Speaker 1: Warning this podcast can date spoilers for Black Panther Wakanda Forever. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Jason Concepcion, and welcome to x ray Vision,
Speaker 1: The Crooked Podcast where we dive deep, all the way
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the ocean into your favorite shows, movies, comics,
Speaker 1: and pop culture. In this episode in the Airlock, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be diving deep into the Black Panther Wakanda Forever.
Speaker 1: Rosie and I are gonna talk about the characters, talk
Speaker 1: about the themes, talk about our thoughts about it, talk
Speaker 1: about some of the history. It's gonna be fun. A
Speaker 1: return of the omnibus segment. We're gonna talk about Wakanda,
Speaker 1: the Black Panther, and the Afrofuturism aesthetic movement in the
Speaker 1: Hive Mind. We will be joined by author, sociologist, professor, poet,
Speaker 1: and writer of the acclaimed Iron Heart comic for Marvel,
Speaker 1: Eve l Ewing. It was just so excited for this.
Speaker 1: If you want to jump around, of course, check the
Speaker 1: show notes for the timestamps and join me. Today is
Speaker 1: the writer Comics Encyclopedia.
Speaker 2: She is the heart shaped the Great Rosie Day.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, yeah, this is so exciting, I mean, most
Speaker 3: anticipated movie of the year probably, and here we are
Speaker 3: about to break it all down and talk about some
Speaker 3: of the amazing creators who made it possible and talk
Speaker 3: about this wild movie and of course like thirst over
Speaker 3: nay more.
Speaker 1: So, Okay, let's get into it first. Up recapping Black
Speaker 1: Panther Wakanda Forever, we're stepping out of the air lock
Speaker 1: and into talkan to discuss the latest installment of the MCU,
Speaker 1: the last film in Phase four.
Speaker 2: Black Panther Wikonda Forever.
Speaker 1: Here we go, the last film in Marvel's Phase four,
Speaker 1: which is a wild thing to say. It opens in Wakanda,
Speaker 1: where in Suri's lab, the Princess is frantically trying to
Speaker 1: synthesize a replacement for the heart shaped herb, which was
Speaker 1: destroyed by Kilmonger, of course after he sees power in
Speaker 1: the first film. And sure he needs this because t'achala
Speaker 1: is terminally ill. The herb is his only chance to survive.
Speaker 1: She pushes through a formula to production. It's maybe only
Speaker 1: thirty percent effective, Grio her Ai tells her. But before
Speaker 1: she can rush it to the King's bedside, Queen Romanda
Speaker 1: appears and the king has passed. You know, this was
Speaker 1: the big question, right is how are they going to
Speaker 1: handle it? And I thought they handle it with appropriate
Speaker 1: grace and real sadness. I mean there's a real.
Speaker 3: Sadness and there is a space within this for the
Speaker 3: actors and the friends of Chadwick to mourn Chadwick while
Speaker 3: Morning T'Challa. After this, we get this huge funeral scene.
Speaker 3: It's a celebration, it's a morning and then boom a
Speaker 3: year later and we see the fallout.
Speaker 1: One year later, French commandos are rating a Wakandan science facility.
Speaker 1: They force the workers there to open up a vault,
Speaker 1: but it is a trap out stride a Koye ao
Speaker 1: Aneka and other Dora Malaje who are who are disguised
Speaker 1: as the as the scientists there, and they easily best
Speaker 1: these commandos. Later, at a closed session of the United
Speaker 1: Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, American and French officials are just
Speaker 1: tearing into Queen Ramonda. They are saying that Wakanda has
Speaker 1: not lived up to its obligations see International Community. I
Speaker 1: guess Wakanda had promised to share.
Speaker 3: At some point the end of Black Panther, and this
Speaker 3: is one of the spanners that was thrown into the
Speaker 3: works with everything like the tragedies that happened during the
Speaker 3: two movies. The end of Black Panther opens with this
Speaker 3: idea of Wakanda being a nation that will be open,
Speaker 3: will be part of the global community, will share technology.
Speaker 3: Was going to open a STEM school in Oakland. You
Speaker 3: know that was influence.
Speaker 4: We're going to give you.
Speaker 3: We're going to give you vibranium, and also like greedy,
Speaker 3: this is they're greedy and it's going to cause a
Speaker 3: big problem for everyone.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, vibranium, as we're going to see over the
Speaker 1: course of this movie, and as we saw in Black Panther,
Speaker 1: is a It's a wonder substance. It's not only a metal, right.
Speaker 1: It has a staggering number of applications. It's easily workable.
Speaker 1: It can be an indestructible substance, but a can also absorb, store,
Speaker 1: and amplify energy.
Speaker 2: It can give.
Speaker 1: People superpowers, on and on and on and on, and
Speaker 1: the rest of the world is like, hey share this stuff,
Speaker 1: and Wakanda rightly has said no.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially because they keep talking about how it can
Speaker 3: be used to make weapons. They're acting like.
Speaker 2: That's what they would love to get them.
Speaker 3: But really that's what they want it for. They want
Speaker 3: to make weapons of mass destruction with Wakanda with vibranium.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Queen says, we're not going to do
Speaker 1: that because the rest of the world can't be trusted
Speaker 1: with vibranium. Whether Wakanda has ever actually again formally agreed
Speaker 1: to share this substance unclear, but would love to learn
Speaker 1: more about, like why the world thinks this. Whatever the case,
Speaker 1: we all understand she made the right decision, and certainly
Speaker 1: the world does. When she then parades the captured commandos
Speaker 1: into the hall, the chastened French ambassador, it's unclear whether
Speaker 1: the French ambassador would have had any idea that this
Speaker 1: was happening.
Speaker 3: You know it is, but they say that it was
Speaker 3: someone who was from a member state. And then the
Speaker 3: French ambassador, who's been kind of really pushing for.
Speaker 1: This, is like, oh, I guess we've done bad stuff,
Speaker 1: and the Queen promises a harsh response if the world
Speaker 1: ever again violates Wakandan sovereignty. Later, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 1: there is a boat of CIA scientists protected by, as
Speaker 1: Tony might say, jasop guys and they have discovered a
Speaker 1: deposit of vibranium deep under the ocean. It is at
Speaker 1: this point the only known deposit of the material outside
Speaker 1: of Waconda. Scientists and diving suits are going in for
Speaker 1: a closer look. But soon mysterious warriors are peering out
Speaker 1: of the waves, and one of these with wings on
Speaker 1: his feet, snatches a helicopter out of the air hurls
Speaker 1: it into the sea, and we can we're led to
Speaker 1: believe that all the scientists, everybody on this boat has
Speaker 1: been neutralized to be gay guilt.
Speaker 3: And we hear a sirens song, and we see these
Speaker 3: men just throwing themselves off the ocean, off the boat, and.
Speaker 2: It's not just a brute attack there.
Speaker 1: These these people are able to somehow take over people's
Speaker 1: minds and.
Speaker 3: Draw them on hypnotization that like the siren song of interesting,
Speaker 3: which like, I'm really glad that they're leaning into that
Speaker 3: because everyone's always said it's a mom man.
Speaker 1: In Wakanda, the queen is worried about her daughter, Princess
Speaker 1: sureI Surey is taking to Challa's death very very hard.
Speaker 1: She blames herself essentially for not being able to save him.
Speaker 1: Queen Ramonda takes Shury to the bush Uh and there
Speaker 1: the Queen burns her ceremonial funeral gown, and she wants
Speaker 1: Shuri to do the same, but sure he can't move on, She.
Speaker 2: Can't let go.
Speaker 1: She says that if anything's gonna burn, it's going to
Speaker 1: be the world, which is alarming. At that moment, a
Speaker 1: man with winged feet emerges from the river nearby. It's
Speaker 1: our friend nay War. We get a good look at him.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: He's looking good, He's looking really, really great. He somehow
Speaker 1: managed to evade Wakanda's cutting edge, cutting, cutting edge border
Speaker 1: defenses of which we have seen of the courses, you know,
Speaker 1: various movies.
Speaker 2: By Now.
Speaker 1: He tells them that his nation, Talakan, also has vibranium.
Speaker 1: They too, kept themselves hidden from the world, have kept
Speaker 1: themselves successfully hidden from the world, but Wakanda's Wakanda's emergence
Speaker 1: and her decision to reveal the existence of vibranium has
Speaker 1: the knock on effect of that is, it's awakened the
Speaker 1: world's greed for vibranium.
Speaker 3: And they want to find vibranium. They want to find
Speaker 3: the source of it for themselves. They want to find
Speaker 3: new sources, which is going to definitely play in to
Speaker 3: the future of the MC you as well as just
Speaker 3: the ramifications of name Or now existing and being rightfully pissed.
Speaker 1: So led by brand new technology that can ditect that
Speaker 1: can detect vibranium, the US military has come poking around
Speaker 1: in the ocean near Telekan's hiding place, and Naymar says,
Speaker 1: Wakanda has to take responsibility for the mess that it
Speaker 1: helped create. Wakanda should ally itself with Talakan and demonstrate
Speaker 1: that friendship, how by killing that scientist or capturing that
Speaker 1: scientist and bringing them to Telekan so that talcan can
Speaker 1: then kill the scientist. And it's either that or name
Speaker 1: More promises that we're going to attack Wakanda, bring it
Speaker 1: to its knees.
Speaker 2: Okay bye, And then Naymar.
Speaker 1: Disappears under the water and he leaves the undersea vibranium
Speaker 1: detector curiously for Wakanda to kind of investigate into, I.
Speaker 3: Just have to say, he's he's old man, he's rightfully angry.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, he might be. He's coming to them
Speaker 3: with a little bit of aggression. But this is the
Speaker 3: first of many times that nay More makes the correct
Speaker 3: offer to Wakanda that they should ally themselves.
Speaker 5: They should ally themselves and nobody wants to listen to
Speaker 5: nay Moore, and so much of the horror of this
Speaker 5: movie could be absolutely avoided if Wakanda was just real
Speaker 5: about the outside.
Speaker 3: World and the strength of allying with Talakhan.
Speaker 2: We will we will unpack that later, I have.
Speaker 1: I think one of the wonderful subjects of this movie
Speaker 1: is that Wakandan leadership. Listen, we love the Queen, I
Speaker 1: love Shuri T'Challa. May he rest in peace. I do
Speaker 1: think that specifically post the Wakandan revealed to the world,
Speaker 1: I think, uh, decision making has been spotty at best.
Speaker 2: But that's a monarchy, baby. We're gonna get that problem,
Speaker 2: the monarchy, you know.
Speaker 1: Should we have just been like, okay, kill Monger is
Speaker 1: the guy now, and I guess we got to do
Speaker 1: everything he said. Like on his side, I think there
Speaker 1: need there needed to be mechanisms by which to say, no,
Speaker 1: we're not just going to destroy all the heart shape
Speaker 1: her now, Like wait, hold on a second, it seems bad.
Speaker 4: A.
Speaker 1: Koya gets the identity of the scientist from her contact
Speaker 1: in the CAA. The Wakana's man in the CIA, Everett Ross,
Speaker 1: CIA agent and colonizer, has been feeding a Koya intelligence
Speaker 1: for years.
Speaker 2: Apparently. The scientist's name is Reee Williams.
Speaker 1: A nineteen year old student at MI T Surey, against
Speaker 1: the queen's wishes, goes with a Koya on the ostensibly
Speaker 1: snatch and grab a kidnap mission, right but but sure
Speaker 1: he is saying, Hey, I'm a brilliant scientist. Also, maybe
Speaker 1: I can talk to this person and convince them to
Speaker 1: help us.
Speaker 2: Actually, they confront re Rea the.
Speaker 1: Sudden appearance of a princess of Wakanda uh and a
Speaker 1: general of the Wakandan military. Let's re Reno that actually
Speaker 1: this is very serious, Like is very concerned that, Oh shit,
Speaker 1: did I piss off Wakanda?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you think you'd like? I do want
Speaker 2: to say something that wanted to radio.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things is that she's like, did
Speaker 3: you make this for the CIA? Sure, he asks her, like,
Speaker 3: why did you do that? And she's like, no, I
Speaker 3: made it for homework. I made it for my metal
Speaker 3: g class. Like that lets you know that really is
Speaker 3: one of the most intelligent people in the Marvel universe.
Speaker 3: In the MCU. She did this. She created this thing
Speaker 3: as a as a homework.
Speaker 2: Homework science took her a couple of months. It wasn't
Speaker 2: even that deep.
Speaker 1: And one of the concerns raised by the ambassadors to
Speaker 1: the UN is that this vibranium cannot be detected by
Speaker 1: any existing technology. Metal detectors don't pick it up.
Speaker 2: You can use it.
Speaker 1: You can make a bomb out of vibranium then just
Speaker 1: walk it into the airport. Right but here, Rary Williams
Speaker 1: has figured out a way to detect vibraniums.
Speaker 2: This is a big deal.
Speaker 1: She takes Shurei and a Koya to her lab nearby,
Speaker 1: but before she can show them her you know, her
Speaker 1: research into the vibranium detector, the FBI surrounds the building.
Speaker 1: There's a big chase with shuriy and Akoye you know,
Speaker 1: on the streets and rear in her home brewce Stark
Speaker 1: Tech inspired Ironheart Mark one battlesuit, which gets its debut
Speaker 1: here but on a bridge over the Charles River, the
Speaker 1: Talkanil ambush R trio of heroes. A Koya's fighting skills
Speaker 1: are world class, of course, but that Talacanil are super
Speaker 1: humanly strong, very very hard to kill, and Suri ends
Speaker 1: up convincing them to take her captive along with re Rey,
Speaker 1: to their king so that she can argue for Rerey's life.
Speaker 1: Rosie tell us more about Reary, Williams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this is such an exciting addition because
Speaker 3: this is probably one of, if not the quickest transitions
Speaker 3: we've seen from a character being introduced. Reary was introduced
Speaker 3: in twenty Sixteens Invincible I Am an number seven from
Speaker 3: volume three, created by Brian Michael Bennis and Mike Diodardo,
Speaker 3: So that's only six years between then and now her
Speaker 3: making her MCU debut. And then she's kind of like
Speaker 3: what we see in the movie, though in the comic
Speaker 3: she was a little bit younger. She was fifteen. She's
Speaker 3: an MIT student super genius who in the comics built
Speaker 3: her own version of Tony Stark's Mark forty one suit
Speaker 3: as a pet project, and she did that while he
Speaker 3: was missing, presumed dead, and he was actually undercover in Madriport,
Speaker 3: And that was in the lead up to Road to
Speaker 3: Civil War two, and she would eventually appear in that event.
