Doom or something like that. He dresses up like a spider and he doesn't even do it well. He's only got two arms. I don't want to like step on your toes and yeah, you know like with what you're going to be talking about in a bit. But it is basically

because apparently you know, Peter and Mary Jane had sort of rekindled their relationship and part of like you know mefester's past with them was basically the end of that relationship so i think he is uh conspiring with all these people and like you know setting up kindred to go and fuck up beaters life was to try and course correct on that i guess but then again and we'll talk about this but i i ever understood why mefester would be like i'm gonna break up your age.

You're like the Lord of Hell. Like you've got other shit going on. Yeah, what is, you have other things. Why would you give a fuck with this random guy? There are people constantly trying to take your title as Lord of Hell from you. Strong guy's right over there. Aunt May. Baby Aunt May.

Sorry. Johnny Blaze. Yeah. Me, the rapper Johnny Blaze. Yeah. A cat. Easy Don. Anybody give you a Lord of Hell.

hell these days for khaki yeah i could do it you know what you mean piece of piss that's basically it anyway so yeah so i guess that that story that was very controversial at the time i appreciate yeah because you're forced correct it but like it was there was a lot of nonsense i remember hating them but i read it oh yeah so so again like just they hit the high points i don't like jms as a writer period as a comic book writer period i'm sure babylon five is fantastic and it's because of this. Yeah. Well, it's just another and a long list of JMS doing random bullshit that other people have to clean up. Yeah. Well, it happens all the fucking time with JMS. I will say, apparently his original idea was for it to be Peter Parker, who was the kid's parents, but it was the editors

at the time, Axel Alonzo and Warren Simons who basically said, oh, no, we don't want to make Peter a father because then that ages him up. It's all like, it goes back to, we've talked to before about like the breakup of like the Mary Jane marriage. Alonso was yeah Alonzo was the hand-picked replacement for Joe Casada and Casada was one of the people behind breaking up Mary Jane and Peter's marriage in the first place. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. Fucking weirdo Cassada.

But I guess my whole thing is like wouldn't it if the goal was to establish this new goblin and then have the reveal be like, oh yeah, Gwen Stacey had these children with Norman Osborne. wouldn't it just be like a lot more straightforward to just have like hey there's a new green goblin it's not norman harry's dead who is this and then you have a mystery and then like you build clues and then like you're seeing things referencing gwynstacey and like then you have the reveal like that seems like way more of a comic book storyline than whatever the fuck that was absolutely i think they must have planned it the way they did was to just shock everyone right at the beginning and thinking, oh, maybe this will be the big hook that brings everyone in like Gwen's had twins,

but clearly that didn't work. That's why they started twins arrived. Apparently, though, even JMS was not happy with it. Like, they did the big Marvel, they did the big Marvel 1000 issue like a couple of years ago

where like a bunch of different creators and artist, like, contributed towards it. And he had like a one-page thing in it drawn by Ed McGuinness, where it was like various characters saying their biggest regrets. And one of the, like,

you know, drawings was of JMS just saying since past. So at least he can sort of, yeah, poke fun at it. Well, then that's all right then. There's a lot of stories of JMS at conventions not wanting to sign. anything comic book related.

Like, he's clearly way more proud of his work with Babylon 5 than he ever was of comic books. It seems like this was just a gig for him that would pay the bills. And understandably so, because as we've covered, he's not very good. Nope. Introduces an idea. Fuck shit up. Leaves and let someone else clean it up. He did it for Wonder Woman, did it for Superman, did it for Spider-Man.

He'll do it again. He'll do it again. Because he'll still put him on books. Fucking villain. At least he didn't sexy harass anybody. That we know of. that we know of. All right, Dylan.

I think it's your turn now. So mine, I'm going to do a little bit of research on my phone. So if I'm looking at my phone, don't worry about it. Mine, I think this is the one I did last time. On the, on the, the, the, when we didn't air. It was either this one or the Goblin Jays one. And I think it was this one. But I did, I picked a storyline called Spider-Man, one more day.

