Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another edition of Nerdificent. I am
Speaker 1: one half of your host, Danny Branan is and sitting
Speaker 1: to the side of me this time. How's everybody doing.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone's feeling good listening to this. Just chilled
Speaker 1: out on a good February mid February time of day,
Speaker 1: if you know. We asked people to rate and review
Speaker 1: us on iTunes and people have been sending a screenshots
Speaker 1: and I have to say thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to do that. It really does bump
Speaker 1: up our numbers. It helps other people see the podcast.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you know this, but we
Speaker 1: have been featured on the front page of Apple I
Speaker 1: think like three or four times, and this podcast isn't
Speaker 1: even a year old. Yeah, it'll be soon, though, It'll
Speaker 1: be soon. That's a big accomplishment. I think that's really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially to have like two nerds of color on the
Speaker 1: front page. It's just holding it down, you know, like, Hey,
Speaker 1: how's it going? Yep, yep, how you doing? Look at
Speaker 1: these heads? I know it is just two heads of us.
Speaker 1: I love it. And uh, today we are covering black Panther.
Speaker 1: We're covering everything that is to Chaula how he came
Speaker 1: to be the film, the TV show, and joining us
Speaker 1: we have comic book writer, novelist, screenwriter, showrunner, A black
Speaker 1: Panther's Quest, Jeff Thorpe, Wow, who's that guy? That is you?
Speaker 1: I didn't even name all the things you did. Also,
Speaker 1: actor that's dead. That's dead tweeter teeter extraordin there. I can't.
Speaker 1: They're like all my friends are like, Jeff, get off Twitter,
Speaker 1: Like it's too late. We're married. Don't you feel though
Speaker 1: that your can connect? I feel like Twitter helps me.
Speaker 1: I mean it hurts me for sure, but I feel
Speaker 1: like it helps me stay relevant with everything going on. Yes,
Speaker 1: on a certain level, that's true. Um. Also, uh, if
Speaker 1: you use it properly, you meet a lot of people
Speaker 1: you would not have or wise have met. I've had
Speaker 1: lunches and made friends with screenwriters, directors like yourself, animators
Speaker 1: who I would have never otherwise got to meet. I
Speaker 1: put I put together these things called the battle books
Speaker 1: that I'm selling, which I got. Um. There's a hashtag
Speaker 1: called visible women. There's a hashtag called drawing well Black.
Speaker 1: There's also a hashtag called drawing well Latin, and all
Speaker 1: the other different things. But I found artists that I
Speaker 1: would have never been able to find, and they're awesome
Speaker 1: and they were affordable, And if I wasn't on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I would not know who any of them were, and
Speaker 1: I made initial contact with them. That way, I can
Speaker 1: probably I can publicize my work in a very quick
Speaker 1: effective manner. And frankly, if I want to tell the
Speaker 1: President he's a jerk, I just tipped right over to
Speaker 1: his account, right And it doesn't change anything, but it
Speaker 1: makes my day a little lighter. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's also helped me to be a better
Speaker 1: person because I'm aware of people that exist outside of
Speaker 1: my friend group, you know, and I have a very
Speaker 1: diverse friend group. It's constantly changing, the world is constantly changing,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I wouldn't be the woman that
Speaker 1: I am without listening to all these other voices people.
Speaker 1: The hard part about Twitter is the awful people that,
Speaker 1: of course you have to put up with. But like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I just I did not know what non
Speaker 1: binary was until last year, Right, I thought I had
Speaker 1: it all locked down and I'm all progressive and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and they started throwing out ace and non binary and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But luckily there's Twitter, and I don't
Speaker 1: even have to ask half of the questions, half of
Speaker 1: the questions, or just somebody else going what the hell
Speaker 1: and then someone graciously explains it and I follow follow, Right,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have watched Pose. I wouldn't have thought to
Speaker 1: watch Pose if not for Twitter. Right. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: some gorgeous people pose. Yes, Oh my god, some of
Speaker 1: those ladies um flutter. But it wasn't the kind of
Speaker 1: show regardless, because I generally like things with monsters or
Speaker 1: some sort of supernatural or whatever thing in it. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been the kind of show that I would
Speaker 1: have even looked at because it's essentially it's soap opera,
Speaker 1: right again, with no time travel. I'm fine, just put
Speaker 1: in some time trying, right. But because of this sort
Speaker 1: of presence that my Twitter, who I follow and who
Speaker 1: follows me, there's conversations I don't even participate in that
Speaker 1: makes me aware of things that I'm I'm gonna check
Speaker 1: this album. Yeah, I mean that's that's kind of how
Speaker 1: you know. I kind of sell people on Reddit because
Speaker 1: every time people here red and they're like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a bad place, I was like, you can make it
Speaker 1: a good place you have control, and as if you
Speaker 1: follow the right subreddits, your feed becomes this, you know,
Speaker 1: beautiful place. I mean, you know, just like yeah, people
Speaker 1: can sneak in and you'll have to like squish accordingly.
Speaker 1: Here's a good example. There's an artist called Jennifer Meyer
Speaker 1: and after she's like an illustrator, painter, book covers, kids
Speaker 1: books and fantasy novels and stuff. You can find her
Speaker 1: on Twitter jail Meyer. She's awesome. I was really depressed
Speaker 1: after the Trump election. Like I don't get depressed if
Speaker 1: you follow Twitter. I'm rarely depressed, right, and I'm rarely
Speaker 1: even dark. I'm just like, you know, I get angry.
Speaker 1: I don't get sad, right, But after the election, I
Speaker 1: was kind of down and I couldn't shake it. And
Speaker 1: I was not used to feeling that way for any
Speaker 1: extended period of time. I was like, I might have
Speaker 1: to therapy or something for this. This is kind of
Speaker 1: raw every day, every day day and this somebody else
Speaker 1: followed her. Someone I followed followed her and reposted these
Speaker 1: ridiculous sketches she was doing of bunnies. And these bunnies
Speaker 1: were like dressed like wonder Woman or like having sword
Speaker 1: battles with other bunnies riding a bunny, you know, And
Speaker 1: I was like what, But they were delightful, man, they
Speaker 1: were delightful and they lifted me and I was like,
Speaker 1: how is this happening? And so I followed her and
Speaker 1: she was doing this like while she was working on something,
Speaker 1: she'd take a break and do these weird little quick sketches.