Speaker 3: She was in some other comics that were tied to it,
Speaker 3: like Guardians to the Galaxy, but wouldn't debut as iron
Speaker 3: Heart until the first issue of the fourth volume of
Speaker 3: Invincible iron Man, which was that famous cover where she's
Speaker 3: in the suit and it says you know iron Heart
Speaker 3: on the cover. That story stuck to this idea. She's
Speaker 3: from Chicago. It's got a little bit of early Mars
Speaker 3: moralesness to it. AKA. Her story was quite it leaned
Speaker 3: into some tropes. She'd been in trouble at school. The
Speaker 3: police were going to arrest her because, I will say,
Speaker 3: salvage the parts to make the iron Heart suit. So really,
Speaker 3: the version of Really that we are seeing now is
Speaker 3: the Eve Viewing expanded holistic that was introduced in the
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen solo iron Heart series with originally drawn by
Speaker 3: Kevin Lebranda and then Luciano Veccio and Jeffolded some pencils
Speaker 3: and layouts, and that was where Ironheart became a Marvel legend.
Speaker 3: That was the story that made people fall in love
Speaker 3: with her. That was the story that showed that she
Speaker 3: was a super genius who was also a normal teenager
Speaker 3: who had this unbelievable relationship with Tony Stark. That was
Speaker 3: this mentorship, this beautiful space where she could be the smartest,
Speaker 3: most impressive version of herself with someone who was her peer.
Speaker 3: We know in the MCU Tony is dead rip sorry
Speaker 3: to that man, But in Eve's in Eve's Iron Heart
Speaker 3: story in issue nine, Tony arranges it for really to
Speaker 3: visit Shuri in Wakanda. And obviously what we're seeing in
Speaker 3: the movie here is leaning more into that Rheree's relationship
Speaker 3: is not one of a mentor with Tony in the MCU,
Speaker 3: it is one of a burgeoning partnership and alliance with Wakanda,
Speaker 3: with Shuri, with one of the only people in the
Speaker 3: whole of the MCU who can go toe to toe
Speaker 3: with her on an intelligence level. And it's very exciting
Speaker 3: to just see her be thrown into this wild world.
Speaker 3: And as you said about you know about to go
Speaker 3: to Talakhan.
Speaker 1: Well, in a vast Karen under the ocean, Shuri meets
Speaker 1: kokoul Kan, who the Talakanil worship as their god and
Speaker 1: whose enemies call Nemour.
Speaker 2: When he.
Speaker 1: Will pause there because I just want to say that
Speaker 1: when when when Nemour explains the origin of his name,
Speaker 1: I was like, whoever came up with this is the
Speaker 1: smartest person.
Speaker 2: Ten out of ten ten out of town.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just one of the coolest origin of an name,
Speaker 3: one of the most smart recontextualizations which this series the
Speaker 3: Black Panther movies have been known for. But it is
Speaker 3: it's like gosp out loud good.
Speaker 2: It was amazing.
Speaker 1: So he tells Suri of the history of himself and
Speaker 1: his people. Over five hundred years ago, native people around
Speaker 1: what is now called the Yucatan Peninsula were dying of
Speaker 1: smallpox brought to the land by Spanish Conkystradores. One of
Speaker 1: the shamans of the indigenous people has a vision that
Speaker 1: leads them to find a plant in a cavern underwater.
Speaker 3: Looks very much like the harsh sure.
Speaker 1: Right, It's slightly different in color, maybe a little blue
Speaker 1: in color, but looks to be the same, and the
Speaker 1: people create a kind of potion out of this plant.
Speaker 1: They ingest it. It protects them against the smallpox, but
Speaker 1: it also turns their skin blue and takes away from
Speaker 1: them the ability to breathe air, but gives them the
Speaker 1: ability to breathe underwater.
Speaker 2: Her name or his mother, who is pregnant at the time.
Speaker 1: Had to be persuaded to take the plant, but she
Speaker 1: does and her child is born with amazing abilities that
Speaker 1: are beyond what the tealcanill have, and he becomes the leader,
Speaker 1: the king, the god in fact to his people. Years later,
Speaker 1: following his mother's dying wish, Cookoulcan returns to his mother's
Speaker 1: human village to lay her remains to rest, and there
Speaker 1: he finds that the Spanish have enslaved the local indigenous people.
Speaker 2: In retribution, he slays.
Speaker 6: Them and by the way, he looks like he's like
Speaker 6: but he's probably like fifty or something, but he makes
Speaker 6: like a baby yees.
Speaker 1: So he slays the conquistadors and as one dying priest
Speaker 1: looks upon him, you know, with fear, the priest says
Speaker 1: that this this boy describes the boy as El Nino Cinemore,
Speaker 1: the boy with out love, and from this no more
Speaker 1: could cool kind of takes his name of war and
Speaker 1: I was like, holy shit, that's it so clever.
Speaker 3: And my favorite thing about it is like, at first
Speaker 3: it sounds a little bit like Emo, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of like he has no love because his heart's broken
Speaker 3: and his mother is not there.
Speaker 2: But really for the service, he has no love for
Speaker 2: the service.
Speaker 7: Well, that's like the hardest shit in the MC I
Speaker 7: could not believe it good. I'm just obsessed so good,
Speaker 7: And to be able to recontextualize, like we haven't even
Speaker 7: really gotten in nay More is you know, one of
Speaker 7: Marvel's oldest characters debuted in like nineteen thirty nine and
Speaker 7: has throughout history been entangled in some of the more
Speaker 7: problematic and racist depictions of characters of color, and like
Speaker 7: Marvel's own fear of especially like Asian communities and this
Speaker 7: idea of an Asian superpower, and ironically some of that
Speaker 7: actually makes the old name or stuff. Some of the
Speaker 7: panels are quite radical, and you see this kind of
Speaker 7: like interesting subversion of what they.
Speaker 2: Thought they were against the white race. Yeah, like he's on.
Speaker 3: His mission to kill the white man or whatever.
Speaker 5: Like, but.
Speaker 3: I love that they took this name that was given
Speaker 3: to him, you know, the submarrin or name or always
Speaker 3: been quite a character of people been like, oh, he's
Speaker 3: wearing some pants, he's got wings on his he's quite silly,
Speaker 3: he's quite campy. And to create an origin for that
Speaker 3: name that is so directly linked to this brilliant recontextualization
Speaker 3: and this very what feels very authentic to the conversations
Speaker 3: that are being had and the realities of the horror
Speaker 3: of colonialism. It's just so cool like that, that is
Speaker 3: just a level of craft and detail in writing that
Speaker 3: just cannot go uncelebrated. So I'm glad that I'm glad
Speaker 3: we brought it up.
Speaker 2: It's so good, beautiful.
Speaker 1: The Queen travels to Haiti, where Nikia is running a school.
Speaker 1: She has lived there apparently since the blip. Devastated by
Speaker 1: to child's death, she just couldn't bring herself to return
Speaker 1: to Wakanda, not even for his funeral. The Queen convinces
Speaker 1: Nikia to uh to you know, bring back her super
Speaker 1: spy skills and track down Princess Shuri, who is who
Speaker 1: is missing and in the hands of the Talkanil. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Everett Ross's new boss, the Contessa Valentina Allegradfontaine.
Speaker 2: Is all over his ass.
Speaker 1: The CIA director wants to refound She wants to know
Speaker 1: how the Wakandans because who else would do this tracked
Speaker 1: her down, and the Kintessa also wants to start thinking
Speaker 1: about how we can respond, how we can start destabilizing Wakanda.
Speaker 2: Also, she's Ross's ex wife. Very interesting, very very interesting.
Speaker 3: Her romantic entanglement was with Nick Fury and were very
Speaker 3: interested to see if that was going to come up.
Speaker 3: But it seems that they've decided to do like these
Speaker 3: little Cia romance. Terrible hate for both of them, but
Speaker 3: you know what, Ross comes out of this looking better
Speaker 3: out of the pair.
Speaker 1: I will say also in the annals of We Were Right,
Speaker 1: it's not quite we were Right, but over the course
Speaker 1: of this movie, our theory that the Contessa's plan is
Speaker 1: to create the superhero team that follows orders, you know,
Speaker 1: is burnished by her actions in this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we you know, we definitely got some we
Speaker 3: were Right stuff that we got into, but that's true.
Speaker 3: Also very interesting to see that something I was wary
Speaker 3: about that we've talked about is like the Thunderbots has
Speaker 3: to be a villain team. It doesn't really make sense otherwise.
Speaker 3: But the way that they built in I understand the
Speaker 3: expanding this Black Panther universe have to fit into the
Speaker 3: rest of the MCU, I think is some of the
Speaker 3: stuff people have been struggling the most with with like
Speaker 3: the folks on Ross and Contessa and I totally agree,
Speaker 3: But well, I did really like credit to Ryan and
Speaker 3: his co script. She's a villain like no question, absolute villain.
Speaker 3: I feel like in the TV shows they were doing
Speaker 3: more of a is she just like a different way
Speaker 3: of running things, But no, she's the director of the
Speaker 3: CIA and she sucks.
Speaker 1: She's putting together the Avengers team quote unquote Avengers team,
Speaker 1: that is soldiers that are people that will just like
Speaker 1: decapitate people in the street. Ross finds Suri's beads communication
Speaker 1: beads under some wreckage at the attack site in Boston,
Speaker 1: and he uses them to warn the Queen that the
Speaker 1: US government might be preparing to do something to move
Speaker 1: against Wakanda in some sort of way in Talikan. Under
Speaker 1: the seat the More takes Shuri to Talikan, and the
Speaker 1: culture and the beauty of the place and the obvious
Speaker 1: strength and the unity of its people just ows her away.
Speaker 2: She asks the King if she.
Speaker 1: Can take read back to Wakanda, and she promises that
Speaker 1: there she's going to advocate strongly on Telecon's behalf anymore
Speaker 1: is like I've got a counter deal. Wakanda allies itself
Speaker 1: with Telecan and side by side we wage war against
Speaker 1: the nations of the service. And he makes some good points,
Speaker 1: he said, and defang them so they can never again
Speaker 1: threaten either of us an lave and yeah, take our
Speaker 1: take our resources, et colonize.
Speaker 2: Us not necessary.
Speaker 3: She I feel like this is a character be that
Speaker 3: I understand for this movie's sake, But I do feel like,
Speaker 3: sure he would be the one person who would be
Speaker 3: most open to this. But she is quite horrified because
Speaker 3: she's like, well, lots of people didn't do anything bad
Speaker 3: up there, and I don't know if we would want
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 2: I think in Suri's you know listen.
Speaker 1: Allying, I think is a good idea waging war against
Speaker 1: the entire surface world, which is very in line with
Speaker 1: Naymor's character history and a thing that he has done
Speaker 1: time and time and time and time again in the
Speaker 1: comics for various reasons, some of them actually pretty just reasons,
Speaker 1: like I get it would.
Speaker 2: There are other.
Speaker 1: Ways to do it, like I don't need we we like,
Speaker 1: you know, to sure He's credit the idea of just
Speaker 1: jumping straight out to a state of active warfare against
Speaker 1: the entire world probably not a great idea, but also
Speaker 1: you can see how this is going to lead the
Speaker 1: nations of the world to hate superpowered people, in particular
Speaker 1: superpowered people like no More.
Speaker 3: Who by the way are mutants. I was going to say,
Speaker 3: we should say this, we should say this. We've had
Speaker 3: the ab mutation. We've been waiting for someone to be
Speaker 3: cold a mutant name. He does it, says I was
Speaker 3: a mutant. He says I am a mutant. He says
Speaker 3: the word he means in the context of his community.
Speaker 2: Yes, And the truth.
Speaker 3: Is that, you know, Jason, you really smartly brought this
Speaker 3: up in pre pro But like nay More, is not
Speaker 3: the only mutant. He might see himself that way because
Speaker 3: he is a mutant in comparison to his people, who
Speaker 3: he can be above land, he can be underwater. They
Speaker 3: can only exist under the water. But his whole community
Speaker 3: are mutants, and apparently from a vibranium rich soil and
Speaker 3: the plant which allowed them to become mutants. This is
Speaker 3: very interesting, and I think there is a world where
Speaker 3: we see that come into play down the line to
Speaker 3: introduce more mutated characters. We know that we're not going
Speaker 3: to get an inhumans in this world. Miss Marvel kind
Speaker 3: of proved that we're not there yet. This is going
Speaker 3: to be a mutant situation. So I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 3: to see a version of the plant or a vibranium
Speaker 3: rich soil or that could be turned into some kind
Speaker 3: of myst almost like a tarage of myst I'm weaponized
Speaker 3: to create.
Speaker 4: Moment.
Speaker 3: That's a great point mutants, because I think what we're seeing.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't kind of spell this out, but
Speaker 1: my guess for why no More has his abilities is
Speaker 1: he had the ex gene just passed to him by
Speaker 1: his parents, right, And something about the active ingredient in
Speaker 1: this plant, this vibranium based plant, awakened.
Speaker 2: That and supercharged his powers.
Speaker 1: All of which is to say, mutants are here, and
Speaker 1: they are here now in vast numbers in the form
Speaker 1: of the Talcanol.
Speaker 3: We're talking about thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of
Speaker 3: people maybe more living in Talakan as a symbol of.
Speaker 1: Naymar's word, right, and you know the generosity of his offer.
Speaker 1: You know, in his view, he gives Shuri a bracelet
Speaker 1: which is woven from the very plant which gave the
Speaker 1: Telecanel their powers belong.
Speaker 3: To his mob us. So this is a very intimate moment.
Speaker 3: And I will say they must have chemistry tested the
Speaker 3: fuck out of Letitia and who plays nay More because
Speaker 3: there is such an unbelievable spark between them. These children
Speaker 3: of these hidden nations, respect respect, but there's like a bond,
Speaker 3: but there's like a slight flirtation, but it's not necessarily romantic.
Speaker 3: It's more of a It's like they spark each other's curiosity.
Speaker 3: And the whole time I was watching it, I was
Speaker 3: just thinking, like, when Sue Storm comes into the MCU,
Speaker 3: is gonna be it's happening. Do it in the first movie.
Speaker 3: It needs to be there because.
Speaker 4: That is good.
Speaker 3: The way that they play with that relationship. His performance
Speaker 3: is the standout for me in this film.
Speaker 6: Is he established at charisma, this this danger, this relatability
Speaker 6: and real older against real arrogance, but based on like legit. Yeah,
Speaker 6: just reason for just reason, but also because he is
Speaker 6: probably the most powerful person on earth apart from as
Speaker 6: he will learn like the Black Panther, you know. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I was just blown away by him and that the
Speaker 6: Talakan stuff was really my my favorite part of this movie.
Speaker 6: And I just kept thinking about him and Letitia were
Speaker 6: so good together in those small moments that they had.
Speaker 6: I was like, I need to see him with Sue Storm.
Speaker 3: I need to see him break up the marriage because
Speaker 3: sure is stronger person than me. I would have been like, yes,
Speaker 3: let's do the war. I'm cool with it, man.
