Speaker 1: Warning, we're gonna be talking about Eternals today. This movie
Speaker 1: just came out. Have you seen Eternals? If the answer
Speaker 1: is no, stop right now, what are you doing? You
Speaker 1: cannot listen to this because we're gonna spoil the entire movie,
Speaker 1: the first credit scene and the second credit scene, and
Speaker 1: lots of other shit I wanna do. Hello, my name
Speaker 1: is Jason Concepcion. Welcome to episode eleven of X Ray Vision.
Speaker 1: We're gonna count them all the way up and see
Speaker 1: how far we get. This is the Crooked Podcast where
Speaker 1: we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and
Speaker 1: pop culture in general. On today's Previously on we will
Speaker 1: talk about the Marvel film each Journals, out now in
Speaker 1: theaters near you. We'll dive into the film with the
Speaker 1: help of co host Rosie Knight. I will explore the
Speaker 1: worlds and work of the celebrated comics creator Jack Kirby.
Speaker 1: And then we will talk to Abraham Riasman, great comics journalist,
Speaker 1: and talk about Jack Kirby and a creator writes with
Speaker 1: regards to the comics industry in general. But first, let's
Speaker 1: recap Marvel's Eternals, which is a film.
Speaker 2: We're Tournals we came here seven thousand years ago.
Speaker 3: To protect humans from the Deviants.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I saw the movie for a second time
Speaker 1: last night, and I took notes on my phone as
Speaker 1: best I could, trying to do so surreptitiously in a
Speaker 1: way that would not get me kicked out of the
Speaker 1: theater for, you know, being suspected of videotaping the movie.
Speaker 1: So bear with me, and I hope that these are right.
Speaker 1: And also, if you haven't seen the movie yet, obviously
Speaker 1: probably wait on this because I'm gonna spoil a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that happens. Okay, So we open with a
Speaker 1: title card that tells us about the Eternals and tells
Speaker 1: us about the Deviants, and tells us of how those
Speaker 1: two creatures, two species, were created by the Celestials, the
Speaker 1: giant space gods which you have learned about in movies
Speaker 1: such as Guardians of the Galaxy and others. The Celestials
Speaker 1: created the Deviants to hunt intelligent life, but something went wrong,
Speaker 1: and so they needed to create the Eternals, who are
Speaker 1: these immortal superheroes to basically kill off the Deviants. We
Speaker 1: opened five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and there is
Speaker 1: there are some villagers. They're fishing by the shore, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, deviant comes out of the
Speaker 1: water and eats this kid's dad and he's like, son,
Speaker 1: get the fuck out of here. And just as the
Speaker 1: devian is about to eat the boy, the Eternal show
Speaker 1: up and they just start whooping major ass. Present day,
Speaker 1: we meet Circe played by Jemma Chan and Dane Whitman
Speaker 1: played by Kit Harrington. Kit Harrington has to say the
Speaker 1: name Circe lovingly multiple times in this movie, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty funny, but maybe not consciously funny. Maybe they didn't
Speaker 1: know that it was actually funny. Anyway. They're teachers, they're dating.
Speaker 1: Circe teaches some kind of art class, and there's like
Speaker 1: this major earthquake across the globe, across the globe, like
Speaker 1: a five point something or to six I would estimate
Speaker 1: from just like seeing it, And we see that Circe
Speaker 1: has the power to change matter into other matters. She
Speaker 1: turns like a large piece of art stone art into
Speaker 1: just sand and saves a child's life. Later on, while
Speaker 1: Circe and Dane Whitman are just kind of like walking
Speaker 1: around enjoying the town, a deviant shows up and comes
Speaker 1: out of the would I would guess is the River Thames,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure and attacks. We meet another eternal
Speaker 1: named Sprite, who who is played by Leah mq. Sprite
Speaker 1: can apparently create illusions and with the help of Icarus
Speaker 1: played by Richard Madden. Yes, that's right. This movie has
Speaker 1: both two heirs to the Stark throne and both of
Speaker 1: them have to say circe numerous times. Icarus shows up
Speaker 1: and he is very powerful, basically like an eternal superman,
Speaker 1: and with his help they fight off the deviant. They
Speaker 1: then decide, gosh, something is going on here. What with
Speaker 1: the earthquake that shook the entire globe. That's a clue.
Speaker 1: Plus the deviants. We thought we had taken care of that,
Speaker 1: but guess what, they're back. We need to contact the
Speaker 1: other eternals because apparently, after thousands of years of fighting deviants,
Speaker 1: once that was accomplished, all these turnals had gone their
Speaker 1: separate ways separate ways, so they go to find Ajak,
Speaker 1: who is their leader played by us the wonderful Somahayak.
Speaker 1: They arrive at Ajax like Dorothy farmhouse in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, and the unfortunately Ajack has been killed. They think, right,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be because the Devians are back.
Speaker 3: The Devians killed Ajak.
Speaker 1: That's what everybody thinks, and everybody's very sad about it.
Speaker 1: They go around and find other eternals. Where are the
Speaker 1: rest of the eternals? We meet Kingo played by Kumille Nanjohnny,
Speaker 1: the Eternal King Goo. He can shoot beams of energy
Speaker 1: from his fingers and hands, and he is a Bollywood actor,
Speaker 1: and he has been undercover as a Bollywood actor, playing
Speaker 1: basically like four generations of a Bollywood actor, pretending to
Speaker 1: be his own great grandfather, grandfather father. Let's go to
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere in the outback and there they find
Speaker 1: Theena and Gilgamesh played by Angelina Julie and Don Lee respectively.
Speaker 1: They are in some kind of relationship that's a little
Speaker 1: hard to discern, clearly a warm and loving one, a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship, a very close platonic relationship, unclear, whatever the case.
Speaker 1: Theena is experiencing some kind of like memory problems and
Speaker 1: she will go in and out of funks.
Speaker 3: And then we meet.
Speaker 1: Druid played by Barry Kyogan.
Speaker 3: He is like a professor X.
Speaker 1: He can take over people's minds, implant implant thoughts, make
Speaker 1: people do as he wishes. He's living in the rainforest
Speaker 1: in you know what I would describe as the kind
Speaker 1: of place that like Nazis probably went to go hide
Speaker 1: after World War Two, and Druig is running this utopian
Speaker 1: kind of like farm in the middle of the rainforest.
Speaker 1: And it's a little troubling the way Druig is just
Speaker 1: extremely comfortable with taking over people's minds. Later we find
Speaker 1: Fastos played by Brian Tyree Henry, and he's wonderful and
Speaker 1: his husband. They live with their child somewhere in the US,
Speaker 1: I think outside of Chicago, and Fastos has the power
Speaker 1: to create technology, but he doesn't want to do anything anymore.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to help anymore because he's got his
Speaker 1: kid and he's got his husband and they're very much
Speaker 1: in love and they don't want to do shit anymore.
Speaker 1: Also spoiler, Fastos also was instrumental apparently in creating the
Speaker 1: atomic bomb that was then detonated over Hiroshima and Nick Nagasaki.
Speaker 3: And so he's just kind of like.
Speaker 1: You know what, I don't want to do technology stuff anymore.
Speaker 1: They go back to the Eternals, go back to their ship,
Speaker 1: and there they find the speedster McCary played by Lauren Ridloff,
Speaker 1: who is our first deaf superhero in the MCU. So
Speaker 1: maccary's just been living on the ship all these years
Speaker 1: and like stealing art and stuff because she can run
Speaker 1: extremely fast.
Speaker 3: She's just been chilling out, I should add.
Speaker 1: In a scene that has haunted me ever since I
Speaker 1: saw this movie earlier, in Bagdad, like around I want
Speaker 1: to say, like five hundred BC, McCary again, who is deaf,
Speaker 1: is communicating using sign language, and she makes the sign
Speaker 1: for time, which is which she signs by tapping her
Speaker 1: wrist like a wristwatch. Wristwatches would not be invented for
Speaker 1: another two thousand years or something that has haunted me.
Speaker 1: Around about the time that McCary makes the extremely anachronistic
Speaker 1: sign for time, we get the very very first sex
Speaker 1: scene on camera in an MCU movie. Of course, we
Speaker 1: understand that Steve Rogers and Natalia Romanov fucked many, many
Speaker 1: many times off off screen, at least in my head canon.
Speaker 1: In Captain American Winter Soldier, the vibes are very clear
Speaker 1: they fucked a lot. But in Baghdad around five hundred BC,
Speaker 1: the first on camera sex scene happens in which Icarus
Speaker 1: and Circe just pounded out on the sands in Mesopotamia
Speaker 1: blows that back out. Circe played by Gemma Chan not
Speaker 1: feeling at all. No orgasm has been had, so we're
Speaker 1: still waiting for that pivotal moment in MCU history.
Speaker 3: Just sex, very very tame.
Speaker 1: Later, Circe learns that the celestials have been keeping a
Speaker 1: secret from them over They've been over the years communicating
Speaker 1: with a celestial who's been giving them their missions.
Speaker 3: It hasn't happened for some time.
Speaker 1: Ajac usually was the one who would take care of that,
Speaker 1: but now Circe is able to do it, and she
Speaker 1: learns that actually Earth, planet Earth, is like an egg
Speaker 1: for a baby celestial, and that intelligent life feeds the
Speaker 1: celestial in the egg and allows it to grow, and
Speaker 1: then eventually the celestial hatches from the egg being planet Earth,
Speaker 1: killing everything on the planet, and then the celestial goes
Speaker 1: off and lives its life. Circe is like, we can't
Speaker 1: let this happen because for various reasons, namely that it
Speaker 1: would kill the billions of people that live on this planet,
Speaker 1: and we should probably not do that. So they go
Speaker 1: off and they try to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: stop it, but they find out that Icarus actually wants
Speaker 1: it to happen.
Speaker 3: In fact, he was the.
Speaker 1: One that killed the Ajac, and now they have to
Speaker 1: fight him while also fighting the deviants who are evolving
Speaker 1: into higher forms of deviants, while also stopping the celestial
Speaker 1: from hatching out of the earth egg. They do manage
Speaker 1: to stop this by joining together in something called a unimnd,
Speaker 1: which Fastos figures out that they can do if they
Speaker 1: all kind of like bond together with their energies, they
Speaker 1: can create this uni mind that does something and then circe.
Speaker 1: Because of earlier fight with the deviants over in Druig's village,
Speaker 1: she had managed to turn a deviant like into a tree.
Speaker 1: She's not sure how, but she thinks, maybe if I
Speaker 1: do something similar with the celestial, I can stop the
Speaker 1: celestial hatching by like touching it and turning it into something.
Speaker 3: She does this, and she turns it into like.