Speaker 1: But it changed my life, Like it. I talked about
Speaker 1: this with my friends all the time. It literally shifted
Speaker 1: my perspective away from this sort of dark abyss place
Speaker 1: I was going to. And once again, had I not
Speaker 1: been on Twitter and following the right people, and now
Speaker 1: we're kind of pals. We go back and forth. I said.
Speaker 1: I sent her a thank you note, like I know
Speaker 1: you weren't trying to do this, but had you not
Speaker 1: done this, I would have been a way different place
Speaker 1: last year. Thank you. And she was just what you'd
Speaker 1: expect the lady who draws bunnies and dressed like wonder
Speaker 1: woman to be like. And she's awesome. And that's a
Speaker 1: Twitter connection. Um. Occasionally people yell at me or they
Speaker 1: get mad at my political opinions, and okay, that's you,
Speaker 1: you know, and I fight back. It's not like I'm
Speaker 1: all like all gracious and Gandhia's or whatever. I go
Speaker 1: right in on you do. But it's so funny because
Speaker 1: you and I don't know how long you and I
Speaker 1: have been following each other, yeah, while, But you know what,
Speaker 1: it's so because we were talking and I think I
Speaker 1: think the same way about myself is like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm angry on there a lot, but you're actually funny
Speaker 1: a lot like you. I mean, you know that, but
Speaker 1: like I'm saying, you in your mind, but you are too.
Speaker 1: You just do it with photography more so than I
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably how we followed each
Speaker 1: other is one of us was being petty and shot
Speaker 1: down somebody and put them in their place. They deserve it.
Speaker 1: They deserve it. But what I was gonna say is
Speaker 1: that I think you're you. You're probably like me, and
Speaker 1: that you think that you're like you, that you're tweeting
Speaker 1: angrier than what you come across as. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to say, you come across as very well like I
Speaker 1: like your Twitter because it's very well rounded. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do. Yeah, I curated, like yeah,
Speaker 1: I like I just like a lot of stuff and
Speaker 1: there's no way well two things, let me stop. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's too much information just of any kind, and you
Speaker 1: get to it. I'm like, all right, uh okay, I
Speaker 1: gotta go like it doesn't matter. You can tell me
Speaker 1: the greatest, most wonderful story, but it's above that line.
Speaker 1: I can't hear it. I can't hear it. I gotta
Speaker 1: go away from this. And I think everyone should step
Speaker 1: back because it's just Twitter, But yeah, you you can
Speaker 1: learn a lot. I saw, like, how about this when
Speaker 1: there's something crazy going on in Syria and the news
Speaker 1: hasn't got anybody in there yet, my Twitter feed is
Speaker 1: showing me people on the ground, right, so when somebody
Speaker 1: comes up and well, this isn't happening, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I saw Ahmed put his iPhone out the window to
Speaker 1: show me that did actually happen. So what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Right? That kind of stuff or brand new
Speaker 1: things from um what do you call it? Like a
Speaker 1: web comic that you again would never have heard of?
Speaker 1: Post one still from You're like, oh my god, who
Speaker 1: is this person? How do they paint like that? What
Speaker 1: is and you go look right, like if you use
Speaker 1: it right, it's doing what it's designed to be done for.
Speaker 1: It's just all these jerks coming in there going now
Speaker 1: I can flex because no one can hit me back, right,
Speaker 1: And I feel like, let me put it like this
Speaker 1: and then I'll shut up about it because Twitter and
Speaker 1: panis for this. You know what it's like. It's like
Speaker 1: every time um Tucker Carlson would try to have a
Speaker 1: debate with Jon Stewart, and I'm like, look, Tucker, first
Speaker 1: of all you're asked is mediocre? Okay, just to begin with,
Speaker 1: you probably couldn't debate me. But Jon Stewart, he's not
Speaker 1: only wicked smart, he's a professional comedian. Do you understand
Speaker 1: the process by which a person becomes a professional comedian?
Speaker 1: The open mic night at the end of the night
Speaker 1: where the only people in audience are other professional comedians.
Speaker 1: So if you got heckled, you're getting heckled by a pro. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you survive that to become a real stand up,
Speaker 1: regular professional comedian, These regular old folks who think they're funny,
Speaker 1: they're like stepping into the ring with Muhammad Ali. Right,
Speaker 1: So you decided to go on TV right with this
Speaker 1: guy who's literally made himself a millionaire being funny every
Speaker 1: day and you're gonna out with him. You're an idiot.
Speaker 1: You just showed your triple idiot. So it's the same
Speaker 1: kind of thing on Twitter. A lot of us, you
Speaker 1: mean a lot of people on that it's made out
Speaker 1: of words. A lot of us make our believing with words.
Speaker 1: So some rando who's got a problem with women being
Speaker 1: geeks or about different minority group being involved with Star
Speaker 1: Wars or something like that, thinks he's gonna be all
Speaker 1: clever because he made his little cabal, his little claver
Speaker 1: and laugh right, And then they stepped to the wrong
Speaker 1: person that they might not have heard of. What that
Speaker 1: person is a pro? Done? Go away, Now go go
Speaker 1: play with your children, Go play with the other child.
Speaker 1: So that's the vibe I try to. I know it
Speaker 1: sounds vicious, but these people are awful. I think I
Speaker 1: think that I'm all for flexing. I see, maybe I'll
Speaker 1: see you flexing girl. No, hell yeah, flex away, flex away.
Speaker 1: Speaking of flexing, look, I'm going to perfectly transition list.
Speaker 1: You are the showrunner for Black Panther's Quest, And before
Speaker 1: we get into the show, what was your first introduction
Speaker 1: to Black Panthers? So I got a reprint, probably of
Speaker 1: the Fantastic Fur issue where he my dad introduced me
Speaker 1: to comics when I was probably about seven or eight,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe as old as ten young at seven, and
Speaker 1: Marvel used to put out these giants sort of I
Speaker 1: mean literally giant omnibus comics, not like graphic novels are today,
Speaker 1: like oversized weirdly, like how are you going to collect
Speaker 1: this type stuff? And in that was the Fantastic Four.