Um wait infamous it's pretty well that's the thing about both of these storylines is that like they're they're kind of notorious for being just dog shit

um and the the reason I wanted to talk about this one is I talked about it a few episodes ago I feel like but there was something in it that just annoyed me so so much yeah and it's not even like the Mephaasto

of it it's just annoyed me so much So to kind of piggyback on that, it was worse deaths. Yes. Because we talked about, yeah, that's where we start talking about one more day. Yes. So what happens is Spider-Man reveals himself to be Peter Parker. Bulls his dick right out. Well, people need to see it on live television.

Tony Stark's like, go ahead, Peter. And he's like, the dick thing? Because here it is. And Tony was like, we're going to have that. You have to blur that. He got amnesia dick. There it is. It all is coming together.

There it is. So to show like solidarity with Tony Stark and Iron Man and his allegiances or whatever, Peter Parker is convinced to reveal his identity live on the television, which was a bad idea. And everybody knew it was a bad idea. And the Kingpin watches the TV, as he often does. What else has he got going on? Nothing. Watch the TV.

He sees that Peter Parker is revealed as B Spider-Man. And he doesn't like that. He's like, I got beat up by, like, his kid for so long. I got to do something about this. So he hires a hitman to shoot Peter Parker, who, is Spider-Man. This has been revealed that Spider-Man

and Peter Parker are the same. The Kingpin has fought Spider-Man for 170 years. He's well aware of how this character works. And he thinks,

I'll just hire a guy to shoot him. Easy. This has never, ever, ever worked for me before in the past. And the Lord knows I've tried.

But this time, I'm just going to get someone to shoot him. So the sniper takes a shot at Peter Parker. Get this. His spider sense goes off and he moves out of the way of the bullet.

Which, I don't know, if you knew anything about Spider-Man for like five minutes, you would have been able to figure out. So once Peter Parker moves out of the way of the bullet, the bullet accidentally catches Aunt May and she gets amnesia and becomes Nightwing. So Aunt May is in like a critical condition. I don't think she's technically.

died so that means you know the placement on the worst death list that's a bad that death was even happened um she's taken into intensive care and peter parker is um obviously very unhappy but the fact that his ancient grandmother decrepit aunt not grandmother um practically a mummy could could potentially die like this and he's he's he's he's he's very sad about this. We'll also cover the fact that he's already seen or die once before. But that was a...

So... That was a different person that Norman Osborne had plastic surgery to look like on my normal standard. We've heard with that guy's up to you. They go to... He goes through such extreme lengths to fuck with this kid.

Like, in a way, I really like that. I'm like, he's just merciless. He was like, I'm just gonna fuck him. I'm gonna fuck his. girlfriend, why do you think of that? Get some twins on the go. Goblin kids, little goblin babies. Goblin babies.

Goblin babies. Now, I do want to point out something because this is Kingpin and he has hired a sniper to take a shot on Spider-Man, he knows how dense Spider-Man is because he's exchanged punches with him. And it's like, Kingpin, big guy. I hit really hard. I hit this little dude

didn't smear him against the wall like it should have. Obviously, he's bit durable. So you would think sniper is going to be packing like elephant bullets. You know, the kind of shit is going to bring down a packaderm. Yeah. So this old lady should have been fucking red mist against a wall. Well, that's also part of it is that it was just a regular sniper. It's just a regular bullet.

And I'm like, why would the kingpin be this stupid for no reason suddenly? He's just like, I got to kill him. The only thing I can do is because he's just, So the type we're doing out. Like, if it was the kingpin, he would have put a little bit more thought into it. I would imagine. So, like, this is my issue with this storyline. Obviously, there's a lot of other issues that we will cover.

But my main issue is this part of it is so stupid. It's so, so stupid. It would never, it doesn't make any sense. It annoys me so much. Like, the kingpin wouldn't be this dumb. You know what you mean? Like, I'm just going to hire a guy. Remember the bit in like Austin Pars where he's like, I'm going to lower you into the sharks and they're like, aren't you going to watch, see if he does it?