Speaker 1: And we should add unless unless we're unless we find
Speaker 1: out that apocalypse is out here, which might be a case.
Speaker 2: Right, this is the first first mutan. This is the
Speaker 2: first muta.
Speaker 3: And they're not just that they made him five hundred
Speaker 3: years old, so you're talking about a first mutant. It's
Speaker 3: not one hundred years old, not one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: years old. This is a mutant who has lived in
Speaker 3: what is essentially a secluded secretsist We were right. Secret
Speaker 3: societies are a huge deal going into secret wars, and
Speaker 3: not only that, but he potentially has a more locks
Speaker 3: sque community of secret mutants. So look always saying is
Speaker 3: this is a secret society of mutans that nobody knew
Speaker 3: about even in the Age of the Avengers. So there's
Speaker 3: probably other secret societies of mutants that are hidden in
Speaker 3: this world.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, five hundred years this also in the comics,
Speaker 1: No Moore has this whole history before his appearance, you know,
Speaker 1: fighting the Fantastic Four, you know, in the Silver Age
Speaker 1: of comics, as a fighter in World War Two. All
Speaker 1: of which is to say, is five hundred years gives
Speaker 1: you a lot of back centuries that they could fill
Speaker 1: in in various ways. Is this the first time that
Speaker 1: no More has has interacted with the surface. I'm going
Speaker 1: to guess not. I'm going to guess there's other things
Speaker 1: that we're going to find out that he's been involved in. Later, Nikia,
Speaker 1: having discovered the sight of Nomor's mother's village, finds out
Speaker 1: where Shuri and Reri have been taken, and she gets there,
Speaker 1: goes under the sea to the cavern where they're being held,
Speaker 1: and she goes to break them out. She kills two
Speaker 1: Telecanal guards in the process, and Shuri is like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, we got to save this person's life, and
Speaker 1: Nikkia is like, no, we have to leave right now.
Speaker 1: And Surrei knows that to take the lives of too
Speaker 1: Tealcanil like this means that war between the Talcanil and
Speaker 1: Wakanda is going to happen.
Speaker 3: And in Shuri's defense, I love this. This is a
Speaker 3: true moment of leadership. She tries to use the Kimoo
Speaker 3: beats to save the lives of the Talacanal gods and
Speaker 3: in one of the few mistakes that Nakia makes because
Speaker 3: she's generally like one of the smartest people in Wakanda,
Speaker 3: she doesn't listen to Shuri, and that is like a
Speaker 3: heartbreaking moment because it leads to this kind of huge
Speaker 3: conflict that could have been avoided.
Speaker 1: Now, Wakanda steals itself for the blow. But when the
Speaker 1: More arrives, the most advanced nation of the surface world,
Speaker 1: their defenses are completely worthless against only a handful of
Speaker 1: Nomore's warriors. Tidal waves devastate the capital cility Talkano warriors
Speaker 1: leap from the backs of Wales to lay waste to
Speaker 1: the streets, but all of this is a distraction to
Speaker 1: allow no More to strike at Queen Ramonda.
Speaker 2: She gives her.
Speaker 1: Life to save Rear and it's a heartbreaking moment. Shuri
Speaker 1: finds her mother now passed like this has just happened
Speaker 1: moments before, and the More tells Shuri more than you're dead,
Speaker 1: I'll be back in a week, your queen. Now it's
Speaker 1: your decision about how to lead the nation. Next, I'll
Speaker 1: be back with your decision about whether you're going to
Speaker 1: a lie with my people. And if the answer is no,
Speaker 1: just so you know, I'm gonna when I come back
Speaker 1: in a week, it's going to be at the head
Speaker 1: of my entire army, not just a handful of my warriors.
Speaker 1: As Queen Sure, he just wants vengeance. We heard it,
Speaker 1: you know earlier in the movie that she wanted the
Speaker 1: world to burn because of her feelings of the surrounding
Speaker 1: the death of Chachala, and now this has sharpened those
Speaker 1: feelings to a really keen, killing and dangerous edge. Imbaku
Speaker 1: tries to talk her out of it, you know, the
Speaker 1: Wandan's He notes that the Talcan will consider name more
Speaker 1: their god. If you kill their god, the war will
Speaker 1: never end. The war will be existential. It will be
Speaker 1: my children, my children's children. It will go on and
Speaker 1: it will go on and on and on until.
Speaker 2: One of our nation's perishes. And Sure is like that's.
Speaker 3: Fine, and also just want to shout out Winston Duke
Speaker 3: so good and Barkoo's still a standout, there's a great standard.
Speaker 3: One of the best moments, like the biggest laugh moments
Speaker 3: in this really somber movie, is like he walks into
Speaker 3: the council eating.
Speaker 2: Cara and calls a.
Speaker 3: Koye a bald headed demon, and it is like our
Speaker 3: whole cinema just lost its ship, like I want to
Speaker 3: see more in Baku. I love him. I love that
Speaker 3: recontextualization of the character. Winston Duke, you are king. Thank you.
Speaker 3: And without Winston Duke, I don't know if we would
Speaker 3: have got like thick name more, you know, I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel like we would have got like this. Winston
Speaker 3: changed the the idea of like what a Marvel character
Speaker 3: can look like. And you know, people love him for it,
Speaker 3: and and he's delightful and I'm just so happy that
Speaker 3: that Nomore is more in that mold of like a
Speaker 3: just like a chunky, strong guy. We need more of them.
Speaker 2: I absolutely love it.
Speaker 1: Using the bracelet that the More gave her, she successfully synthesizes,
Speaker 1: you know, a kind of heart shapter based on the
Speaker 1: talcanal plant, which is a biochemical twin of the heart
Speaker 1: shaped her. She takes that potion herself and goes to
Speaker 1: visit the Ancestral Plane, but it's not the ancestral plane.
Speaker 1: She finds herself in the flooded throne room, a version,
Speaker 1: you know, the incestral plane version of that very interesting
Speaker 1: in Capital City, and she wakes up.
Speaker 3: Underwater after using the plant. I think that we cannot underestimate.
Speaker 2: That's a great point, the.
Speaker 3: Importance of this essentially being a combined version of the
Speaker 3: heart shape up and whatever the plant of the talcanal is.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm very interested to see where that leads.
Speaker 1: So she finds herself in the throne room. She's behind
Speaker 1: the throne, someone sitting in it. She walks to the
Speaker 1: front of it and we're thinking it's going to be
Speaker 1: the Queen, or it's going to be T'Challa.
Speaker 2: It's Killmonger.
Speaker 3: Oh my cinema just absolutely lost its mind last night,
Speaker 3: like screaming. That was like, that's the big you know,
Speaker 3: the Spider Man. There was so many of those moments.
Speaker 3: This is that moment where people just lost their mind.
Speaker 2: Michael B.
Speaker 3: Jordan delivering as always. And I love the reasoning of
Speaker 3: him being there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Killmonger knows that surely wanted to see him.
Speaker 3: That's why he's there.
Speaker 1: She chose she wanted, and he knows it's because he
Speaker 1: is the one person who will agree with what she
Speaker 1: wants to do next, which is wipe out the telecanil.
Speaker 1: No more must die. And when she wakes up, Nokia's like,
Speaker 1: where'd you go? Who'd you see would you talk you know,
Speaker 1: what was the ancestral plane, Like who'd you talk to?
Speaker 2: And she's like, I'm not talking about it.
Speaker 3: She's like I failed, and then she just like smashes
Speaker 3: up the lab and obviously has super strength, so it's like,
Speaker 3: think it worked, babe, but it worked.
Speaker 1: Valentina breaks into Everett Ross's house to arrest him. She
Speaker 1: had the beads bugged from the very beginning. She heard
Speaker 1: everything Ross has told the Wakandans, and Ross is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well the Wahannahs are awesome and they saved my life
Speaker 1: so and they're right, so I guess I'm going to jail.
Speaker 1: Ross says it would be terrible to imagine what the
Speaker 1: United States, what other countries would do, but specifically the
Speaker 1: United States would do if it controlled vibranium all by itself.
Speaker 1: And the Contessa is like, well, you're going to prison
Speaker 1: for us of your life. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: dream of a day when we control vibranium.
Speaker 3: That's when you do whatever we will want. She's obsessed
Speaker 3: with power, she's obsessed with owning this resource, with colonizing Wakanda,
Speaker 3: and with using it for her own nefarious.
Speaker 1: Means, and by the way a very a a very
Speaker 1: juicy and vibrant plot from various Marvel comics throughout the years,
Speaker 1: like the world is greedy for the resources.
Speaker 3: That will go and I think as well, this is
Speaker 3: I'm not a huge fan of Everett Ross and the MCU,
Speaker 3: but I do think this scene is the closest we've
Speaker 3: gotten to the Christopher Priest stuff that we talk about
Speaker 3: in the omnibus y, where it's about Ross understanding who
Speaker 3: the Wakandans are, his awakening to them, and the sacrifice
Speaker 3: that he will make at because he realizes what the
Speaker 3: right thing to do is. Most of I feel like
Speaker 3: that has been mostly a misunderstanding of his character in
Speaker 3: the MCU, but this is the closest I feel like
Speaker 3: that we get.
Speaker 1: In this moment, Surrey, now clad as the Black Panther,
Speaker 1: leads her people to war, and her plan is to
Speaker 1: take Rerea's detector out to see use it as bait
Speaker 1: to lure the Talcanill to attack, and then they'll trap
Speaker 1: me more inside like a flying microwave and they will
Speaker 1: dry his ass out. Here's where I just want to
Speaker 1: put a pin in this and discuss it so we
Speaker 1: you know, again, I think Wakanda needs better leadership at
Speaker 1: I think I think some of the I think some
Speaker 1: of the decision making process is not good. And I
Speaker 1: would like to highlight that Rear's plan is to fight
Speaker 1: the fish people on water.
Speaker 3: They could have just they could have literally just fought
Speaker 3: him on a different bit of land that wasn't Wakanda, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you didn't need to fight him on water where all
Speaker 3: his people are coming. They got crazy underwater technology. They
Speaker 3: have these un Something that is really cool that this
Speaker 3: movie introduces and I think is very unique, is these
Speaker 3: water bombs that kind of makes there. It's really cool.
Speaker 3: I will say, if you enjoy the more stuff here,
Speaker 3: you enjoy the taler Canal, please go and watch James
Speaker 3: Wan's aqual Man, because I do feel like that movie.
Speaker 3: This movie would not exist without that, and a lot
Speaker 3: of the stuff they do in that movie is definitely influential.
Speaker 3: But I really felt like the idea of this talacanil
Speaker 3: technology and the bombs and everything is very unique and
Speaker 3: very visually beautiful. But why did she want to fight
Speaker 3: him at the seat?
Speaker 1: I guess I would say, I get that you had
Speaker 1: to lure him, but you know what, I am on
Speaker 1: the seat I think.
Speaker 3: The idea of and this is something I would have
Speaker 3: liked to see expanded a little bit, but it leans
Speaker 3: into Sherry's comic book canon, especially the run when she
Speaker 3: becomes Black Panther, you know, the reginal Hydelan run. She
Speaker 3: is at this point not making sensible decisions.
Speaker 2: She is she's absolutely she's very revenge.
Speaker 3: She's consumed with it, and that leads her to make
Speaker 3: this very silly decision that does kind of end up
Speaker 3: working out, but it works.
Speaker 1: Not a great idea, well, well, it kind of works,
Speaker 1: I would add. So there's a big battle, right they
Speaker 1: go out to see the talcanill are are alerted to
Speaker 1: the presence of this vibrium detector in the water. News
Speaker 1: gets to no More. He leads his forces against them.
Speaker 1: Re Re debuts the iron Heart mark too.
Speaker 2: Which she was building in a montage in wac.
Speaker 3: Powerful looks super coolium yeap.
Speaker 1: Probably made a vibranium Okoya and Neka fight in two
Speaker 1: brand new Shuri designed pieces of Wakandan battle armor, also
Speaker 1: clearly like vibranium tech very powerful. Sure, he gets nay
Speaker 1: More in the microwave and the two get separated from
Speaker 1: the main fight where Akoye Ao Neka Baku and the
Speaker 1: rest of the Wakandans are at sea, trapped on their
Speaker 1: ship fighting off the tylecanil. And I should add that,
Speaker 1: you know though the plan again the plan, Surei's plant
Speaker 1: kind of works. What like eight hundred Wakandans die in
Speaker 1: this I was gonna say, they get they get wiped out,
Speaker 1: there's gonna end.
Speaker 3: There's like twelve condos. I was gonna say, there's like
Speaker 3: twelve people who say Wakanda forever. And I'm like, babe,
Speaker 3: you could have avoided all.
Speaker 2: Of eight hundred people.
Speaker 3: So I know you could have made more of that.
Speaker 3: Amah for like the Midnight eight you know, like is
Speaker 3: not the best plan.
Speaker 1: So Shuri's microwave plane crashes in the desert because more,
Speaker 1: even in a weakened state, is extremely powerful.
Speaker 3: And he uses he has a he has a spear
Speaker 3: made of raw vibranium processed and he uses it to
Speaker 3: crash the plane.
Speaker 1: And he's potentially again like as strong as the Hulk
Speaker 1: in the water, probably stronger, you know, I guess the
Speaker 1: Hulk theoretically you get as strong as he wants, the
Speaker 1: angrier he gets. But like Hulk levels class one hundred
Speaker 1: level strength.
Speaker 3: And they mentioned this very briefly, but I think it's
Speaker 3: really interesting. Nay More is covered in vibranium. They always
Speaker 3: say that everything that he wears, his his his jewels,
Speaker 3: his his his kind of costume, whatever it is, that's
Speaker 3: all covered in vibranium. So he has a similar energy
Speaker 3: signature power kind of vibe to a black panther who
Speaker 3: is wearing a vibranium suit.
Speaker 1: So they fight in the desert, and it is a brutal,
Speaker 1: brutal fight, but even a dried out, partially weakened no
Speaker 1: More is incredibly powerful, more powerful than the black panther.
Speaker 1: He impales her on his vibranium spear and then goes
Speaker 1: to stagger back to see sure he frees herself, and
Speaker 1: then to square off again.
Speaker 2: We get to fucking we.
Speaker 1: Get saying imperious Rex in his in his language, and
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's a famous comic cry. That's it's it's iconic because
Speaker 3: everyone's like, what does that even mean? And what I
Speaker 3: only really like got into it recently. But this shows
Speaker 3: the absolute power of this movie, which is this word,
Speaker 3: these combination of words that's so comic, booky and so poppy.
Speaker 3: When Tenoch says it in the Talcanil language and looks
Speaker 3: at kind of looks towards the screen, it feels just
Speaker 3: like fuck, like we're seeing something unbelievable here.