Speaker 1: He already liked Jack Kirby, so my dad was like,
Speaker 1: he likes Jack Kirby, let me give him Matt And
Speaker 1: I don't think Panther was in that, but at some
Speaker 1: point I came across a reprint of that story, and uh,
Speaker 1: I was okay, the black guy whatever. But I was
Speaker 1: fascinated with the fact that his introduction was, well, here's
Speaker 1: how I'm going to meet the Fantastic Four. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kick all of their access by myself, just to see
Speaker 1: if I feel like talking to him. I was like, okay, dude,
Speaker 1: wait a stepped up to the money. But then he
Speaker 1: just became sort of a secondary character in the Avengers
Speaker 1: for a billion years. He was just sort of like
Speaker 1: from my point of view, he was the silhouette of
Speaker 1: Batman without being Batman. They wanted a character that kind
Speaker 1: of looked like Batman and this guy. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can just keep going on this. But the Black
Speaker 1: Panther's mask used to have his face exposed for a
Speaker 1: brief period. At his face exposed, I believe that they
Speaker 1: shifted it to a full face covering so they could
Speaker 1: sell the comic in the South. Um, and that he
Speaker 1: wasn't obviously lack. You almost never saw him unmasked. He
Speaker 1: almost never took that mask off. Even if he got
Speaker 1: hit by something, his skin would never show in the
Speaker 1: rip or whatever. That's not accidental. That's we got to
Speaker 1: sell stuff to a very racist South in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seven. Wasn't there a period of time when they
Speaker 1: removed I know that he was for like one issue
Speaker 1: he was the Black Leopard, Yes, to try and move
Speaker 1: it away from being associated with the with the Black
Speaker 1: Panther organization. But I do know also I think that
Speaker 1: it was like the his one comic came out that
Speaker 1: was like the history of Ta Chaula, Like they also
Speaker 1: tried to do that to to change his name. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing with that period of time, modern people think
Speaker 1: that Stan and Jack uh saw the Black Panthers and
Speaker 1: then made the character, but he predates them, yes, right,
Speaker 1: especially one whole year before there you go, so um
Speaker 1: my feeling. My guess is there was a comic book
Speaker 1: when both Stan and Jack were kids that most people
Speaker 1: don't know about, called All Negro Comics. All Negro Comics.
Speaker 1: Number one only had one issue. There's a whole horrible
Speaker 1: saga about why there was only one issue, which is
Speaker 1: its own show. But inside that was a character called Lionman,
Speaker 1: who was an African prince who protected his country, who
Speaker 1: had a giant mound of exotic material that people kept
Speaker 1: trying to come get. And I can't help but think
Speaker 1: either Stand or Jack got exposed to that comic. They're
Speaker 1: both New York kids, they were not rich. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they picked up every rando five cent one cent comic
Speaker 1: that they could get their hands on, and it probably
Speaker 1: flitted away and went away, and then they pulled some
Speaker 1: of that apple because it's very similar, but it's also
Speaker 1: not the same, so um yeah. And so then it
Speaker 1: went into Jungle Action. They had a book called Jungle Action,
Speaker 1: which nowadays I don't know if that would flop one
Speaker 1: of one of us is going to have to write that.
Speaker 1: That was Don McGregor primarily, and he did a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of taking onto the clan. Um. He was
Speaker 1: ironically for an African king. He spent an awful lot
Speaker 1: of time in the US fighting ratio is interesting with
Speaker 1: a lot of superheroes. It's like, oh, these aliens, weirdly
Speaker 1: all just hang out here in the United States of America.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't we go to China where most of the
Speaker 1: human beings are New York especially um. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: they did that for a while. He was the feature
Speaker 1: in Jungle Action that kept trying to give him a
Speaker 1: book and it wouldn't last and all the while while
Speaker 1: I'm reading comics, he was always a second tier. People
Speaker 1: pretend now that they always were into it. But if
Speaker 1: you were, the book would have never died. So that's
Speaker 1: a lot even you're lying, right, Um, he was a secondary.
Speaker 1: He was there to be black. I think primarily he was.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call him as far as a token because
Speaker 1: they always wrote him fairly well, like, he wasn't he
Speaker 1: go iron man, He wasn't the cheerleader. He came to play,
Speaker 1: but he was also there because we need a black
Speaker 1: guy in there, just for that few black fans that
Speaker 1: we have out there, they might want to see them.
Speaker 1: I think stan Stan was very good about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Jack Kirby also said that too in a
Speaker 1: in an interview. I have my hands high up in
Speaker 1: the air because I worship all things Jack Kirby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jack Kirby would say that he wanted more followers to
Speaker 1: feel represented. He was always that way, always that way,
Speaker 1: and you can tell when I mean again, we'd go
Speaker 1: off from just on Jack. But when he split off,
Speaker 1: when it was just him, you could see that in
Speaker 1: his work throughout he had much more prominent women. His
Speaker 1: women were hard, they were all based all the really
Speaker 1: tough ones were based on his actual wife, right, um. Heed,
Speaker 1: He integrated all of his his little teams. They were
Speaker 1: unnecessarily in a sense like I'm just throwing a black dude,
Speaker 1: throwing a Heason dude. Why the hell not? And I
Speaker 1: think it's largely because the soup that New York was
Speaker 1: when those guys grew up was basically and it's apropos now,
Speaker 1: it was chuck full of immigrants in a different way
Speaker 1: than it is now. Um. The immigrants were much more
Speaker 1: I think widely dispersed, so there was no dominant immigrant group, right,
Speaker 1: so everybody just climbing all on top of each other.
Speaker 1: New York is a very different kind of city in
Speaker 1: that regard than as you go further west, it becomes
Speaker 1: more and more segregated from my point of view, and
Speaker 1: obviously South, but in New York, yeah, you get broken
Speaker 1: up by neighborhood. But everybody's kind of on top of
Speaker 1: each other all the time. So even if you don't
Speaker 1: like the next person, you've got to get along with them.
Speaker 1: You just have to where the city won't work. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's like that now, but I guarantee
Speaker 1: it was like that when those boys were coming up.
