The Weekly Planet - 136 Big DC Changes & Defunct Comic Book Universes 2!

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

This week Mason recounts some more cancelled comic book universes! All the classics you neither remember or love, they’re back for this very special episode that’s pretty much a regular episode. We also talk the new trailers for Ghostbusters and Star Trek Beyond, Star Wars Episode VIII getting a title, Tetris the movie, changes over at DC, a Harley Quinn movie and more! Thanks for listening.You can find the X-Men DOFP Commentary on Patreon here: patreon.com/MrSundayMovies or via bandcamp here: https://weeklyplanetpod.bandcamp.com/5:19 Star Trek Trailers11:04 MacGyver & Lethal Weapon Trailers14:58 Star Wars Episode 8 Title16:41 Michael Keaton joins Spider-man Homecoming18:16 Ghostbusters Trailer 221:39 Iron Man 3 villain changed23:18 Transformers The Last Knight title reveal25:14 Tetris The Movie27:26 Geoff Johns more control over the DCU29:48 Harley Quinn and Birds Of Prey Movie30:55 Suicide Squad well received34:04 DC Rebirth Spoilers37:47 Cancelled Comic Book Universes1:30:50 What We Reading/What We Gonna Read1:33:08 Letters It’s Time For LettersBuy the Rogue Cut of X-Men: Days of Future Past on Amazon: https://amzn.to/326ok8rPatreon: patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesMr Sunday Movies YouTube Channel: https://goo.gl/lB90W2The Weekly Planet YouTube Channel: https://goo.gl/1ZQFGHFind our T-Shirts here: https://goo.gl/q6gE9C Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Weekly Planet, official podcast of ComicBookMovie.com where we talk movies, comics, TV shows. My name is James, also known as Mr. Sunday. With me as always is my co-host Nick Mason. It's me. I bloody nailed that. Yes. Thank you.

Yeah. First time I was actually kind of stunned. Like, oh, perfect. Hey, before we get started, quick shout out. Yep. Actually, I've got two things to mention before we get started. All right. Number one, thanks to listener Cal Spurr on Twitter who pointed out that we are now both on Akinator the web genie.

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. Which for anybody who doesn't know is you think of somebody We are now both on Akinator, the web genie. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. Which for anybody who doesn't know is you think of somebody and you go on this, I think it's an app as well, and it asks you a series of questions and it narrows it down until it comes up with the person you're thinking of. And I guess it's user-submitted people in there, mostly famous people, but now we're also on it.

We're bottom rung, but we made it. Yeah, exactly. What's weird is it's quite, because I'm like, oh, if I'm on there, I should figure out. It's actually kind of difficult to guess yourself when you're on there. Because you know too much about yourself. I know too much about myself. And it's like, is this person famous? And I'm like, well, no.

But if I'm on this, then I don't know. Where's the bottom rung famous button? I'll be like, is this person married? And I'm like, well, I know the answer. But do they know the answer? That's right, yeah. You're trying to get ahead of the system. You can't do it.

You can't. Second thing, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about a podcast that I like a lot called Do Go On. It's a couple of friends of mine, and they do a report on something while the other, one person does a report, and the other two members of the podcast sort of try and drag them down with unnecessary questions.

Absolutely. And they're badgering. And Jess, who is normally on the show, is touring for the Comedy Festival show. She couldn't be there. So they got me in and I did an episode on the Marvel Universe. And you wore her yellow sweater. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right.

Did you actually wear it? No, that's mine. You son of a bitch. Anyway, it's on iTunes. I did give it a listen. I really enjoyed it. Actually, because you talk about the history of comics. A little bit, yeah.

And all these kind of interesting twists and turns that happen along the way and the stuff that happened between Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and who created certain characters and shake-ups at DC and Marvel and how Marvel nearly went bankrupt a couple of times and selling filing cabinets. A bunch of times. I learned some stuff and I never learn anything. So if that's something to go by.

Now, I should let you know that I did go off like two pages of notes and a lot of half-remembered things. So I probably got some things wrong, but I don't want to hear about it. Do not email in. I'll tell you what though.

Yes. I want to hear about it. Okay, great. No, I don't. I don't want to know. I don't want to know. But I'll tell you what I do want to know, Mason.

I want to know what you thought of the new Star Trek Beyond trailer too. Every time I hear that it's called Star Trek Beyond, I think of that old Madness song that goes, One step beyond, except I hear Star Trek Beyond. It's one of those. It's one of those old Scar songs. Sure, yeah.

You know? Yeah. Is that good for you, though? Is that a good thing? Well, no, I have a fun little chuckle. Excellent. You know what? Again, the last trailer we saw saw for this you're the only one who liked it the only one who liked it it was that kind of guardians of the galaxy-esque yeah it's fun action-packed and

there's a motorbike and there's dirt bikes there was still a dirt bike in this one there was shorter though this was this was a much this one was much more serious in tone yeah more of an impression of what was what was going on there. Look, I'm not super concerned about this movie being bad. I think it'll be exactly what the other ones have been. For me, that trailer didn't work. This trailer, though, I thought was a lot better and gave you kind of a better idea of what direction the movie would go

and the villains and things like that. And spoiler alert, the Enterprise is destroyed. Again. Again. No, this new one hasn't been destroyed yet, has it? No. But as is tradition, every few movies you're destroying Enterprise down. That's right.

So some kind of... Looks like some kind of nanobot force. I don't know what's going on there. It could even be like... I think they're bigger than what they look. Yeah, these buildings... Because you see them go through and you see them up close and they're like car-sized. I think they might be like individual...

Fighters. Like fighter planes or something like that. i think they might be like individual uh fighters like fighter planes okay like that like suicide fighters or something i don't know but yeah i mean this is it's a very interesting villain i guess is it a new is it a new species i've never seen it before but i mean who's to say you're not to say that's that's for sure no i'm many many years behind on star trek yeah yeah but speaking of did you see there was also a teaser a very short teaser for the CBS series, the new one? No. It's got a new cast, new crew.

They haven't specified whether it's going to be set in the new continuity or the old one or even what time period it's in. Okay. What do the uniforms look like? Nothing. It's just like – Oh, nothing. They're naked.

They're naked. Wow. That is the far future, I think. That's right, yeah. They don't have Mack Weldon in the future, unfortunately. Everybody's naturally antimicrobial in the future. It's a spray, yeah. Oh, great.

Yeah. So you don't get any look at any... No, it's just like a logo and you fly through a solar system or whatever. I don't want it to be in the past. I don't want another Enterprise. I want to move forward. Me too. I'd like much further in the future.

I need to go back and watch every episode of the john lick picard series what's it called next generation i was gonna say generations that's the movie yeah because what i've seen of it i've seen like bits and pieces that is a big commitment there are a lot of episodes but apparently it's from what i've heard it's a really like especially for the time like the budget is incredible uh you know the effects for the time so it's like the 80s, 90s or whatever. But I've heard it's got some really interesting kind of philosophical stories and questions about what it means

to be a person or an alien or like a robot, yeah. What I'd probably recommend is I'm sure there is, go online and search for like Star Trek Next Generation. What are the good ones? What are the good ones? Exactly. There'll be one that'll be like, okay, here's the viewing order and here's all the important, you know, saga episodes

and here's the important, you know, here's the standout dramatic episodes or whatever and here's the space battle episodes and you can find it. You don't have to watch them all. You don't need to watch the second episode about Data learning about emotions. Yeah, or learning to play the violin or whatever he did. That's right.

Great stuff. I was going to because with every time i watch an old every time i watch like enterprise or something like that or you know the the movie set in the old continuity or the the movie set in the past yeah i'm always like if you waited a couple years that you could have just done that with a transporter. Right. You could have just. Absolutely. I think that was the problem with Enterprise as well because they were like, the hyper, not hyperdrive, sorry, the warp drive doesn't work and nothing, you know, who cares? I don't care about any of that. Not that I even really saw that show. Enterprise does have its fans.

I think it would be a mistake though, not to put this, not to somehow tie it to the movies and just have it as a crew that kind of runs parallel with the current crew. Okay, sure. Whether it be past or present or whatever, but I think you need to have it loosely connected because I think the way to go would be to connect the entire universe over TV and movies. Because if you go, okay, well, this is...

Like from a marketing perspective, Mason, I'm talking purely financially. Brand synergy. Brand synergy. Who cares about the story? Just sell some toys but yeah i mean i guess if you said it after next generation deep space nine voyager yeah people would go okay what continuity is this yeah you need i think maybe you could set it in the post those yeah but you

would need to have some flashbacks to the new movies so you need to make sure wharf turns up every fourth episode has to be in every Star Trek. Also, that's the thing. Potentially there is no more future in the original timeline. Well, I'm presuming that this second one's like an offshoot. It's a branching timeline. Because I think the idea was that that original continuity still exists. It hasn't wiped out.

Exactly. And that's how they kind of got around upsetting people they still upset people speaking about speaking about branching timelines and upsetting people ghostbusters yeah there's a new one out because again that the star trek the star trek reboot would have upset a lot of people yeah but again they very cannily went okay this is set in a separate universe. We've shown you the event that branches off, but all the original stuff is technically still there. So we've invalidated none of it. You can still have your favorite episodes and they still exist,

even though they're fictional and none of them really do exist. Data can't really play the violin. Or the cats, whichever musical instrument he played in the future. I don't know. But yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Before we get to the Ghostbusters, do you want to talk about the Lethal Weapon and MacGyver trailer, I don't know. But yeah. Yeah, fair enough. Before we get to the Ghostbusters, do you want to talk about the Lethal Weapon and MacGyver trailers?

Oh, yeah, briefly, yeah. I just watched the MacGyver one. Yeah, so these came out, I guess, both came out in the last couple of days. I really like the Lethal Weapon one and hate the MacGyver one. You were the opposite. Look, I don't like either of them, if I'm honest. The MacGyver one I found particularly amusing when they're like,

this guy can do anything. He says something like, my dad taught me that everything I need is all around me at all times. And the example they show of that is he pulls a garden hose and a bad guy like trips down some stairs. Yeah, nice.

And at the end you see him like firing like a missile arrow. Like you'd think you'd show that after he says, you know, everything's right in front of you. But you've got to save that till the end. Also, it's kind of weird, like, because MacGyver...

It's not a mullet? Well, yeah, MacGyver traditionally doesn't kill people. He doesn't use guns. Like, that's one of his rules. Yeah, sure, yeah. But also, again, it's this... If you shoot an exploding arrow in front of a truck and it flips and explodes, same thing. You might as well have had a gun.

I find it odd, this particular setting, because it seems to be like he's just this regular guy. It's the guy who plays Havoc in X-Men First Class. In the X-Men. Yeah. He's in the Apocalypse as well. Yeah, but so he seems to be working for this. The odd part is that they just seem to be putting him in situations. Surely...

Get her to this hospital. Because he's a guy, even though he's a guy who can make weapons and equipment out of anything, give him some equipment. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Why is he just a guy? Why is he rocking up in a flannel? He's just a guy.

Exactly. He's just a guy with no haircut and in a flannel, and he's just wandering in and tripping people with garden hoses and building bombs or whatever. Give him some stuff. Imagine how good he'd be if he had some stuff. Yeah, right? He'd be Batman.

Yeah. And that never struck me with the originals, but it just seems to be like... Especially at this age. Yeah, right? It seems to be they've... You don't want to give him a key card scanner or something? Something, anything, right?

Or a gun? A little iPhone that's got some stuff on it yeah maybe he's he's like i can't rely on tech i only rely on myself and these garden hose i always carry with me right just in case yeah maybe that's what it is maybe lethal weapon though it's pretty balls see i think it missed the point of the original lethal weapon which was racism like subtle racism oh sure yeah no uh i don't know like who are these ones wayne's brother yeah and the other ones doesn't have the charisma of mel gibson yeah mel gibson used to have uh-huh and i love that bit at this the table where he's like oh riggs i see you've got a

wedding ring are you married married married tell us about your wife your wife your wife i don't know is she she alive, alive, alive? Or was she murdered, murdered, murdered? You've gone silent. But see, that's the thing. You're right. But at the same time, how good did it look? Not very good.