Speaker 1: It was so so cool Suri. Then you think they're
Speaker 1: going to fight again. But then Shuri crosses his arms,
Speaker 1: says Wakanda forever, and she triggers the blasters of her
Speaker 1: crast ship like the Thrusters, and just.
Speaker 2: Bakes anymore and very brutal.
Speaker 1: Some baked fish here, maybe with a little bread crumb
Speaker 1: on top, it would be delicious. Suri then stands over
Speaker 1: no more he is he could die potentially right now,
Speaker 1: just as Kill Munger, just you know the moment that
Speaker 1: Kill Munger described in her vision in the Ancestral Plane.
Speaker 1: It's here now. Suri then reflects on everything that she
Speaker 1: has lost, and she hears the Queen telling her that
Speaker 1: now she needs to show no more who she is.
Speaker 3: And this is a huge deal because Suri it doesn't
Speaker 3: believe the Ancestral Plane exists. She barely believes that the
Speaker 3: kill Manga thing was real. She just thinks it's something
Speaker 3: she needed to see. And we see Ramonda in the
Speaker 3: traditional ancestral plane talking to Shuri saying show him who
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 1: She stands over him and she makes him this offer.
Speaker 1: She will as queen ally Wakanda with the telecan Ill.
Speaker 1: The Wakandans will protect the seas for the Teleconill protect
Speaker 1: the surface you know around where telecan is well. Keep
Speaker 1: their secrets, keep their secrets. But no More must yield,
Speaker 1: promise to stop pursuing rere and promise to not wage
Speaker 1: war against the surface world. Nomour yields and the Talcaneal
Speaker 1: return home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's this really, this is one of my most
Speaker 3: powerful like chills moments. They fly down the Wakanda's is
Speaker 3: about to be killed. There's on like fourteen of them left,
Speaker 3: and no More and Shuri come down on this plane
Speaker 3: together and they sort of you know, they say dead
Speaker 3: and they say like Talacanill rise Wakanda forever and Talacanill
Speaker 3: go home. This shows really, I have to say, on
Speaker 3: your point, the monarchy of Wakanda has a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because the real truth is sure we could have avoided
Speaker 3: that eight hundred deaths by just having a little combo
Speaker 3: making this offer before something I feel like, but I
Speaker 3: understand that Namo needed to see the strength of the
Speaker 3: black understand that they were strength all but still rip
Speaker 3: can say this.
Speaker 2: It will be a problem going forward.
Speaker 1: There will be hard line factions, yes, of both the
Speaker 1: Talcanill and the Wakandons, who go that's it.
Speaker 2: No, this is not over.
Speaker 1: Certainly the Wacanons are going to say we some Wakandans
Speaker 1: are going to say, we lost how many soldiers and
Speaker 1: now we just let it go.
Speaker 2: Pursue this.
Speaker 1: They attacked our cab, we lost the queen, and now
Speaker 1: eight hundred soldiers dead. No, we're pursuing this to the end.
Speaker 1: So this is gonna be an issue going forward. Wakanda rebuilds,
Speaker 1: re re returns to mit, but the iron Heart Armor
Speaker 1: has to say, Wakanda, that's pretty wise.
Speaker 2: Nakia returns to Haiti.
Speaker 1: In Talakan, Nomura is giving Nay more shit for kneeling
Speaker 1: to the Wakandans, and he's like, no, no, trust me.
Speaker 1: This is fucking great because here's why we're allied with
Speaker 1: the strongest nation of the surface world by far, and
Speaker 1: one day the rest of the surface world is gonna attack.
Speaker 1: Wakanda isolate. They have no we're our only friend, and
Speaker 1: they will wage war against Wakanda and when that happens,
Speaker 1: Wakanda and Talikan together will defeat the surface world.
Speaker 3: Love that great plan.
Speaker 1: Suri blows off her official coronation at Warrior Falls to
Speaker 1: go to Haiti, and there she burns her funeral garb,
Speaker 1: just as her mother wanted her to. In America, a
Speaker 1: Koya Freeze ever ross from custody. He is coming back
Speaker 1: to Wakanda with everyone, and in the sting in Haiti,
Speaker 1: Suri burns her funeral garb and Nikia introduces her to
Speaker 1: her son to 'challa's son, Prince T'Challa, who looks to
Speaker 1: be about six years old. What a movie Your quick thoughts?
Speaker 3: Yeah, very emotional, beautiful cinematography, great performances. My biggest takeaway
Speaker 3: is No More. I absolutely adored the Talakanal stuff. I
Speaker 3: really want to know more about No More. I think
Speaker 3: it's set him up as a true you know, we
Speaker 3: talked about this before, but kill Monger is right with
Speaker 3: such a huge thing coming off Black Panther. I feel
Speaker 3: like with No More, it's like five thousand times stronger argument,
Speaker 3: and I'm really I wish there'd been a little bit
Speaker 3: more and No More. I think she's incredible, also very
Speaker 3: ironic because a lot of the inspiration here was probably
Speaker 3: taken from Namora Number one, the original introduction of that
Speaker 3: character from the Golden Age setting at a Mayan underground
Speaker 3: secret society they worship of God Couko Khan, you know,
Speaker 3: so a lot of inspiration was taken from that. I'd
Speaker 3: like to see more of No More, No More, but
Speaker 3: I like that conflict they set up between the two
Speaker 3: of them, where he might be he might end up
Speaker 3: as more of the Charles and she ends up as
Speaker 3: more of the Magneto. Also, we'll say, look, I love
Speaker 3: the X Men. Yeah, but I feel like currently No
Speaker 3: More is really gonna be that Magnio staff figure for
Speaker 3: the MCU going forward. He has that direct action. The
Speaker 3: politics or that are right, but the the the way
Speaker 3: that he will approach it is not going to make
Speaker 3: everyone happy. Yeah, very emotional, great performance, is beautiful cinematography,
Speaker 3: and No More. I love you. I'm so excited to
Speaker 3: see more.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm very very excited for more and No More up
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Speaker 1: in the Omibus where lower analysis and understanding come together.
Speaker 1: This week Afrofuturism and the Black Panther. The Black Panther
Speaker 1: and Wakanda are an early example of afrofuturism, which is
Speaker 1: a term coined by cultural critic Mark Derry in his
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three Say Black to the Future, which explored
Speaker 1: the paucity of black creators in sci fi. Filmmaker and
Speaker 1: scholar Yatasha L. Womack, in her book Afrofuturism The World
Speaker 1: of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy Culture, defines the movement
Speaker 1: as quote both an artistic aesthetic and a framework for
Speaker 1: critical theory. That quote come by elements of science fiction,
Speaker 1: historical fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, afrocentricity, and magic realism with
Speaker 1: non Western beliefs. Some other examples of Afrofuturism that you
Speaker 1: might be aware of, or the works of Jean Michel Bosquiat,
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Hendricks Experience, Parliament, Funkadelics kind of like ufo
Speaker 1: esthetic and lore, the works of Octavia Butler, and the
Speaker 1: late rapper MF. Doom Wakanda is the most technologically advanced
Speaker 1: superpower on Earth in the MCU, a utopia melding supercomputers,
Speaker 1: incredible weapons, spaceships with fictional African traditions, the Rasia of
Speaker 1: the heart shaped Herb, Warrior falls, and so on. At
Speaker 1: a time when racial caricaturing of non white characters was commonplace,
Speaker 1: see any of Marvel comics or any comics at all.
Speaker 1: DC Anybody's nineteen sixties depiction of Asian characters and any
Speaker 1: character of color. Really, kirbyan Lee avoided such pitfalls with
Speaker 1: the creation of Ch'chala without a doubt, Loyola professor Dilifu
Speaker 1: Nama writes in his book Super Black American pop Culture
Speaker 1: and Black Superheroes, The Black Panther and Wakanda offered unprecedented
Speaker 1: and upbeat images of Africa and African people. When Reid Richard's,
Speaker 1: among course the most very brilliant minds in the Marvel Universe,
Speaker 1: first count encounters Wakandan technology.
Speaker 2: He's blown away.
Speaker 1: Quote he took a metal device from inside his toga,
Speaker 1: Reid says in Fantastic four number fifty two. But it's
Speaker 1: so small. Can he actually transmit a message halfway around
Speaker 1: the globe with that? As radical as the intersection of
Speaker 1: technology and blackness is the presentation of Wakanda as a
Speaker 1: nation which has time and again successfully defended itself from
Speaker 1: European invasion and colonization. Wakana compels respect from the world's
Speaker 1: great nations, its superheroes, and it's supervillains. The nation has
Speaker 1: no history of colonial trauma to transcend Wacana's existence as
Speaker 1: a free, self sufficient geopolitical power is a powerful critique
Speaker 1: of colonialism and the economic exploitation of Africa. The introduction
Speaker 1: of Ulysses Claw sharpens that point of Belgian mercenary, son
Speaker 1: of a Nazi war criminal, Claw, the Black Panther's nemesis,
Speaker 1: is obsessed with obtaining Wakana's vibranium to Chile's origin story
Speaker 1: rising from the title of Black Panther after beating back
Speaker 1: clause murderous assault on his nation, is as NAMA Rights quote,
Speaker 1: the idealized composite of Third world black revolutionaries and the
Speaker 1: anti colonialist movement of the nineteen fifties that they represented.
Speaker 1: The first Black Panther film calls on numerous elements from
Speaker 1: T'Challa's comics canon, the most notable being for Me Panther's
Speaker 1: Rage and the Client. The former is a storyline which
Speaker 1: is an epic storyline written by Don McGregor with art
Speaker 1: by Rick Buckler, Billy Graham, and Gil Kine, which played
Speaker 1: out in the pages of Black Panthers solo book, then
Speaker 1: embarrassing titled Jungle Action from September nineteen seventy three to
Speaker 1: November nineteen seventy five. Rosie tell us more about Bill Graham.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Panther's Rage is a really monumental book, not just
Speaker 3: because it's widely seen as one of the best arcs
Speaker 3: of Black Panther, but also it was drawn predominantly by
Speaker 3: Billy Graham, who is arguably the first black creator who
Speaker 3: was hired by the Big Two. The book also had
Speaker 3: a black uncredited assistant on it, Arvil Jones, and Billy
Speaker 3: Graham had already done work at Marvel because he had
Speaker 3: inked the first ever issue of Luke k Chero for
Speaker 3: Hire in nineteen seventy two and continued to ink or
Speaker 3: pencil that book for its first sixteen issues. One of
Speaker 3: the things that's most memorable about Billy's art on Panthers
Speaker 3: Rage are these unbelievable title pages. He would draw, these
Speaker 3: huge names written out of rock, and Billy has long
Speaker 3: been an undercredited part of Marvel history. So it's really
Speaker 3: wonderful to see people revisit Panther's Rage and learn about
Speaker 3: the impact that Billy and his art had on Black
Speaker 3: Panther and this landmark arc.
Speaker 1: The Client is an art written by Christopher Priest with
Speaker 1: art by Mark to Share It not the baseball player
Speaker 1: part of a character redefining run on the Black Panther
Speaker 1: solo title, which was first published in the late nineties
Speaker 1: and is just tremendously influential, Like unbelievably influential in Panther's Rage, T'Challa,
Speaker 1: back in Wakanda after many years in the States, is
Speaker 1: struggling to adapt to a nation that has kind of
Speaker 1: been is in the midst of kind of coming apart
Speaker 1: because of pallace intrigue, and he's trying to balance his
Speaker 1: love life and also his responsibilities as a leader. And
Speaker 1: he faces his most dangerous nemesis yet, a Condon named
Speaker 1: and Jadaka who spent time in America changed his name
Speaker 1: to Eric Kilmonger. Panthers Rage was groundbreaking comic storytelling. The
Speaker 1: story was set completely in Africa, in Wakana, far from
Speaker 1: the urban settings in which most you know, kind of
Speaker 1: mainstream media stories set in a black context were told,
Speaker 1: and it was quote at a time when strident expressions
Speaker 1: of black cultural pride were cresting in the United States.
Speaker 1: Right It's Nama and super Black. The story unfolds over
Speaker 1: thirteen issues, which was this was not done back then.
Speaker 1: This was not really done in comics. The thirteen issue story,
Speaker 1: like arc didn't really happen back then when it was
Speaker 1: hard to find comics, like you didn't know most people
Speaker 1: got them off the rack. There were not that many
Speaker 1: comics stores, and so to do a thirteen issue arc
Speaker 1: was really it was an investment, and it was and
Speaker 1: it was It's cool that it happened, but it was
Speaker 1: really your trusting people are going to be able to
Speaker 1: find these comics and follow the story. It has been
Speaker 1: described as Marvel's first graphic novel. The Crease Skrull War,
Speaker 1: for instance, which was published in nineteen seventy one seventy two,
Speaker 1: was told over eight issues in the pages of The Avengers.
Speaker 1: Panthers were aged features, with one exception, the villain Venom
Speaker 1: and All Black cast, a first from mainstream comics. In
Speaker 1: their first confrontation, Kilmunger tosses the Black Panther over Warrior falls,
Speaker 1: declaring your line of dissent and you'll take nothing for
Speaker 1: me ever again. Goodbye, great and mighty King. You've returned
Speaker 1: to the land of your birth, only to die here.
Speaker 1: T Chila bounces back from this defeat much quicker than
Speaker 1: he does in the first Panther film. But this, you know,
Speaker 1: this defeat really shakes to childdo his Core and its
Speaker 1: subsequent issues, he faces various challenges to his authority. Christopher Priest,
Speaker 1: who in nineteen eighty three he became the first black
Speaker 1: writer be hired at the big two comic houses, Marvel
Speaker 1: and DC, began writing Black Panther in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: At the time, this was a really tenuous time in
Speaker 1: comics written large and in particularly at Marvel, which was
Speaker 1: just then emerging from bankruptcy after the kind of collectibles
Speaker 1: wide bust of the early to mid aughts that included
Speaker 1: comics and included beanie babies, included trading cards, etc. All
Speaker 1: those things just tanked, and the company at that time
Speaker 1: was just kind of willing to try shit, just throw
Speaker 1: anything at the wall and see if anything came of it.
Speaker 1: One of those things was a new line of edgier
Speaker 1: comics branded as Marvel Knights. kN Ights Editors Joe Casada
Speaker 1: and Jimmy Palmiatti approached Priest about Black Panther. Christopher was
Speaker 1: initially hesitant to do it, but he accepted and it
Speaker 1: was a transformational run, breathing new energy to the character
Speaker 1: and lore. Quote he had the classic run on Black
Speaker 1: Panther period, and that's going to be true for a
Speaker 1: long time. Tom mcacy coats Black Panther writer and now
Speaker 1: Superman writer told Vultures Abraham Raisman in twenty eighteen, Priest
Speaker 1: brought a real kingly wait to T'Challa's character. Contrast this
Speaker 1: with Panther's rage, where T'Challa was more unsure of his
Speaker 1: leadership and how to wield it. In Priest telling, T'Challa
Speaker 1: was a leader, was a king, was a ruler, and
Speaker 1: exuded that confidence in the client.