Speaker 1: This is probably aging us giving our age away. But
Speaker 1: when I would watch and this animated show is the
Speaker 1: first one that I saw that really did that was
Speaker 1: Hey Arnold. Do you remember that Hey Arnold had one
Speaker 1: of the most diverse cast that I can remember in cartoons,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that was on purpose, but that was exactly
Speaker 1: what you were talking about, um, And it was all
Speaker 1: different types of immigrant families and and and immigrants coming
Speaker 1: together in in that And I did I did love
Speaker 1: that a lot. I think that's where Henson got The
Speaker 1: Henson Company started with Street for that. Their model was
Speaker 1: New York Street. In New York Street, it just had
Speaker 1: muppets on it, you know. Um so yeah, So the
Speaker 1: Black Panther rolls for a long long time is sort
Speaker 1: of you know, in the mid to late seventies, and
Speaker 1: they tried with Jungle Action. They gave him a little
Speaker 1: mini series here and there. He was perennial in the
Speaker 1: in the Avengers, he was on a lot of the
Speaker 1: different rosters in the Avengers, but again kind of just
Speaker 1: there to be black. He doesn't really have the juice
Speaker 1: that they started him out with right when they started
Speaker 1: about taking on the whole fantom which, to correct myself,
Speaker 1: the cover that The Fantastic for he appeared in came
Speaker 1: out in July six, nineteen sixty six, and Black Panther
Speaker 1: was created in October sixty six and not even a year.
Speaker 1: So he's like there's something in the in the air,
Speaker 1: in the air, I like to imagine it was just
Speaker 1: like Hughie be like, Huie, what were gonna name this group?
Speaker 1: And look over to their stack. This works yeah black yeah, man,
Speaker 1: oh man. I wanted to be the spot of man
Speaker 1: so that won't work. That doesn't sell our our political
Speaker 1: point of all. Right, but the spot of man's would
Speaker 1: be cool. I'm not mad at your brother did You're right,
Speaker 1: it would be cool. But you know, we could be
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers. Let's ladies would be the Black Panther
Speaker 1: or the Spider Man. They're like, are you your fool's fools?
Speaker 1: Clearly it's Black Panther. Um, so that happened, right. They
Speaker 1: did that for a while. Um, really up until either
Speaker 1: the I guess it's the late eighties or the early nineties,
Speaker 1: when Christopher Priest, uh, he shows up and I mean
Speaker 1: his issue I remember what issue number it was. But
Speaker 1: when he revealed what the Black Panther have been doing
Speaker 1: all this time, if there had been an Internet back then,
Speaker 1: it would have burned down that day because he basically
Speaker 1: was like, wait, I'm not with you all, I'm in
Speaker 1: spying on you all the star It's like, wait, what
Speaker 1: it's like, No, No, I'm the king of a Nathan
Speaker 1: What are you stupid? Of course you guys are crazy powerful.
Speaker 1: Why would I play the backfield all these times? Dude?
Speaker 1: Come on, now what I look like? Right? But it
Speaker 1: was like and they were all like, oh, like even
Speaker 1: in the book, right, Priest wrote it like the adventures
Speaker 1: were like, wait, what are our friendly to challow? You know,
Speaker 1: He's like, man, I'm a king. I've been telling you
Speaker 1: this for thirty years. I'm a king. I do kings
Speaker 1: stuff like and that just blew the doors off. And
Speaker 1: I also feel like that kind of model to shallow
Speaker 1: we know and love to he took. Basically, it was
Speaker 1: almost like the and nothing against McGregor, who I met
Speaker 1: and as a lovely guy and did great stuff for
Speaker 1: the time period in which he is. But it's almost
Speaker 1: like Priests reached back to that first issue of Fantastic
Speaker 1: four and said, nope, that guy. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, how they're gonna kill him? Why he's
Speaker 1: gonna die? They're gonna kill the black panther. There's no
Speaker 1: way he survives after that. He's gonna be a villain,
Speaker 1: now what. I was ready to be outraged, Right, They're
Speaker 1: gonna pick the black panther, but no, and it's stuck
Speaker 1: and it it resonated. It was like he became unique.
Speaker 1: I think in that moment his blackness wasn't the uniqueness factor.
Speaker 1: It was this is a different kind of hero than
Speaker 1: you've seen before. Right, the closest thing would have been
Speaker 1: nay more this the Mariner. But he has always played
Speaker 1: as a villain. Yeah right, he's sort of a what
Speaker 1: is it chaotic? He was lawful evil yeah right, So,
Speaker 1: which to me is fascinating that to Chala didn't end
Speaker 1: up being that since he was technically fighting against the heroes,
Speaker 1: right Fantastic four, Right, Like they're the good guys and
Speaker 1: he's beating their asses as his debut and right, well
Speaker 1: that's just your typical, like, you know, wrestling way of
Speaker 1: putting someone over. I'm the only one in here watches
Speaker 1: wrestling to prove yourself a lot of fake nerds, and
Speaker 1: I've been given all the static about my lack of
Speaker 1: wrestling model. Well that's that's typically how you put someone over,
Speaker 1: and wrestling you have a really good person and then
Speaker 1: the new guy comes out beats the mess out of
Speaker 1: the guy who we've established is the strongest kind of
Speaker 1: jail rules and so everyone's like, oh yeah, so like
Speaker 1: essentially they Kirby and uh and late you know, put
Speaker 1: Black Panther over, which I often that I think that's
Speaker 1: what kind of always gave them a special part of
Speaker 1: my heart to not only create a black the first
Speaker 1: black hero, but also put him over and be like this,
Speaker 1: this is like, this is what I think. It couldn't
Speaker 1: have been conscious, Right, there was no conversations like the
Speaker 1: kind we have now going on back then, certainly not
Speaker 1: across ethnicity. Right. So there's these two white aspect Jewish
Speaker 1: dudes running a comic book company. It's like, I almost
Speaker 1: feel like it had to be Jack who brought this in, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we need a black guy. What wait, what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need a black guy. We need a black guy.