Speaker 1: A huge rock, like a big there's just like a
Speaker 1: celestial popping part way out of the ocean. Now, readers
Speaker 1: of Marvel comics will probably think of the Avengers headquarters
Speaker 1: the most recent Avengers headquarters, which is the kind of
Speaker 1: like corpse of a celestial that is half frozen. Icarus,
Speaker 1: in what can only be described as the most on
Speaker 1: the nose scene in movie history, flies into the sun
Speaker 1: because he has failed to stop the his colleagues, his friends,
Speaker 1: the Eternals, from stopping from stopping the celestial from hatching.
Speaker 1: Disgusted with all of this, he goes and flies.
Speaker 3: Into the sun.
Speaker 1: His name is Icarus, and he goes into the sun.
Speaker 1: Circe is able to make Sprite, who is in the
Speaker 1: form of a child, into a regular person that will
Speaker 1: now age and is no longer immortal like the rest
Speaker 1: of the Eternals, and then we get our credit scenes.
Speaker 1: Credit scene number one, Dane Whitman is hearing a voice.
Speaker 1: He goes to a very very old looking case which
Speaker 1: has very like old inscriptions on it, and he opens
Speaker 1: it and he pulls out a sword which is the
Speaker 1: Emony Blade, which was introduced earlier in the film when
Speaker 1: we meet McCary on the Eternal Ship and being bamboom,
Speaker 1: we realize this is Dane Whitman, the Black Knight from
Speaker 1: Marvel Comics, a member of the Avengers and other teams,
Speaker 1: just as he is gazing upon this sword. We hear
Speaker 1: the voice of maherschel Ali, who plays Blade. We're back
Speaker 1: on the eternal ship. There is a flash of light.
Speaker 1: Some figures have teleported onto the ship. It is Pit
Speaker 1: Patrol voiced by the very funny Patton Oswald and Eros
Speaker 1: aka Starfox, the brother of Thanos from Titan played by
Speaker 1: Harry Styles.
Speaker 3: And that was a thing that happened.
Speaker 1: By the way, this kind of, I guess confirms that
Speaker 1: Thanos is an eternal. In the comics, Thanos is like
Speaker 1: an eternal with like deviant mutations. Eros slash star Fox
Speaker 1: also is an eternal, and I guess this kind of
Speaker 1: proves that Thanos is a eternal Slash TV And that's
Speaker 1: our movie, folks. Currently Rotten Tomatoes score forty nine percent
Speaker 1: critics score and seeming to be trending down. The audience
Speaker 1: score is just in as that the movie has just
Speaker 1: opened eighty six percent initial audience score. This is the
Speaker 1: at this point lowest rated Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 1: Let's get a overview of some representative reviews Mick Leasal
Speaker 1: and the SF Chronicle. It takes a special kind of
Speaker 1: movie anti magic to make an entire audience in different
Speaker 1: to the potential destruction of Earth and every living thing
Speaker 1: on it, Eternal manages it, Dana Stevens and Slat Eternals
Speaker 1: is as sociologically inconclusive and as picturely beautiful as any
Speaker 1: movie in the franchise. Was Seen after Seen, bathed in
Speaker 1: the warm light of Jao's favorite time of day, the
Speaker 1: pre dust Golden Hour. But it is also one of
Speaker 1: the weakest Marvel movies I've seen meandering and Wan shots.
Speaker 1: Using Wan in a review, I would add that Icarus
Speaker 1: and Icarus and Circe's love scene also takes place in
Speaker 1: that pre dust Golden Hour. Shirley Lee in the Atlantic
Speaker 1: in shot after shot show Mind's a quiet and poignant
Speaker 1: humanity from her characters.
Speaker 3: I think this is.
Speaker 1: A bottom tier Marvel movie, not a bad movie at
Speaker 1: like graded, not on the scale of Marvel movies. It's
Speaker 1: just like a normal boring movie with some cinematography. Is beautiful,
Speaker 1: the fights are pretty good, and Kumail Nan Johnny is
Speaker 1: hilarious and really the best part of the movie for me.
Speaker 3: As Kingo.
Speaker 1: The movie depends a lot on emotional space and emotional plot.
Speaker 1: Some really interesting decisions made here to like finally have
Speaker 1: true romance and you know, physical longing. We get love triangles,
Speaker 1: we get jealous see. But unfortunately with that is a
Speaker 1: really strangely.
Speaker 3: Like cold depiction.
Speaker 1: Jemmy shann and Richard Madden just kind of like have
Speaker 1: no chemistry and they are former lovers. It's it's better
Speaker 1: with with Kit Harrington's Dane Whitman, but he's like barely
Speaker 1: in the movie Sprite and Icarus, kind of Sprite has
Speaker 1: a crush on Icarus, I guess you could say.
Speaker 3: And that is probably.
Speaker 1: The most like true like emotion and longing that is
Speaker 1: conveyed on the screen in a real way. Unfortunately, like
Speaker 1: Sprite is like a child character, which is super weird
Speaker 1: although like obviously thousands of years old, but in the
Speaker 1: physical form of a child, and it could have just
Speaker 1: used more plot.
Speaker 3: It's fine.
Speaker 1: Too many characters is part of the problem too, I think.
Speaker 1: Really for me, the sad part of this movie is
Speaker 1: you get the first real on screen representation of a
Speaker 1: gay character in Fastos who's married with a wonderful child.
Speaker 1: You get the first representation of a hearing disabled character,
Speaker 1: of a deaf character in Macary, And really part of
Speaker 1: the problem is you just have too many of these characters,
Speaker 1: like really interesting moments like with Druig in the rainforest
Speaker 1: and King Goo living his life as like a celebrity,
Speaker 1: but in the end the movie can't focus on any
Speaker 1: of them. And the reason why I think I would
Speaker 1: probably put this below say thor The Dark World or
Speaker 1: even Iron Man two is those movies like understood who
Speaker 1: the hero of the movie was. It's unclear, like who
Speaker 1: the central character of this movie is. Theoretically it is Circe,
Speaker 1: but she's like super weirdly inactive throughout the film, doesn't
Speaker 1: know how she turns the Deviant into a tree, never
Speaker 1: really figures it out, at least in a way that
Speaker 1: is conveyed to the audience, and then when she beats
Speaker 1: the Celestial is similarly as like doesn't really know what
Speaker 1: she did and spends the whole movie basically having like
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome and not knowing why she was picked to
Speaker 1: lead the team by Ajax. So disappointing in that regard.
Speaker 1: Post credit scenes were fun. I could have used more
Speaker 1: Dane Whitman, and I think we'll see it and I'm
Speaker 1: interested to see where this goes. That said, the strength
Speaker 1: of the MCU like as a structure, is that you
Speaker 1: can brick Thor the first Thor movie not great really,
Speaker 1: but and then Thor The Dark World, arguably up until now,
Speaker 1: the worst movie in the entire MCU, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you get the third movie Thor Ragnarok,
Speaker 1: which is for my money, a top three Marvel movie,
Speaker 1: maybe the best, depending on what mood I'm in. So
Speaker 1: is this like devastating? Is this the end of the
Speaker 1: m c U. No, they'll bounce back from this, but
Speaker 1: it's still disappointing. Onto the airlock, the Turtles assemble, bomb
Speaker 1: bomb bom bom. On my left, who is that?
Speaker 3: It's Rosy Night, the number one in Turtles.
Speaker 4: Lover the.
Speaker 1: Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Rosie uh Eternals is out.
Speaker 5: It's out.
Speaker 1: We've seen it several times. It is getting panned. Let's
Speaker 1: just be honest about it's hit thee ever worst reviewed
Speaker 1: mc movie MCU movie ever, I would have truthfully, I
Speaker 1: would have it near the bottom of my list of
Speaker 1: MCU movies. If not at the bottom, I would need
Speaker 1: to process it.
Speaker 3: A little more.
Speaker 1: Not a terrible movie by any means, because I would
Speaker 1: argue MCU the mc has really not made any like
Speaker 1: truly awful movies.
Speaker 6: But you love this movie, yeah that so.
Speaker 1: Bring bring me like Druig, like take with your powers.
Speaker 5: Okay, so then make.
Speaker 1: Me and everyone else love it. Tell us why this.
Speaker 6: Is a movie that truly understands the weirdness of Jack Kirby.
Speaker 3: This is it is.
Speaker 6: Ruling strange, experimental, ambitious movie that mixes the humanity of
Speaker 6: Jack Kirby with the absolute sci fi wildness that he's
Speaker 6: known for. To me, it has a character in Fastos
Speaker 6: who I think is like a love letter to Jack Kirby,
Speaker 6: an inventor who's all about the machinery and the mechanics,
Speaker 6: which is so much about what we love about Jack Kirby.
Speaker 6: I love Chloe Jaw the writer is such an incredible
Speaker 6: film and this brings Obviously, it is not Chloe Jao
Speaker 6: getting to make her own incredible art house vision because
Speaker 6: it's an MCU movie, but there is so much humanity.
Speaker 6: I feel like one of the biggest things that work
Speaker 6: for me about this movie is every there's ten Eternals
Speaker 6: and eleven new characters if you count Dane, and every
Speaker 6: single one has a nuanced, interesting relationship with the others
Speaker 6: which I've never felt in The Avengers.
Speaker 5: There's no like Cirsa again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no you know.
Speaker 1: This is here is there are a lot of really
Speaker 1: really interesting and good choices that and I would argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, all together it didn't make okay heese so.
Speaker 3: Whole that said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the kind of like a emotional spaces that this
Speaker 1: movie went to, I think are super interesting. The fact
Speaker 1: that we get love triangles, that we get romantic relationships,
Speaker 1: we get breakups within a team is a thing that
Speaker 1: we haven't really seen before. Yes, like Vision and Scarlet,
Speaker 1: which that's.
Speaker 6: The closest I think if you get, if you like
Speaker 6: that aspect of wonder Vision, the grief, the forever romance
Speaker 6: that kind of can go from zombies in what If
Speaker 6: to kind of the past and the future in one
Speaker 6: division that aspect of this. This is definitely the most
Speaker 6: romantic MCU movie. And as someone who grew up as
Speaker 6: in avowed romance hater but has as an adult realized
Speaker 6: I actually love romance, that.
Speaker 5: Was a big thing for me.
Speaker 6: I wrote a piece that was like ranking all the
Speaker 6: ships in Eternal because every Eternal ship is good, Like
Speaker 6: there are some I'm a Dane Whitman, Circe OTP Like
Speaker 6: I love that Avengers run where Black Knight and Circe
Speaker 6: are together and they're in the Avengers, the Jacket Avengers
Speaker 6: as we as we like to call.