Speaker 2: He just commands total respect.
Speaker 1: And while Priests did not create the Black Panther, it's
Speaker 1: really in many ways his version of the character that
Speaker 1: you see in the MCU. Priests and artist Mark Tashera
Speaker 1: tell the tale in a kind of jumble, fractured style
Speaker 1: that feels, you know, very Quentin Tarantino ask very of
Speaker 1: the time period of the nineties. It's about the Tomorrow Fund,
Speaker 1: which is a Kanda project to create affordable housing in
Speaker 1: kind of downtrodden urban areas. It's been revealed as a
Speaker 1: cover for a money laundering operation for drug money. A
Speaker 1: young girl who appears in the fund's ad with T'Challa
Speaker 1: is murdered, and despite tensions arising for war refugees sheltering Wakanda.
Speaker 1: The king travels to the US to try and figure out, like, okay,
Speaker 1: what's going on with this Tomorrow fund and to you know,
Speaker 1: like to bring those responsible to justice. He's accompanied by
Speaker 1: his personal bodyguards, Nikia and Akoye, members of the elite
Speaker 1: all female fighting force known as the Doramalaje.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: The concept of the dormalage Wakanda for adored ones evolved
Speaker 1: out of the brilliant work of Panther scribe Don McGregor,
Speaker 1: who theorized Wakanda was actually made up of a great
Speaker 1: many indigenous tribes and that not all the tribes liked
Speaker 1: each other. Priest writes on his website, Digitalpriest dot com. Quote,
Speaker 1: Joe and Jimmy just thought it'd be cool to have
Speaker 1: Panther travel with a pair of six foot tall, gorgeous women,
Speaker 1: and I certainly agreed.
Speaker 2: But the order of the.
Speaker 1: Door of a Ladje, a kind of nun wife in
Speaker 1: training deal gave us a foot in both the worlds.
Speaker 1: The panther struggled to maintain peace between the modern and
Speaker 1: the tribal end quote. The story is told mainly through
Speaker 1: the recollections of one colonizer Everett Ross Cia agent Everett
Speaker 1: ross Kind in the comics, a mid level State Department
Speaker 1: bureaucrat who's ostensibly assigned to d'challa as his kind of
Speaker 1: like point of contact with the US government, but whose
Speaker 1: actual job is to spy on him. A preset inspiration
Speaker 1: for Ross was hilariously chandler bing from Friends and Alex P.
Speaker 1: Keaton from the nineteen eighties sitcom Family Ties. The inclusion
Speaker 1: of Ross as a narrator was this really subversive moment.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: With Ross in place, the book began to take shape,
Speaker 1: Priest writes on Digital priest dot Com.
Speaker 2: Quote continues.
Speaker 1: Ross became the key to making the book work. He
Speaker 1: was the voice of the average Marvel reader, who, in
Speaker 1: no doubt wondered why Marvel was bothering with another Panther series.
Speaker 1: Ross's monologues began to steal the show, offsetting the mysterious
Speaker 1: night creature of the man a few words who Ross
Speaker 1: was attached to. The monologues were alf and outrageous, with
Speaker 1: Ross interpreting the Marvel universe through his every man's eyes
Speaker 1: rather than through the eyes of someone who's been reading
Speaker 1: comics all their life. It was a new voice, one
Speaker 1: seemingly hostile towards the Marvel universe and by extension, it's fans,
Speaker 1: But actually the intent is to be a social observer
Speaker 1: and a deconstructionist end quote. In his Nomo Notes and
Speaker 1: Super Black quote, the Ross figure provides the reader with
Speaker 1: the choice of identifying with either the white figure or
Speaker 1: the black superhero, or both of them, but never exclusively
Speaker 1: with the black protagonists. In this sense, Ross's character is
Speaker 1: a nifty technique for addressing whether or not readers will
Speaker 1: identify with a black superhero, namely T'Challa. By the mid
Speaker 1: two thousands, Priest had burned out at Marvel, frustrated by
Speaker 1: a lack of opportunities to write a list characters.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: I've mentioned this a lot in interviews, Priest told CBR
Speaker 1: dot Com in twenty twenty. But long story short, somehow, bizarrely,
Speaker 1: as a result of my writing Black Panther, a comic
Speaker 1: book about the cultural awakening of a white man named Ross,
Speaker 1: I stopped being a writer and somehow became a black writer.
Speaker 1: Offered only writing assignments for characters for color end quote.
Speaker 1: Priest returned to comics in twenty sixteen when DC offered
Speaker 1: him the writing duties on Death Stroke as part of
Speaker 1: the company's rebirth launch. That title ended in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and as early as twenty twenty one, Priest was working
Speaker 1: on the relaunch of Vampirella for Dynamite Comics.
Speaker 3: Okay, and this is actually incredible because Billy Graham's first
Speaker 3: known credited work was actually on a Vampirella comic, illustrating
Speaker 3: Don Glas in Vampirella. I think it was number one
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty nine, and he would go on to
Speaker 3: actually pencil nearly like a dozen stories and inc Vamprella stories.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of amazing that there's also that connection
Speaker 3: between what Priests is doing now and then where Billy
Speaker 3: found a home at the beginning of his career.
Speaker 1: Up next to conversation with Ironheart writer Eve l Ewing,
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Hive Mind, where we explore topic in
Speaker 1: more detail with the help of expert guests. This week,
Speaker 1: we're absolutely honored to have evaluing author, academic poet, writer
Speaker 1: of Marvel's Ironheart series, which reinvented re Rey and who
Speaker 1: of course makes her mcudbut in black panther kind of
Speaker 1: forever Eve. Welcome to X Revision.
Speaker 4: Oh thanks for having me.
Speaker 8: I am a super fan of the podcast, as y'all know,
Speaker 8: so this is very exciting for me. It's a big
Speaker 8: career moment for me, big career.
Speaker 3: To have you on the show. Oh, it's something just
Speaker 3: so wonderful to talk to people who make comics who
Speaker 3: love this stuff like we do. So first of all, like,
Speaker 3: what was your comic book origin story? What made you
Speaker 3: fall in love with comics?
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, my comic book origin story is a little unique,
Speaker 8: I think in that I would not have been born
Speaker 8: without comics. And what I mean by that is that
Speaker 8: my dad in the eighties was making and self publishing
Speaker 8: like comic books that are basically like zines.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and so cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very cool.
Speaker 8: I have tracked down some of these and he's pretty
Speaker 8: mortified at them now, but I think they're cool. And
Speaker 8: in the eighties, my parents were both waiting at a
Speaker 8: Greyhound bus station in Chicago to head back to their
Speaker 8: respective hometowns for the holidays, and my dad was there
Speaker 8: selling these comic books for a dollar, and my mom
Speaker 8: bought one, and her and her friends had been like
Speaker 8: pregaming the greyhound, so they were like a little.
Speaker 4: Tipsy, you know, as one does.
Speaker 8: And she had never ridden the bus by herself before,
Speaker 8: and so they were getting on the same bus and
Speaker 8: her friends kind of like drunkenly said to my dad
Speaker 8: like you know, we have your comic book, and if
Speaker 8: something happens to our friend, like we'll find you, you know,
Speaker 8: responsible for her because there was no internet, and so
Speaker 8: he had like his you know, his mailing address and
Speaker 8: his phone number on this thing. And so so that's
Speaker 8: how my parents met. And so it's like a very
Speaker 8: literal origin story. And then my first comics as a kid.
Speaker 8: I feel now like confident enough in myself to say
Speaker 8: this that I was a big Archie comics fan. I
Speaker 8: think for many years, I yeah, didn't feel confident, uh
Speaker 8: sharing that, but I started reading Archie when I was
Speaker 8: in kindergarten and that was kind of my first you
Speaker 8: know Archie. They would like often reprint old comic like
Speaker 8: old strips in the same issue with new ones, and
Speaker 8: so that was also my introduction as a kid to
Speaker 8: the idea of like recurring characters and that different people
Speaker 8: can like have different takes on things and like letters
Speaker 8: to the editor and all these sorts of things. And
Speaker 8: then in middle school Chicago at the time when I
Speaker 8: was growing up, you know, like every week in our
Speaker 8: local all weekly, I would be reading like Linda Barry
Speaker 8: and Ivan Brunetti and Chris Ware. So it was like
Speaker 8: a really great time for comics and cartooning. And then
Speaker 8: in high school I started getting more into superhero comics.
Speaker 8: I'll shout out like Chicago Comics and Quimby's, which is
Speaker 8: a place that has some amazing zine collection. You know,
Speaker 8: I was reading like superhero stuff, but also like Joan
Speaker 8: and Vasquez and you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: Baby Jennie the homicidal maniac. Yeah, age was it was.
Speaker 4: That was the thing.
Speaker 8: And you know it was also like a great time
Speaker 8: for animation. You know, like Samurai Jack came out when
Speaker 8: I was fifteen. I promise, I'll wrap up this long story.
Speaker 1: So and I don't know this is why.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, since we're at like my first when
Speaker 8: I was in high school, I signed up to take
Speaker 8: this history of animation class at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 8: where I now teach, and I learned about like Jan
Speaker 8: Schwanckmeyer and like Windsor McKay and yeah, so, like I
Speaker 8: would say, animation and comics and cartooning were all very
Speaker 8: much of a piece for me. And then the last
Speaker 8: thing in this epic origin story is that when I
Speaker 8: was fifteen or sixteen, at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Neil
Speaker 8: Gaiman was interviewing Will Eisner, and my dad took me
Speaker 8: to see that interview, and so that was pretty amazing,
Speaker 8: especially because later on, and you know, if we talk
Speaker 8: about like the not so fun part of comics, later
Speaker 8: I had the very surreal experience of Neil Gaman like
Speaker 8: defending me on the internet from comics on people.
Speaker 4: So that was pretty cool. I was like, Wow, you're
Speaker 4: really important to me.
Speaker 8: But you know, I think that like when I was
Speaker 8: in high school, I never People always say like, did
Speaker 8: you think that you would write comics?
Speaker 4: And I absolutely didn't because I never I never.
Speaker 8: Saw anybody who looked like me doing it, and and
Speaker 8: I think that there are many people in this world
Speaker 8: who have the imagination to kind of insert themselves in
Speaker 8: the narratives where they haven't been and I just didn't have.
Speaker 4: That level of imagination.
Speaker 8: So I was like, oh, you know, this is something
Speaker 8: I'm always gonna love, but I'll never get a chance
Speaker 8: to do. But I did, as I started taking myself
Speaker 8: pretty seriously as a writer across lots of genres. You know,
Speaker 8: I was reading a lot of Ivan Brunetti and Scott
Speaker 8: McLeod and stuff like that, because I also and I still,
Speaker 8: you know, to students and all kinds of people who
Speaker 8: just want to talk about like how to be a
Speaker 8: great writer, I tell them like, read understanding comics, read
Speaker 8: cartoon in philosophy, and practice right because I think that
Speaker 8: they have a lot to teach us just about like
Speaker 8: narrative in general and storytelling in general. So yeah, I
Speaker 8: think that before I even started writing comics, a lot
Speaker 8: of my other writing was very informed by that tradition.
Speaker 1: Just from that answer, I think people who maybe are
Speaker 1: not familiar with your work or you are, are getting
Speaker 1: the picture of how incredibly varied and well rounded you are.
Speaker 1: You know, if that's the right. Thank you for the
Speaker 1: for the amount of stuff that that you know about
Speaker 1: and that your intellect touches. And I wonder as so
Speaker 1: as you know, as an assistant professor, as.
Speaker 8: Oh I'm associate No, I'm telling okay officially, yeah, I
Speaker 8: can't be fired.
Speaker 4: I can.
Speaker 2: I love it. You love to hear it.
Speaker 4: Pretty great scam.
Speaker 1: You know, as an academic, as a sociologist, as an author,
Speaker 1: as a poet.
Speaker 2: How do how do all those things inform your work?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, at any point in this range of things
Speaker 1: that you're interested in?
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for asking that.
Speaker 8: I thought you were going to pivot to the whole
Speaker 8: rest of the interview being about Yan Schwankemeyer and like.
Speaker 2: Check trying to get there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I think that at the end of
Speaker 8: the day, I just want to tell stories.
Speaker 4: I want to tell good stories.
Speaker 8: And I think that not to get like too heady
Speaker 8: or whatever, but you know, a lot of these get
Speaker 8: intellect okay, please get a get any intellectuals that are
Speaker 8: most important to me, and particularly in the black intellectual tradition.
Speaker 4: You know, people like W. E. B.
Speaker 8: Du Bois, people like Zuriel Hurston have always written all
Speaker 8: kinds of things right, like across genre, and I think
Speaker 8: that I think that a lot of times folks don't
Speaker 8: really want to give themselves permission to do that. But
Speaker 8: for me, I try to approach any story or anything
Speaker 8: I want to write about and talk about and think, like,
Speaker 8: what is the medium that is best going to serve
Speaker 8: what it is I'm trying to say and do. And
Speaker 8: also I think I'm really comfortable being a learner. I'm
Speaker 8: really I used to teach middle school and that's a
Speaker 8: great way to learn humility, you know, like comfort with
Speaker 8: being like, Okay, what can I do better today than
Speaker 8: I did yesterday. And I think, if anything, I'm I'm
Speaker 8: really comfortable doing that. And so I think that you know,
Speaker 8: all this stuff that I write and and try to make,
Speaker 8: you know, I've I've co written a play, and I
Speaker 8: write poetry, and I do comics and working on some
Speaker 8: TV stuff, And I think what unites all those things
Speaker 8: is just like what's the best possible story that we
Speaker 8: can tell? What are those fundamentals of really good storytelling,
Speaker 8: you know, and how do we how do we get there?
Speaker 8: And I also think I think, like I try to
Speaker 8: do something in comics that I think is has always
Speaker 8: been part of the tradition, right, which is like using
Speaker 8: comics as a space to bring interesting questions about the
Speaker 8: world we live in, uh to readers in a very
Speaker 8: like pop culture, low brow way, you know. And I
Speaker 8: think that that's also like the kind of like pulpy, cheap,
Speaker 8: like crappy, low culture aspect of comics is something that
Speaker 8: I also really love and embrace. And you know, I
Speaker 8: have a graphic novel coming out this coming next year
Speaker 8: in March, but prior to that, I'd never written a
Speaker 8: graphic novel, and you know, like a lot of my
Speaker 8: colleagues and stuff who don't know anything about comics would
Speaker 8: be like, oh, congrats on your graphic novel, right, because
Speaker 8: they basically saw graphic novels like a polite word for.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, it's the comics is the that you haud
Speaker 3: didn't yeah.