Speaker 1: And you've seen the designs for the original version. It
Speaker 1: was cold Tiger or something. They're terrible, terrible, terrible, Like
Speaker 1: Jack was my man, but occasionally he'd have a dude
Speaker 1: and they were like no, no, no, they we find
Speaker 1: it down a black panther. But on some basic human level,
Speaker 1: they had to know he has to come in so strong, right,
Speaker 1: he has to come in so hard, or the audience
Speaker 1: will never accept that he's appear with these people. He
Speaker 1: will always be in the backfield. And by the way,
Speaker 1: they introduced whyatt Wingfoot, Johnny's Native American best friend, for
Speaker 1: no damn reason. Why is he? Like why and he
Speaker 1: was cool. And then this. I was just talking to
Speaker 1: some guys about this on the web, the Kiwazi tribe
Speaker 1: that they made up, the Native American tribe. People don't know,
Speaker 1: and no one's used this in Marvel, and I probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't blow this because I probably should use it for
Speaker 1: my own stuff. There's a Native American Wakonda sitting under
Speaker 1: the soil in New Mexico in the Marvel universe called
Speaker 1: the Kawazi tribe, and they're just as high tech as Wakonda, Okay,
Speaker 1: but they have nothing's been done with them. I'm like,
Speaker 1: somebody ought to. It's probably not gonna be me because
Speaker 1: I'm not in position to do that, but that's what
Speaker 1: Jack and Stan would do, and I have to have
Speaker 1: I kind of have to feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: that came from Jack because when he went off in
Speaker 1: his solo, it just became much more crazy. He was
Speaker 1: like black Jewish people and you know, Chinese Muslims like
Speaker 1: this whatever, Just like when you hear stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And then we did a Twilight Zone episode with Rod
Speaker 1: Serling and how progressive he was. It kind of just
Speaker 1: really completely destroys that argument of they were a product
Speaker 1: of their time, that's always been Yeah, that's always been
Speaker 1: hard like, but you know, it just kills that argument
Speaker 1: because you see all these people and if you're if
Speaker 1: you're talking about the people who were talented enough to
Speaker 1: be like the pinnacle of entertainment at the time, there
Speaker 1: had to be more people like them who just didn't
Speaker 1: have the same microphone. That's right. So so I think
Speaker 1: that are and I trust me old if you're on
Speaker 1: a porch and gonna let anyone get away with telling
Speaker 1: their grandfathers who was around when I am back, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: they were probably like now, we were all woke. People
Speaker 1: were getting digital backpacks and it was actually real popular
Speaker 1: to almost almost kind of diluted the wrongness of it all,
Speaker 1: you know, just because I've been woke before. We were
Speaker 1: getting digital grounding points back when you were back when
Speaker 1: you would lose friends. Remember that we're the only one yelled.
Speaker 1: We have to convince people it wasn't No one was
Speaker 1: putting it on T shirts and it's somewhere on the internet.
Speaker 1: Is my hour long tirade about how awful Tier Rock
Speaker 1: character Tier Rock though it's a d C character from
Speaker 1: second But yeah, so Priest shows up and sort of
Speaker 1: Really the best thing about it was I have this
Speaker 1: thing called UM. I call this at Moore's law, Alan
Speaker 1: Moore's law for comics. I made this up. It's not
Speaker 1: a real law. Please make it a law. Always attribute me.
Speaker 1: But UM. Basically, he takes over the Swamp Thing comic
Speaker 1: and he made he told him. He says to himself,
Speaker 1: Look a lot of people, not enough because it had
Speaker 1: been canceled, but a lot of people liked the original thing.
Speaker 1: Now I want to do this all this other stuff
Speaker 1: with it. I can't really, I can't really spit on
Speaker 1: these existing fans. That's not fair. So he came up
Speaker 1: with a story called Anatomy Lesson, which is everything you
Speaker 1: read happened. All those stories are real. I'm not changing
Speaker 1: one word of that. All those events occurred in the
Speaker 1: contact to this story. Except after this story, all the
Speaker 1: rules are different. And it was called, i think not coincidentally,
Speaker 1: the Anatomy Lesson, where you find out all this different
Speaker 1: stuff and everything you thought was true was not true,
Speaker 1: but not in a cheap, crazy way. I feel the
Speaker 1: same way about Priest taking over Black Panther. All the
Speaker 1: things that he did with the character, they hit so hard.
Speaker 1: I think because they were in it. It was already there,
Speaker 1: like it just needed a writer to come in and go, well,
Speaker 1: if this is true, then these X the six or
Speaker 1: seven other things have to also be true. Right, If
Speaker 1: these are the conditions of his normal life at home,
Speaker 1: why is in the US so much? Like? Why would
Speaker 1: the king of this most advanced nation on Earth spend
Speaker 1: all of his time in New York City? Doesn't he
Speaker 1: have a country to run? Like? And even who is
Speaker 1: he leaving behind to run in for him? When he's
Speaker 1: like all these questions probably were not asked by any writers.
Speaker 1: Why would they nothing against them? They got other things
Speaker 1: to deal with. But Priest comes in and goes, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and all that's in the character. If it
Speaker 1: had not been, it would have felt paste it on.
Speaker 1: It would have felt like, oh, here's this black rider.
Speaker 1: He came in. He's gonna you know, he's gonna make
Speaker 1: him the Batman of the Marvel Universe or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I feel like the reason that he didn't get that
Speaker 1: backlash is because the character had had been already teed
Speaker 1: up for two decades for someone to come in and
Speaker 1: do it, and he just said, oh, I'll do it,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. But you know, then some funky stuff happened,
Speaker 1: like Casper Cole, which we'll get into. Well, that's writer's personalities.
Speaker 1: After this break. Hey, what's up, y'all? We are back
Speaker 1: and you know, yeah, I guess we can talk about
Speaker 1: Casper Cole. You know, well, there's two things that he did, right,
Speaker 1: Priest did. He creates Casper Cole and he also creates Hunter, right,
Speaker 1: the the Caucasian half brother of Actually, you know, as
Speaker 1: as unnecessary is that is? I actually liked that aspect.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be cool, right, How what it
Speaker 1: would it be like to be the one white dude? Right,
Speaker 1: and you're part of the royal family, but you're not
Speaker 1: part of the royal dude. Come on, that's genius. Also
Speaker 1: the way Priests did it at the time, people forget
Speaker 1: Everett Ross. They've never talked about Everett Ross, who actually
Speaker 1: was the character telling the story, right, the white CI agent.