No, no, I'm just going to turn it back and I assume that everything will be fine and it will go the way I expected to go. That's how this feels. It's so like stupid and lazy and like, I just assume he'll get shot with no evidence to say that this would ever happen. So that annoyed me. but Anne Mae is in a critical condition and Spider-Man, Peter Parker is like, I got to do something to save my aunt because if she dies, boy Hardy,

my life will change completely. If I don't have this old lady in my life, what will I do? She's the reason that I'm Spider-Man. Without her, I will be nothing. He gets very morose about this. And so he then decides to make a deal with Mepesto.

the devil, the Lord of Hell, or one of the Lords of Hell. There are many. One of them's a cat. And, Professor is like, here's what we're going to do, kid. I like you. I like your moxie. I like your face that doesn't have a bullet hole in it.

I like that. What we're going to do is I'm going to take away the fact that everybody in the world knows your Spider-Man. I'm going to heal your old aunt and make her not a boy to die and in return for that I want your marriage to Marrijean Watson to not be a thing

and Peter Parker's like okay he obviously thinks about it for a little bit he has to talk to his wife and like hey wife I got something I want to talk to you about Maybe we could How would you feel

If I invited Mepesto over Next week for dinner and talk Because there's some stuff I've had on my mind He doesn't think This is a good thing You and me But on the flip side

That old lady will come back to life So What do you think? I know you're pretty happy with me On my Readeractive Steven We've covered that Plannies of times

But maybe it'd be better if Mephisto just Oh, Corey has something to say but really like to see one, I believe. Have a comment. Do you think the deal was just Mephisto looking out for Mary Jane? Ah, because

he founds to Marry Jane. He's like, listen, this guy you're with, he's no good. His semen, radioactive. Your teeth's going to start falling out, your hair's going to start falling out. You're going to be in some bad physical shape if you keep this up. Me, though. Lord of hell.

Yeah. Everybody knows the story about Hades and Persefany. my semen is pure fire so that will rip your inside side completely and you hold down immediately my penis is corkscrewed and barbed

yeah and it is pure lava it is very uncomfortable but I know how treat you right yeah so what do you think you know

so it's it's it's a way to like reset everything and they do they do reset everything and obviously Peter Parker says, I'm going to go with this deal. I'm going to ignore the love of my life who I've loved and who has been by my side to be thick and thin.

I think we can all agree. Because at that point. She has been very, very good. Very forgiving. Yes. Of my husband turning up covered in fucking bullet wounds to bed. Yeah. Like the chameleon tried to kidnap me

a bunch of times. You know, all their super villains have come after me. Oh, yada, yada. There's been a lot of stuff that she stood by and would just went with. And this all was like unnecessary. They didn't have to reveal Peter Parker as Spider-Man. And then to cover for that, they didn't have to do any of this. It's so, like, badly thought out.

They didn't have to make a deal with Mifesto. Like, they didn't have to fuck with, with, I know historically, a lot of people. People of Marvel didn't really like the marriage in Peter Parker marriage and they wanted to get rid of it. But like this is all so unnecessary to get to that point. I don't see why making a deal with Mephesto, who hasn't really focused in on Spider-Man at all. I don't understand why Mephisto would want that as a bargaining chip. It doesn't seem to make any sense. I'm going to take your wife away from you and then you're not going to remember that you were married.

So it's not going to have any. Because if it was from a festival to like fuck with Peter Parker by saying, you're no longer married, your love of your life is gone. Now you have to live with that forever. Ha, ha, ha, torment. I like that because I'm the devil. But that didn't really happen. What really happened was they just were not married and they didn't remember that. So you're like, well, then what's the point?

What is the end game? Why would he do this? He has nothing to gain from this. It was all just real bad. Now, I should probably say, I should look up who wrote it and when they wrote it. Well, go ahead, John. You'll be surprised to hear that it was JMS who wrote this one as well. Well, guess who else wrote it?

Joe Cassata. Correct. Casada had such a weird, I don't know if it just, for some reason, this was like a thing in the 2000s because they did the same thing with DC. When they relaunched the new 52, it's like the characters are younger now. And like we don't we don't need them to be like in relationships and marriages and stuff because that means that they're old. Yeah. So like when DC relaunched the new 52, what happened was like established couples were already were broken apart.