Speaker 8: You know yeah, And people thought that they were like
Speaker 8: insulting me and they had to use this kind of
Speaker 8: like euphemism. And I'm super into that. I'm super into
Speaker 8: like pulpy, cheap garbage stories written on like you know,
Speaker 8: paper literally staple together, like so I'm sold on paper
Speaker 8: that is like not very good.
Speaker 4: I'm totally into that.
Speaker 8: And I think it puts comics alongside jazz, alongside him
Speaker 8: hu as you know, kind of like a great subterranean
Speaker 8: art form.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think one of the things that's so
Speaker 3: powerful is the certain level of freedom you get from
Speaker 3: writing something that's like disposable or disposed for real time.
Speaker 3: And how does it feel like, so, say, like poetry
Speaker 3: collection like Electric Arches, which definitely deals with a lot
Speaker 3: of the same themes and interest, the kind of cosmic
Speaker 3: mixed with the mundane. What kind of freedom do you
Speaker 3: get when you take those themes and you take them
Speaker 3: out of a poetry space, a very structured space, and
Speaker 3: then you put them onto the page in a comic book.
Speaker 3: How different is that for you? And how much fun
Speaker 3: do you get to have in that in that world
Speaker 3: of panels?
Speaker 8: And oh, you know, I see, actually I see in like,
Speaker 8: if I were to categorize the work that I do,
Speaker 8: I see kind of poetry and comics as being of
Speaker 8: a piece and that I think both of them are
Speaker 8: places where I feel a lot of permission to just
Speaker 8: do wild stuff and just say.
Speaker 4: Whatever you know and do whatever.
Speaker 8: But I think the difference about comics is that, like
Speaker 8: you know, it's such a collaborative medium, and so for me,
Speaker 8: you know, the poetry in my first book, Electric Arches,
Speaker 8: which you're so kind to mention, is is very much
Speaker 8: about imagination, is very much about you know, afrofuturism and
Speaker 8: exploration and time travel and like weird space stuff. But
Speaker 8: to bring in the visual element of that is just
Speaker 8: so magical to me. And I feel, you know, I've
Speaker 8: gotten to work with a lot of different artists at
Speaker 8: this point, and I feel like really grateful for all
Speaker 8: of them, and really grateful for the process. And I
Speaker 8: think that for folks who have never been on the
Speaker 8: creator side of comics, just really wrapping your mind around
Speaker 8: how many people go into making one thing. I think
Speaker 8: is often something that surprises a lot of people. So
Speaker 8: you know, you pick up a comic book that's at
Speaker 8: least one editor, right, at least one writer, somebody doing pencils,
Speaker 8: somebody maybe doing layout, somebody doing inks, somebody doing colors,
Speaker 8: somebody doing lettering, right, And I really love working with
Speaker 8: all those folks, and in particular with Ironheart being my
Speaker 8: first kind of like big two comics experience, I got
Speaker 8: really lucky working with with Luciano Vecchio for most of
Speaker 8: the run. Also shout out to Kevin Lebronda, who started
Speaker 8: out the run, but most of the issues are drawn
Speaker 8: by Luciano, who's just like an amazing, wonderful person. And
Speaker 8: so that aspect of it is really different than poetry
Speaker 8: or other forms of writing, where it's like I'm trying
Speaker 8: to take stuff from my brain and say it on
Speaker 8: paper and then turning it over with a lot of
Speaker 8: trust and a lot of gratitude to really brilliant people
Speaker 8: who are gonna bring it to life in a different way.
Speaker 8: And so that's something that I that I really appreciate.
Speaker 8: And one of the biggest things that I try to
Speaker 8: tell you know, folks who are again like as I'm
Speaker 8: teaching or talking to folks about coming into the space
Speaker 8: is like an artist on a comic book is not
Speaker 8: an illustrator.
Speaker 4: Their job is not to.
Speaker 8: Compliment or like make pretty what you're doing right, Like
Speaker 8: they are doing fifty percent or more of the work
Speaker 8: through their craft and translating.
Speaker 3: They translate your script into the comic book, you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and there and like visual art is what makes
Speaker 8: comics what they are, right, And so I think it's
Speaker 8: also been really amazing for me to live into some
Speaker 8: of my principles as a writer about like parsimony and
Speaker 8: less is more and showdown, tell and all that type
Speaker 8: of stuff becomes very literal in the comic space in
Speaker 8: a way that it isn't in like nonfiction or poetry
Speaker 8: or other things.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could take us into that the
Speaker 1: kind of process that you uncovered through working on Ironheart,
Speaker 1: because you know, one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: Rosie and I try to do with this pod is
Speaker 1: like point a way for people like Rosie and myself
Speaker 1: who fell in love with comics, fell in love with
Speaker 1: serialized storytelling to try and if they ever wanted to
Speaker 1: do that, find the creative outlet for themselves, to find
Speaker 1: the kind of like nuts and bolts things that they
Speaker 1: could you know, bring into their process that could help
Speaker 1: them get there.
Speaker 2: So what what was that? Like? What what is the what's.
Speaker 1: The storytelling process, the collaborative process, like on on on
Speaker 1: these issues. How do you how do you bring these
Speaker 1: stories to life?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, I think the first thing you have
Speaker 8: to get over is like immense fear.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the biggest, the biggest obstacle for any.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think that, you know, I something I like,
Speaker 8: I've I've published a lot of stuff. I've written a
Speaker 8: lot of stuff, and to this day, when I sit
Speaker 8: down to write a new thing, you know, I have
Speaker 8: that moment of terror of like I think I'm gonna
Speaker 8: throw up, you know, like I'm like i might die, Like.
Speaker 3: I might die from writing.
Speaker 4: Is today the day that writing finally gets me? You know?
Speaker 8: And so I think the biggest thing is like learning
Speaker 8: to push through that. Alexander Chi, who's an essayist and novelist,
Speaker 8: has this thing that he said that I'm I'm sort
Speaker 8: of paraphrasing, but people should look it up from his book,
Speaker 8: which is called them How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,
Speaker 8: which the title is misleading because it's not about that.
Speaker 8: It's just like a collection of essays, many of which
Speaker 8: are about writing. But one of the things he says
Speaker 8: is like the difference between people who write and people
Speaker 8: who don't is being.
Speaker 4: Able to stand it.
Speaker 8: And so I think the biggest thing is like learning
Speaker 8: to trust yourself and to work through some of those
Speaker 8: feelings of discomfort, and then beyond that, you know, I
Speaker 8: studied up a lot, I seek feedback a lot. I
Speaker 8: think that who I am now. I'm working on what
Speaker 8: my next project is going to be for Marvel, which
Speaker 8: I really wish I could tell you because it's super exciting,
Speaker 8: superret But I'm working on that now, and I've had
Speaker 8: a lot of opportunities to reflect on like who I
Speaker 8: am now as a comics writer versus who I was
Speaker 8: in twenty eighteen trying to start Ironheart. And I think
Speaker 8: that the biggest thing that I had on my side
Speaker 8: was reading a lot, studying a lot. You know, some
Speaker 8: of those those books that we just talked about, you
Speaker 8: know a lot of certainly everything Scott McLeod wrote about comics.
Speaker 8: You know, Will Eisner's books. Greg Pak has a really
Speaker 8: great book called Making Comics Like the Pros or something
Speaker 8: like that, and he's amazing, but.
Speaker 4: Also like reaching out for help, you know.
Speaker 8: And so I had folks give me a lot of
Speaker 8: feedback on things and kind of push push me forward.
Speaker 8: And then even with that understanding that the first thing
Speaker 8: you write, like, you know, I look back at my
Speaker 8: first issue of Ironheart and I'm like, you know, oh
Speaker 8: my god, there's.
Speaker 4: So many things that I would never do, you know.
Speaker 8: And that's the truth for every comics writer I've ever
Speaker 8: spoken to, and they're like, oh, it's like nauseating to
Speaker 8: look back at where you started, But you have to
Speaker 8: be willing to push through that, you know, you have
Speaker 8: to be willing to kind of get over that. And
Speaker 8: I think for anybody who wants to write in any genre,
Speaker 8: I think about this. I'm really into baking and I'm
Speaker 8: really into metaphors.
Speaker 4: So you know, one of my.
Speaker 8: Favorite ways of thinking about this is like if I
Speaker 8: told you, if you're like, you know, I want to
Speaker 8: make a cake. Like I've seen cake, I've eaten cake,
Speaker 8: really into it. It's tasty, it's delicious, it's beautiful. And
Speaker 8: you know, you took a bowl and you put like
Speaker 8: eggs and flour and milk and cocoa powder into a
Speaker 8: bowl and you start it up and you're like, this
Speaker 8: doesn't look like cake at all, Like this is discuss
Speaker 8: you know, what is this? And you throw it in
Speaker 8: the garbage, like you you don't go that's you didn't finish.
Speaker 4: You didn't finish the process.
Speaker 8: And I think that a lot of folks they see
Speaker 8: the writing that they admire the most, and they see
Speaker 8: the finished product of that, and they don't realize exactly
Speaker 8: how much like utter garbage, Sauce went into going from
Speaker 8: a first draft to a final product. And like you
Speaker 8: gotta put the cake in the in the pit, put
Speaker 8: the batter in the oven, and put the you know,
Speaker 8: put the batter in the pan, and put.
Speaker 4: The pan in the oven.
Speaker 8: And and I think that that's that's the secret.
Speaker 4: You know, I was a ton of hockey coats.
Speaker 8: I'm very grateful to count him as a close, close
Speaker 8: friend and mentor. And I watched him be interviewed several
Speaker 8: years ago and somebody asked him about the case for reparations,
Speaker 8: which for those who only know him from comics and
Speaker 8: you know how him for his runs on im Cap
Speaker 8: and Black Panther. He you know, wrote this really important
Speaker 8: piece of nonfiction pros And you know, somebody said, I
Speaker 8: wish I could have written that. I could never have
Speaker 8: written that. He said, Oh, it was easy. You know,
Speaker 8: all I did was I wrote it badly five times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, It's all you have to do.
Speaker 4: And I think that that's it.
Speaker 8: So, you know, unfortunately that's true about so many things,
Speaker 8: like you know, working out, exercise, like relationships, like all
Speaker 8: these things about life that we kind of wish were
Speaker 8: just easy.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, you just have to do the thing. I love
Speaker 4: that it sucks.
Speaker 3: Because that's what we always that when people we've done
Speaker 3: like mail book, mail Bag episodes and stuff, and people
Speaker 3: will say like, oh, how do you get into writing comics?
Speaker 3: How do you start writing? And true is you just
Speaker 3: got to make them. You got to do that what
Speaker 3: your dad did, You go to make it lean, You
Speaker 3: got to write a script, you got to write a pilot.
Speaker 3: And you kind of touched on this, but you know
Speaker 3: throughout that that's your writing process, that's how you get
Speaker 3: it done. And you mentioned this, but like what was
Speaker 3: it like the first time that you still and still
Speaker 3: now because I know it's like the best feeling. But
Speaker 3: what was it like when you started to get the
Speaker 3: art back and you started to see oh my gosh, yeah,
Speaker 3: your story and really being brought to life in this
Speaker 3: form that you'd loved since you were a kid, and
Speaker 3: suddenly you're part of that process. How did that feel?
Speaker 4: Oh, it's mind blowing. I never get over it.
Speaker 8: I mean, yeah, getting art back is like the Grid's Christmas.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's like Christmas and your birthday, you know,
Speaker 8: rolled into one.
Speaker 4: And I think that.
Speaker 8: That's also part of why it's challenging to start, because
Speaker 8: when you when you write your first comic script, if
Speaker 8: you're doing your own art, that's dope and actually secret
Speaker 8: since we're doing all kinds of secret confessionals of things
Speaker 8: I wouldn't normally say in interviews.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: I actually in the early like twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
Speaker 8: I was like, oh, I'll probably just like self publish
Speaker 8: a lot of comics.
Speaker 4: So I was drawing.
Speaker 8: I was writing and drawing well, and you know, and
Speaker 8: like and that. I mean for those who draw do
Speaker 8: visual art, it's the same thing, right, Like every time
Speaker 8: you sit down to put a pencil to paper, you
Speaker 8: learn something new at the limits of your own ability,
Speaker 8: right where you're like, oh man, people have wrists, like,
Speaker 8: you know, like.
Speaker 2: How do you what's a car?
Speaker 3: Dragon car?
Speaker 4: And you're like, I've never seen a car before.
Speaker 3: Doesn't know it's a dog?
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe no animals in this, nobody's never seen another person.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'll just look at everything straight on, you know,
Speaker 3: And and this, honestly, that's a kind of a cool
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 8: Another comic strip that I love growing up was Life
Speaker 8: and Hell by Matt Greening, right where it's like literally
Speaker 8: every single so you know, I wrote this this uh,
Speaker 8: this strip called Pretend Interviews, which was a comic of
Speaker 8: a cartoon strip, a cartoon of a radio show, of
Speaker 8: a fictional radio show of me interviewing dead people. And
Speaker 8: I did it Life and hellstyle, where every single panel
Speaker 8: was exactly the same as a sitting.
Speaker 4: Just literally copy and paste.
Speaker 8: So anyway, unless you're doing your own art, and even
Speaker 8: if you are, the part of the challenge of writing
Speaker 8: your first script is is recognizing that kind of translational
Speaker 8: work that Rosie was talking about, which is like, how
Speaker 8: do I say this in a way that somebody else
Speaker 8: is going to be able to draw it and in
Speaker 8: a way that's compelling. You know, how do I do
Speaker 8: that succinctly? How how do I give them enough and
Speaker 8: not too much? And the first time you're writing a
Speaker 8: script and you haven't seen how it turns to art, Uh,
Speaker 8: that's hard to do, right, And so it ceases to
Speaker 8: be kind of an intellectual exercise.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 8: I was helping a friend of mine who's who's writing
Speaker 8: his first comic script, and he sent it to me,
Speaker 8: and you know, I sent him a gentle reminder that
Speaker 8: I also had to receive, which is that in comics,
Speaker 8: people can only do one thing at a time.
Speaker 4: Yes, right, so you can't come.
Speaker 3: Through a door into another room and then something.
Speaker 4: Walked in and picked her mug of t and high
Speaker 4: five Jason.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's the.
Speaker 8: Whole thing, Like you decide, And that's different. I think
Speaker 8: also a lot of folks were familiar with like screenwriting
Speaker 8: or to people move like DV. Human beings can move
Speaker 8: around in three dimensions, and so so that's kind of
Speaker 8: like to me, honestly, what I still really relish at
Speaker 8: a craft level, it's like, what is the what is
Speaker 8: the gestaltz.