Speaker 1: He's like, who, how is the black panther? That guy?
Speaker 1: But I gotta remember, when this book came out, it
Speaker 1: had to sort of feel like lethal weapon. There had
Speaker 1: to be a sort of humorous component. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: was part of the pitch, right, Uh, there couldn't just
Speaker 1: be like strong black lead, Like I can see that.
Speaker 1: They would be like, oh here comes a black dude
Speaker 1: with a pit for the black panther. Oh it's delightfully funny.
Speaker 1: We thought it was gonna be all hard and political
Speaker 1: and oh this is great, go go crazy, right. I
Speaker 1: think Casper Cole comes out of the idea that they
Speaker 1: don't have an American right, they don't have a back
Speaker 1: then everybody was. I remember this from my own trying
Speaker 1: to write, trying to sell scripts. Uh, quite as it's
Speaker 1: capt I write primarily fantasy and science fiction. Um, there's
Speaker 1: no rhyme of reason to the ethnicities and my stories. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot. All you can say is there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of different ethnicities and gender types of
Speaker 1: my stories. But just looking at me and going, oh
Speaker 1: he's a black guy, it's always going to be black people.
Speaker 1: That's foolish. I don't do that. Um. What I do
Speaker 1: do is the rainbow. Right, So what would happen with
Speaker 1: my scripts would be can it be more urban? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, what are you saying? Right? Do you mean
Speaker 1: it should take place in a different city, because that's
Speaker 1: what urban means, like they meant black. I think that
Speaker 1: there was a certain like the way he was writing
Speaker 1: The Black Panthers, the way we have him, the way
Speaker 1: Kirby and Leep presented him. Was a high tech genius
Speaker 1: running the most advanced company cooks last country in the world,
Speaker 1: and he acted like it. There was nothing street at
Speaker 1: all about this royal this you know, hereditary ruler of
Speaker 1: a nation. Why would there be is Dr Doom street? Right?
Speaker 1: But I can bet there was some kind of a
Speaker 1: vibe like we need a street version, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's where Casper Cole comes from. You sort of
Speaker 1: a street version of the Black panth a multiracial New
Speaker 1: York City police officer. Yeah. I mean, but by this
Speaker 1: time we had Luke Cage. So it's like, get out
Speaker 1: of here, and we've got we've gotten some cool cages
Speaker 1: like Cage that run which one not the one as
Speaker 1: Arello because I'm not to have We're not that. Look.
Speaker 1: I'm a child of the nineties, grew up in Compton.
Speaker 1: That was me. I was like, let's go. I wanted
Speaker 1: to find him and beat him down over that. I
Speaker 1: was like, you're gonna never come with an arms reach now,
Speaker 1: Like I you know what. At the time, I was
Speaker 1: up to here with all of that, so just to
Speaker 1: have Cage be that. And also Cage was already kind
Speaker 1: of a regular, that's the thing. It was written by
Speaker 1: someone who's outside that life. Yeah, there's a difference between
Speaker 1: growing up on this as what you would think of
Speaker 1: a a street level, which would be lower middle class
Speaker 1: basically um, iron worker family or something like that in
Speaker 1: the city, bus drivers and all that, and being you know,
Speaker 1: a crip. Yeah, okay, but there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who can't tell that difference. They shouldn't be writing Cage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't tell that difference. I'm not ironic. You can't.
Speaker 1: You don't get to be ironic about this. And the
Speaker 1: first picture that pops up when you search Brian Azarella
Speaker 1: makes you think that's the gold tooth Cage, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's what's funny is see this is this is
Speaker 1: that's the that's the majesty of being an author. And
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm just at that because there are ways
Speaker 1: we could take it. Like, you know, in my head,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what Brian Azarella looked like, So in
Speaker 1: my head he was a Latin next dude. I thought
Speaker 1: he was a Latino dude. I'm looking at him now
Speaker 1: and uh, and I see, I see why you might have.
Speaker 1: But it was not just that it was like what
Speaker 1: they did. It was a lot of things at the
Speaker 1: same time. It's what it was done to hip hop, right.
Speaker 1: Hip hop was a very diverse sort of movement at
Speaker 1: its roots at the beginning, it started with a bunch
Speaker 1: of Latin and Black kids, just poor as hill chopping
Speaker 1: it up. And they had all they had, like trance
Speaker 1: hip hop, they had, you know, just for dancing. They
Speaker 1: had like message hip hop, they had all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: And then the freaking West Coast came in and it
Speaker 1: was all gangster all the time. Right, You're welcome. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can say that if you want to. But even
Speaker 1: the West Coasters, like I'm thinking like dilated People's and
Speaker 1: some of the other sort of have the hieroglyphics down
Speaker 1: down look native but you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 1: they didn't get as much purchase, right the main line
Speaker 1: with because came over and took over and everybody had
Speaker 1: to Right, I felt like this was out of that.
Speaker 1: I felt like I'm getting enough of that in my movies,
Speaker 1: I'm getting enough of that on my TV. I see
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not against this life because it's a life.
Speaker 1: It's legitimate to discuss and show and all that. But
Speaker 1: it's not even clo it's not even fifty, it's not
Speaker 1: even forty. It's not of what's going on out there.
Speaker 1: So when that Cage book came out, I was like, yeah, done, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, just to you know, get just a
Speaker 1: real tap into that next truly like explained, because I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you you feel. There was an authenticity
Speaker 1: when it first came up. When n w A was
Speaker 1: coming out. N w A was like, look at our
Speaker 1: struggle and somehow it like evolved and grown into a
Speaker 1: glorification of it. And we felt that here in the hood.
Speaker 1: Like you know, like I said, I grew up in Compton, California,
Speaker 1: was in Downey to go to high school, but I
Speaker 1: lived in Compton till about I was like in ninth grade.
Speaker 1: Then by senior year, I was back in Long Beach,
Speaker 1: uh north side Long Beach, across the street from Jordan's High.