Speaker 1: Me, the Monica Ramboau Avengers. That was my introduction to
Speaker 1: the event. That was my era of the event. Roger Stern, Roger.
Speaker 5: Sterne, Monica rambo Is Sellous era.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Actually, just on a tangential MC, you think Nia DaCosta
Speaker 6: has been talking a lot about how that is like
Speaker 6: an era she's really been looking at for Marvels, So
Speaker 6: I'm very excited about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think.
Speaker 5: Eternals is worth it. I think it's weird.
Speaker 6: The thing is, I don't the one thing, the one
Speaker 6: criticism I don't agree with this. I don't agree that
Speaker 6: it's a badly made film. I think that the pacing,
Speaker 6: the way that it works, it works for me. I
Speaker 6: objectively disagree with the idea that Chloe made a bad film,
Speaker 6: But I do understand the critiques that people have about
Speaker 6: it being kind of too weird for them, or too
Speaker 6: dense or too esoteric, and in that way, I just think,
Speaker 6: you know, there's movies for everyone in the MCU, and
Speaker 6: this for me is definitely a my rotating top five.
Speaker 6: I don't know where it is, but I think this
Speaker 6: is for me. This is the kind of after twenty
Speaker 6: six movies, I want to see someone doing something really
Speaker 6: weird and shooting for something different, whether it's tone, also like,
Speaker 6: there are things in here. This is the big thing
Speaker 6: I think if I was trying to sell someone to
Speaker 6: go and see it, because this is what maps to
Speaker 6: tell me, you know, Jason, because you're going to see
Speaker 6: this movie anyway, if you like the MCU and you
Speaker 6: want to know what's going to happen next, and you
Speaker 6: want to learn about all the cool weird stuff that's
Speaker 6: probably going to impact us in Multiverse of Madness. How
Speaker 6: mutants are going to be involved, Yes, how you know
Speaker 6: Thanos might come back. This is the movie to see
Speaker 6: because it sees so much cool, weird comic book stuff,
Speaker 6: and it takes very heavily from the comics, maybe more
Speaker 6: heavily than any other MCU movie.
Speaker 5: Not that anyone has read the Eternal's comics.
Speaker 1: So barely anyone will know. But if you do like it,
Speaker 1: a lot of Volume one and Volume two Eternals.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and also as well like if you you know
Speaker 6: there was there's only been like four Well there's a
Speaker 6: fifth volume of Eternals now, but there's only four volumes
Speaker 6: of Eternals.
Speaker 5: So something else that's cool about this is.
Speaker 6: If you do like it, you can easily pick up
Speaker 6: some eternals and be like, oh, this is where, this
Speaker 6: is where this comes from, or this is where the
Speaker 6: emerging celestial, the dreaming celestial, this is you know, all.
Speaker 5: This kind of weird stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and the cast as well, I think is just
Speaker 6: really good, Like they blew me up Barry Kona, who
Speaker 6: I love anyway. Actually, this is something I wanted to
Speaker 6: say to you because I was thinking about the biggest
Speaker 6: takeaway I had from this movie, aside from loving it,
Speaker 6: was they never should have recast Barry Kon in Why
Speaker 6: the Last Man. He would have been so perfect because
Speaker 6: Druig is like that perfect mix of like is he terrible?
Speaker 5: Is he good? But I care about him? And then
Speaker 5: you get to go on that journey, which is what
Speaker 5: he should have been with you.
Speaker 1: But you know, on the topic of interesting choices and
Speaker 1: interesting kind of like spaces and energies to explore Druig.
Speaker 1: You know, his power is essentially you know he can.
Speaker 1: He's a mentalist. He can project his will into other people.
Speaker 1: He can make them do what he wants, essentially like
Speaker 1: a Charles Xavier gen grep.
Speaker 3: And it is unclear.
Speaker 1: First of all, he has a code which makes him
Speaker 1: something of a great card. He carres deeply about about
Speaker 1: violence and about suffering, and unfortunately his answers to those
Speaker 1: problems is I will just control people's minds and make
Speaker 1: them not do that.
Speaker 5: Which is actually quite a Charles Xavier move. Actually, if
Speaker 5: you think Charles treats it, but that those that's I
Speaker 5: think something. But it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I wanted to just I found myself, you know, when
Speaker 1: we first go to the jungle and meet him, and
Speaker 1: I find I found myself just wanting to know more
Speaker 1: about what he's been up to. That was a very
Speaker 1: interesting thing. That was a very interesting moment of the film.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I think that's another thing I can understand where
Speaker 6: people might not have been digging it so much. Is
Speaker 6: there's so many characters that there's probably a couple that
Speaker 6: you really want to know more about. And this movie
Speaker 6: is very much like I feel like it's peppering them
Speaker 6: in and they will be in the like at the
Speaker 6: end of the movie, it says you know Eternals will return.
Speaker 6: That doesn't to me signal and Eternals too, that signals
Speaker 6: that you will see these characters in the wider MCU
Speaker 6: playing a part in whatever comes next, which is kind
Speaker 6: of teased in the post credit scenes.
Speaker 1: Let me so, I gave some of my larger critiques
Speaker 1: in the previous segment.
Speaker 3: But I'll give you.
Speaker 1: One of my small.
Speaker 3: Critiques that I think is.
Speaker 1: I think it's a thing that Marvel has done well
Speaker 1: in the past, and that is like quietly very important.
Speaker 1: That is, especially when introducing new characters. And you saw
Speaker 1: this in Marvel's The Avengers. Any team up movie where
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you're seeing characters together in combinations
Speaker 1: that maybe you haven't seen before. In the past, Marvel
Speaker 1: has been really good at using fights two show how
Speaker 1: powers worked and how powerful the characters are in relations
Speaker 1: to each other. And I would argue that they didn't
Speaker 1: do a great job of that this time. And because
Speaker 1: of that, I have no idea how tough it was
Speaker 1: or wasn't to beat Icarist at the end, Like how
Speaker 1: tough really was he? He seemed like he is, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of strength it's like maybe on par with Gilgamesh,
Speaker 1: maybe Gilgamesh could have taken him, could thena have taken
Speaker 1: him like one on one, And that for me was
Speaker 1: was a quiet detail that is often overlooked in earlier
Speaker 1: Marvel films. That is kind of like part of the
Speaker 1: secret sauce about like why it's so good all of
Speaker 1: their fights are beyond just being like spectacle and cool
Speaker 1: displays of choreography and fantastic destruction of entire building, But
Speaker 1: it also conveys information about like how strong the Hulk is,
Speaker 1: how strong the Hulk is in relation to Iron Man.
Speaker 1: You know, that kind of information is is actually kind
Speaker 1: of important, and I feel.
Speaker 3: Like they didn't do it great this time.
Speaker 5: I think that you adds a nitpick.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, I think you actually tap into one
Speaker 6: of the hardest things about adapting the Eternals, which is
Speaker 6: in the original Eternal's comics by Jack Kirby, they all
Speaker 6: have the same power set and it just changes whoever
Speaker 6: you so somebody like everyone can shoot like laser beams
Speaker 6: out of their eyes, everybody's super strong, everybody's super fast,
Speaker 6: and it just depends on who's using the different skills
Speaker 6: at a different time.
Speaker 5: So I think that.
Speaker 6: In that way, the movie is like at a place
Speaker 6: that's harder than necessarily something like Captain America, where you
Speaker 6: know really clearly what his power set is, because they
Speaker 6: basically have to redefine that when you have ten characters,
Speaker 6: like you say, that can become kind of hard. Like
Speaker 6: the characters who stand out the most power wise is mccari,
Speaker 6: speed stuff, overpowered, always good. Druid can control people's minds,
Speaker 6: you know, Donley basically, I mean Gilgamesh basically one punch
Speaker 6: man candy with both hairs exactly. And like, the thing
Speaker 6: that I found really interesting, which I guess we can
Speaker 6: get into later when we talk.
Speaker 5: About theories, is give it.
Speaker 6: They gave Circe this very specific set of transmuting matter,
Speaker 6: which occasionally pops up in the comics. She loves to
Speaker 6: turn people into pigs. That's like a regular thing. There's
Speaker 6: like five times she did that throughout the comics. But
Speaker 6: I feel like that is really and this I agree
Speaker 6: with you here that this is if you can't sit
Speaker 6: here and say this, this, this, and this is the
Speaker 6: powers and here's how they work, then that is definitely
Speaker 6: something that differs and is less established than say your
Speaker 6: Avengers famous, you know the round shot where you get
Speaker 6: to know what everyone can do.
Speaker 3: But I I.
Speaker 6: Do think I think that the Circy powers are I
Speaker 6: think the reason those are the most specific is because
Speaker 6: I think they are essentially replacing. They are going to
Speaker 6: use her as their molecule man when they move into
Speaker 6: Secret Wars, is my guess, because I think it's very
Speaker 6: specific to make her powers. I know that when we
Speaker 6: talked before, you were saying, you know, you felt like
Speaker 6: that's a character who didn't have like motivations and was
Speaker 6: kind of in this space of imposter syndrome for most movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically like why did you know? Why was I
Speaker 1: chosen the lead? And I don't know if I can
Speaker 1: do it? How did I turn this dev into intrigue?
Speaker 1: I actually have no idea.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I think that in that space, if I
Speaker 6: was looking at this as a the MCU as a whole.
Speaker 5: What's an easter egg? What's important going forwards?
Speaker 6: I think the most important takeaway with Circe is her power,
Speaker 6: which maybe is why to some people she feels like
Speaker 6: a less defined character, because I think the powers are
Speaker 6: the most important, and her amount of power that she
Speaker 6: could turn this you know, emerging celestial into stone by
Speaker 6: herself or whatever. That I think is that actually the
Speaker 6: meant to be the biggest takeaway if we're talking about
Speaker 6: what the MCU is doing going forward.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about theories I think. So
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of attention on the post
Speaker 1: credit scenes we get as you mentioned, the reveal of
Speaker 1: Dane Whitman Black Knight from the comics, one of my favorites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the most really really fun character that gets you into
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of Marvel's British character lore is
Speaker 1: just simply the weirdest shit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Arthurian weird, Mulin weird.
Speaker 6: And they had a little in the other post credit scene,
Speaker 6: you know, at some point in the movie, some you know,
Speaker 6: Theena mentions that Arthur always thought she was really attractive.
Speaker 6: So they're definitely leaning into the bringing that Arthurian law.
Speaker 6: Because in the comics the Ebony Blade was like created
Speaker 6: by Merlin, and the Ebony Blade is what we see
Speaker 6: Dane Whitman opening and kind of deciding whether or not
Speaker 6: he's going to use it at the end.