No, but in terms of like effects and like it looks. Yeah, I guess. It leaps from car to car. This isn't going to do well. It flips a thing. Who knows? It won't. Do you know they made a Beverly Hills Cop pilot with Eddie Murphy as the chief?

No. That they never released? Yeah. Yeah. So I think this is going to go. I think they're just going to go keep jumping show to show. Like 80s property to 80s property. Like from car to car.

Yeah, exactly like that. Like Riggs. Like Riggs. And then I guess, you know what? They did kind of nail his kind of, he's the loosest unit. They kind of nailed that. They did. But I don't know.

I don't care about any of these. Look, I wasn't convinced by his facial hair. I wasn't convinced by anyone's facial hair in this. Sure, in any of them. But I have some faith. Look, you know what? I don't have any faith in it, but I'll watch the first one because to me it kind of looks fun.

Good for you. Except for, again, the parts about your wife. Your wife, your wife, your wife. Do you need that heated up all right i'll put some glad wrap on it on it on it you can take it home to your wife what then the flashback so star wars has a this there was some leaked star wars stuff this week we've got a close look at Rogue One. Yep. Do you see any of that stuff? No, but I did get that – I did get that – those photos of Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver,

and Mark Hamill arriving on set or arriving at London or something like that. And it's Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver with, like, you know, sunglasses on and they've got the hoodies over their heads and they're like, no photos, please. And there's just photos of Mark Hamill like, hey! He's like finger gunning everybody like, I'm here, look at me! This is how you do it. Good for him, man.

Yeah, it's pretty good. What a champion. He's got another bloody shot, mate. Not that he ever kind of, like he was always doing stuff, but he's bloody back in a massive film. Good for him. So yeah, the Rogue One stuff was just like, these are the characters and Darth Vader's kind of confirmed and whatever.

And there was also a scene supposedly leaked for the Force Awakens, not Force Awakens, for the episode eight, which I won't detail. But if it's true, which it may not be, it sounds pretty awesome. But the leaked title, which may or may not be the title, unconfirmed, is called Star Wars Fall of the Resistance. Oh, pretty good. So that's very Empire Strikes Back. Pretty good. Yeah. And it's a lot better Star Wars Fall of the Resistance. Oh, pretty good. That's very Empire Strikes Back. Very good.

Yeah. And it's a lot better than your Attack of the Clones. I loved that movie. No, that movie's not, that's not a good movie, is it? You're thinking of literally anything else. I'm thinking of other movies, aren't I? You are, yeah. So you're okay with that, Fall of the Resistance?

Yeah, sounds good. Me too, I'm okay with it. Bit of a tease. Bit of a tease. Bit of a nibble. Yeah, it sounds good. Me too, I'm okay with it. Bit of a tease. Bit of a tease. Bit of a nibble. Yeah. But you know, the name of the movie

doesn't necessarily mean anything. I mean, it does in terms of that's what it's called. Sure, yeah. It doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a good or bad movie

unless it's called Attack of the Clones. We don't know how many clones are going to be attacking. No, not yet. Maybe tons, maybe none. Yeah. Michael Keaton is reportedly

back in talks to play the villain in Spider-Man Homecoming. Huh, because he was in, then he was out. He was in, then he was out. He was in, everybody was like, is he going to be the vulture because he looks real old and he's like, how dare you, I'm out. Who else can he play?

Yeah, that's right. Is he going to be Aunt May? No, actually, he can't be. They already cast Aunt May, didn't they? They did. And she's not that old. But you want to see love interest, don't you? You want to see what they used to do with the 60s comics

where Aunt May would accidentally date Doctor Octopus. Doctor Octopus, yeah, absolutely. Oh, Peter, I've met this nice young man. Oh, we're going so well. And he's like, it's Doctor Octopus. So the directors kind of pretty much confirmed this because he put something on Twitter about Keaton. Maybe they're still kind of, you know, I was going to say chastising him.

They're still... Keeping him in a chastity belt. That's right. He's a wild man. He is. But apparently with this new version of the Vulture, he's going to have tech that's built by the Tinkerer. Okay.

Oh, so it's definitely going to be the Vulture. Yeah. Well, this is all rumor. None of this is true. We have no insider information. You know that about the show. Correct, yes. And apparently that's going to all be from all like Chitauri Tech.

That's an interesting kind of connection. So that'd be pretty good. How are they going to power that Chitauri Tech? Because for the most part it doesn't work. Yeah, but some people can get it to work. Some people get it to work. The tinkerer makes all sorts of toys and gadgets and little bits and bobs, doesn't he? Correct, yes.

So I'm sure he's probably got something for it. Probably tinker with it a little bit. I don't doubt it. Happy with that, Keaton? And then he'll turn to the camera and wink. Yeah. Just going to tinker with it. That's right.

Pretty good. Anything else to say about that? No. Good. Let me think. No. Ghostbusters reboot. Yep, another trailer.

It's called Ghostbusters Maybe Answer the Call Now because that's at the end of the trailer. No. I don't know whether you think that's just the tagline yeah no I think that's just the tagline do you think it's a mistake to just call it

flat out Ghostbusters I mean a lot of this seems to upset a lot of people I think there's been maybe a few mistakes along the way it seems in the eyes of a lot of people

and I think that also again this is I think a movie we've seen too much of already yeah because now like and I think this maybe this we've seen too much of already. Yeah. Because now, like, and I think maybe this last one is some sort of attempt at damage control.

Like, you hate everything that has come out so far. We know that. But if we throw in slime, you'll like it. Maybe if we show you the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, you'll like it. But I think people are going to be like, well, now you've just shown us. Like, I think if you tricked everybody into going in yeah and then they saw these things they've been like oh pleasant surprise that look at good slimer looks okay you know whatever yeah yeah but i don't i think the people who are already set to hate this movie are going to continue to hate it forever

yeah yeah i'm so i made a video on it i'm so tired of i'm saying i'm so, I made a video on it. I'm so tired of. I'm so indifferent and tired. I just wanted to come out. And people will stop talking about it. Exactly. Forget about it. James Rolfe, the angry video game nerd. Yes, saw that, yeah. He resolved to never see it. Yeah.

Which is fine, whatever. Right, but at the same time, like, it is fine, but who cares? But I mean, just back in the day, you'd just not see a movie. You didn't have to make a video about it. The thing about James Rolfe is he's, I actually, I genuinely like him. He does a lot of great work. I think a lot of the time, and if you look at a lot of his old videos, he hates continuity.

Is that a delicious Coke you're drinking? It is. We're not sponsored by them. Pour it out. Pour it out. Not into your mouth. No, my mouth is naturally anti-microbial. Oh, okay.

That's fine uh like he's very particular about continuity and like he likes things to have labels on the outside if they reboot something don't call it the same name because like he doesn't like how the new thing was called the thing and i think this that's also got a lot to do with this as well like like he's very kind of particular in that way i don't't think he hates women or is anti-feminist. Yeah, but it's his call. If he doesn't want to see it, I don't give a shit. Yeah, well, exactly, yeah.

Good for him, man. Are you going to see it knowing that we will see it for this? Yeah, but I mean, I'd see it anyway. Yeah. I just want to know. I don't think it's going to be amazing. I don't even know if it's going to be good. Yeah.

Look, I have said in the past, if you can't get a 90-minute movie compacted down into two minutes and have a good trailer, it's probably not very good. But I'm going to say, as a corollary to that, that doesn't seem to apply to Paul Feig movies. Yeah, his trailers are genuinely not great. Terrible. Bridesmaids was like, look, it's The Hangover, but it's with chicks, and it wasn't. No.'s the hangover but it's with chicks and it wasn't

no and it's like spy look terrible and it wasn't the heat looked terrible but it wasn't yeah so since you mason oh you're bloody feminist i'm a feminist in many ways yeah i'll say it yeah look again we've yeah so there's now we've got now two videos on this then i guess yes you've just done a new one yeah we talked about it last time yeah just it might be good it might be terrible i'm fully prepared to go to watch it and go you know what i hate it it's good or bad or whatever but until i see it there's no way of knowing well you're wrong that's true i am wrong yeah shane black came out this week because uh the nice guys is hitting cinemas that's Really looking forward to seeing that. I haven't seen it yet.

Is it also set at Christmas? Couldn't tell you. Okay. Because I haven't seen it. You don't listen, Mason. No, no, no. You can definitively say a thing about a movie without having seen it. I forgot that.

But yes, it's definitely set at Christmas. He says that, he's speaking about Iron Man 3 and he's talked a little bit about the Mandarin and how like he said that, you he said that he understands that people are upset because they wanted the Mandarin to come in with laser rings and whatever and they didn't get that. But he also said that originally he wanted the Iron Man 3 villain to be female, but Ike Perlmutter vetoed it because he said it wouldn't sell toys.

Because you know how all those Guy Pearce action figures just flew off the shelves. Oh, my Ben Kingsley bobblehead. Yeah. Ew, it says. I think that would have been, look, I don't like Iron Man 3 particularly. There's parts of it I like,

but I think it would have been maybe interesting if maybe Rebecca Hall's character turned out to be more villainous because she was just kind of here and then she dies, maybe? I don't even remember. But they probably sold about the same amount of action figures. I think so. I'd imagine.

But yeah, I mean, it's done. I don't think that would have saved that movie, but I think that's just an interesting mindset. Yeah. Because I think Marvel are now kind of moving away from that because they locked Ike Perlmutter in that box.

Is that right? They sure did. Yeah. So that's really interesting. They blocked him in a box. They dropped it in the bottom of the ocean. I mean, he'll get out eventually. Yeah.

Because he's very good at that sort of thing. But hopefully they've got about three more movies under that. Yeah, right. Speaking of movies, that's this show. Yeah, great. And sometimes TV, isn't it? Yeah, we do that. Transformers 5.

Sometimes we talk about comic books. Transformers 5 has a name and a teaser trailer to show that it's happening. Yep. It's called The Last Knight K with a K. No, surely not. Why would I make that up? Oh, no. Okay, fair enough.

So you're not happy with it? Is Optimus Prime the last knight? I think he was. Because he's always everything, right? He's always everything. He's the one and he's not. He's the dark of the moon. He's the dark spark or the all spark.

He's the fallen. Yeah, he's the matrix. He's the last prime. He's the first prime. He's the he's the matrix yeah he's the last prime he's the first prize surprise jetpack man he's got stanley tucci's mate yeah he's like the jesus of the franchise because he comes back no but sometimes shiloh booth is also the jesus that's true but he's gone so this is optimus prime definitively jesus maybe then shiloh booth was the john the baptist okay sure okay so he had some skillsouf was the John the Baptist in the franchise and Optimus Prime is the Jesus

so he had some skills but he was no Jesus not all the skills or Optimus Prime in this case okay so I think this one has the Quintessons

is that what they're called yeah okay who in depending on which continuity of the Transformers you like none they create

well then it doesn't matter but in the cartoon version the quintessence who appear in transformers the movie they got the spinny heads you got the spinny faces or whatever yes they do yeah i remember that they created the transformers excellent why don't i couldn't tell you i'm sure they'll explain it yeah in great detail it'll be amazing do you care about this movie at all uh look we'll see it eventually won't we yeah yeah four was marginally better than two and three maybe so maybe this maybe this is the fast and furious maybe this is the number five once again but michael bay's doing this system this system we established which has never been proven right, is the fifth movie

the return to form of the franchise. And it gets good again. Which has worked literally once, which is Fast and Furious. That's right. It's got to happen again at some point though, right? You'd hope so, yeah. So, $80 million has been put towards a joint effort of Chinese and US production companies

that will bring a Tetris film to the big screen described as an epic sci-fi thriller. Waste of money. Sorry. Epic waste of money. Epic sci-fi thriller. Yeah.