Speaker 4: What is the essence of what like this this rosy moment?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 8: Is it most important that she SIPs her tea? Is
Speaker 8: it most important that she pets the cat? Is it
Speaker 8: most like what am I actually trying to get across?
Speaker 8: And I kind of love that, Like I love thinking
Speaker 8: about how you reduce moments of immense emotion and human
Speaker 8: interaction to like a single thing. I'm also really a
Speaker 8: big fan of like it's pretty boring when people are
Speaker 8: just talking to each other, like standing there talking, And
Speaker 8: so I'm also a big fan of the subtextual visual
Speaker 8: like substory that that I script out, but that doesn't
Speaker 8: involve dialogue, right, And so you know, like there's this
Speaker 8: an issue seven, Issue seven of Iron Hurt, Nadia van Dyne,
Speaker 8: the Wasp comes to visit Rerea in her lab and
Speaker 8: she's re reshowing her around and.
Speaker 4: And the subtexe.
Speaker 8: So like, as she's showing her around the lab, to me,
Speaker 8: this is an opportunity to show a lot of things
Speaker 8: about Rerea. So one of the things she'd like a
Speaker 8: recurring thing in Ironheart is that every time re reopens
Speaker 8: a fridge, it's only full of orange pop. And so
Speaker 8: like she only that's all she drinks, and.
Speaker 4: That's like a that's a character moment, right.
Speaker 8: The things, the ways that people interact with each other nonverbally,
Speaker 8: the things that you see on somebody's desk, the way
Speaker 8: that they dress, right, Like, all of those are opportunities
Speaker 8: to build a character as well.
Speaker 4: And I love scripting that type of stuff.
Speaker 8: And it's it's kind of the backdrop so that like,
Speaker 8: because you know, I do want to write like emotionally
Speaker 8: laid in work, and so if people are sitting and
Speaker 8: having a deep discussion, like what are the other things
Speaker 8: that they can be doing? You know in Rosie's you know,
Speaker 8: uh comic, the food the food preparation scene, right, yeah,
Speaker 8: the Miyazaki nod of like somebody making food in the
Speaker 8: background while they're having a conversation.
Speaker 4: I love that type of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. For me, I think one of the biggest.
Speaker 1: Lessons I need to learn in my own writing was
Speaker 1: my own tendency to uh love my characters and want
Speaker 1: to protect them too much. You know, you always hear,
Speaker 1: oh love all your characters, even even the bad, even
Speaker 1: the villains. You know, you have to empathize with you
Speaker 1: And so my the way that that manifested in my
Speaker 1: own work was that I don't want anything to.
Speaker 2: Happen to them. I want you to just be protected,
Speaker 2: just like, yeah, you know, and and what what you know?
Speaker 2: How does that translated translate to nothing happens? It's boring.
Speaker 1: Were there anyone like that for you, where you're like, oh, god,
Speaker 1: I I have to I have to be mean to
Speaker 1: this creation that I love a little bit.
Speaker 2: I have to be willing to be mean to them. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's such a good question.
Speaker 8: So, first of all, my dream in life is to
Speaker 8: have the cachet as a creator to produce work in
Speaker 8: which truly nothing happens.
Speaker 3: A dream that's the ultimate dream dreams.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, I'm a big I'm a Miyazaki stand and
Speaker 8: so like you know, I love of Miyazaki films in
Speaker 8: which like, truly.
Speaker 4: Not a lot happens.
Speaker 8: You know, there's there's the there's the polar opposite, which
Speaker 8: is the Miyazaki film in which like seven hundred things
Speaker 8: happened that you don't really understand me. You know, I've
Speaker 8: seen Princess Mononoke, like, you know, infinite times. I think
Speaker 8: the last time I saw it, I was like, cool,
Speaker 8: I think I'm up to a strong seventy five percent
Speaker 8: of understanding what.
Speaker 2: Is going on.
Speaker 8: But the episode of that is where it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 8: you know, like you like Kiki, she worked at a bakery,
Speaker 8: and then like there was a rare you know, like
Speaker 8: very minimal content. I aspire, I aspire, but until I
Speaker 8: get to that point, I think, you know, I got
Speaker 8: in a one of the few times I've had like
Speaker 8: a minor, respectful disagreement with somebody on the creative side,
Speaker 8: and Marvel Comics was the this person who was not
Speaker 8: an editor, who was a you know, kind of higher
Speaker 8: up person, uh, really wanting me to kill some characters.
Speaker 8: And you know, I was kind of like, what are
Speaker 8: the other ways that we can have stakes?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 8: And so it's true, you can't just have nothing happening,
Speaker 8: But I think that some of our assumptions about what
Speaker 8: constitutes stakes are sometimes wrong, right, And so the question
Speaker 8: is like, what are the you know, to quote she Hulk, like,
Speaker 8: those aren't mistakes, right, Like, what are the stakes that
Speaker 8: matter for that character? And I think for somebody, you know,
Speaker 8: for somebody like re Rea just you know, since we're
Speaker 8: talking about.
Speaker 4: Her, the stakes of.
Speaker 8: Like getting into a fight are not always the highest stakes,
Speaker 8: right for her, the journey that I wanted to take
Speaker 8: her on in that solo title is really like very
Speaker 8: emotional and so like being wrong, exploring your own inner
Speaker 8: foolishness that you haven't really dealt with, being nice to
Speaker 8: other people, listening to other people, taking advice, asking for help, right, Like,
Speaker 8: those things are also really big moments for some characters.
Speaker 8: And so the question is how do you take the
Speaker 8: audience or the reader on a journey where they're bought
Speaker 8: in the body?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know if you guys watched The Bear?
Speaker 4: Did you watch The Bear?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a huge, huge.
Speaker 3: Ten incredible. I spent a lot of my time before
Speaker 3: I moved to America working in bars and restaurants, so
Speaker 3: it was like, I was like this the representation I
Speaker 3: wanted was like, it's ship to work and recapture that
Speaker 3: it captured that frenetic there's an emergency, there is another emergency.
Speaker 1: Now there's another emergency, and people need to get fed also.
Speaker 8: And it's a little I think it's a little triggering
Speaker 8: for people who've worked in the restaurant industry. You know,
Speaker 8: it's like, but but you know, one of my favorites,
Speaker 8: so folks should watch. I think it's just an amazingly
Speaker 8: written piece of media. I also think it's one of
Speaker 8: the best things to take place in Chicago, like ever written.
Speaker 4: It's really good.
Speaker 8: But you know, I think one of my favorite scenes
Speaker 8: is like the scene of these two characters Sidney and
Speaker 8: Marcus at the end right towards the end of the
Speaker 8: first season. This is not like a major spoiler, but
Speaker 8: you know, Sidney has basically just like done the George
Speaker 8: Costanz equivalent of like sitting in the slushy machine, like
Speaker 8: like when you have an epic quit, like an epic
Speaker 8: quitting when you're like I quit on this in this
Speaker 8: like amazing like burn every bridgeway and this tension of
Speaker 8: like is she gonna go back?
Speaker 4: Like can she go back to the restaurant? Right?
Speaker 8: And to me, when I think about that show, which
Speaker 8: is so wildly frenetic and stressful, like, to me, that's
Speaker 8: one of the highest stakes moments of the season is
Speaker 8: because all of us have felt that thing where like
Speaker 8: we we went out with a bang, and then we
Speaker 8: look back and we're like, yo, I was kind of wrong,
Speaker 8: Like I honestly was like maybe really wrong and really
Speaker 8: and like am I gonna go back and tell people like, yo,
Speaker 8: I was wrong and try to salvage that. That's so cringey.
Speaker 8: It's like so uncomfortable to even talk about. So yeah,
Speaker 8: I think that the question of like, you know, kill
Speaker 8: your darlings like sometimes that's that's not literally murdering right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And you know, Sali Nama said this to me.
Speaker 8: He was like, at this point, you know, people dying
Speaker 8: in comics is also like not that high.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say that.
Speaker 3: Like everybody comes back, so big a challenges to find
Speaker 3: stakes the feel real.
Speaker 4: George R.
Speaker 8: Martin is like, comic stopped being good. When people stop being.
Speaker 3: He's still like he's feared of Uncle Ben coming back
Speaker 3: that will be the true most people.
Speaker 4: And make them dead. He's like, just kill them and
Speaker 4: let them be dead.
Speaker 3: Come on, bro come on broh. I mean that's the
Speaker 3: ultimate comic book conundrum. So I think that's quite yeah,
Speaker 3: quite ironic that that was a note, you know, the
Speaker 3: idea that you had to kill people for it to
Speaker 3: be real. I'm like, oh, they'll be back, they'll be back,
Speaker 3: They'll be right. And then kind of like what was
Speaker 3: it like for you to go from this space of
Speaker 3: seeing getting to know really as a writer, but also
Speaker 3: as a comic book fan and in this art space
Speaker 3: to then you know, this is one of the quickest,
Speaker 3: if not the quickest transitions of being introduced in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: getting a solo series twenty eighteen, being in the MCUI
Speaker 3: she appears.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, It's amazing.
Speaker 3: So how does it feel then to not just be
Speaker 3: creating her Storians seeing it on the page, but to
Speaker 3: then go to the premiere to see it on the
Speaker 3: screen and to see Dominique Tholn just absolutely smash it.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, Well, first of all, is this a spoiler?
Speaker 8: Is a spoiler friendly situation?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeh yeah, yeah, this is a spoiler note?
Speaker 4: Okay, cool? Cool? Yeah.
Speaker 8: I mean so, first of all, on a practical level,
Speaker 8: I've spent the last four years of my life perfecting
Speaker 8: the uh who is Ironheartshpiel for that I have to
Speaker 8: give to people, which now has morphed into the who
Speaker 8: is Monica Rambo?
Speaker 4: And you know, just like to.
Speaker 8: Tell people, you know, tell people in thirty seconds before
Speaker 8: their eyes glaze over, you know, like this is a character.
Speaker 8: Brian Michael Bendis Miles Morales.
Speaker 2: You probably Brian.
Speaker 4: It's that guy.
Speaker 8: Okay, so iron Man, you know who that is and
Speaker 8: the protoce, but then not the same and at that
Speaker 8: point the person is like walked away. And so what
Speaker 8: I'm really excited about is just like being able to
Speaker 8: say iron Heart to people and then being like cool,
Speaker 8: I know that is without like this long drawn out explanation. Also,
Speaker 8: usually at the end of that explanation, somebody turns to
Speaker 8: their friend and they're like, yeah, this is eve she
Speaker 8: wrote iron Man in the movies.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, that's not that's not how it happened.
Speaker 8: And comics literacy is still like very low in our society.
Speaker 8: So yeah, that also keeps me humble. One of my
Speaker 8: best friends when I when I started writing iron Heart,
Speaker 8: she said to me, this is a person, brilliant, person, amazed,
Speaker 8: she has a PhD, you know, like amazing person.
Speaker 4: Well read.
Speaker 8: She's like, she's like, I was unaware that they were
Speaker 8: still making new superheroes. Yeah, She's like, you were like,
Speaker 8: She's like, you know, I thought, like, there's Batman, there's
Speaker 8: Spider Man, and I thought, like, you know, they're like
Speaker 8: she thought it was like a canonical like decision we
Speaker 8: have and we're just to you know, I'm like, first,
Speaker 8: you know, we have new Pokemon, Like there's like things
Speaker 8: don't anything that has IP that's not like you know,
Speaker 8: we just have so so honestly, like just the I
Speaker 8: love this character so much and she's very real to
Speaker 8: me in a probably weird way, and so yeah, like
Speaker 8: just to know that she's gonna be visible to so
Speaker 8: many other people is really exciting and frankly completely unreal
Speaker 8: for me. And then honestly being at the premiere, Like,
Speaker 8: first of all, it was my first Hollywood premiere, and
Speaker 8: so it was just like surreal in a number of ways.
Speaker 4: Rihanna sat rows behind us, wow.
Speaker 8: Like like directly behind those so that I could not
Speaker 8: see her unless I turned my entire body, and throughout
Speaker 8: the whole time, my husband was like Rihanna's eating popcorn,
Speaker 8: like he was like all of Rihanna's activities. To me,
Speaker 8: I was like, okay, thank you, but yeah, I thought
Speaker 8: I'm a big crier and I thought I was going
Speaker 8: to cry a lot when she first appeared on screen,
Speaker 8: and instead I was like, like so filled with the
Speaker 8: most unspeakable joy that I can't even describe to you.
Speaker 4: I was so.
Speaker 8: Happy and I sat behind right behind Reginald Hudlin, you
Speaker 8: know who for folks who don't know, is both Hollywood
Speaker 8: like Black Film Icon and made like House Party and Boomerang,
Speaker 8: but also had a pretty good run on Black Panther
Speaker 8: and the two comics Writer and And when Reary first
Speaker 8: appeared on screen, he turned around, uh and and grabbed
Speaker 8: my hand and he goes.
Speaker 7: Oh, He's like, that's what the fuck I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Like totally long. And I was like, yeah, I love
Speaker 2: that and cool, Yeah.
Speaker 4: That was very cool. And and and Bendis was there
Speaker 4: in the same row.
Speaker 8: And the other thing I'll share is that, like, I
Speaker 8: think this is okay to say, like he he was
Speaker 8: sitting in front and like a little to the left
Speaker 8: of me, and and before the and we'd actually never
Speaker 8: met in person before.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 8: And so you know, I went over and I introduced
Speaker 8: myself to him, and he he shook my hand and
Speaker 8: he said, you're the reason we're all here. And that
Speaker 8: was like very I think, very just very moving and
Speaker 8: very generous. And you know, I think for him to
Speaker 8: be able to say that, yeah, it was just it
Speaker 8: was it was really kind. And I think that part
Speaker 8: of the fun and wild thing is like none of
Speaker 8: us own these characters, right, Like the that's the other
Speaker 8: thing where people don't understand, like I'm not making.
Speaker 4: Like your character making dollars. Yeah, I do not on
Speaker 4: this ip, you know.
Speaker 8: But so I think part of the like beauty, the
Speaker 8: hard part and the beautiful part is like you have
Speaker 8: a turn.
Speaker 4: You get to take your.
Speaker 8: Turn, right, Like you know, Brian invented something and made
Speaker 8: something and then I got.
Speaker 4: To take my turn and that was really really special.