Speaker 1: I love, I just love that this sets the stage
Speaker 1: for a possible like Captain Britaincore like all the super
Speaker 1: weird shit. So that's that's a credit scene number one.
Speaker 1: Credits scene number two, of course, is the reveal of
Speaker 1: Harry Styles as Eros. And well, now before we get
Speaker 1: into the the particular history of star Fox.
Speaker 3: Interesting choice there.
Speaker 1: So star Fox is the brother of Thanos, and this
Speaker 1: seems like it confirms that Thanos is an eternal, right,
Speaker 1: so in the comics.
Speaker 5: An eternal and a deviant and.
Speaker 1: A deviant, right like a mutated eternal and so it
Speaker 1: and that was not clear that that was the case
Speaker 1: in the MC. Now it seems like that is definitely
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 6: I'm guessing they're gonna say he's an eternal rather than
Speaker 6: a deviant because they weren't allowed to help anything that
Speaker 6: wasn't to do with deviance, and if Thanos was a deviant,
Speaker 6: surely they could have helped with the Danas thing. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 6: that is some I didn't see that coming at all.
Speaker 6: Aros is Danas's brother Aeros slash star Fox. We will
Speaker 6: probably hear him called Aeros in this because of Nintendo.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, wonderful y starfucks and a video game
Speaker 7: series of My favorite thing about this is like Eros
Speaker 7: and Thanos were both introducing the first issue the same issue,
Speaker 7: which was Iman fifty five from nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 6: Jim Stalin, Mike Friedrich, ma Quesposito, John Castanerza, and I
Speaker 6: just love that because it has nothing to do with
Speaker 6: anything cosmic. And that's just Jim Stalin. He just used
Speaker 6: to be He'd be like, I'm doing Iron Man. Now
Speaker 6: here's two cosmic brothers. So they appear in the same
Speaker 6: first issue. So if you have that first issue, you're
Speaker 6: a collector well done because that's a key issue. That's
Speaker 6: a very very key issue. And yeah, Thanos's brother, he's
Speaker 6: like very what's the polite way to say.
Speaker 5: He begins he's a Latharia.
Speaker 4: I mean ifore plightly, okay, so beg He begins as
Speaker 4: Althario and ends as like a sexual assaulter, which is
Speaker 4: the fact that they introduced him.
Speaker 6: I still can't believe it when I when I heard
Speaker 6: this rumor, I was like, this is made up.
Speaker 5: I was like, who wants to get.
Speaker 1: In to the world? So fuck spent a lot of years,
Speaker 1: you know, flying around space having adventures. He's got like this.
Speaker 1: They kind of did it with Harry Styles with this
Speaker 1: kind of like foxy ear hair, and he's you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like this dashing, charming guy. Now his powers,
Speaker 1: you say, what are his powers? Like, okay, he can fly,
Speaker 1: he can kind of right, he has some level of
Speaker 1: super strengths. And crucially, he can essentially like target the
Speaker 1: parts of the person's brain where arousal lives and he
Speaker 1: can so he can basically make.
Speaker 3: Is that is.
Speaker 1: And so we should add that this is obviously a
Speaker 1: very troubling power to use on people. And one and
Speaker 1: two the che Hulk, Yeah, five or six actually put
Speaker 1: him on trial sexual assault.
Speaker 6: But the funniest thing is, like, so in that series
Speaker 6: that was one of those good reconsiderations where everyone was like,
Speaker 6: wait a minute, this is like creepy, like why a
Speaker 6: manipulating and seducing people?
Speaker 5: So they put him on trial and then Jennifer Sheehock.
Speaker 6: Is actually defending him, but then she realizes he's being
Speaker 6: using the powers on her to make her like and
Speaker 6: she's like, what the heck?
Speaker 5: And then I think at the end he wasn't.
Speaker 6: But yeah, basically this guy has so badly behaved that
Speaker 6: they literally put him on trial for sexual assault.
Speaker 1: So oh yeah, baby, do I have your consent exactly.
Speaker 6: I'm assuming we're not gonna see that element here. I
Speaker 6: think they've introduced.
Speaker 5: I think they've.
Speaker 6: Introduced like a hot young actor who people find attractive,
Speaker 6: who has like a certain amount of kind of like
Speaker 6: gender present gender fluidity in the way they present themselves
Speaker 6: as a pop star, in the way that they kind
Speaker 6: of behave, And I think that they'll just you know,
Speaker 6: he started, he got introduced by basically saying how hot
Speaker 6: Angelina Joli's Tina was so, which is true, she looks
Speaker 6: incredible in that movie. But like, I think that that
Speaker 6: it's gonna he's going to be more of like a
Speaker 6: safely flirtatious guy who probably has a lot of connections
Speaker 6: with important women throughout the universe who he's had consensual
Speaker 6: relationships with.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, And you know, the one thing.
Speaker 6: That we forgot from the first post credits scene is
Speaker 6: that so at the end, Dame Whitman's going to pick
Speaker 6: up this spooky sword that basically like possesses you, And
Speaker 6: the idea of the sword is it's cursed, so the
Speaker 6: only people who can wield it properly are people who
Speaker 6: lose themselves to the sword and they become like murderous berserkers.
Speaker 5: So he's looking at the spooky.
Speaker 6: Sword and then Blade a voice comes and he says, like,
Speaker 6: are you sure you're ready for that, mister Whitman? And
Speaker 6: we thought maybe it was Blade, and then Chloe Jao
Speaker 6: in an interview with Fandom confirmed it was than you, Chloe,
Speaker 6: Thank you Chloe. It was Mahershler Ali as Blade, which
Speaker 6: is super cool. And I love that they introduced him
Speaker 6: in London because in the comics, Blade is a character
Speaker 6: who comes from London.
Speaker 5: He was born in Soho.
Speaker 6: He was raised in a brothel and then he was
Speaker 6: trained to fight vampires by a cool trumpets a called
Speaker 6: Jamal Afari.
Speaker 1: I will say, we forget this is doesn't really get
Speaker 1: mentioned enough.
Speaker 3: Blade is like one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 1: Thirty or something like that, Like he was hanging around
Speaker 1: we have logan.
Speaker 5: He's like the jazz.
Speaker 6: He was born in like nineteen hundred or something, and
Speaker 6: like in early.
Speaker 1: Twentieth century London, British guy turned into a vampire, which
Speaker 1: is super cool.
Speaker 3: I so.
Speaker 1: I think that you're right in the kind of in
Speaker 1: the hypothesis you laid out about how Blade connects will
Speaker 1: be the kind of like connecting.
Speaker 3: Darkneck fury, dark adventage person.
Speaker 1: The thing that I initially thought of when I was like,
Speaker 1: is that Blade? And then if that's Blade, it felt
Speaker 1: like a reference to the Heroes Reborn storyline, which is
Speaker 1: which is you know, very recent storyline, which is about
Speaker 1: a world in which reality has been altered, so the
Speaker 1: Avengers never formed, it never took place, they don't exist,
Speaker 1: and in their place is the Squadron Supreme.
Speaker 3: But crucially, as always.
Speaker 1: Happens with stories like this, as with House of m
Speaker 1: there's always one person.
Speaker 3: Who remembers what the real world is supposed to.
Speaker 1: Be like, and in this reality it is Blade then
Speaker 1: goes around contacting like getting Steve Rogers out of the
Speaker 1: ice and being like, hey, do you remember what the
Speaker 1: world was like before? And assembling a team to try
Speaker 1: and put the world back the way it was. Well,
Speaker 1: that's initially what I thought, And with the multiverse stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe there's I think, maybe there's something like that.
Speaker 5: I am a true believer law in.
Speaker 6: That in the absolute corporate synergy that Marvel loves to do,
Speaker 6: and I read a lot of the comics and one
Speaker 6: of the things that I truly believe in.
Speaker 5: This has helped me a lot of theories that I've
Speaker 5: got right, a lot of theories I've got wrong.
Speaker 6: But like, they love to see stuff, so it makes
Speaker 6: sense to me, even if this is not necessarily going
Speaker 6: to be a exact Heroes Reborn story, because we know
Speaker 6: they like to pick and choose from what they take,
Speaker 6: it is unlikely that it's a coincidence that they had
Speaker 6: a story that saw Blade going around and helping heroes
Speaker 6: come together in the time that they really needed him,
Speaker 6: when there was some kind of multiversal threat. That to
Speaker 6: me is you're setting up an idea so that people
Speaker 6: can watch that movie and go, oh, is this like
Speaker 6: Heroes Reborn? Not the nineties Heroes Reborn, by the way, guys,
Speaker 6: just not the sexy Captain America boob Heroes Reborn?
Speaker 5: Now, this is the.
Speaker 1: New re the Dark Avengers. I think that I think
Speaker 1: that you're onto something. I think that we're gonna see
Speaker 1: in a post Avengers world's post Tony Stark, you know,
Speaker 1: where heroes may or may not have the actual backing
Speaker 1: of the US government as the Avengers kind of did
Speaker 1: in this Tony Stark era. I think we're gonna see
Speaker 1: two teams. We're gonna see the Blade team, which is
Speaker 1: either Dark Avengers or Midnight can bend this era New Avengers,
Speaker 1: you know, like a new heroes that take up the
Speaker 1: mantle but don't necessarily have the resources that like Tony Starging,
Speaker 1: you know, living like closer to the ground. And then
Speaker 1: we're going to see the Contessa's team, which is the
Speaker 1: US Agent USA Alena, and they're gonna be like the
Speaker 1: Thunderbolts kind of gray slash bad guy Avengers that are
Speaker 1: more closely hued to the US government, which is probably
Speaker 1: going to be more overtly the bad guys as we
Speaker 1: go forward.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think you're totally right.
Speaker 6: And I think that they'll do the same thing that
Speaker 6: Thunderbolts Comics did originally, where they basically just introduce analogs
Speaker 6: for each characters. So there will be the government saying,
Speaker 6: here's our Captain America, which we also how people reacted
Speaker 6: to with in Falcon Instldiers, Here's our Black Widow, Here's
Speaker 6: our you know, whoever else they're going to introduce in
Speaker 6: maybe an apt Man or something, and and then the
Speaker 6: reality will be that the Dark Avengers, the New Avengers,
Speaker 6: the Midnight Sunds, whoever this there's gonna be another team
Speaker 6: of kind of Blade and Wang are probably putting them together,
Speaker 6: you know, this team.
Speaker 5: We might even see multiple teams.
Speaker 6: I do think that is kind of where we're headed
Speaker 6: with the Multiverse, that you're gonna need these kind of
Speaker 6: different heroes for different universes and different spaces. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I think that that's we're definitely going to get to see.
Speaker 6: And obviously we have like young Avengers forming already.