Speaker 1: You may know Vince Staples, and like it was like
Speaker 1: it was like a whole lifestyle. Like if you remember,
Speaker 1: like the punk kids at your school and the metal
Speaker 1: heads like gang banging became this lifestyle. But it wasn't like, no,
Speaker 1: you didn't wash out the spikes, you didn't take off
Speaker 1: the It was a real lifestyle that kids got caught
Speaker 1: up in. And also was the effect of you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, systematic issues that people of color dealt with
Speaker 1: in the hood and it seemed like there was no
Speaker 1: way out. It seemed like the only way to survive
Speaker 1: in those situations was to either be a rapper, a
Speaker 1: basketball player, and or a gangster. Like that was that
Speaker 1: was the only way you survived because when you got
Speaker 1: home there was no food. So what this group of
Speaker 1: people that you called the gang, you know, would take
Speaker 1: care of you, feed you, and that's all you had,
Speaker 1: you know. That's that's the thing about this that people
Speaker 1: I mean again, we can do a whole show about this,
Speaker 1: actually the whole series about this, but there's a reality
Speaker 1: of that life. Uh it's too simple to just write
Speaker 1: everybody off as though they just have a hard, vicious,
Speaker 1: criminal thug. There are significant number of them that are
Speaker 1: just hard, vicous, but there's also the complete lack of
Speaker 1: family structure that this thing takes the place of that.
Speaker 1: Like that's basically every terrorist it's exactly the same. You
Speaker 1: destroyed their culture. There's no unit, there's no unified families
Speaker 1: where all these testesterone testosterone filled boy is going to do.
Speaker 1: I'm going to join up with the Taliban, or I'm
Speaker 1: going to become a crip or a blood or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. It's very simple equation. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to some outsider who only knows about it from MTV
Speaker 1: turning Luke Cage into that, right, right, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: have the discussion, dig deep. Well, Also because you don't
Speaker 1: like if if we want to go back to the
Speaker 1: n w A analogy, you lose that that that you know,
Speaker 1: explanation of what the struggle is to kind of shine
Speaker 1: light on what the the the the sources versus like
Speaker 1: someone glorifying it and being like this is cool, thus
Speaker 1: leading to more kids wanting to do that, so much
Speaker 1: so that the Gangster Rappers themselves had to go and
Speaker 1: do an armistice. Hey stop, we're happening about this. We
Speaker 1: know we make it sound cool, but it ain't. I
Speaker 1: remember Snoop Dogg and Game had to come out and
Speaker 1: do a whole so like, if you look at the
Speaker 1: actual lyrics, they're not always making it sound that cool,
Speaker 1: talking about my friends getting chopped down in front of
Speaker 1: the cops, beating them up and treating them like hell
Speaker 1: just for standing around, Like it's not a life you
Speaker 1: want to do unless somebody's glorifying it. Which watch watch
Speaker 1: what I do now, uh, Which I think that's where
Speaker 1: Casper Cole came from, that same sort of soup of
Speaker 1: we need it to be hood, we need to be street,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, and even with the cage thing, not necessarily
Speaker 1: because it's in the person's mind. I don't think they're
Speaker 1: doing it to be negative or whatever they're like. Remember
Speaker 1: Marvel Comics is we used to be called Marvel pop comics,
Speaker 1: pop art comics. Their whole reason why they always beat
Speaker 1: DC once they showed up was they try to keep
Speaker 1: their finger right on the pulse right. So whatever those
Speaker 1: kids out there are doing, we're gonna have some comics
Speaker 1: about it. If you look at that stuff from it,
Speaker 1: it was all hippies and whatever. So that was the
Speaker 1: street culture became kid culture came youth culture. In some ways,
Speaker 1: I think it's a problem, but I can see the
Speaker 1: people at Marvel, editors at Marvel going, hey, there's a
Speaker 1: black guy we're gonna do this. Hey, I don't know this.
Speaker 1: I have no inside knowledge about this, but I would
Speaker 1: be willing to bet that that was a discussion rather
Speaker 1: than writer going hey, you know what else I want
Speaker 1: to do? I want to do this too, would be
Speaker 1: more like, hey, we need this gap field, can you
Speaker 1: can we use your popularity with the Panther right now
Speaker 1: to fill that gap? Sure, let's go, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's where you get I think that's where you get
Speaker 1: Casper call from ohay, I was going to say the
Speaker 1: talk about the portrayal of Techaula, like how that is
Speaker 1: so important then because you have a black king who
Speaker 1: is royal, you have royalty, you have a sister shrer
Speaker 1: who like especially if we're talking about the film, like
Speaker 1: how important it was to see that, to see I'm
Speaker 1: sorry introduced create. He created the dor Malaje, who were
Speaker 1: only two when he created them, just the two sort
Speaker 1: of wives, protector wives of the Black Panther, like ceremonial marriage.
Speaker 1: Reggie Hudlind comes in among many other things. When he
Speaker 1: takes over, he adds Shrei, the little sister, and you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: and she's a genius too. All right, let's go. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting that she took off in the movie because
Speaker 1: once again we've sort of been talking about this off
Speaker 1: off the mic. But there's a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: who haven't been getting served, and sureI typifies of that
Speaker 1: to some degree. Right, she shows up and she feels
Speaker 1: a space that all of us could go. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this empty space you could fill up with money
Speaker 1: if you just did this, right, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. You guys are crazy. That's some Pine
Speaker 1: the Sky progressive stuff. You guys are crazy. And then
Speaker 1: she shows up and takes over the movie. Right, everyone
Speaker 1: wants to talk about Shrei. Where Suri? What's what's she doing?
Speaker 1: Which the most popular character you've seen it all year?
Speaker 1: You know, because there's there's a need for it, wonder
Speaker 1: woman Captain Marvel, like, there's a need for this. People
Speaker 1: want to see it. I mean, yeah, if we if
Speaker 1: look but by now, anyone who's against this has already
Speaker 1: turned off that. But they turned it off last week,
Speaker 1: the same damn last week. But but there you're I
Speaker 1: I think you're speaking to something very very true. Whereas
Speaker 1: the sense of like, you know, if I just take
Speaker 1: a step back. There's been a lot of badass black
Speaker 1: dudes on on screen. Black Panther isn't new. It's you know,
Speaker 1: I was happy because Black Panther does happen to be
Speaker 1: my favorite comic book character as a Nigerian American. It
Speaker 1: like touches me in a very specific way no other hero. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this is you even to the max.