What are they thinking? They have to build a wall around the city and then a monster runs into it, but they're going to build it quickly. And maybe they don't have the long bit until the end. Yeah, the long bit never arrives when you want it to arrive, does it? Yeah. Almost like it knows. That's right.

What do you do with this? Actually, you know what? Don't tell me because we shouldn't give them any ideas. No ideas for them. They dug their own grave. That's what they're doing. They're just listening to podcasts. They're watching videos, watching the YouTube,

trying to find out an idea for this. Give them nothing, people. Give them nothing. You're absolutely right. Dug their own grave. This is, I mean, people laughed at Battleship, but this is like. Pixels? After Pixels.

I think Pixels did Tetris, didn't they? I haven't seen it. Yeah, they did Space Invaders. The Millipede one? What's it called? Centipede? Yeah, no, Millipede. I think there was a Millipede.

I'm sure there was. Yeah. Do you know there was a Mrs. Pac-Man? It was Ms. Pac-Man. They're not married? Living in sin. Don't approve. Wow.

Maybe that's the plot. Maybe it is. So, look. I think Ms. Pac-Man was just like, okay, we need a sequel to Pac-Man. Like, legitimately legitimately they're like yeah should we make more maps or whatever and they're like no i just put a put a bow on it yeah and then we can just put the bow down underneath and pac lady no ms pac-man ms pac-man yeah you can make that a bow tie as well and call it like i don't know fancy pac-man

all right good stuff oh yeah actually there's one more bit of news before we... We've got two sponsors for this week, which means we're very fortunate, Mason. I think so, yeah. In terms of money. Oh, here's a little bit of news. Okay, go on. No, it's not real news.

New DC logo. Oh, what do you think? It's part of their... You hate the old one, eh? It's part of their constant restructuring and damage control. As part of their controlled tailspin to death, they've decided to bring out a new logo. It looks a lot better.

Let's talk DC movies. I want to talk comics, which we will, because there's been some stuff happening with the DC Rebirth. But there has been a shake-up at Warner Brothers where there's been a whole lot of restructuring where people who already had the titles they had still have them, but maybe Geoff Johns has more control now over the DC universe. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, he's getting some film control now or something like that. Yeah, which he kind of had, but I think now they went, maybe we should listen to the guy who probably knows something about this universe. Right, yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. I don't hate that at all.

Neither do I. Just a bit of direction wouldn't hurt at all. Yeah. It's good to have,, unique perspectives on each film, but it's good to have, you know, it's the Kevin Feige kind of thing where you need that person. You need one guy who's passionate about it. But also understands it.

Yeah. Not some bloody bean counter, Mason. Exactly. Get at the bottom of the ocean. Get in the Perlmutter box. Get in the Perlmutter trench. That's what we're calling it. So that's exciting.

But also, or it's, you know. Yeah. And again, look, I've criticized Geoff Johns in the past. Yeah. Because of the way he looks. Yeah. Some would say that's not his fault, but I say no. He's actually a very handsome man.

I guess. He looks after himself. I bet he can do 30 push-ups. I bet he could. But I could do 30 push-ups right now. You don't have to. You added a lot of coke. You probably bobbed on my carpet.

You're a bear skin rug. That's what you have in here. Yeah, my problem, you know, he's a great writer, but I've had a minor issue with his writing in the past insofar as because he grew up with a certain era of superheroes yeah as soon as he got the opportunity to write those superheroes he sort of brought them all back to the status quo kind of thing like there was like when he started writing on justice society there were certain characters that had kind of moved on yeah but since he wanted to sort

of play with the toys as he originally remembered them he sort of reverted a lot of characters back to their original and that kind of annoyed me. Right, right. And I feel that is kind of DC's failing as they keep wanting, they don't let the characters evolve, they just have to keep them as the status quo. But I guess if you're doing movies, if you want to establish a universe, you want somebody who's like,

here's my ideas and we're not going to deviate from these. Yeah, absolutely. Good, I'm glad you agree. If that's what you were saying to deviate from these. Yeah, absolutely. Good. I'm glad you agree. If that's what you were saying. I agree with that. Okay, good. Margot Robbie is apparently, this is a rumor,

is to produce and star in a Harley Quinn movie. Oh, yes. That was probably part of her deal initially, I'd imagine. There was also been rumors of like a Birds of Prey movie as well, which would be probably better than that show, which was the worst show. Definitely, absolutely. Yeah, so that's pretty cool.

I'm okay with all of that. Yeah. Would you have like a, where would the Birds of Prey movie be set? Like, would it be? France. Oh, I meant more when. Like, would you want Fat Girl and the Birds of Prey?

I think you'd have to go that way. I think you'd do it that way. Or would you want Oracle? Oh, yeah, good question. Do we have an Oracle in this universe? We don't know. I think we probably... Oh, actually, we don't know.

What's her name? She's in Bloody Hunger Games. She's got red hair. Jenna Malone was willing to play Barbara Gordon. Okay. But we don't know whether she's Oracle or Batgirl or whatever. I'd say it seems as if Batman's been doing this for 20 years. She's Oracle now.

And, yeah, I would say the killing joke already happened that's true but also we have batgirl back in the dc universe but what if they change also dc rebirth so maybe we don't know we don't know where everything's at uh so also just quickly this is just a rumor as well suicide squad apparently has done some test screenings and it's been really well received okay which may or may not be true. Who knows? But that's- Certain other properties were also very well received in previews and were not so well received. But also, other properties were well received in previews

and were also well received critically. Critical reviews, yep. And well received. Microbial. The point is, it's not really news, but it's not bad news, is it? That's true, yeah. So that's it. Yeah. Mason, we've? That's true, yeah. So that's it. Mason, we've got a topic for this week.

Oh, very good. We're going to talk about cancelled comic book universes again, aren't we? Because we didn't get through all of them last time. There are so many. You bloody banged on too much and we had to cut it short. I talk a lot, yeah. I didn't like it, quite frankly. Wow, sorry.

I'm glad we're back. But leading into that, what a good way to lead into it. Oh, by the way, we're doing X-Men next week, aren't we? Yes, we are, Apocalypse, yeah. Which, in a way, to lead into it. Oh, by the way, we're doing X-Men next week, aren't we? Yes, we are, Apocalypse. Which in a way is a cancelled comic book universe sort of. I thought it would be a fun way to shoehorn this topic in. Correct. Is because it's a universe.

A comic book universe. Well, I have an even funner way, Mason. Great, let's do it. DC Rebirth. Spoilers. Yes. These are all out Wednesday. So if you don't want to know anything about the new DC Rebirth

and how they're shaking up the universe, bugger off, mate. I'll put a time code in the bottom. You can bloody skip ahead. So these are some of the things that are apparently come out of what's going to be in the new DC Rebirth. I cannot wait. Here we go. Bearing in mind, these are like initial issues. I don't know necessarily whether these things are good or bad

or how it's going to play out. These are just some facts that I have that aren't connected to anything. Can I make some guesses? Absolutely. Batman, about the same. Yes. They generally never change Batman. Yeah, he's about the same.

Because he makes the most money. Well, if you look at New 52 Batman, he's got all the history of previous Batman. They just compacted the years. Yeah, they never changed Batman. They changed Superman a lot. Yeah, okay, Superman. I can tell you what happened to Superman.

Okay. Right. Let's do it. I think they killed New 52 Superman. They killed him? They bring back original classic recipe Superman. Are they going to kill the new Superman though? The new, new one?

Is he going to literally die? I think they do. Or are they just going to brush him away? I think they kill him. Okay. Sure. I like him. He's been a bit arrogant.

Yeah. Are his underpants back on the outside are they back i couldn't tell you that mason that's a very good it's all waste up photos it's all waste up yeah i probably could go check there's three jokers so there's original joker killing joke joker new 52 joker not sure how that factors in do they work together sounds overly complicated good work dc you've done it again who sits in the front if they've got a car, if they're all in a car? Not Killing Joke Joker, probably. He's in the back, I think. Probably polishing a gun or something.

Probably. And he's all... Because he's probably in a Hawaiian shirt of some kind. He's just cruising along. He's taking it easy. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, fair enough.

Probably, you know what? Probably the original Joker's probably driving because he can probably drive stick because he's from like the 50s. Exactly, yeah. He had to be able to drive stick. Yeah, a new 52 Joker is navigating. Yes. Because he's got the iPhone.

He's got the iPhone. Brilliant, we did it. Wonder Woman has a twin brother called Jason. Jason Woman. Great. And this is the bit that's blowing people's minds. The three Jokers isn't blowing people's minds? That's overly complicated

if you ask me no one did but i'm saying weird don't like it dr manhattan from the watchman yes is responsible for the rebirth which also makes the watchman now canon in the new dc universe they exist so which means that i guess they'll be ongoing characters to some extent or they'll i'll kill them off immediately that's uh that's some dangerous ground that i mean they've already done before watchman so they kind of i don't think people if we hadn't seen before watchman and then this happened i think this would have been like people would have flipped out more but because they already kind of not so the the watchman characters going to be in this universe though i believe so is it going to be a parallel well that's a good question how many

universes are there now because we've gone from one originally to two to three to an infinite number yeah to one to hyper time to 52 now where are we i don't know i think they'll probably just have regular earth and like the one where there's like the bad Justice League I'm sure yeah I couldn't tell you I dropped off

most of the new DC the new 52 stuff like I kept up with Batman and a few bits and pieces but I don't care about the continuity I just want to read

good stories and I don't want to read stories where I have to read other stories to understand the stories that's what I think what do you think? I agree with everything you've ever said thank you jerk oh trap in a web

of logic but look we'll see how that plays out this wednesday won't we in the meantime yeah you've got some bloody cancelled comic book movies to bloody talk about. Let's talk about them. Not movies, universes. Universes, yeah. We talked about this in episode, you know what, I figured it out. It's episode 101. Well, I didn't figure it out. I went back and I had a look. You figured it out.

It's episode 101. Got his abacus. And because I'm like, what if I just talk about all the stuff that I talked about in the previous episode? Which we are prone to do. Yeah, we are prone to do. So I went back and I re-listened to it and I i uh came up with some other ones that uh we haven't uh talked about i'm very excited for this i always learn something yeah so last time uh for those who are uh keep catching up uh last time we talked about uh we talked about the ultimate universe marvel's

ultimate universe good stuff the valiant universe and later the acclaimed universe we talk about supreme power good stuff we talk about techno comics which of course featured uh a series of half-baked ideas that famous creators came up with i guess over the phone or wasn't it just like it's merlin but it's the future like it's just yeah it was like look at leonard leonard nimoy came up with dinosaurs but they're from space and they wear suits of armor. And Mickey Spillane came up with his character, Mike Hammer, except it was in the future and he was called Mike Danger and he had a bloody ray gun or whatever. And, of course, the Malibu universe, the Malibu Ultraverse.

Yes. Which was a pretty great one. Which spawned the Malibu Barbie. Yeah. Okay, so let's go with some other stuff. How many have we got? You know what? I've got five written down here. pretty great one which spawned the malibu barbie yeah okay so let's go with some other stuff so um how many we got uh you know what i've got five written down here so we'll see if i can think of enough things to say about them and then we'll see how we go so i think last time we talked about

them we talked about uh like some high and low points about each of them and then like whether or not i'd like to see them come back like maybe if you you know if you if you want to go back and check some of them out yeah what you know maybe what issues you'd like if you want to go back and check some of them out, maybe what individual issues you'd like to go for. Yeah, sure. So the first one I probably want to talk, because last time we talked about a Marvel spinoff, The Ultimate Universe, I thought maybe this time we could talk about The New Universe.