Speaker 1: I legitimately can because and then we're almost there.
Speaker 5: We're so close. We're so close.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 6: The one thing I love. I actually they did a
Speaker 6: Babysitters Club reboot on Netflix.
Speaker 5: It was amazing.
Speaker 6: The girl who played Dawn social Gomez. She ended up
Speaker 6: being cast as America Chavez. She's amazing. But that did
Speaker 6: tip me to the idea that I think they're gonna
Speaker 6: at least have some of them be a lot younger,
Speaker 6: because to me, America is like always twenty twenty one.
Speaker 6: But you know, we have Kate Bishop, who is like
Speaker 6: more adult age, so I think you can have We're
Speaker 6: gonna have Patriot on that team. I think you can.
Speaker 6: We hopefully gonna get see some of that romance, some
Speaker 6: of that fun. Uh, And I just I can't wait
Speaker 6: for them.
Speaker 2: And obviously you.
Speaker 6: Know, uh Wonder's kids. They can kind of be aged
Speaker 6: up throughout the.
Speaker 1: Right because you know, they come back from whatever dimension
Speaker 1: they do. They have a demon dimension, you know what,
Speaker 1: other part of Mephisto that you know, realm they were
Speaker 1: in and they come back older up next to the omnibus.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another chapter in the Oonymous where lore, analysis
Speaker 1: an understanding come together. Today, let's talk about the career
Speaker 1: of Jack Kirby, who created much of the mythology on
Speaker 1: display on the screen in Eternals. The Eternals made their
Speaker 1: common debut in Eternals number one, cover Day of July
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: Small aside here.
Speaker 1: A later retcon places McCary of the Eternals in the
Speaker 1: story Mercury in the twentieth Century, which is written and
Speaker 1: drawn by Jack Kirby, which appears in nineteen forty's Red
Speaker 1: Raven number one. So technically speaking, that retcon, if you
Speaker 1: choose to read it in a certain way, that retcon
Speaker 1: makes it so the first appearance of the Eternals is
Speaker 1: actually nineteen forty, but let's leave that aside for now.
Speaker 1: Eternals number one tells the story of the origin of
Speaker 1: the Eternals, a race of alien warrior gods, and their
Speaker 1: endless struggle against their twisted cousins, the Deviants. The issue
Speaker 1: was written and penciled by the creator of the Eternals,
Speaker 1: Jack Kirby, and it marked his return to Marvel Comics
Speaker 1: after a half decade run at the company's chief competitor,
Speaker 1: DC Comics. Marvel's nickname for itself is the House of Ideas,
Speaker 1: and Jack Kirby has provided more of that grand mansions
Speaker 1: for then probably anyone besides stan Lee himself, certainly when
Speaker 1: it comes to Marvel's look and feel, the art style,
Speaker 1: the costuming, everything about the aesthetic appearance of many of
Speaker 1: the characters that have now become iconic. There's Kirby, Steve Ditko,
Speaker 1: co creative Spider Man and Doctor Strange, and Joe Simon
Speaker 1: who co created Captain America with Jack.
Speaker 3: And that's it.
Speaker 1: And of those three, Jack Kirby absolutely stands alone. Beginning
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, when the Marvel Comics era started
Speaker 1: in proper fashion, up to about nineteen sixty four five,
Speaker 1: Kirby in a burst of creativity that is essentially unmatched
Speaker 1: in American popular culture. Created or co created the Fantastic Four, Galactus,
Speaker 1: the original X Men. That's Cyclops, gene Iceman, Angel Beast
Speaker 1: plus Professor X Menneto and the rest of the Brotherhood.
Speaker 3: Of Evil Mutants Thor Loki as Guard.
Speaker 1: All the characters within Asgard, the Rainbow Bridge, Hulk, Doctor Doom,
Speaker 1: Black Panther, were Katta, and many, many, many, many many more.
Speaker 1: On top of that, Kirby helped create the visual language
Speaker 1: of superhero comics, with effects like the Kirby Crackle, which
Speaker 1: are masses of dark circles contrasted with lighter shaded spaces
Speaker 1: used to convey surges of energy. But by the end
Speaker 1: of the sixties, the long creative partnership with Stanley Head
Speaker 1: frayed beyond repair, and the issue was credit. It's an
Speaker 1: issue that in any collaborative endeavor, be it a school
Speaker 1: project or a song or a movie or improv team
Speaker 1: or a comic book creative team, is it's emotionally fraught,
Speaker 1: and of course it is financially crucial. It's a Gordian
Speaker 1: knot that is almost impossible to unwind with any kind
Speaker 1: of accuracy because of the subjective nature of individual recollections.
Speaker 1: It's simply impossible to with any kind of accuracy unwind
Speaker 1: who is responsible for what, even in projects with defined
Speaker 1: roles like the like the content created by Marvel Comics,
Speaker 1: in which Stanley was the writer, editor and Jack was
Speaker 1: the artist, and creative work is inherently frustrating anyway, ideas
Speaker 1: come from intimate, personal, psychological, and emotional spaces. Rejecting ideas
Speaker 1: is a necessary part of ideating, but that doesn't make
Speaker 1: the rejection hurt any less for the person whose idea.
Speaker 3: Was pitched and then rejected.
Speaker 1: To make things even stickier, the famous Marvel method, the
Speaker 1: loose improvisational system by which Marvel generated story over the first.
Speaker 3: Several decades of its.
Speaker 1: Existence, gave artists wide latitude to unleash their imaginations, and
Speaker 1: this ironically made the apportioning of credit a kind of
Speaker 1: rashamonic exercise in the nature of truth. The method worked
Speaker 1: like this, the writer and the artist, in this case
Speaker 1: Stanley and Jack Kirby, we get together and hammer out
Speaker 1: a plot, loose plot, which was usually based on an
Speaker 1: initial notion of stands, but not necessarily. Jack would then
Speaker 1: go off and draw the book based not on a
Speaker 1: script or even an outline, but on his own innate
Speaker 1: sense of pacing and story. The panels then would go
Speaker 1: back to Stan, who would fill in the dialogue balloons
Speaker 1: and the narration boxes is needed. This method worked extremely
Speaker 1: well during Marvel's early years. It allowed the maximum of
Speaker 1: creative freedom for the writer and artist and allowed each
Speaker 1: party to work quickly and efficiently. And that's really what
Speaker 1: it was about, you know, this system such that it was.
Speaker 3: Was really one of necessity.
Speaker 1: How do we Marvel Comics pump out enough product at
Speaker 1: scale with the limited creative resources that we have. And
Speaker 1: it's a great system right up until the point that
Speaker 1: creators begin to want to benefit from the success that
Speaker 1: they helped achieve by taking credit for what was created.
Speaker 1: As the sixties slouch toward the seventies, Stand increasingly became
Speaker 1: the Carnival Barker like face of the company. As the
Speaker 1: editor and writer of the stories, he naturally was the
Speaker 1: point person for interviews, and in those interviews, when naturally
Speaker 1: he was asked about Marvel's magic formula, Lee invariably started
Speaker 1: with heaping helpings of it was mostly me. Stan the Manly,
Speaker 1: a nineteen sixty six piece in the New York Herold Tribune,
Speaker 1: is often seen as the Fork in the Road of
Speaker 1: the relationship between Stan and Jack. Writer Nat Friedland opens
Speaker 1: with a scene Lea giving artist Saul Brodsky directions. It
Speaker 1: then compares Stan to the actor Rex Harrison, who, by
Speaker 1: the way, was once nicknamed Sexy Rexi by the Hollywood
Speaker 1: press because he was so handsome, mentions that director Fredriko
Speaker 1: Felini is a fan. He's my buddy now, Stan says
Speaker 1: in the piece, and notes that Stan's appearance at Bardie
Speaker 1: University drew a larger audience at President Eisenhower, also known
Speaker 1: as the guy who beat Adolf Hitler in real life.
Speaker 3: And it goes on like that.
Speaker 1: For about a dozen paragraphs before ever mentioning another artist
Speaker 1: at length. I don't plot spider An anymore, Lee is
Speaker 1: quoted saying in the piece, Steve Ditko, the artist, has
Speaker 1: been doing the stories. I guess I'll leave him alone
Speaker 1: until sales start to slip since Spidey got so popular.
Speaker 1: Ditko thinks he's the genius of the world. And this
Speaker 1: is the kind of passive, aggressive shots that Stanley would
Speaker 1: often take it interviews now. To be fair to him,
Speaker 1: he was often also very generous and saying, oh, Jack
Speaker 1: and Steve are so creative, and they're amazing artists.
Speaker 3: But these kind of digs certainly didn't go unnoticed.
Speaker 1: The article then goes on to describe Jack King Kirby
Speaker 1: as quote a man who created many of the visions
Speaker 1: of your childhood in mind.
Speaker 3: Okay, good, so far.
Speaker 1: He is sucking on a huge green cigar, and if
Speaker 1: you stood next him on the subway, you would peg
Speaker 1: him for the assistant foreman in a girdle factory. Quite
Speaker 1: a contrast from from the comparison of Stanley to one
Speaker 1: of the most handsome actors of the age.
Speaker 3: Anyway. Mark Evigner, a.
Speaker 1: Former assistant of Kirby's, recalls, quote Jack's wife Roz read
Speaker 1: the article early this Sunday morning. It came out, woke
Speaker 1: Jack up to read it. Jack phones stand at home
Speaker 1: to wake him up and complain. Both men later recalled
Speaker 1: that the collaboration was never the same after that day.
Speaker 1: End quote, along with these kind of petty or not
Speaker 1: so petty. If you're Jack Kirby injustices, Jack surely must
Speaker 1: have noticed how the industry treated his contemporaries when they
Speaker 1: tried to get paid. In nineteen sixty six, DC Comics
Speaker 1: froze out Superman co creator Jerry Siegel after learning the
Speaker 1: artists plan to contest for the Kryptonians copyrights. Quote. DC
Speaker 1: writing veterans such as Gardner, Fox, John Broom, Bill Finger,
Speaker 1: co creator Batman, Arnold Drake, and Otto Binder had seen
Speaker 1: their assignments dry up in what some believed was retaliation
Speaker 1: for their lobbying for things like better pay and health insurance,
Speaker 1: writes Jason Sachson. The nineteen seventy seventy nine volume of
Speaker 1: American Comic Book Chronicles, Fingers example certainly must have raised
Speaker 1: Kirby's alarm. Quote Finger had co created Batman with Bob Kane,
Speaker 1: but he was always Kane's employee, reads American Comic Book Chronicles.