Like they were too young to be a couple. So the big one being Clark Kent and Lois Lane who had been married since the 1980s were now we're like, you know, Clark and Lois were not together. and Lois was dating other guys and Clark was this sort of like unrequited love until he got with Wonder Woman in a relationship that a lot of people were still really weird about like Superman and Wonder Woman being a couple but yeah there was such a weird that that 2000s area up until like early 2010s when like the new 52 launched everything people had a weird hatred for characters being in established relationships because

they thought it made them less marketable somehow it is weird because, like, yeah, nobody ever gets married when they retain, right? That never happens. Yeah, right? Ridiculous. You know, I don't see how that's like... So, you said something, and it reminded me something that DC did. Is it a CNN thing?

Kind of. Because we talked about the Flash, and this has to do with the Flash. Remember, the Flash's romantic partners, they also age slowly like he does because of proximity. Yeah. So you call it proximity. Proximity. Ah, there it is. So anyway, when they undid the new 52 with rebirth, Wally West was a character that he was the flash in the 90s.

He was the fastest man alive, the fastest flash. They excluded him from the new 52 because they thought it was redundant to have that many flashes. And they wanted to bring back Barry Allen. They were really big on bringing back Barry Allen. because the people in charge of decision making were in that Joe Casada school of this isn't I was a little kid and Spider-Man was a single loser so Spider-Man needs to be a single loser again. These people, Jeff Johns was like, Barry Allen's the flash and he's the one who needs to be the flash because Barry Allen's the flash. So let's get rid of every other flash except Barry Allen. Despite the fact that Barry Allen had been gone for 20 years at that point and no one really seemed to care that much.

Right. People have moved on. Exactly. So when they did rebirth, Wally from the previous continuity got brought into the main continuity again. Like he got pulled back in. And he, one of the things that made the 90s flash so nice was that he was a married man and he had children. And a lot of the flashbook was about his relationship with his wife and his kids because it wasn't like, you know, like, they don't know my secret. It was like, no, he's incredibly up front about everything with his wife. Like he let her know, like, hey, weird shit's happening. And I need to protect you guys kind of stuff. So when they brought him into the main continuity, nobody remembered Wally at first, but people gradually did. But in the new continuity, his wife had never met him before, obviously.

So he didn't have his wife and he didn't have his children. And a lot of some of those early Wally West stories were him like struggling to like live this life because he had all of his memories and all his past experiences, but the reality was different. So he remembered his wife and he remembered his kids, but his kids didn't exist and his wife was a stranger to him. So like that sounds like that would have been better used for one more day of Spider-Man having all the memories of his relationship with Mary Jane and not being able to have it. Yeah. That seems way more sense.

Like torture, like a demon, devil, lord of hell would probably want to do to someone. Right. It was a bad story Really Just Again, it's them trying to fix problems That they started themselves There's no need for any of this

And then they fixed it In such a half-ass Like nonsensical Not even like a Spider-Man kind of way None of this was like I would read this in a Spider-Man book You know what you mean? It wasn't like this is how Spider-Man

would solve this problem Spider-Man came out of a little bit looking like a fucking idiot all the time. And I'm like that, I don't think that that's a good solution. So then after that, you know,

they did brand new day and they kind of like, I think like whenever they do brand new day, it's like six months after that. Harry Osborne is like, and Mary Jane is like friendly with Peter, but not really. And they're kind of like,

oh, just whatever, I'm single and I'm Peter Parker and I'm always single, you know. and they just moved on, went on with their life. But that was another thing as well. They never explained why Harry Osborne came back. He just was there. This is a result of it.

Something about Mary Jane and Peter getting married resulted in Harry's death. Yeah. Like that was never in the original issues. That was never part of the bargaining. Just tossed it in for free. And we're going to give you your old best friend back. Nobody gives a fuck about Harry Osborne. Here you can have him.

He's been in hell for ages and I hate him. I don't like looking at his stupid hairs. He's so annoying. Get him out of here. Take him. But I want your wife, though. I mean. Put Peter in the Cuck chair.