Okay. Which was 1986's, in 1986 Marvel had an editor-in-chief called Jim Shooter, who was kind of a megalomaniac. Nobody liked him. Sounds great. Yeah, he sounds great, right? So in, yeah, but he had this idea in 1986 for this new universe, which he called The World Outside. Look, in public it was called The World Outside Your Door

because it was meant to be like, okay, in the Marvel universe there's hundreds of superheroes and hundreds of supervillains and they're just flying about in New York City and blowing stuff up and people are kind of like, hey, Spider-Man, whatever. Like nobody, like it's kind of, it's just day-to-day activity. Yes. And the idea behind this was, wouldn't it be amazing if, like how would the world react if superheroes arrived in the real world?

Right, right. It was like, okay, this is going to be the real world. That never been done before well see that's the thing it kind of hadn't at that time it kind of had a bit like this was this was kind of new territory sure so he was like okay this is the real world so every month that passes in the comic books a month is going to pass in the real world and right and there's going to be no there's going to be no they said you know what they they set a whole bunch of rules and then set apart dismantling them almost immediately. So they were like, there's not going to be any aliens. There was aliens.

There's not going to be any magic. There was magic. So what kind of superheroes and supervillains are we talking about? Okay, so we had. This isn't just like Spider-Man's in the regular world. Is it new characters? Well, it was new characters, but they're very much like... They're archetypes.

They're some classic archetypes. So we had a guy called Starbrand, who was this regular guy who had like... It's like a type of bread. Starbrand bread. Yeah, the freshest. Get it at a service station. If you want.

It's very unpleasant. Get it at the Star Petrol Station. But he was like a regular guy and like an alien came down if you want. It's very unpleasant. Get another star petrol station. But he was like a regular guy and like an alien came down and gave him like the star brand. So when they said no aliens, what issue was he in? One, star brand issue one. When he got the powers. Yeah, straight away.

And yeah, and he got like, you know, your standard flying and energy beams and whatever. DP7, which was like Displaced Paranormal 7, so they were like... Like a squad? Like a squad. Like a... yes. And we also got Psi-Force, which were also basically mutants.

Two groups of mutants. But they could... Psi-Force were these people, they all had individual sort of mental powers, and then they could combine into like a flame... This thing called the Phawk which was essentially a large flaming phoenix kind of right right you see where i'm going with this there was also spitfire and the troubleshooters so spitfire was like an like a red armored suit which could fly and was very strong and had weapons built in

and the troubleshooters were like the troubleshooters were like uh like a team of mercenaries and they had like um like each had like a high-tech weapon like one of them had like a like a gauntlet that could fire laser beams and one had like like metal legs so they could run real fast and all that sort of stuff and i remember even that time as a kid i'm like why don't they just give them all the one guy and he could be the best that's great uh there's a guy called night mask who could who was um a man who would fall in and out of coma and he could be the best. That's a great one. I never did. There was a guy called Night Mask who was a man who would fall in and out of coma and he could go through people's dreams. Right.

Created by Neil Gaiman. Oh, really? Who several years later went on to some success with The Sandman. Right. So it's kind of a proto-Sandman. That's interesting. There was Mark Hazard Merck, which was basically the Punisher. Right.

Except he would go around the world shooting brown people. That was... Why brown people? Because they were the enemy in the 80s. I guess so. You know. Oh, and Kickers Incorporated, which was basically an ex-football team who are superheroes now.

I bet they're jerks. It's pretty great. Yeah, so it was like... Can you think of anything worse than taking a really popular sporting team and giving them superpowers? Like, that is the worst. They're already horrible. They're bad people.

Yeah. So anyway, like, so the, the, the impetus for the new universe, like in the story was that there was this, this thing called the white event.

Like there was this, is this their Terrigen mist? Yeah. Sort of thing. There was this flash of white light in the sky and some seconds of time just go missing and nobody knows what happens. And then it turns out some people have decided, some people have started having superpowers

and stuff like that. But I mean, yeah. Was it random? Because like say the guy who got the star brand, was that related? Yeah, that was unrelated. Although it was in a way it was related. If I can go all the way to the end.

Let's skip ahead. Yeah, so if we skip to the end, basically the reason the white event happened is because the guy, Starbrand, realizes that he doesn't want to be Starbrand anymore. It's causing too much death and destruction. So he goes into space and he attempts to, because he can sort of get the Starbrand

and he can give it to somebody else. So he decides he's going to put it on like an asteroid to kind of get rid of it. And then it exploded through time and that created the white event. What an idiot. So in a way, he created it all in the first place. But how did he get the star brand in the first place?

That's a really good question. He bloody knows. Good thing they probably answered that. It was probably an alien though. And yeah, it was kind of... Some of that sounds okay some of it does sound okay how long did this run for?

this ran for three years I think it ran till 1989 okay and you had full credit as well for making like a new thing like kicking off a new universe like that's not yeah that's true

I mean again this is I think part of the reason was this was again Jim Shooter's the editor-in-chief at the time his uh like i said but you know in in in public it was called the world outside your door he called it the shooter verse because he was like this is my this is my legacy this is my legacy this is going to be the new spider-man this is going to be the new iron man this is going to be the new x-man you can't i don't think you can start any project with that in mind because you

can't just be like i'm going to create iconic characters that's how iconic characters are made yeah it's almost like an accident and then it's like it's up to the public to to accept them or reject them right exactly but yeah i mean they were just yeah like elements of it were pretty good yeah ultimately you said neil gaiman this sounds like there's some there was some talent there was a little bit of talent yeah yeah um yes hang on i've lost my train of thought that's not good enough not not good enough exactly uh yeah but i mean it was just yeah it was like this this is gonna oh one of the things i think that i remember at the time they were like okay this is gonna be realist this is gonna be a realistic universe yeah how are we gonna make it more realistic and people like oh you're gonna make more you know

more accurate carrot you know more moreto-life characters kind of thing. They're like, no, no, we're going to eliminate speed lines. So you know when somebody's running and you see the lines behind them. So you don't know, there's no sense of movement? Well, here's the thing though, there were speed lines.

They were like almost straight away. It's just, anyway, it's a pretty great universe. Wouldn't you just say, look, we're building a new universe and these are things we're hoping to do, but we'll just see how it evolves over time as opposed to being like,

we definitively won't do this ever. Right, right. And then having to go back on it straight away. I don't know. Look, I've never created a comic universe. Yeah. But yeah, now we're like, look, you know, new universe, no cliches, whatever.

But again, it did kind of... You can't help though. There are certain tropes and things that kind of, if you're building a superhero universe, you're going to end up touching on some things that have kind of already been... That building a superhero universe, you're going to end up touching on some things that have kind of already been done. That's true, yeah. You're going to end up making Iron Man eventually, aren't you?

Yeah, yeah. But also, and I think maybe one of the things that killed it was also that they released, it started out with eight series, and they released them all at the same time. So it wasn't a case of like, okay, we'll see how this one goes. We'll build its continuity a little bit. It was like, smash, here's the universe. Everything has to adhere to this particular universe, whatever.

And you can't, again, he was, Shooter was this kind of authoritarian and I think he was like, okay, these are the rules. You can't. What is he? Is he a writer? Is he a creative person? What was his deal?

You know, I don't know. Give me a second and I'll look him up. But I had always recalled him as just kind of a... A pencil pusher. Yeah, exactly. I bet now that I think about it, he created something amazing. Let's check it out. Wow, he looks like a villain.

He looks like an evil version of Christopher Reeve. Right, right, exactly. He did some stuff on Legion of Superheroes. Oh, he's only 64. Yeah. I mean, it seemed like he was a good manager, but he was not necessarily well-loved. Sure.

Sometimes you have to, though. Yeah, and so after this, he left Marvel in 1987, so a year later. All right. And actually what happened as he left left so john burn who uh had done man of steel and he does one stuff he did some writing on the universe as well and and when jim shooter left uh marvel everybody went over to john burn's house and they built an effigy of jim shooter and they stuffed it so the story goes they stuffed it with unsold copies

of Starbrand and they set it on fire that's amazing pretty good right so was this under the Marvel brand no it was just called New Universe okay right yeah don't you think it would have done better if they just put Marvel like on the in the corner of the let me just check a cover let me just let me just check hang on oh no it's got Marvel in the car it's gone there you go. So it still didn't do well. So it must have done okay to run for three years. I guess so, yeah.

And they... I don't know. But at the same time, I guess, if you've got the success of Marvel behind you, you can sort of trial something out for a while. That's true, yeah. They also did some stuff like they... There was a couple of years after that,

after the white event, they had the black event where in the series, in the universe, Pittsburgh was destroyed. Right. And that coincidentally is Jim Shooter's hometown. That's sad enough that was related at all. It sounds related. Yeah, it sounds related, right.

And then there was a massive war kind of was all, and then it sort of just ran out of steam. If you had to recommend any or none of this, what would you recommend? I would recommend none of it, but a few years ago, Warren Ellis is one of my favourite writers. Yeah. He started a series called New Universal, all one word. Right.

And it took a lot of those concepts, but instead of making it eight different comic books that you all had to collect, it was just the one. And again, it was never finished. I think Alice lost a whole bunch of stuff in a hard drive crash, like a lot of scripts and things like that. And so the story sort of ended. But it was called New Universal and there was a spin-off called New Universal Shockfront that was also very good. Right, okay.

new universal shock front that was also very good right um they also the the how they i think the best ending for the new universe was that again they were very they weren't it was supposed to be settling tile in its own universe but it was it did exist in the marvel multiverse right right and so at one point uh uh quasar remember quasar no he had quantum bands he could he's like he was like a green lantern except there's only one of him okay uh anyway he um he traveled to the new universe and kind of got stuck in it and then he um he eventually escaped the the new universe and then it was brought to the attention of this cosmic being in the marvel universe called the stranger who's kind of like he's like the watcher but he sort of tinkers with the universe. Okay.

And experiments with people and stuff like that. And he actually basically captured the entire Earth from the new universe and sort of trapped it in a pocket dimension near his laboratory. And basically, so the Living Tribunal, who's like a god in the Marvel Universe, was like, what have you done? I'm declaring this off limits to everybody.

So it's now trapped in the Marvel Universe. And it's still in there. So the new universe still exists on its own, but the Earth containing all the characters is off limits to everybody in the entire multiverse. You cannot access it anymore. I was just looking. It seems like they've done some stuff with Starbrand in that, though.

Like, he has kind of popped back. They made an appearance in The Exiles. I don't know if you remember. No. The Exiles was like this, it was like Sliders, but for Marvel. Oh. It was a team of, it was sort of an ever-changing roster of superheroes who were going through various parallel universes

to sort of right various wrongs in the universe. roster of superheroes who would, who were going through various parallel universes to sort of right various wrongs in the universe. And at one point they do go to not the original new universe, but a variant of the new universe. Right. Like an alternate version of that. So it's not the original Starbrand. No, but it was also, it was also seemingly a world that was set in the, stuck in the eighties.

Yes. Pretty good, right? So much new coke. Yeah. Loved it. Cool. Pretty good, right? So much new coke. Yeah. Loved it. Cool. Well, that sounds interesting in terms of how it played out. Yeah.

But also uninteresting story-wise. I mean, it's just kind of generic like it was. Yeah. Don't go back. Don't go back. Got a new universal. In Warren Ellis' version, it's basically the white event was this sort of, version it's basically the the white event was this sort of there is there's uh the premise is that there's this sort of gigantic structure like this this interdimensional structure in the

universe built by some sort of forces unknown right like millions of years ago it's like this million light year across kind of web of like you know in hyperspace and when an element of it crosses over into a you know through a through a planet or through a dimension that means that that dimension is sort of going to be elevated into like a you know more a more like a like a metaphysical kind of a like an elevated plane like an evolved plane kind of thing right but in order to adapt humanity to this you know this evolved universe it has to send kind of like it has to sort of empower some individuals across the world with superpowers so they can uh so they can help humanity adjust and so one's a star brand and one's a night mask and etc etc

and it played out a lot better it made a a lot more sense. Than what you just explained. Correct. Sounds okay. Pretty good, right? Pretty, pretty, pretty okay. Pretty great, right? Yeah. Yeah. Pretty, pretty okay. Yeah.