Speaker 1: While Caine made millions from Batman, Finger scrape by financially,
Speaker 1: Kirby naturally wanted to escape that fate. He wanted a
Speaker 1: profit from the success that he helped build. Quite naturally,
Speaker 1: quite fairly. Quote Jack's plots and designs were on TV shows,
Speaker 1: his art was on toys, and he wasn't seeing a
Speaker 1: nickel from any of it, writes Mark Evianner in his
Speaker 1: biography of his former boss, Kirby, King of Comics in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, after negotiations over a new contract with Marvel stalled,
Speaker 1: and after two years of secretly preparing to do so,
Speaker 1: Kirby made the fateful call informing Saneley that he was leaving.
Speaker 1: Kirby's next stop was Marvel's main competitor, DC Comics. DC
Speaker 1: trumpeted Kirby's arrival from the mountain top the word from
Speaker 1: high is the great One is coming blaired DC's house ads.
Speaker 1: A longtime fan of science fiction, Kirby followed his creative
Speaker 1: moves to the farthest fringes of outer space. Quote you
Speaker 1: would occasionally reach back and pick a science fiction paperback
Speaker 1: up and riff through it to get an idea, Evianner
Speaker 1: says in the two thousand and seven documentary Jack Kirby's
Speaker 1: Storyteller that would generate an entire new concept somehow and quote.
Speaker 1: Kirby's vision, which found its full expression by nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: was collectively known as Kirby's Fourth World at DC Comics.
Speaker 1: His most impactful creation for DC is truly the archvillain
Speaker 1: New God dark Side. Dark Side, hailing from the planet Apocalypse,
Speaker 1: is one of the most powerful beings in existence, and
Speaker 1: he's driven by a fanatical obsession with the anti life equation,
Speaker 1: with which dark Side hopes to enslave the entire universe.
Speaker 1: Since twenty eleven's linewide reboot, The New fifty two, DC
Speaker 1: has positioned dark Side as its universe's primary antagonist, and
Speaker 1: the character recently made its DC cinematic universe debut in
Speaker 1: Zack Snyder's Justice League aka The Snyder Cut. He is
Speaker 1: DC's answer to the MCU's Thanos, which is an ironic twist,
Speaker 1: as comics fans surely are yelling at me right now,
Speaker 1: considering that Thanos was conspicuously modeled after some MTE say
Speaker 1: shamelessly from dark Side. IGN has dark Side sixth on
Speaker 1: its Top one hundred Comic book Villains countdown.
Speaker 3: Jack Kirby Done it again.
Speaker 1: Kirby's psychedelic Explosion was in perfect harmony with the pop
Speaker 1: culture zeitgeist of the late sixties early seventies. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, Eric von Danikin's book Chariot of the Gods,
Speaker 1: which posited that human technological development was influenced by visitors
Speaker 1: from alien worlds, was a surprise bestseller. In spring of
Speaker 1: that same year, Sanley Kubrick's adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey melted brains in
Speaker 1: movie theaters throughout the world. One of my friend's moms
Speaker 1: used to talk about how she tripped acid watching two
Speaker 1: thousand and one A Space Odyssey and that she was
Speaker 1: never the same, which is not a thing that she
Speaker 1: should have been telling us anyway. In nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: Kurt Vonagets break through time travel anti war novelist slaughter
Speaker 1: House five was published, as was Frank Herbert's sequel to Dune,
Speaker 1: Dune Massage. Kirby's work at DC expanded on the visual
Speaker 1: language of science fiction. It is incredible, it is powerful,
Speaker 1: it is intricate, and it was met with a thunderous shrug.
Speaker 1: Kirby's Fourth World had only slim connections to DC's ongoing continuity,
Speaker 1: which was a point of criticism from fans at the time.
Speaker 1: It met middling sales and very respectfully negative reviews, and
Speaker 1: it was canceled after three years. Fast forward to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. At New York's Hotel Commodore, Stanley announces to
Speaker 1: a rapturous Marvel con crowd during the Fantastic four panel
Speaker 1: that Kirby was returning home. Back at Marvel, Jack had
Speaker 1: complete creative freedom. He wrote his own stories, he edited them,
Speaker 1: and of course he did his own pencil work. He
Speaker 1: also had the leeway to select who inked his artwork,
Speaker 1: who lettered it. Kirby can speak aqueously, steered clear of
Speaker 1: the books and the characters that he collaborated on with Lee.
Speaker 1: He took over Captain America, the character he co created
Speaker 1: with Joe Simon. He did a ten issue adaptation to
Speaker 1: two thousand and one Space Odyssey, He did Black Panther,
Speaker 1: and he launched The Eternals. The Eternals ran for nineteen
Speaker 1: issues from nineteen seventy six to nineteen seventy eight. In
Speaker 1: the series kind of sums up this period of Kirby's career,
Speaker 1: this kind of second act, this middle act. It is
Speaker 1: bursting with unbelievable artwork and sci fi imagery. It contains
Speaker 1: visionary panels that conveyed heady concepts much better than the
Speaker 1: pedestrian story and forest of Wooden dialogue. Does Kirby seemingly eager,
Speaker 1: not such as to throw off any kind of link
Speaker 1: to Lee, but to prove in fact that he was
Speaker 1: better than stan Lee.
Speaker 3: Just lays in the words like fu and bricks.
Speaker 1: Icarus posing as Ike Harris in Eternals number one and
Speaker 1: apparently a human tourist who somehow just ends up tagging
Speaker 1: along with an archaeologist and his daughter who are exploring
Speaker 1: the Nascal lines in Peru. You know, just kind of
Speaker 1: like by chance, is like, hey, I'm going to tagle
Speaker 1: on with you, and the archaeologist is like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: that's not weird at all.
Speaker 3: Come.
Speaker 1: Ike seemingly by accident, leads the archaeologist and his daughter
Speaker 1: to a chamber filled with a bunch of alien shit
Speaker 1: and staring at a display screen showing some area of
Speaker 1: outer space, Ike exclaims, quote.
Speaker 3: There they roam.
Speaker 1: There they live in this great reflector, which the gods
Speaker 1: left when they last departed. The devoted Inca people kept
Speaker 1: watch for their next arrival, but the gods never returned,
Speaker 1: and the Inca's vanished from history. Keep going, Ike, says
Speaker 1: the archaeologist.
Speaker 3: Tell us more, but first tell.
Speaker 1: Us who you really are.
Speaker 3: You're not really one.
Speaker 1: Of us, are you, says the archaeologist's daughter, and the
Speaker 1: narration box reads Ike Harris seems to project the silent
Speaker 1: power of the god chamber itself. Both Margo and her
Speaker 1: father realize that he's somehow part of the awesome truths
Speaker 1: unfolding here, smeare is nothing, says the archaeologist. We've got
Speaker 1: to know begin with your name. It's not Ike Harris,
Speaker 1: is it not? Exactly? This is the kind of writing
Speaker 1: that is everywhere in the Eternals, and it's not good.
Speaker 1: And that's even judging on the scale of comic writing
Speaker 1: at the time. It's very stilted, awkward and not great.
Speaker 1: The cover of Eternals number two, which introduces the Celestials,
Speaker 1: reads quote more fantastic than Chariots of the Gods. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't know whether Kirby actually read Danakin's very, very
Speaker 1: weird book or whether he watched the nineteen seventy pseudo
Speaker 1: doctor Mentory film adaptation of Chariot of the Gods, but
Speaker 1: it's clear the book had a profound impact on the Eternals.
Speaker 1: As one would expect, Jack's art in Eternals is a
Speaker 1: tour de force. All of the kind of trademark Kirby's
Speaker 1: stuff is there. The dark light contrasts the power bomb
Speaker 1: splash pages, the characters and the vehicles that seem to
Speaker 1: burst out of the page. The story those, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned above, is just basically a massive exposition dump and
Speaker 1: so high concept that you basically need an oxygen tank
Speaker 1: to kind of like make any sense out of it.
Speaker 1: And the characters display none of the kind of grounded
Speaker 1: feet of clay traits that are invariably part of the
Speaker 1: best Marvel stories. This is this is the thing that
Speaker 1: made Marvel such a revolutionary pop culture force in comics
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 3: You know, DC. It's it's an old critique, but it's
Speaker 3: one that holds true.
Speaker 1: DC's characters are all gods you know, and aliens, where
Speaker 1: where as Marvel's characters.
Speaker 3: Are you know, human beings with human problems.
Speaker 1: Even the gods like Thor has to turn into a
Speaker 1: human being and he ends up having human problems and
Speaker 1: dating issues and things of the like. And that's all
Speaker 1: the best Marvel stories are like that. None of that
Speaker 1: is here in the internals, and the critical response was
Speaker 1: poor and the sales were poor. Within Marvel. Shockingly, Kirby's
Speaker 1: peers even mocked him. You know, here they are following
Speaker 1: in the path that he laid out, and this kind
Speaker 1: of like new generation of comics creator was you know,
Speaker 1: snickering that Kirby lost it.
Speaker 3: He was out of step with what was going on.
Speaker 1: Quote. The editorial staff up at Marvel had no respect
Speaker 1: for what Kirby was doing, Jim Starlin says in an
Speaker 1: interview in Comic Book Artists Collection, all these editors had
Speaker 1: things on the walls making fun of Jack's books. They'd
Speaker 1: cut out things saying stupidest comic of the year as
Speaker 1: brutal stuff. Additionally, Kirby's work on Captain America and Black
Speaker 1: Panther ignored the canon that had been established by the
Speaker 1: creators that preceded Kirby, which was a thing that annoyed
Speaker 1: comics fans and is still a critique that you'll read
Speaker 1: from comics fans today if they feel that once a
Speaker 1: new creative team takes over a book, there are invariably
Speaker 1: fans that go, this isn't what the character was previously,
Speaker 1: this is not what we established as a character. It's
Speaker 1: always a critique, and it was a particularly trenchant one
Speaker 1: for Kirby. By nineteen seventy seven, Archie Goodwin, Marvel's then
Speaker 1: editor intrief, tried to convince Kirby that he needed a
Speaker 1: dialogue punch up writer, you know, someone to help him
Speaker 1: make this stuff sing a little more, and Kirby said no.
Speaker 1: Captain America two fourteen cover data October seventy seven is
Speaker 1: usually mentioned as the last Captain America that Kirby did
Speaker 1: a few months later in January, the Eternals was canceled,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen seventy eight, fed up once again with
Speaker 1: life at Marvel Comics, Kirby decamped for the fatter paychecks
Speaker 1: and lighter workload in animation, accepting a position at Hannah Barbera.
Speaker 1: Though the nineteen seventies were a tough decade for Jack
Speaker 1: Kin Kirby, he ended the era with one of the
Speaker 1: more interesting footnotes in comics history. Forty two years ago
Speaker 1: this month, Iridian revolutionaries stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran,
Speaker 1: seizing diplomats and various US citizens who were inside the buildings.