Speaker 8: And then you know, Coogler and Dominique are taking their turn,
Speaker 8: and the Disney Plus series comes Shanakahad, who's an amazing
Speaker 8: writer who I actually who was also a poet, so
Speaker 8: who I actually knew prior to her taking on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great, like poets are out here doing stuff.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Like everybody gets to take their turn, you know,
Speaker 8: And I think that that's I think that's hard for
Speaker 8: some people. But it's really really cool too. It's really
Speaker 8: cool to see where people take something. And I'm I'm
Speaker 8: lucky enough that I am a consultant on the on
Speaker 8: the TV show and so you know that means like
Speaker 8: I made a lot of notes and they can take
Speaker 8: it or leave it. But something that Kelly Studiconic said
Speaker 8: to me, is like, for us as comics writers, when
Speaker 8: we see the stuff on screen, our job is not
Speaker 8: to litigate every kind of like biographical detail of the character,
Speaker 8: but to do our best to try to protect the
Speaker 8: core of who the character is.
Speaker 4: And that's what I you know, that's what I'm hoping
Speaker 4: to be able to do.
Speaker 8: And I like, if I had, you know, if somebody
Speaker 8: had told all of us fifteen years ago, there's to
Speaker 8: be a Spider Man movie and yeah, this Spider Man
Speaker 8: has no uncle Ben, right, we would be like what boo, right,
Speaker 8: Like that's yeah, But it turns out like that's not
Speaker 8: what makes him Spider Man, right as it turns out
Speaker 8: like we we would never have known that unless somebody
Speaker 8: made that choice on screen. So anyway, now I'm rambling,
Speaker 8: but yeah, it's been it's been wild. And Dominique is
Speaker 8: a is a star and I really want every amazing
Speaker 8: thing for her. She's incredible and I hope people love
Speaker 8: seeing her on screen.
Speaker 2: Do you you mentioned that?
Speaker 1: Uh, the the ownership aspect, like the fact that these
Speaker 1: are characters who come into your custody for a period
Speaker 1: of time. What's that like to be part of this broader,
Speaker 1: larger conversation, you know, almost like this huge wall in
Speaker 1: a public space that you get to write something on
Speaker 1: and then walk away from.
Speaker 2: And there, Yeah, I always hear people.
Speaker 1: Get up and yeah, I wonder, you know, just you know, philosophically,
Speaker 1: what does that what does that feel like? And what
Speaker 1: do you and what role do you think that plays
Speaker 1: in this kind of like broader, vast conversation that is
Speaker 1: now you know the MCU.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think there's a cynical read on that, and
Speaker 8: there's like an idealistic read on it. And depending on
Speaker 8: the day that you catch me, I have I have
Speaker 8: felt both poor and everything in between. You know, I'm
Speaker 8: an idealist again, you know, I wrote I wrote Marvel
Speaker 8: Team Up, which is a mini series featuring Kamala and Peter,
Speaker 8: and I went with the classic. It's a three issue
Speaker 8: mini series, so I was like, bet body swap right,
Speaker 8: Kamala becomes Peter, Peter becomes Kamala. Don't think about it
Speaker 8: too hard, just let's just let's go. That Also, by
Speaker 8: the way, was one of the few moments where I've
Speaker 8: also had a back and forth with editorial because uh,
Speaker 8: there's a scene where Peter Peter's and Kamala's body and
Speaker 8: he's at school and uh, he thinks he has she
Speaker 8: has this big presentation and she's like, don't ruin this
Speaker 8: for me, and he's like, yo, I'm like a scientist,
Speaker 8: like I'm in a kill your high school bio presentation,
Speaker 8: Like don't even worry about it. And he gets to
Speaker 8: class and immediately is like, oh my god, I'm dying.
Speaker 8: Something horrible is happening to me, Like I'm being this
Speaker 8: is like biological warfare, and she has to be taken
Speaker 8: out of class. And then later on there's a scene
Speaker 8: of them sitting, you know, looking over the city and
Speaker 8: she's like, you had a cramp, Like those are that's
Speaker 8: that's cramps right like, and he's like I thought I
Speaker 8: was gonna die, right So so that was that was
Speaker 8: a moment where the word the word cramp was cannot appear,
Speaker 8: so we can we can unpack that later.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so yeah, classic, so but yeah.
Speaker 8: So when I was writing that series, literally I would
Speaker 8: I would wake up, I'd brush my teeth, I'd look
Speaker 8: in the mirror, and I would be like, I write words,
Speaker 8: and Spider Man says those like it's just like the
Speaker 8: basic fact of that, like, you know, I would go
Speaker 8: in the kitchen and grab my husband and be like, honey,
Speaker 8: I say the words and then they come out of
Speaker 8: Spider Man's mouth like I am the I have I
Speaker 8: am the person who has the power to be the
Speaker 8: vector of Spider Man, and that like like Spider Man
Speaker 8: like maybe the most recognizable iconic pop culture figure like
Speaker 8: possibly ever, you know, and so like on on moments
Speaker 8: when I feel idealistic about it, that's really magical. And
Speaker 8: and also I think being part of the community of creators,
Speaker 8: you know, to have to have phone calls with people,
Speaker 8: you know, when when Danny Lord took over Champions, like
Speaker 8: having those conversations with Danny, right, having conversations with Vita,
Speaker 8: having conversations with SOLIDI, you know, amazing, you know, like Okay,
Speaker 8: what are you doing.
Speaker 4: With Miles here?
Speaker 8: What are we doing in Champions you know Evan or
Speaker 8: like any any folks where we're crossing over things. It's
Speaker 8: really fun to be like, all right, what are you
Speaker 8: doing in your sandbox? And how can I make sure
Speaker 8: this matches up to my sandbox?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: The cynical read.
Speaker 8: Of it is like, uh, it's a super bazillion Defolfilion,
Speaker 8: Dy Dollar Mega Corporation. Yeah, uh that you know, I
Speaker 8: produce really good work sometimes and and that, yeah that
Speaker 8: creators have no uh, not only compensation financially, but like
Speaker 8: even just like acknowledgment, right, giving a little fuzzy sometimes,
Speaker 8: and you know, you all have talked a lot about it,
Speaker 8: and folks can google the horror stories of just like
Speaker 8: I've definitely had the experience of sitting in a you know,
Speaker 8: not not with Black Panther, but with other Marvel stuff,
Speaker 8: Like sitting in a theater watching a movie that I
Speaker 8: know is going to make a bazillion d dollars.
Speaker 4: And being like that is that my was that a
Speaker 4: thing from my brand? And that's a bad feeling, you know,
Speaker 4: it's a bad feeling.
Speaker 8: It's also a bad feeling I think with the way
Speaker 8: some of the TV stuff has panned out. I think
Speaker 8: for some of the writers in that room, right, the
Speaker 8: ways that the writer's room on the TV shows are
Speaker 8: are very different from traditional writers rooms, and some of
Speaker 8: the hierarchy of power and control and decision making is
Speaker 8: really different, and I think that's been a struggle for
Speaker 8: some folks. So, you know, I think that the like
Speaker 8: I try to maintain a healthy reality somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 8: And you know, maybe one day I'll just go full
Speaker 8: Alan Moore and just.
Speaker 3: Expire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's fine.
Speaker 8: You know, maybe maybe I'll get there, but for now,
Speaker 8: it's still fun. And I also, to be honest with you,
Speaker 8: I have a huge privilege of like, I have a
Speaker 8: regular day job. I'm a professor at a university.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: I had a whole other writing career before comics, and
Speaker 8: I have a whole other writing career outside of comics.
Speaker 8: And that's also an immense privilege that makes it easy
Speaker 8: for me to be like, Okay, cool, I'm doing this
Speaker 8: and not that, or I don't feel comfortable with this,
Speaker 8: or I feel achy about it, so I'm going to
Speaker 8: step away.
Speaker 4: And a lot of folks in this industry don't have that,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 8: And and so that's why the creator own space and
Speaker 8: you know, Kickstarter projects and all that kind of stuff
Speaker 8: is really important.
Speaker 4: And I hope that for folks. If you go and
Speaker 4: you read a big two comic by.
Speaker 8: A writer and artist that you absolutely love, like look
Speaker 8: them up and sign up for their newsletter and follow
Speaker 8: them on their socials and you know, pledge their Kickstarter thing.
Speaker 8: And buy their creator own thing because that's it's called
Speaker 8: creator own because that's what it is, right Like, that's
Speaker 8: the thing that they actually control and can can make
Speaker 8: money off of. So yeah, I think it's it's it's tough,
Speaker 8: and I think it's important to not be so idealistic
Speaker 8: about it, to not be honest.
Speaker 3: That yeah, I think and I think you really summed
Speaker 3: up the two most intrinsic things about making like what
Speaker 3: we call work for higher comics, which is, yeah, we
Speaker 3: want to tell the best story and you put everything
Speaker 3: into it, and the companies know that you have that
Speaker 3: excitement of right Spider or you know, writing Godzilla something
Speaker 3: that you love like, and they are aware that you
Speaker 3: will say, Okay, I'm going to sign away any ownership
Speaker 3: of this because I would love to do it.
Speaker 4: It's it.
Speaker 2: That's the.
Speaker 3: Historically, that is the exchange that has been made between
Speaker 3: the two, and I live every day to hopefully try
Speaker 3: and make that change or evolve from the way.
Speaker 4: That it was.
Speaker 3: There was a time in superho comics where that was
Speaker 3: not the base level. That was something that came around
Speaker 3: relatively recently in like the seventies when that sort of
Speaker 3: became a thing. So yeah, I think you summed out.
Speaker 3: But it's it's that really interesting thing because you know,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I won't come mix to union eyes. We
Speaker 3: told all the time about creative rights, but I'm also like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll write a fucking X Men book.
Speaker 2: Like I'll do it, like I I will do it, right.
Speaker 3: I will literally write the softball X Men mini series
Speaker 3: like high to me and I and then I'll write
Speaker 3: something into the book about unions or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, right, But.
Speaker 8: How the softball team is actually just a metaphor for
Speaker 8: the union, Yeah, exactly, No, it's totally it's totally real.
Speaker 8: And I think, like, you know, to a certain extent,
Speaker 8: I mean, I'm comfortable saying publicly like this is the
Speaker 8: least financially lucrative thing I could.
Speaker 4: Be doing time, Like I pretty much pretty much do
Speaker 4: it for fun.
Speaker 8: And but not only that, I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 8: the impact, the cultural impact that you get to have
Speaker 8: is just really tremendous.
Speaker 4: And I think that it's for me.
Speaker 8: It's just important to understand what my values are and
Speaker 8: what I want to do. And you know, I've I've
Speaker 8: said no to a bunch of Marvel stuff because I
Speaker 8: wasn't excited about it or I wanted somebody else to
Speaker 8: get an opportunity or you know. And I think the
Speaker 8: main thing is like just just recognizing that the thing,
Speaker 8: the thing being inherently exciting or a big honor doesn't
Speaker 8: mean it's exciting or a big honor for you, yeah, right,
Speaker 8: and doesn't mean it's always a good move for you
Speaker 8: and for your time, calculus and for your you know,
Speaker 8: way you want to make your money. And I think
Speaker 8: that that's yeah, like not letting the kind of glitz
Speaker 8: and glamour of the name recognition get you in a
Speaker 8: spot where you're like making stuff that you're not getting
Speaker 8: paid in a way that makes sense for your life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Someone recently told me the creatively there's a huge power
Speaker 1: and no, and that is the truth.
Speaker 2: It's best even anything to plug.
Speaker 8: Yes, I would like to plug a couple of things
Speaker 8: coming December. Photon Monica Rambo Photon number one, featuring an
Speaker 8: amazing black woman. If you don't know Monica Rambo, get
Speaker 8: to know her. She's incredible. Used to be the leader
Speaker 8: of the Avengers. Now she's trying to figure out her life.
Speaker 8: I've been telling people, if you are like an old
Speaker 8: school Marvel fan or if you are a person who
Speaker 8: feels like you're that underappreciated person in your life, but
Speaker 8: you've never read a comic book before, like, this is
Speaker 8: a comic that you will relate to. It's about trying
Speaker 8: to figure yourself out and it's really great. And then
Speaker 8: coming March twenty twenty three, my first ever graphic novel
Speaker 8: called Change the Game, which I co wrote with Colin Kaepernick,
Speaker 8: and it is coming out on Scholastic in March twenty
Speaker 8: twenty three.
Speaker 4: And for the young adult or the young adult at
Speaker 4: heart in your life.
Speaker 2: Eve, please come back. This has been way Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Conte Corner is allmine.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate you all so much.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Evel Ewing for appearing on the program,
Speaker 1: and of course the big thanks to Rosie Night for
Speaker 1: closing the Rosie plugs.
Speaker 2: Plugs, plugs, plugs, plug plugs. What do you you have
Speaker 2: to plug?
Speaker 3: You can find me Rosie marks on Instagram and letterbox
Speaker 3: where I'm starting to budge into Christmas movies, so come
Speaker 3: and judge me. Yeah, I watched so many bad Christmas movies,
Speaker 3: like I'm talking about Harvark, Lifetime, everything. They're all there
Speaker 3: and I make them in lists if you like hearing
Speaker 3: about Rievey Williams, I have a piece up at Polygon
Speaker 3: that's the kind of explainer, in depth explainer about that
Speaker 3: and just other cool things coming up. You can check
Speaker 3: me writing about TV and stuff at IGN and Nerdict,
Speaker 3: and you can also read my comics. I have a
Speaker 3: website Rosiolivia Night dot com because I haven't bothered to
Speaker 3: change my URL yet it's my proper name. But there
Speaker 3: you can read some free comics. You can read all
Speaker 3: of my thousands of articles that's not hyperbolic. And yeah,
Speaker 3: and then obviously here.
Speaker 1: Catch the next episode on November eighteenth, and of course
Speaker 1: subscribe to the show on YouTube, follow at XRV pod
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Maybe not for much longer on Twitter, we'll
Speaker 1: see that it's about somewhere else. But check out the
Speaker 1: discord to meet and hang out with the other X
Speaker 1: ray Vision fans, and of course Rosie and I were
Speaker 1: active on there, and we'd love to interact with you.
Speaker 1: Five star ratings. We love them, we gotta have them,
Speaker 1: we need them. Here's one from the dot Potato, the
Speaker 1: nerd podcast we need. If there are nerd happenings, I
Speaker 1: know I can count on Jason to Rosie to not
Speaker 1: only cover it, but direct me to more resources. I've
Speaker 1: picked up comics, books and shows that I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: sought out otherwise, and I know it all to Extray Vision.
Speaker 1: Plus they've got the best podcast theme song out there,
Speaker 1: hands down.
Speaker 2: No contest. Thank you.
Speaker 1: The Peto x ray Vision is a Crooked Media production.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by Chris Lord and Solve Rubin.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy Arhard
Speaker 1: are editing in sound design.
Speaker 2: Who's by Vacillius Photopoulos.
Speaker 1: Dylon Villanueva and Matt de Group provide video production support.
Speaker 1: Alex Reller for Handle Social Media. Thank you, Brian Vasquez
Speaker 1: for theme music.
Speaker 4: That's It for Us by