What's the next? What do you want to talk about next? What do you got? I've got some options. I'm going to give you the Impact Universe. What else? Comics Gracious World. Continuity Comics.

Milestone Comics. It sounds like you want to talk about Milestone Comics? It sounds like you want to talk about milestone comics, but what do you want to talk about? Ah, let's go in order. Let's talk about Impact Comics. Okay. So there used to be a comic... The Impact comic characters are comic characters that...

They're from this... They're like Valiant. They're like a universe that won't die. Like, it's a bunch of characters. It's a bunch of intellectual property that has sort of gone back and forth through various companies over the years and they're to varying degrees of success

right they used to be owned by a company called MLJ Comics who later became Archie Comics and so they were the Archie Comics superheroes for a while and they would occasionally make appearances in Archie Comics

right but they would also they had their own separate universes. And then in the 90s, DC wanted to make like a more all-ages kind of comic universe because their comics were getting kind of dark and gritty at the time. So like, well, let's make one for kids. And so they contacted Archie and they licensed out all the Archie comic superheroes. Was this a temporary thing

yes okay i say that not knowing if it was and i think it was sure but it was a lending as opposed to a buying yeah it was a lending not a buying yeah exactly um and and so became the the impact universe which had it was basically they took all the names and they gave them new looks and new origins and new continuity, basically. Okay, sure. And it was this one for kids. And I was like a teen or a tween at the time. Yeah.

And it was a real good universe. Early 90s, you wouldn't have been a teen. In the 90s? In the early 90s. Oh, sure. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, go on. So what was good about this universe, I think,

is that all the characters were new and the universe was new, but they acted like it wasn't new, like it had been a universe that had existed for a while. Right, right, right. We had this modern day universe where all these superheroes started appearing, but it wasn't the first appearance of the superheroes. Like in the 50s, there was a team called the American Crusaders who had already existed and they had all sort of mysteriously disappeared. Right. And then decades had passed and there was this new breed of superheroes. And they weren't the same team.

They weren't the same. There were some shared elements. Sure. So the character, The Shield. Oh, yeah, I know The Shield. Well, The Shield predates Captain America. Really? By like a year, I think.

Oh, isn't that... You'd mentioned that's why they changed the shape of his shield. Yeah, so in Captain America's first appearance, his shield is like a medieval-style shield. Yeah, like a crest. Right, it's like a crest kind of shield. And the creators of the shield, whose kind of chest emblem is that, sort of crest shield, they were like, you have to change it.

And so he got the circular shield. But yeah, the shield sort of was the original Star Spangled American kind of superhero. Yeah. And so he was in the part of this original team of American crusaders. Yeah. Some of these characters already existed.

Someone knew that they'd said, okay, these characters existed in the 50s kind of thing. And then they were like okay well that happened in in the past but now there's a new shield like the american government have decided they're going to build a new shield so they built a new shield suit and they're like now get out and do so this is more tech and it's more this one is very much he's not a super soldier basically no he's he's just a man he's a man in a in a sort of indestructible suit with like a force field generator cool yeah and then there was yeah and there was like it was there was a sort of indestructible suit with like a force field generator.

Cool. Yeah, yeah. And there was a lot of sci-fi elements. There was a little bit of mysterious magic. But yeah, it was a lot of high-tech stuff. So one of the good elements, again, about this universe that was already set in, one of the characters that I really enjoyed, it was a character called The Web.

And he was not one man, but he was an organization. So in the 50s, they had the American Crusaders and the government's like, well, we need somebody to keep tabs on this super team. So they created an identity called The Shield, which was a guy in this golden suit of armor,

but it was actually a whole bunch of different people. And a different person would wear it every time. Every time, yeah. And so they would put him in the suit and they would go off and be like, hey, I'm the web, why don't I join your superhero team? And it was kind of like spying on the commies kind of situation. Right, right, right. But what happened is when we sort of catch up to this universe,

in the 90s when we catch up to this universe, the web, like their budget's been cut because there's been no superheroes in decades. And so it's just like they're just like doing surveillance on biker gangs and like yeah you know just like doing the occasional drug bust and like their budget is such that they can only activate their super powers for like 15 minutes at a time kind of that's really interesting that was kind of interesting and then but then all of a sudden more superheroes arrive and they're like okay you get we're gonna kind of, you know, we're

going to bring the budget back. We're going to introduce new recruits. So it was kind of like, you know, there's this old guard and one has kind of, one's gone too deep into like this undercover operation. He's like an old bikey kind of guy. Yeah. And one's like a, like a hippie. Yeah.

Because he's gone back on, like he's a pacifist now, whatever. Sure. And they have to team up with these new recruits who don't care for him and think they're old-fashioned and these aren't like clones of the same guy they're actually different yeah it's all different people it's like recruits they're like you know ex-army recruits sure and so we had like the comet who who was in like uh like an accident in the in the north pole and he gained sort of you know flight and energy beam powers and stuff like that we We had the Jaguar who had magic powers.

We had the fly who could turn into sort of an armoured fly man because of a magic amulet. It was pretty... Sounds about right. It was a bit silly, yeah. It doesn't sound like exclusively aimed at kids though. No. I mean, it was quite light-hearted.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was probably the key there But was the way it was written Was it kind of like This is too simple for adults Was it that kind of Look I'd have to go back and re-read it To tell you that

Because again It's one of those things Where your brain fills in the blanks And I'm sure I thought it was amazing Writing at the time But I bet Although there were some interesting twists I don't know if it was a deliberate kind of Playing with the form Or they just felt like writing at the time but i bet although they there were some interesting twists i don't know if it was a deliberate kind of playing with the former they just felt like it

at the time they're what they did is they introduced the first raft of superheroes yeah and then like we're going to introduce some more you know a few months down the track and one of the characters was a character called the black hood and he was like a punisher kind of character and he wore like a again like a red armored suit and he had this black hood with with red eyes and he carried a whole bunch of guns and he would make he would make it like a guest appearance he would appear in the comet and he would like you know have a shootout with the comet or whatever and then they'd come to an uneasy alliance kind of thing or whatever he's like i'm gonna you know i'm gonna make a team i'm gonna go all these superheroes together we're gonna make a team like the crusaders back in the day right yeah and then it'd be like coming in three months

black hood number one, right? And then he would make an appearance somewhere else and he would fight the, you know, the other superhero and say, I'm going to form up a team. And it'd be like, coming in two months, Black Hood number one or whatever. And it would keep going. And then in Black Hood number one, he's shot in the head and he's killed, like in the first issue. And then the hood is passed along to somebody else.

Right. And it turns out that the power was, like, it was never in him in the first place. He was just sort of a pawn of this magical hood. You put it on and it contains the skill set and the spirits of all the men who wore it beforehand. Right, right. But then the actual Black Hood series was just people getting the hood, wearing it for a while, either being terrified of what it turned them into and

giving it away or being riddled with bullets and replaced would you see them riddled with bullets was that kind of universe uh well so the the first what the first character was a guy called walt sidmanson he was the first one we saw the one who's like we're gonna i'm gonna get this team together kind of thing and he is shot in the head head. And so from that point forward, one of the Red Hoods, one of the Black Hoods' eyes is like really big because that's where he was shot. So he's got a massive blood stain in his head. It wasn't super bloody. Yeah.

It was, you know, the kind of kid level blood. That kind of sounds cool. It was kind of a fun universe. How long did it last? A couple of years. Okay. Yeah. And poor sales is what killed it. I was kind of a fun universe. How long did it last? A couple of years. Okay. And poor sales is what killed it. I was going to say, yeah.

It's generally what the case is. Yeah, that's what it normally is, isn't it? Yeah, that generally boils down to. They were going to reboot it in this storyline called The Crucible. Yeah. And it was going to be like, okay, this is going to be Impact Comics 2.0. Yeah. They're going to start it again.

But in the end, they were like, no, let's just can it. It's pretty good. But again, if you are going to read any of that, I'd probably say The Comet was my favorite. The Web, again, because it's got the fun little twist there. Little twist, mate. Little twist. Yeah, it's all pretty good.

I bet they're probably not on Comixology, I'd imagine. I'm going to check right now. All right, then. That's right. How do you like that? I'm okay with it okay good I'll also check

yeah although now they are back because again this is the universe that can't die so like a few years ago those characters were

reintegrated in the DC universe as proper so the web but again they kept the names they changed all the yeah the look and the properties

and whatever and so the web taking sort of cues from the previous version, he was like a billionaire style, you know, Bruce Wayne style guy who people would send requests for help via the web, as you might imagine. And then he would either go out himself or he would issue somebody like a suit of web armour with like a technical manual and like technical support and they could go and fight the crimes themselves.

Okay. It was pretty interesting. That's pretty cool. I like that. I know, right? Oh, there's Black Hood. Yeah, Black Hood's on here. Cool.

The Shield, yeah. Yeah, there is some of that. There is some stuff here. Yeah, and I think that went up and down kind of thing and now there is another imprint. It's called Dark Circle Comics right which is

from what I've seen very good okay there was a one of the one of the Archie comics characters called the Fox came back a few years ago

in a series called Fox Freak Magnet which is basically about him he makes this realisation that like he was just this mild mannered guy

and as soon as he puts he became a superhero all these lunatics just sort of coming out of the woodwork and attacking him and now he can't have a normal life because people are just constantly on him. Just constantly at him. Yeah, yeah.

That's pretty cool. I like that. Real good, man. I'm seeing it with the Black Hood. Like the second issue, the first issue he's got two regular sized red eyes and the second issue he's got one bigger shot. That's the bullet hole.

Yeah, that's cool. He's very kind of spawn-esque a little bit yeah i mean this is before spawn i presume or maybe not i don't know no way of knowing no there isn't that's unfortunate yeah right how about you said in order okay we'll do it in order okay we'll talk about comics Greatest World, which was Dark Horse's superhero imprint. Right. Which this came out right at the height of the comic book speculator craze. Yes. And a lot of people were like, again, a lot of people were like,

well, they're just cashing in. Right. Because I think it took them several years. They came up with the idea for Comics Greatest World several years before this speculator craze hit. But I think it took them so long to put everything together that uh people were like you're just cashing in but i think it was a coincidence all right they were already kind of doing it but basically comics greatest world was it was it was set in america but in this weird america yeah where there was like like four very strange kind of cities.

You know, the kind of cities had their own personality. What do you mean? Like the same way that Gotham Metropolis? Yeah, like that kind of thing. I think they were kind of built around, okay, we need a new Gotham, we need a new Metropolis kind of thing. So it was like Arcadia, the Golden City, Cinnabar Flat, Steel Harbor. And each one had their own superheroes,

some of which are more memorable than others. Some of which... The ones you remember. Yes, exactly. Well, some of them have lived on unexpectedly and some have just disappeared without trace. Some of them crossed over, like Dark Horse had the mask license for a while.

Right, right. So the mask met a number of these characters sure uh but yeah some of them have appeared some of them disappeared without trace um so arcadia was like was pretty much it was kind of the gotham was like all corrupt politicians and like organized crime and that sort of thing yeah um and they had they had a character called ghost whatever oh you know i'll show you some photos. Show me a picture. So that's Ghost right there. I can't really see that from here. It's just like a blue smear.

I think you might have severe visual impairment. What would I type in to see that? Dark Horse Ghost, probably. And she's kind of like a woman who believed she had died and come back as a ghost, but it was... Oh, yeah, okay. It's a bit Spider-Gwen, the costume. Yeah, a little bit, but many years beforehand.