Speaker 3: Unbeknownst to the.
Speaker 1: Burseoning revolutionary movement and other group of Americans were hiding
Speaker 1: nearby in the Canadian Embassy. May have seen the film Argo,
Speaker 1: which dramaticizes these events. A CIA team, using the cover
Speaker 1: of a film crew working on a movie adaptation of
Speaker 1: the Hugo Award winning science fiction novel Lord of Light
Speaker 1: managed to enter Iran and exfiltrate the Americans from the
Speaker 1: Canadian embassy using the cover of scouting locations for said film.
Speaker 1: The artist contracted by film producer Barry Geller to create
Speaker 1: the costumes and designs for A Lord of Light one.
Speaker 1: Jack Kirby up next, The Hive Mind. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Hive Mind, where we dive deeper into a specific topic
Speaker 1: with the help of a guest panelist. Today, x ray
Speaker 1: Vision is pleased to welcome journalist and author Abraham Reaesman,
Speaker 1: whose book True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stan
Speaker 1: Lee chronicles the life of the iconic Stan Lee, the
Speaker 1: spokesman essentially for Marvel Comics for many years. Released in
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty one, this book is available wherever you
Speaker 1: get books.
Speaker 3: Abraham, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: It's great to be here, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: So. The eternals were created by Jack Kirby. The comic
Speaker 1: was drawn, written edited by Jack Kirby. Jack Kirby was
Speaker 1: able to pick the letter, the colorists, the inkor on
Speaker 1: the on this and this was you know, part of
Speaker 1: the deal that he forged after coming back from from
Speaker 1: leaving Marvel for DC Comics. The Marvel's main competitor. What
Speaker 1: were the issues that that that Jack was dealing with
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 2: The career issues or his weird political.
Speaker 8: Beliefs, both of which played into what was going on
Speaker 8: with the eternals.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about let's talk about his his career issues
Speaker 1: as a creator in comics.
Speaker 3: You know, it's.
Speaker 2: Happy to do that.
Speaker 8: So the thumbmail version of a very complicated, fractal story
Speaker 8: is in the superhero comic book industry, there has never
Speaker 8: been a culture of creator ownership, or of creator unionization
Speaker 8: and collective bargaining. Creators as in the writers and artists
Speaker 8: and you know inker as all. That's kind of a
Speaker 8: dying industry because of digitization and colorists. All of these
Speaker 8: people they work as independent contractors. They're not staffers. They
Speaker 8: don't get insurance, they don't have any job security. They're
Speaker 8: paid to pittance. And this has been true throughout pretty
Speaker 8: much the entire history of comics. It was built on
Speaker 8: a very bad foundation. So flash forward to the sixties.
Speaker 8: You have Jack Kirby, this writer artist, operating at Marvel,
Speaker 8: and he's already famous in the comics industry. The nascent
Speaker 8: still somewhat like teenage comics industry. I guess was invented
Speaker 8: in the thirties, he'd already had a great deal of success.
Speaker 8: He was a writer, like I say, a writer and
Speaker 8: an artist, which is crucial because Stan was just a writer.
Speaker 8: Stan did not not a draw I mean, you could
Speaker 8: draw a little doodle a little bit. But Jack therefore
Speaker 8: was sort of the by really, by any reasonable estimation,
Speaker 8: this shouldn't be a controversial point.
Speaker 2: Jack was the main creative engine of early Marvel.
Speaker 8: I just I want to emphasize that, Like, these were
Speaker 8: weird guys with weird ideas, and none got weirder than Jack,
Speaker 8: and that really produced some great work. But also it
Speaker 8: produced the Eternals, which is not a good comic. It's beautiful,
Speaker 8: but like as a comic, it's.
Speaker 2: Not an interesting story. I don't know, I think.
Speaker 1: So let's be fair to Jack. It's pretty impenetrable and
Speaker 1: with stilted, super weird dialogue. You know, for whatever the
Speaker 1: relationship between Jack and Stan was, it's clear that what
Speaker 1: Stan added to it was a certain kind of textual dialogues,
Speaker 1: script writing polish that Jack.
Speaker 3: Just didn't have.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the issue of credit and the issue
Speaker 1: of the creators creators trying to benefit from the success
Speaker 1: creations within comics. Now, this is a this is a
Speaker 1: fraught space in any kind of creative space, whether you're
Speaker 1: writing whatever, but in comics it's particularly as a fringe
Speaker 1: industry for most of its life, in which the big
Speaker 1: money only came in very recently, at a time when
Speaker 1: creators basically had no leverage. It's a space where union
Speaker 1: is we're only just now seeing the unionization, uh kind
Speaker 1: of momentum that is sweeping a lot of other industries
Speaker 1: happening comics with the recent unionization. It was it was
Speaker 1: it was last week, which is in a way ironic
Speaker 1: because the image itself was you know, created by disaffected
Speaker 1: creators who were looking to more adequately.
Speaker 3: Better from the things.
Speaker 1: And so tell me, tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: these kind of like frustrated efforts over the years for
Speaker 1: creators within this industry trying to somehow, you know, make
Speaker 1: money off the things that they had created.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's it's an eternal struggle. You go back in
Speaker 8: the history of comics. Jeremy Douber is just putting out
Speaker 8: a book called American Comics, a History, which most of
Speaker 8: its stuff I already know, but it's an excellent like
Speaker 8: introductory text for people who don't know the history of
Speaker 8: American comics. And you should know the history of comics
Speaker 8: because it ended up being very consequential and you get
Speaker 8: all these little granular stories about people being again from
Speaker 8: the very beginning, from dawn of comics and dawn of
Speaker 8: superhero comics.
Speaker 2: With Superman, you have creators getting exploited.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you've hit on something that's important, which
Speaker 1: is whether it's songwriting, you know, like the film industry,
Speaker 1: popular music, is writing for magazines, whatever, any creative space.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of exploitation of creators that was happening,
Speaker 1: and in that sense, comics was really no different.
Speaker 2: It was no different.
Speaker 1: But it's just that there's billions of dollars in.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, and also but it's not just that it's
Speaker 8: no different, it's worse in some ways.
Speaker 2: The number one reason being work for hire.
Speaker 6: Like.
Speaker 2: It's insane they work for hire. And lack of unionization.
Speaker 2: Those are the two things.
Speaker 8: You know, you talk about screenwriting, and lord knows, screenwriters
Speaker 8: are very much an abused class in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: I am not please, I'm not diminishing that at least.
Speaker 8: There's a WGA comics, comics doesn't have you have no
Speaker 8: shot at getting unionized in comics.
Speaker 2: Now there is this.
Speaker 8: Previously you had no shot in getting unionized in comics.
Speaker 8: Now we have just in the past few days, this
Speaker 8: initial effort on the behalf of staffers, which means not creators.
Speaker 2: These are people who work at on staff at you.
Speaker 1: Not the pencilers, not the right Yes, that would be right.
Speaker 8: Hopefully you know, that might be something that we see
Speaker 8: in the future, but right now it's but it's a
Speaker 8: very important start because the comics industry is basically no
Speaker 8: experience with any kind of union, whether it's for you know,
Speaker 8: editorial staffers or the.
Speaker 2: People creating the stuff.
Speaker 8: And I don't know where it's gonna go, but I'm
Speaker 8: watching it with great interest because, yeah, there have been
Speaker 8: these attempts in the past, I mean, most notably Neil Adams,
Speaker 8: this legendary right a ACBA. Yes he started ABA, which
Speaker 8: was the well he he didn't dig. Giardano and Stan
Speaker 8: Lee created the Academy of Comic Book Arts and Sciences
Speaker 8: in nineteen sixty nine, and Stan's original idea, it was
Speaker 8: a classic stand take on it was.
Speaker 2: This is a hard to have an awards show. We
Speaker 2: want to have an awards show.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 8: He wanted to have a society so they could have
Speaker 8: the Oscars for comics every year. And he wanted to
Speaker 8: be the president of the organization, which is crazy because
Speaker 8: as it was getting formulated, like it became clear that
Speaker 8: like if the bosses are the head of the organization,
Speaker 8: then like, well the point was. Neil Adams decided he
Speaker 8: wanted to run as well, and Stan was like, we
Speaker 8: should run together, and Neil said, but you're not like
Speaker 8: a workwriter, you know, like the point here is supposed
Speaker 8: to be her management. What I would like this to
Speaker 8: be is an actual like coalition of people, which was
Speaker 8: how it was getting pitched. It's just that Stan in
Speaker 8: his head knew all he wanted was was the org
Speaker 8: show ceremony. So at one of the first meetings, not
Speaker 8: an ords show, but one of the first meetings of
Speaker 8: the ACBA, according to Stan, Neil gets up and starts
Speaker 8: or and stands telling of it. Neil gets up and
Speaker 8: starts talking about how creators are being abused and we
Speaker 8: should form a union. And Stan was furious and was like,
Speaker 8: that's not what this is for, Like, that's not why
Speaker 8: we're doing this, and sure enough, there are a bunch
Speaker 8: of other instances. I mean, just a few years later,
Speaker 8: you have when work for hires starts to be formalized
Speaker 8: in national law with this Copyright Act of nineteen seventy
Speaker 8: six that comes into fact in nineteen seventy eight, You
Speaker 8: all of a sudden have all these companies scrambling to
Speaker 8: come up with paperwork where people are retroactively signing away
Speaker 8: all of their rights and then you know, signing away
Speaker 8: any future rights. And Neil Adams writes, this takes the
Speaker 8: contract that you were supposed to sign, paints on it.
Speaker 2: I can't rear the exact phrase. It was just a
Speaker 2: few words.
Speaker 8: It was like, do not sign this, You'll be signing
Speaker 8: your life away, meeting address, you know time.
Speaker 2: And it was all at Adams's studio.
Speaker 8: All these comics creators meet at the studio and they're
Speaker 8: like fired up, and it's a lot of like.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go all the way on this one. We're
Speaker 2: taking these screw you know, these screw jobs down.
Speaker 8: And then all that had to happen was, well, Stan
Speaker 8: did nothing for one thing. He just stood off on
Speaker 8: the sidelines. And then Jim Shooter the e C informed
Speaker 8: everyone that if you were to.
Speaker 1: A Titanic, Titanic figure who is also extremely divisive, was
Speaker 1: once burned an effigy by his own workers.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I loved character who is also very important in
Speaker 1: the evolution of the comic, the.
Speaker 8: Comic and a lot of other things. But I don't
Speaker 8: remember where I was going with all of this. But
Speaker 8: it's I feel like I can go down any tangent
Speaker 8: when I talk about all this, But.