That's what they call him. So that's it. I hate that storyline. I also hate the one John Pick. So there you go. Spider-Man's been through tough times. And it seems like because the character is so popular, I feel like they feel the need to do these really big things with them,

but you don't really need to. Because I think, again, we talked to us previously. I kind of like Spider-Man. more as a street level character than putting him in all this weird shit. It gets way too big. Like all of the shit that we were talking about with the eight deaths of Spider-Man. I'm like, why do you have to kill him at all? What are you doing?

Like, all this is so like not Spider-Man. All of the Spider-verse storylines and crossovers and stuff. It gets really like big and silly and hard to follow. And like Spider-Man is just this. If Spider-Man is supposed to be this regular-ass loser he you're supposed to identify with, what's this other shit about? if him getting marred was hard to identify with killing him and bringing it back the life

eight times is relatable like what are we what are we doing? Can I say also like I think that may be one of those big reasons why I don't read Spider-Man it just seems like it's really hard to jump into at the moment you know I feel like that's like the problem with it noise it's just so big and grandiose

and just impossible to follow you know and that sucks because I love Spider-Man but like this stuff this is way more complicated than the clone saga It's just like so much unnecessary gobbins, you know. I just love the JMS appeared in this episode twice. Twice. If I had known, I would have brought back up his grandiose storyline of having Superman walk across the country.

He just loves fucking stuff up. And not finishing it because we talked to also, because we'd also talked about his Wonder Woman storyline as well, where the biggest sin was he gave Wonder Woman pants. That was, that was bad, though. It was bad. Did not have done that. No. Well, anybody have any thoughts on anything we discussed? Any of the conversations made you think about any other storylines you thought were kind of reprehensible?

I mean, these ones are pretty bad. Pretty rough. The only other one I can think of is maybe Cry for Justice, which was a really unfortunate Justice League series that led to a lot of really unfortunate spinoffs. But that's another tale for another time. We'll save that for the next episode. We'll save her for the next episode. All right. John, you recently saw Captain America Brave New World.

Do you want to give us a real quick idea of your opinions on it? I mean, it was okay. It wasn't great. It was basically felt like it was trying to recapture the whole Winter Soldier conspiracy thriller vibes. But the actual conspiracy itself wasn't that exciting. and there wasn't like a very good villain in this to kind of get behind either. There's three villains.

How could there not been one good one? Well, they... Seth Rollins wasn't in it. Yeah. Burn it down. Burn it down. It feels weird that they finally bring back Tim Blake Nelson to kind of, you know, be some your Stearns again and like embrace the leader that was teased all the way back in,

Hulk way back in the day. 2009? Yeah, eight or nine, something like that. But then they don't really do a lot of interesting stuff with him. So it's a bit like, well, well, what was the point? But like, you know, Harrison Ford is all over this movie and Harrison Ford is Harrison Ford, you know,

he's pretty damn good. So can't complain about that. I'm a year's old. Yeah. I did my own stunts. It fell down. It's a really good impression. Don't ask me about Star Wars. I don't give a shit. Oh, dear. So, John, if they want to see

potentially a more in-depth review of Captain America for a new world, where can they find you? They can find me letterboxed at Big Jombowski, Overwood. Wang, what's going on in the world of Captain Exploity?

Legally, I'm not allowed to talk about it. It's the secret. Secret wang. Secret wang. Aneesia dick. Close relative of amnesia dick. First time. Just buy my book.

There you go. It's on Amazon. Buy it. It's pretty good or bad. Dependent. Just buy it. You can burn it. I don't care.

All right. And I've got another podcast called Large Old Cup. It is a stream of consciousness slash spoken word storytelling podcast. And yeah, give it a go. until then if you're watching us on YouTube check us on Spotify, Spotify, check us on YouTube. We're going to go for now, though, because

we have things to do. Busy people. There are a lot of stuff to do. A lot of people to kill. I mean, not kill. I got to look up a recipe for some, what egg custard? What was it?

Yeah, egg custard. That's just custard. Love custard. Egg custard. Listen, it's been really gross. All of our episodes are gross. It's becoming that way. That will make them so good. It's delicious.

I thought it was all the pineapple you were eating. Best part of it, too. All right, bye, everybody. All right, see you later. Bye-bye. Goodbye. Et cetera.