And she had a couple of blazing.45 automatics and she could turn invisible and walk through walls and stuff like that. So she had some ghost powers. She did have some ghost powers, yeah, exactly. By Spider-Gwen, I mean she's got a hood. That's the similarity. Yeah, exactly, white costume Spider-Gwen.

I like that Yeah, exactly. White costume, spider. I like that design though. But of course, yeah, again, she thought she was killed by, she thought she was killed and resurrected by a ghost, but of course it was the 90s, so her powers were the result of a nanovirus back in the day. But an alien nanovirus, if I recall. Well, that's what I was going to say. Yeah.

So that's, yeah, we also had X who was kind of like a- He's got the X over his face. Yeah, again, it's kind of a Spawn-esque, mysterious. One of the huge mysteries of this whole Comics Greatest World was who is X? Who is he? Because you never see his face. Spoiler alert, I can't remember who he was.

I don't think it was significant. In fact, I think I remember looking it up several times and going, I don't know who this guy is. So... This probably means something to someone. Yeah, but not and going i don't know who this guy is so this probably means something to someone yeah but not me i don't know um yeah there was uh yeah totally okay so we had steel harbor which was like i can't think uh again it's they're all they're all a little bit gotham city but it's kind of like... The docks. Yeah, just imagine all the docks. It was like that.

All like... It's a waterfront city. Yeah, kind of a waterfront kind of city. Like pollution and just all crumbling warehouses and factories. And, yeah, it was kind of like more of a... It was like a post-apocalyptic world where there was no apocalypse. It was just rule of law, kind of wild, wild west. Now, the standout character from Steel Harbor

was, of course, the very memorable Barb Wire. Oh, this is that universe. Yeah, right. Right. Now, I never saw that movie. Does she have powers or something? No, no. She's just a real tough broad.

I see. So the most, she's, barbed wire is probably the most famous escapee from Comics Greatest World because she had the movie with Pamela Lee, Pamela Anderson Lee, whatever she was at the time. Who got the real barbed wire tattoo.

Yes, she did. I don't know whether that was related. Yeah. So if you recall, barbed wire tattoo. Yes, she did. I don't know whether that was related. So if you recall, barbed wire was, essentially she is a tough as nails bar owner and she doesn't take no crap from nobody. I wouldn't think so. And you don't call her babe

because that's the worst thing you can do because she's a strong independent woman. And the opening scene of that movie is her in her bar. Everybody knows this on like a like a trapeze swing in a leather dress being hosed down as like some sort of performance piece while um while were the cameo song word up but a cover by her husband tommy lee oh not the corn version no? No, no, no. By Tommy Lee is playing. And it's just, it's real weird. And I could not tell you the rest of the plot of the movie for a million dollars. I have seen it, but who knows?

That is great. She's a bit Harley Quinn. She's got the baseball bat. Yeah, she's a little bit Harley Quinn. She's a little bit, I guess, Tank Girl. Yeah. It's that kind of universe, right? Okay, fair enough.

Yeah. So that's not a terrible character, though. Is that right? In the comic book, it's not a terrible character. Yeah, that's right. I shouldn't have specified. Right, right, right. I remember this barbed wire outfit.

Like the Pamela Anderson one. That is something else. Mm-hmm. What, Tank Girl wasn't in this universe? No. Okay. You would think so. She's very much got that look, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, man. Who else existed in this weird universe? That people would remember? Let me think. Not necessarily. No, look. I'll tell you this though, Mason, while you're thinking about it.

Okay. Barbed wire is an Australian invention. Really? It's an Australian invention. Oh, it is too, yeah. There you go. We know somebody involved in the production of Comics Greatest World

oh we do too yeah yeah we'll talk about that later we'll talk about that later well I hope I certainly hope we did it justice I can't say how we didn't

no we didn't um Cinnabar Flats was like a kind of Assault Flats kind of kind of like a Utah kind of Area 51 kind of universe.

Right, right. It was home to this character called the Vortex who, again, released that nanovirus in the 40s. And, you know, all sorts of, it was more, it was sort of, yeah, it was sort of like an area 51 no-go kind of like zone. It was like this place is off limits because it's just filled with just swarms of monsters and just crazy so that interests me yeah right exactly right yeah golden city was basically

like like a utopia but with a city underbelly oh well not really i mean it was just it was a pretty good place mostly but there was like it was sort of that it's sort of that universe where it's like the elite live in these ivory towers and people like oh my god if we want to thrive in this world in america we should go there and it's kind of like you know gotcha there was like a like a squatter city i think yeah and it's sort of the city had barricaded itself off from the rest of the world um and like the government's like what's going on in this city like we don't trust it kind of we don't like your big walls yeah so it was like it was kind of like yeah it was kind of like, yeah, it was kind of this universe where it's, this city where it's like, you know, it's this golden utopia,

but it's all going to come crashing down kind of thing. But I don't think it really lasted long enough for it to come crashing down. Okay. Yeah. So is this also a case of sales and just bad timing in terms of like, did the comic book kind of crash happen? Yeah. I also feel at the time, yeah, like most of the –

look, again, we're talking about Speculative Mania. Most of the titles were cancelled after that ended. Right, right. And I think it might – and again, I don't think it was a case of like, well, we've got to – you know, why bother making these if we're not going to make everybody millionaires or whatever? I think it was just a case of the comic book industry crashed. Yeah.

And they're like, well, we've got to cancel this. We can't make it. Sure, that's how it goes. Okay, fair enough. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What else is on your list of things?

Oh, continuity comics. This was one of my favorites as a kid. Because it's bad? Well, I mean, it's bad now. Sure. But continuity comics was the brainchild of Neil Adams. Okay. Who we know for two things.

Number one, 1970s shirtless Batman. Hairy-chested shirtless Batman keeps the mask on. Fighting with a curved sword. Always fighting with a curved sword. But he was like the premier Batman right-hand artist in the 70s. Like an incredible kind of pseudo-photorealistic kind of style. Okay. What year was this?

Batman. No, this particular era. They started in 80s. continuity comics started in... What year was Batman? What year did they do all the Batman? There's no way of knowing. Continuity comics started in, I think, 1984.

Okay. But it didn't do a lot for a while, and then it kicked off sort of in the 90s. Right, right, right. But it was... So Neil Adams done for two things. Batman artist back in the day, that great look. But also he's the guy who believes that Earth is hollow and expanding.

Yes. Which I only found out recently. Right, me too, right? There are people who think that the world is hollow and filled with monsters something like that and no there's another civilization that lives in there and it's slightly expanding all the time oh no or good

depending on what you think right and so Neil Adams also he's one of those guys who's big on creators rights and stuff like that which I think is one of the reasons he started the universe which is great but also he created continuity comics He's one of those guys who's big on creators' rights and stuff like that, which I think is one of the reasons he started the universe, which is great, but also he created Continuity Comics. And he didn't write... He's done a lot of good things.

And also Continuity Comics. It is a very interesting universe because everybody had to adopt the artistic style of Neil Adams. That's a difficult thing to do, isn't it? It's very interesting. If you didn't know any better, if they took all the cover credits off, you would assume that he wrote and drew all of these.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, really? So they actually did a good job at kind of shaping his style. They're quite good. I think he also went in and he retouched a lot of stuff. Sure. And he... Get that Neil Adams flourish.

Yeah, exactly. And he kind of... Hollow Earth flourish. Oh, boy. And he sort of... He would, you know, work on the scripts of everything. And like he kind of. So he oversaw the whole thing.

Yeah, he oversaw that kind of whole thing. Did he finance this? Who did this? Like, because that's a. Oh, I think he had, it was, he, before this, he had a studio called Continuity Associates. And he worked with like another guy from DC called Dick Giordano. Right.

And I think that sort of kicked off a lot of careers and I think maybe he made a lot of money from that and so Continuity Comics is basically his vanity project. Why do you think all these didn't work or didn't take off and then you got something like Image that did? What's the difference? That's a really good question because... I should have saved that till after the last one that's good um i was gonna say because because continuity comics like because there's names behind these

john i mean there's names and there's talent and there's good ideas yeah a lot of the time well that's a good question maybe it's it might even just be marketing i I mean, when Image Comics came out, everybody knew about Image. Yeah. But not everybody knew about Continuity Comics. No. Just as an example. Yeah. I don't know.

Because, like, in terms of the 90s were good for a couple of things, like very dynamic art, which was not necessarily good. It was just big and splashy. Terrible dialogue. Right. Pouches. Pouches of yeah uh gun belts gun belts gore and violence uh just nonsensical dialogue yeah and like flowy cakes image had all that stuff continuity also had all that stuff you know what one thing might have been consistency like right continuity comics despite the name

did not really operate continuously uh so there was uh one particularly one that i remember there was a there was a series called armor yeah which was about two brothers and they were abducted by aliens and one was sent to work in the mines the alien mines and one was sent as a like a gladiator style warrior and they're both given superpowers and the one who was sent to work in a mine yeah like laser cutty powers i don't know it was a bad idea uh look it was a whole the whole thing was a bad idea because the one who said he's a shovel mate yeah right well that's the thing and the one who was sent to work and go in the gladiator battles he was called armor yeah the one who was sent to work in the mines he was given the name silver streak which isn't really a good that's not really a good mining name now that i think

about it anyway so armor this this story about this this super violent armored guy were they kidnapped as adults or kids and then raised in these okay gotcha yeah anyway armor released was was 13 issues i think all up over seven years. Right? That took you a minute to comprehend, right? That did my brain kind of skip to beat. You went, no, oh, seven months, that's quite good. Oh, no, wait, it's the bigger one.

Yeah. Because people complain when, okay, for example, the Dark Knight 3 is coming out and they miss months. Yeah, right, exactly. And people lose their shit. But 13 issues out of 7. Right, exactly. How do you even remember the continuity of that?

Continuity comics. Good God. Was it worth it in the end? I really like the idea. I bet it wasn't. No, I'm sure it wasn't. I mean, continuity comics also brought out, we've mentioned it before, Crazy Man,

which is a character you could never release these days. Isn't he just crazy? He's just crazy. He's just a guy who's very, and he's like comically crazy and like he switches between like violent raging and like simpering in a corner kind of thing. Sure. And again, he's sort of a government agent,

but they just drop him into a hotspot around the world and just wait for him to go crazy. And he's not, like, super strong, but he's, like, he's uninhibited, so he seems stronger than he is. He had, like, a female sidekick. And there was, like, a running gag. This is the kind of level of violence you expect. There was a running gag where he would tear her eye out.

And it happened more than once, I recall. It happened like maybe three... Did she then get it back? Yeah, it was always the same eye. It was always the same character. And then she'd have to go get it sewn back into it. I guess so, yeah. I never recall if it was like a bionic eye or if it was...