Speaker 3: Well, I we should.
Speaker 1: I should say that the thing that was really interesting
Speaker 1: to me about the ACBA and why why it failed
Speaker 1: clearly as a unionization effort, is that there was no
Speaker 1: even amongst you know, like a militant guy like Adams,
Speaker 1: who was who.
Speaker 3: Really wanted to push for this these kind of protections.
Speaker 1: There was not a broad agreement on who would be
Speaker 1: covered by this, who would be allowed do we let
Speaker 1: the colorist in? Who was in on this? And there
Speaker 1: was there was no agreement on that. And where I
Speaker 1: hope we go with, you know, with this current movement
Speaker 1: now is if we start drawing lines, it feels like
Speaker 1: we lose, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know, I'm not a union expert.
Speaker 1: Same here, but it feels like, you know, the way
Speaker 1: it failed in the past was they tried to draw
Speaker 1: a line and said, Okay, these people are not creators
Speaker 1: and these.
Speaker 8: People are each other, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 8: it's nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, my hope is that it would be
Speaker 2: a broad ten.
Speaker 8: I mean, I was part of the unionization drive at
Speaker 8: New York Magazine when I was still on staff there.
Speaker 2: I didn't lead it.
Speaker 8: I'm not going to take more credit than I deserve,
Speaker 8: but I did the secret networking to go talk to
Speaker 8: people and get them on board and get them in touch.
Speaker 2: With the reps.
Speaker 8: Went to a bunch of meetings, and you know, it's
Speaker 8: a real problem trying to figure out who gets covered
Speaker 8: in the bargaining unit. And the companies that you're trying
Speaker 8: to unionize will do everything they can to try to
Speaker 8: confuse people about who can count for the bargaining unit,
Speaker 8: just to keep some people from thinking, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 8: keep them thinking this doesn't apply to me. But yeah,
Speaker 8: with comics it's really hard for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 8: As is true of any industry that is built on
Speaker 8: freelance labor that is not conducted in a centralized place.
Speaker 8: It's extremely difficult to get these people comments creators to
Speaker 8: stop fighting with each other for these few slots, and
Speaker 8: I don't I don't have a good solution to that.
Speaker 8: I'm just glad to see that somebody's even bothering to try,
Speaker 8: and I would be following it very closely. I'm I'm,
Speaker 8: I'm working on trying to get some reporting done on it,
Speaker 8: but I'm like swamped with my Vince McMahon book. You
Speaker 8: want to talk about labor rights problems, wrestling makes commic
Speaker 8: look like a socialist utopia.
Speaker 1: Abe, thank you so much for joining us. I you
Speaker 1: know I've read your stuff for years, big fan. Where
Speaker 1: can we Where can we get more of of where
Speaker 1: you're writing, whatever you're working on.
Speaker 8: Next, go to Abraham Reisman dot com. Your one stop
Speaker 8: shop for all things Abraham Reesman. It's I before E.
Speaker 8: But if you misspell it with EI, I have that
Speaker 8: domain registered too, and it'll redirect you. If you want
Speaker 8: to follow me on Twitter, That's where I spend most
Speaker 8: of my day, and that.
Speaker 2: Is at Abraham Joseph.
Speaker 3: Abe, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Up Next, Endgame.
Speaker 1: We're in the endgame now, baby, it is inevitable, and
Speaker 1: today we're playing another round of assembly required, in which
Speaker 1: Rosie and I will be randomly assigned a mission uh
Speaker 1: and then we have to assemble our character, our team
Speaker 1: to accomplish that mission. Today we are going to be
Speaker 1: picking characters from the eternals, and our producers have prepared
Speaker 1: the mission for us.
Speaker 3: What is the mission, Christopher?
Speaker 2: The mission this week is pick your favorite eternal for
Speaker 2: the best possible Hinge match A.
Speaker 3: Match on Hinge. A match on Hinge.
Speaker 1: Hinge the dating platform that uses your Facebook network to
Speaker 1: match you with people who they hope can can foster
Speaker 1: a love match. This has been a free promotion for Hinge.
Speaker 1: You're not a sponsor of this podcast.
Speaker 5: I don't have Facebook, which is why I don't know.
Speaker 1: What hin I don't have. I don't have it either.
Speaker 1: Well I know who I would, I know people. I
Speaker 1: know people who have had some success on Hinge.
Speaker 3: And so we're going to use it now. Rosie, would
Speaker 3: you like to go first?
Speaker 1: Who would like is your is the ideal eternal to
Speaker 1: Hinge match with is Gilgamesh?
Speaker 6: Not only Isnley Donley is handsome, strong, iconic, one hundred
Speaker 6: plus movie Korean star icon, but Gilgamesh he cooks pies,
Speaker 6: He has a cute, delightful has a cute, delightful little
Speaker 6: apron that he wears. I want to see the fanat
Speaker 6: of that so much, with like the blushing cheeks and
Speaker 6: the apron and the pie. He makes delicious food. He
Speaker 6: makes his own meat. He makes it out of his spit.
Speaker 6: But sure, maybe you an. I think Gilgamesh is the one.
Speaker 6: I love him.
Speaker 1: Rip Gilgamesh, man, I gotta say so.
Speaker 3: That's a great pick.
Speaker 1: And obviously the eternals are not equally quality. Hinge matches
Speaker 1: for various reasons. Gilgamesh is great. You know, Kingo is good, funny,
Speaker 1: Drewig scary, Like, I don't know that I would want
Speaker 1: to go on a date with him. If you're Marcary McCary,
Speaker 1: great sprite obvious problems there.
Speaker 5: She's a child, don't.
Speaker 1: She's a child. She's a yes, I know, and anybody
Speaker 1: out there is like, yeah, but she's actually like seven
Speaker 1: thousand you just stop it, stop it right now.
Speaker 5: I don't her in my shipping lineup because she is
Speaker 5: a child.
Speaker 1: Sina is working through some mental health issues and I
Speaker 1: want to make and so I think it could be rocky.
Speaker 6: I like it.
Speaker 5: You're going for consent there, You're like, I want to make.
Speaker 1: Sure that we're all on the up and up. Circe
Speaker 1: would be fine. Ajac deceased and was keeping a lot
Speaker 1: of secrets from everybody, So I don't know if we
Speaker 1: want to go there. I am going to say, gosh, Now,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. If I pick Fastos, does
Speaker 1: that mean I've broken up a marriage?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: No, this is this is a hypothetical because I would
Speaker 6: not break up yoga mash and tena, So this is
Speaker 6: a hypothetical if the Atitos were single.
Speaker 5: I think Fastos is a good choice.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna pick Fastos because number one monogamy, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're on Hinge, you're looking You're not looking for
Speaker 1: something quick, You're looking for something lasting. Fasts I think
Speaker 1: showed us through his through his actions in this movie
Speaker 1: that he's looking for something real. He's got a beautiful
Speaker 1: family and and a beautiful relationship with his husband.
Speaker 3: He did build the the atom bomb.
Speaker 1: I'm like, did he or did he just seemed I
Speaker 1: seemed pretty broken. I feel like he just I feel
Speaker 1: like he just like this.
Speaker 6: He helped humans with technology and knew that humans was dumb.
Speaker 5: So if he didn't help them.
Speaker 6: It would have been they wouldn't.
Speaker 5: Have been able to create.
Speaker 3: I would argue it this way one.
Speaker 9: He seemed very broken up about it, upset. He was
Speaker 9: actually like at ground zero, like he was there. He
Speaker 9: was in the ruins of Erosia.
Speaker 6: Okay, so you on hinds, you want to match with
Speaker 6: the guy who split the arm, that's your open arms.
Speaker 1: He feels bad about it again a long time ago.
Speaker 3: He does different.
Speaker 6: He's a high a healthy relationship in the MCU that
Speaker 6: we've seen so far.
Speaker 5: So you know what say, even with the full crime,
Speaker 5: So yeah.
Speaker 10: Mass murderer arguably, but but you know, like again, Tony
Speaker 10: Stark traffic weapons for years, gave nature, was friends, was
Speaker 10: very close friends with Ulysses Claw for reasons that are
Speaker 10: probably best not explored.
Speaker 3: And child who is a wonderful guy.
Speaker 5: Love fast, fast, Well done, Tim.
Speaker 1: That's it for the endgame. Let us know who you
Speaker 1: think won this week's game. Hit us at hashtag XRVN game.
Speaker 1: Well listen Rosie as the number one Eternal's lover in
Speaker 1: the world. It was delightful to bathe in the warmth
Speaker 1: of your love for this movie.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: Thank you for letting us into your perspective on the movie.
Speaker 1: Whether people agree with it or not, it was useful
Speaker 1: and it was always a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Where can we find you next?
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: If you want to read more about my eternal I
Speaker 6: reviewed Journal's fanatists. I've written many, many Internals theories. A
Speaker 6: lot of what we touched on here, hit upnourdice dot com.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 6: If you want to read a spooky comic, I know
Speaker 6: it's kind of where over Spooky season Now. I wrote
Speaker 6: a graphic novel called The Hornted High Tops with this
Speaker 6: amazing artist called Frambueno.
Speaker 5: That's out now. So they're just a ton of cool stuff.
Speaker 6: But yeah, if you if you like this conversation you
Speaker 6: want to know more about these theories, definitely check out
Speaker 6: Notice because that's where all my pieces are maybe and
Speaker 6: there's like ten of them already and the movie just
Speaker 6: came out.
Speaker 1: Bump bump, bump, bump, bump bump. Dun Dun Dun, Dun,
Speaker 1: Dun Dun.
Speaker 3: Rosie Knight.
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Rosie Knight and Abriesman for joining us
Speaker 1: on another episode of X ray Vision. Please join us
Speaker 1: again every Wednesday for your weekly dose of the deepest dives.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about the stuff that
Speaker 1: we talk about in each episode. To find out the
Speaker 1: particular comics that we talked about, references, et cetera, check
Speaker 1: out the show notes on our website. You can find
Speaker 1: a full list of last week's comics corner picks on
Speaker 1: the x ray page of Crooked Media's website. And don't forget,
Speaker 1: Please please don't make me use my Druig powers on you.
Speaker 1: Five stars only. If it's not five stars, if it's
Speaker 1: no stars, five star reviews only, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show
Speaker 1: is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. The show
Speaker 1: is executive produced by myself and Sandy Gerard. Caroline Ruston
Speaker 1: and Carlton Gillespie are our consulting producers that are editing
Speaker 1: and sound design is by Facili's Photopoulos. Thank you to
Speaker 1: Brian Vasquez for our theme.
Speaker 3: See you next time.