But it was that. One of the... I think... It might have been... There were two kind of big bruiser kind of characters there was armor and another guy called megalith i think it was armor again yeah where his hand gets cut off and then shredded in a blender so is that kind of like it was this weird mix of gore and just bizarre i mean the art was great sure that's that sound yeah you know what also probably killed

continuity comics again speculative madness but it was probably the sales of 13 comics over seven years i'd imagine and also but also if you look at like a collected works because i i remember a few years ago i'm like i'm gonna read all the continuity i'm gonna give it give it another whirl was is there a lot of it not really doesn't sound like there would there's a couple there's a hundred ish maybe issues but that's the thing like i'm like i'll try and track them down and there's so many storylines that never finished and they're like there was there was two big uh there was two big major storylines that were like 20 issues each that multiple like cross up crossed over through every series there's one called death watch 2000 and there was one called the reign of magic i think and those both went i i'm

pretty sure they both went 19 issues and then the last one just never came out so you built and so you'd have to cross over and read all of these issues and then finally never happened and like again this there's like dead ends this continuity so to be like as happened in death watch 2000 issue 20 and you'd go did that come out like and there's this scare this precious little information so i think maybe at the time they were like oh that's definitely going to come out so we'll just refer to it here yeah and it never really did right right kind of thing um so this went for what 10 years well it technically was like 84 to 94 okay but i think the the it was done before yeah like i think the bulk of the damage was done

right exactly yeah um and also they they also did the like oh that's what i was saying so like i so i went and i went back to it i looked up like, oh, here's the whole bibliography, like all of them together. And like there's so many. There'll be like one particular series and there'll be six issues, but they all have like each of them has five variant covers. So they'll be like a hologram cover and there'll be like a chrome plated cover and there'll be a glow in the dark cover and there'll be trading cards. And there was one point they had covers made out of Tyvek which is like this it's like they make they make

like um like postage bags out of it it's supposedly indestructible it's that weird white tough stuff you know what i'm talking about is it like a like a cloth or a mesh what are we somewhere in the middle okay but it's like they like, our comic covers are indestructible now. Right? What a weird gimmick. Why? At one point, one of the gimmicks was like a hyper color kind of cover, where it was like, you put your hand on it and warm it up,

and you'll see the villain for this. You'll see the secret villain or whatever. And nobody could ever get them to work. No, I imagine. They did those, I guess, I don't know, what do you call them, like stereoscopic covers where you look at the massive, like, colours and shapes and then eventually something pops out at you.

Oh, like the magic eye kind of stuff. Magic eye kind of situation. There was a lot of those. Look, I would say, look, don't go back because it makes no sense. If you just want to read one, just a quick burst of insanity. Yeah. There was a series, I think it was only seven issues maybe, it was called Cyber Rad.

So 90s. And it was basically a guy, he was like a metalhead rocker guy. Like imagine like skinny jeans and like denim vest with no shirt. Cyber Rad, I'm looking this up. Cyber Rad to us. Of course it is. denim vest with no shirt. Cyber rad to us. And like feathered hair with like a feathered mullet with like a white streak through it. Anyway, he loses his memory.

He wakes up one day, he's missing a whole bunch of memory and he's been replaced with a whole, like his body's been replaced with a whole bunch of cyborg parts. Right. And like it makes zero sense. And like he's being pursued by a killer robot oh look at that hair it makes no sense but the art is incredible and like he's got all these cybernetic weapons and stuff like that i think i can see that type of

cover where you touch it and it changes or it's like a holographic tilt cover yeah yeah exactly yeah this is very it's kind of upsetting. I feel like I'm going to get a seizure looking at this. But you reckon to get a taste of that universe. Yeah, if you want to track down... Like, again, the art is great. Yeah. But again, you will... None of the...

If you read any of these, you will not get any kind of finale out of any of these because they're all... Just know that going in, it's very unsatisfying. Yeah. Probably don't bother. Oh, look at that holographic cover. Yeah.

Man, so good. Is there another one there? There's one more I didn't really look into. Well, I mean, I'm like, this was my favourite one, so I don't even have to look into it. But then I'm like, I should probably look into it. Remember the Milestone universe? Yes, I remember that.

So Milestone was, I want to say black DC, but that's not fair. Right. I want to say black DC, but that's not fair. But you know that DC is like a very, like it's a super white universe. Sure it is, yeah. And I guess they were like, well, we need comics that have more, I guess, like minority representation. Because it was founded by the late Dwayne McDuffie and Dennis Cowan and a couple of other people.

And they were like, okay, well, minorities are severely, I guess, underrepresented in American comics. Sure. So let's make this. But it was weird. It was an imprint of DC, but they weren't like, okay, let's incorporate all these characters into the mainstream DC. It was a separate universe, which is weird, right?

It's a segregated universe. But some of these characters have crossed over. Like Static Shock is obviously... It's just static. I just want to be clear. Sorry, I haven't made that mistake before. People call him Static Shock though. That's true, they do, yeah.

Like he's obviously, you know, he transcends time and space and race. That's true, he does. Jane Smith might play him in a movie. Yeah, but essentially Milestone, the universe, it was set in this for most for the most part it was set in this fictional city called dakota uh which was like uh again sort of a gotham city style thing and basically the government uh at the time yeah exactly they try to suppress a riot with this experimental gas and it creates this the event called this uh the event called the big bang which gives a whole bunch of people superhuman powers. And there's also some aliens arriving from other planets.

There's a guy who builds a super suit. Well, this is all very coincidental. It's very coincidental, right? But you know what? Milestone was really good. Okay, sure. I would recommend seeing how much you can track down of this. Yeah, they eventually crossed over in the DC Universe

in an event called Worlds Collide. Yeah, someone's fighting Superman here. Is it Icon? Has he got a cape on? I cannot see. Okay, great. It's a green cape if he's wearing a cape. That is Icon.

So Icon was a guy called Augustus Freeman. He arrived on Earth during... He arrived in America during the time of slavery. And he's sort of like Superman, but he arrived as an adult. Yeah. And kind of his computers like, his spaceship's technology kind of adjusted him to look like the closest human at the time. Right. Who was an African-American guy.

And so he was sort of subject to slavery and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And he eventually became Augustus Freeman, freed slave. Gotcha. And then he's incredibly long-lived, so he sort of survived to... Did he kind of keep a low profile until the 90s? Yes, he did, yeah. And also he always claimed to be his own son.

Right. So he eventually became Augustus Freeman the third I think or the fourth. Gotcha, yeah. And he got a sidekick called Rocket. He gave her a piece of his alien technology and she gained

superpowers as well. And there's a guy called Hardware. Does he actually look like something else? Yeah, he's kind of a Martian man kind of looking guy.

Right, okay. But generally speaking he can't change back. Okay, gotcha. But yeah, so he's the equivalent of the Superman in this universe. Yeah. We had... Actually, that's a pretty interesting... Okay, gotcha. But yeah, so he's the equivalent of the Superman in this universe.

Yeah. We had... Actually, that's a pretty interesting... I like that backstory. It's a great backstory. And we had a guy, we had... Curtis Metcalf is the guy. He was like a sort of a technology prodigy.

And he's raised by this technology company CEO. And then he makes all these innovations for the company. And then he's like, hey, can I get a better piece of this profit or whatever? And the guy's like, no. And he's like, ooh. And then he looks into the guy and it turns out the guy's like a criminal mastermind, et cetera, et cetera. So he builds a suit of technology to kind of fight back

and he becomes hardware. Okay, sure. That's a real good series. That was probably my favorite. How long did this go for? 50 issues probably. Like four years maybe, something like that. But it's actually well regarded and goes somewhere and finishes.

Yes, I agree. No, I don't know what I'm saying. Oh, no, it does. Founded in 93. Yeah. There you go. And obviously Static Shock, the name of the comic. Static.

It was originally just called Static. There we go. And obviously, Static Shock, the name of the comic. Static. It was originally just called Static. And then when he... Then it was... There we go. And then there was a relaunch and it was... The comic book series... The cartoon series he was in was called Static Shock. Yes.

And then they're like, well, this is quite popular. Let's bring him into the DC universe proper. And then the series was called Static Shock. Yeah. It says here that there's a limited series in 2010 called milestone forever yep and in january 2015 uh they haven't decided whether milestone has officially begun publishing new content but they're hoping to i'm all for that i don't know it doesn't look like they've gone beyond that so interesting so out of all these universes universe i would you say this is the one to... This is the best one, I think.

The one that you should read if you're going to choose any? Yes. I mean, there's the most issues to get through, but I think it's the highest quality. It's got the best creators. They all had a chance to evolve naturally, I think. Right, right. Nobody involved in the creation was a lunatic,

so that's a bit of a bonus. Publicly. Yeah, that's probably true. And again, it was a lunatic. So that's a bit of a bonus. Publicly. Yeah, that's probably true. And again, it was a comic book universe that had some minority representation. You had black and Latino characters and there was a Korean character called Zombie who, again, was infected by nanotechnology

and then he couldn't die. It was pretty good. It was the 90s. Of course. I miss nanotechnology. Me too, right? Give me that TV show where that guy could go invisible but he'd have to get the nanotechnology. Of course. Yeah. I miss nanotechnology. Me too, right? Remember that TV show where that guy could go invisible,

but he'd have to get the nanotechnology in him to go invisible? The Invisible Man? Yeah, it was like a newer one, though, because he was like a criminal. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, and it had that guy in it. Yeah, it did. That famous B-list smug guy. Yeah, he was so smug. He was so smug all the time, and he was in every show in the 90s.

But I could not tell you for the life of me what his name was. He was probably in an episode of the pretender probably yeah all right good stuff is that is that all of

it is that all I think of a fun fact about bloody bloody I think of a fun fact you mean see what you've got there and then say a fun fact that you yeah sure

yeah but I don't have anything here so that would probably would have helped yeah low sales though that did it in it's all off in the case well they don't cancel things with high that probably would have helped. Yeah, low sales though. That did it in. That's often the case. Well, they don't cancel

things with high sales, do they? No, that's true. All with regular publication schedules. Sure. You know? Were they pretty good

at getting these things kind of going? Like, was it pretty consistent it sounds like? Yeah, and I think they had, you know, DC's blessing and their marketing machine

behind it, at least to some degree. Good stuff. Alright. Well, do you know what it's time for? What's it time for? It's time for the segment of the show called What We're Reading.

Oh, what are we going to read? Got distracted for a moment. That's okay. I'm doing nothing. What are we reading today? What are we reading today? What are we reading? What I read?

Well, tomorrow I'm going to go see X-Men Apocalypse, which I haven't seen yet. Yes. And then we're going to talk about it next week. Yes. But I've also started watching Lady Dynamite on Netflix. Is that the Chelsea Perrette? No.

It's Maria Bamford. Maria Bamford, that's right. Stand-up comedian Maria Bamford. You're a big fan of her. I am a big fan of her. I saw her when she was here in town a while back. Yeah, she's great. Is it a good show?

I've only watched like 10 minutes of it so far, but it starts out with madness. Right. And it seems to be going... Is it surreal? It starts out quite surreal, but that's a dream sequence. Right. So for me, it's yet to be seen whether that's going to continue or...

Yep. Or even if it's good. Yeah, sure. Yeah. There's no way of knowing, ultimately. There is no way of knowing. But again, I pay my 10 bucks a month, so... Yeah, well, you care.

It's free. What do you bloody care? Yeah. Okay. Well, you're reading this week. Well, I was just going to say, I saw, I caught X-Men Apocalypse. I should say for that first 10 minutes was very funny. Okay, cool.

So you enjoyed it. There was a lot in it. It was packed with... Action packed. Silliness, but I... But you liked it. I had a good time. I saw X-Men Apocalypse.

But for people asking, we're going to... The X-Men Apocalypse but for people asking we're gonna the X-Men Days of Future Past commentary should be out around the same time as this yeah if all goes well we were gonna do it

last week we didn't get the opportunity but we'll try and get that done so even if you've seen Apocalypse you can maybe go back and check it out or if you don't want to you don't have to

that's fine yeah but I mean I think it'd be a pretty good primary in fact what I'm probably gonna do is do the commentary and then immediately go and see. Go and see bloody X-Men Apocalypse.

That'll work out well for me, if no one else. Are you excited for X-Men Apocalypse? Yeah. Interesting. I'll be interested to know what you think about it. And we will discuss that at a later date next week. And we do that episode on X-Men Apocalypse next week. Talk about it next week on the podcast.

Absolutely. Yeah. We got another section of the show? Maybe. And we do that episode on X-Men Apocalypse next week. Talk about it next week on the podcast. Absolutely. Yeah. We got another section of the show? Maybe. Bloody Wi-Fi. I know, right? The bloody Wi-Fi.

It sounded to me again. The classic one was the letters, oh letters. We love you, some letters. They're only a take my way. I know they're here right now. We're going to do letters. You got three in a row. You're back to square one, mate. Oh, no.

So the record is three. Yeah, good. So for those who don't know, Mason plays the letters theme through the phone because I refuse to edit it in, even though it'd be very easy for me to do so. Yeah. Wait a minute.

All right, I got some letters here. By letters, I mean tweets because that's the best way to contact this show. Hashtag Weekly Planet Pod on Twitter. We'll find it. You throw that out there, we'll bloody get it and we'll read three of them letters, I mean tweets, because that's the best way to contact this show. Hashtag WeeklyPlanetPod on Twitter. We'll find it. You throw that out there, we'll bloody get it, and we'll read three of them out, won't we, Mason? At least three.

Just three. This is from Chase underscore Brinkman. Who would you guys cast to play... That's a great name, by the way. It is, isn't it? Yeah. Who would you guys cast to play J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man Homecoming?

Obviously, you can't choose... What's his face? The greatest man alive, J.K. Simmons. Yes. Do you do the opposite? Do you go with Gary Oldman? Do you do the old switcheroo? Ooh.

Maybe because they've made Aunt May young and sexy, they should make Jonah Jameson young and sexy. How young, how sexy? Channing Tatum. Ashton Kutcher. Ashton Kutcher, right? Yeah. Sure.

Well, a lot of people have thrown this out there. This isn't my idea but i really like it um ice cube okay sure yeah i can see him saying because you look at the spider-man you look you look at him in 21 jump street he's got that angry chief that's very true yeah you know personality he does anger real well i would also choose him if they did a live action version of inside out he could be anger as well because he's got the head for it, right? He does have the head. That would be very good. I like the idea of Ice Cube.

Yeah. It's a tough role to cast. I think you... I don't know how you do it. How do you follow it up? Yeah. They didn't even attempt it in the Amazing Spider-Man universe

because they're just like, how can we? That's true. You know, we didn't talk about it... Did this happen this week? Daniel Craig is definitely out. Oh, that was one of the Twitter questions I have. Oh, great.

Okay. Do you want to do that one now? Yeah, let's talk about the next one. Let's do it. This is from Savvy Savvy 1313. Yep. Hashtag Weekly Planet Pod. Not as good a name as Chand Breichman or whatever.

No, if we're comparing, which we are. So now that Daniel Craig is no longer James Bond, who would you like to see in the next movie? My pick would be Luke Evans. Now, Daniel Craig was offered something like 68 million dollars yeah and he went 68 million pounds it probably yeah i don't know something crazy whatever it is yeah he said no thank you i'm taking my potatoes and i'm yeah i'm a potato-shaped head i'm out of here my dick in a bear trap he said and he didn't say that but it's close it was it was implied by

him turning down 68 million pound. I'm not surprised. I'm okay with him leaving. I guess it's probably about that time. I mean, he had the three. Well, we had four. We had four, yeah. But it was an arc, and he kind of completed the arc. He met his brother.

I think they knew that he was on the way out. I think he had one more to do. He did, yeah. That's true. Yeah, but he was just like... They could have made him do like... And I can understand... They could have made him do it, but I can understand they would have gone,

look, Spectre... Imagine that. Imagine those shooting days. Yeah, exactly. Like, Spectre didn't do super well financially. Yeah. Now's probably the time to... I mean, they used all that printer ink

in that final scene where the bad guy prints off all his... All Bond's victims and... Just in black and white, though. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any names in particular? A lot of people, Tom Hiddleston is apparently the top contender.

I wouldn't mind Hiddleston. Didn't Daniel Craig say he would like to see a woman, if we're talking about... How would that work, though? Doesn't matter. You know what I would say? Because he said, like, get a woman, I don't care, do whatever you want. Yeah. I think, because people will be like, oh, make a Jane Bond.

I disagree. Yeah. Some people said emily blunt i think that would be a great one so we're not talking like this person is james bond are we talking like a different spy no i'm saying make her james bond like i'm not even kidding i think you should just go emily blunt is james bond 007 like just just double down on like just people hating it and just go what what are you going to do? Because there's no, you can even just refer to her as Bond.

Sure, yeah, yeah. You just plug her into the existing like with the same Q and the same M and Ben Whishaw and bloody Ralph Fiennes or whatever. Yeah, I wonder if they're going to keep all that, yeah. I think it'll be fine. Why not? Who cares? I think a lot of people will care.

I think so too, but i don't care about them but see the thing is like i've thought about it the other day i really overall i really like the james bond franchise even though most of them are shit correct like there's there's funny ones and there's there's dow ones and there's ridiculous ones and there's serious ones or whatever yeah overall i think it's a fun kind of cultural artifact like all these movies all together very of the time yeah but of the last 10 i like two of them i like golden i like golden iron i like casino royale the rest i can give it you know i can take a leave sure so for me it doesn't i'm not i don't care one way or the other but even if i did really like i'm like yes like what you could

do is it that whole secret agent swap out thing we Where you're like, now you're the new James Bond. No, I think they just don't... I think they just say, Emily Blunt is... Anyway, whoever. Emily Blunt is James 1007. They never refer to the name. They never refer to her as being a woman. Right.

So they go... Nobody ever goes, oh, James is a funny name for a girl or whatever. I never... Wouldn't expect a woman to do this kind of work or whatever. It's just never referred to. It's the same thing. She just dresses the way a female version of Bond would dress. Sure.

And she just kicks in doors and breaks people's necks or whatever. Because people are like, you know, people, it's always like, it's always like, oh, a woman couldn't do that. Nobody can do it. Nobody can do it. Like Daniel Craig couldn't do any of the things in. No. He's just real. He's just real buff.

He's just full of human growth hormone. Exactly. People are like, oh, a woman couldn't do that. No, like, and again, if you got, like, in a fist fight between Ronda Rousey, UFC fighter, and actor Daniel Craig, that fight would last one second. Yeah. The reason, but you look at Daniel Craig on screen as James Bond

and you go, oh, he's a tough, cool, suave guy. Yeah. Because. What's with his weird head? Yeah, and he looks like a potato. He looks like he's been punched a lot. Just a potato in a bag being swung around a corridor. But like the reason you buy him as James Bond is because he's had all the mystique

and all the skill set or whatever wrapped around him. Right. You can do that to anyone. You can do it to Emily Blunt or whoever. I wouldn't say anybody. There's certain people you could have put in that role. Either of us. Yeah, certainly.

But yeah, sure, whatever. If they want to do it. I think they're building, as I've said before it I think they're building as I've said before I think they're building to a female Doctor Who I'm fairly certain that's going to be coming so yeah do it

I just want to see a whole bunch of people real mad well that's really the point isn't it that's the most important thing in the world yeah right

good stuff as long as the movie's good yeah exactly you're right I don't give a shit this is from Riley Eskrimer one word on Twitter

hashtag weekly final pod branding synergy do you guys have any collectibles if so what are your favourites well I mean we've got all sorts of

amazing collectibles from Geek Fuel certainly we do it looks great our amazing sponsors I don't collect a lot of stuff I have a lot of Optimus Primes yeah you do

for whatever reason like I love Transformers as a kid and I got rid of a whole I gave away a whole bunch of stuff. I have a lot of Optimus Primes. Yeah, you do. For whatever reason, like I loved Transformers as a kid and I got rid of a whole, I gave away a whole bunch of stuff, but I kept all the Transformers. So I have like original like die-cast Optimus Prime. I have like the Power Master Optimus Prime, which had like the engine you plugged in,

which is a little man turned into an engine, you plugged in the engine. That's cool. And then you got the trailer and you opened it up and it became like his legs and you could can transform to a real big optimus prime that's sweet that was pretty sweet how many optimus primes do you have not that many now that i think about i have action master optimus prime which is the optimus prime that doesn't transform for some reason uh i have the masterpiece optimus prime which is the japanese one i mean they're all

japanese but it's the one that looks exactly like the cartoon version. Right. Through some weird, arcane, super complicated transformation. Sure. It looks exactly like the truck version and it looks exactly like the robot version.

Yeah, because the other versions generally don't look weird. The original, the die-cast original Optimus Prime looks real weedy. Yeah, he does. He's not very impressive. He's smaller than most other Transformers.

But yeah, I've got all those um and there'll probably be other ones at all you got the new one the michael bay one with the flames down the side no really no that's very interesting i don't really i don't have collect anything because this house i'm in the moment this is a rental and i don't feel the point in setting up anything or buying the man cave obviously that goes everywhere but that's that's all one piece everything's attached to like a whole bunch of bits of string and a ring pull. So if you have to leave real quick, what you do is you just hook the end to your monster truck, your lowered monster truck, and then you just drive off and it just drags it all

with you. Self-folded, yeah. It's pretty good. But graphic novels or story arcs that I really like, I buy. But that being said, I always lend them out. So I think I have none of them at the moment. Yeah, I have your old man Logan. That's right.

Everybody's got everything of mine. It doesn't really matter. But no, I don't. You know what I do want to get? I want to get a sweet Daredevil statue. Yeah. And I want to get a Superman Kingdom Come designed statue, kind of statue thing as well.

But I think I'll wait till I get a place or whatever.'ve always said that i'd like to collect the batman black and white statue yes yes which is all the batman statuettes in the style of various uh famous and well-regarded artists that have drawn him yep yep but there's so many of them and they're like 300 bucks each yeah absolutely that's a that's like at this point it's like a thirty thousand dollar investment mmm I couldn't just have one I'd need all of them yeah I do like though when you go to somebody's place and you see they've got collectible I like looking at other people's collectibles yeah but I don't want the hassle of kind of having them myself still so on us for example it's got that sweet Star Wars case of all the original toys which I I really like so I

like my brother's good the one that you don't like has a whole lot of like lord of the rings figures i think he's got like all of them maybe okay and like he's so he's got you know and they're pretty cool to look at but um no i'm not a big you know when i buy something i have something i put it down and it never moves so that's why that hammock is still in here. Oh, sure, yeah. So I just... I'm just... That's not a fun little improv. There is actually a hammock. There's literally a hammock.

We've talked about it before. One day I'll do something with it. Yeah. So, yeah. We could record in the hammock. We definitely could. We could both get in. We could top and tail.

I don't like the idea of that. Get two hammocks if you could. No. All right. All right. I think that's the show, though. That's the show, I think, yeah. So, yeah yeah like we said

next week X-Men if you are interested hopefully that X-Men commentary check below if it's linked below that means it's up on our Patreon and it's up on the Bandcamp so if you want to check out

patreon.com slash MrSundayMovies that'll be there before you sign up for that if you haven't already just double check it so you don't go there and it's not there

so if it's linked below that means I've already put it up nice Bandcamp was it weeklyplanet it weekly planet pod.com or also weekly planet pod on gmail and facebook and twitter that's right i'm at wikipedia brown on twitter i'm a mr sunday movies uh what else is there uh t-shirts courtesy of uh golden legend and quickly they're on red bubble they are anything else there's an amazon affiliate link sometimes yeah if we can remember this link down there if i remember yeah actually really good stuff like we only kind of endorse things that we don't hate that's true yeah that's actually that's a fact that is legitimately like

some people will be like hey do you want to promote this thing and we're like okay but if it's not good we're not going to say it's good that's right we have we've got an upcoming netflix show that we might be spruiking but we're going to wait till we see a couple that to whether we decide to do it otherwise we'll just we said we'll be honest we'll be like well listen we'll yeah if it's crap we'll you bloody you'll know about it yeah but we'll see how that goes all right i'd love to think we always forget something but we never forget anything that's the thing about the show we're always on point. We're always very factual, informative.

Never put a foot wrong. Constantly put a foot wrong. Constantly. We're never in the right line. It's a metaphor. And also driving. Yeah. It's very confusing.

Where we live, that would be dangerous. It's certainly true. All right. Thanks, everybody. Grab that gem, you guys. Grab it. Bye.