Speaker 1: So I've I've had that attachment. But you know I
Speaker 1: can I can go in and see you know, Idris
Speaker 1: Elba kick someone's but or you know, Chadwick in another movie,
Speaker 1: Michael b But you know, you don't have opportunities for
Speaker 1: young black women and not only see like you know,
Speaker 1: a woman who is beautiful, but someone who's smart. She
Speaker 1: like dominates the movie. Everyone wants to talk about her too.
Speaker 1: Yeah you you really, you really got like two fold.
Speaker 1: You got your badass black woman and you've got your
Speaker 1: intelligent black woman, two things you never see you got
Speaker 1: your third one? Right? Uh n? Right? Who? By the way,
Speaker 1: is it completely different from the way she is in
Speaker 1: the comics. They just took her and made her into
Speaker 1: their own thing. But what you this is the thing
Speaker 1: we all come from. Variations of what mainstream American culture,
Speaker 1: which is white. Uh would deem minority cultures were what
Speaker 1: they would think of his niets cultures. But we know
Speaker 1: within the culture there's all these nuances. It's not just like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's the Latin chick interchangeable with the other Latin chick, right,
Speaker 1: there's the black dude, Like I've been mistaken so many
Speaker 1: times for a football player because of my size, or
Speaker 1: if I happen to be in another the country, or
Speaker 1: you must be on the local basketball team that we've
Speaker 1: We only fly in black athletes to play basketball for MS, right.
Speaker 1: The only place that doesn't happen Africa because everybody is black. Right.
Speaker 1: But from the point of view of these executives and
Speaker 1: their lifestyles and the people who make the decisions about
Speaker 1: all this stuff, their their job is I'm not letting
Speaker 1: them off the hook because a lot of them are
Speaker 1: just bags of but the But a lot of them
Speaker 1: are just comple ignorant in an innocent, childlike ignorance way
Speaker 1: where they literally are like, Okay, how can I put
Speaker 1: you in the quickest box? So I got to move
Speaker 1: on to the next Oh yeah, no, We'll go into
Speaker 1: this because I don't I don't. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: should hop on you for a quote unquote letting them off,
Speaker 1: because this is a very interesting and true thing that
Speaker 1: I think needs to be talked about. Where it's like
Speaker 1: everyone is MORENC is only aware of the world they're experienced.
Speaker 1: And if you grew up like you know, primarily not primarily,
Speaker 1: if you grew up white and a primarily white upbringing,
Speaker 1: you're you're not checking for those things. It's just not looking.
Speaker 1: I could tell you, like, you know, look, I'll you know,
Speaker 1: I write for TV. I have I'm on a group
Speaker 1: of people who write for very popular TV shows, calls
Speaker 1: writing for Brooklyn nine nine right now, the Mars writing
Speaker 1: for Single Parents, and went on to write for other stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say no names because I ain't trying to.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get into a story, you know. I don't
Speaker 1: want people trying to Yeah, you know, and this isn't
Speaker 1: like a knock or anything. This is just you know,
Speaker 1: something that I hope like if the room or someone
Speaker 1: associated or showrunner here's this, they do take notice of this.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the guys they were writing for
Speaker 1: a show, a network show with a black character on it,
Speaker 1: and they and he and he came to me one
Speaker 1: day he was like, Oh, I totally see you know
Speaker 1: how like black characters end up not being written well
Speaker 1: and it's kind of not their fault. What ends up
Speaker 1: happening is you have this black character and it's the
Speaker 1: only black character in the show, so you're afraid to
Speaker 1: make them flawed in any way because you have inadvertently
Speaker 1: accidentally made this one person of colors represent representative. So
Speaker 1: any flaws now the writers are worried of coming off racist.
Speaker 1: You're almost too work for your own good because you
Speaker 1: don't put there and that creates a boring to have more.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how dare you exactly? Well? I did
Speaker 1: want to say this is because when this is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things that I loved Girls Trip for
Speaker 1: because it was like you had all of these black women,
Speaker 1: but they all were different, Like you had the wild child,
Speaker 1: you had, the loving mother, you had, the professional you have,
Speaker 1: and it was like, oh weird that we could be
Speaker 1: like all you could have, you know, but we're all diverse,
Speaker 1: Like we're all different. And when you see it, what
Speaker 1: happens the box office blows up and the reporters talk
Speaker 1: about it like it's an anomaly. You're not interchangeable, is
Speaker 1: what I mean. Like, we're all different. That's what happened.
Speaker 1: They went home. The people who went the first weekend
Speaker 1: went home and went, girl, did you What I want
Speaker 1: to say is I am not Gina Rodriguez. Not you're not.
Speaker 1: Of course, people are still going to make that because
Speaker 1: you're not there. You should never be there to be Latin.
Speaker 1: That's the point tagged in all of her stuff, and
Speaker 1: I think she's I'm just like, I'm not her though,
Speaker 1: and so it's just racist at this point. She is
Speaker 1: not in the end, Like no, I could go on
Speaker 1: this forever, but what I'm saying is we are not interchanged.
Speaker 1: We are not. But you're an actor and you know this.
Speaker 1: Many auditions have you been to. When you go to
Speaker 1: the audition, rod not not even that you're just walking
Speaker 1: cold and you see like nine thousand versions of everybody
Speaker 1: there could be your sister, Like literally, like I just
Speaker 1: always get Gina Rodriguez type. Like I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: I understand that we look similar, but we're our personalities are.
Speaker 1: So what I wanted to say is that's why I'm
Speaker 1: I was excited that there was a film like Girlshrip
Speaker 1: and just like what Black Panther did where it showed
Speaker 1: these women all have all different types of person all
Speaker 1: different types, and the audiences qualities and yeah, right, and
Speaker 1: so what happened with Black Other people talk about kill
Speaker 1: Monger because they've never seen a brother quite like that
Speaker 1: in the movie. And as you said, you have seen
Speaker 1: a brother like to challenge in a movie before, not
Speaker 1: quite that extreme, but he's been around. You've never seen
Speaker 1: somebody quite as smooth as uh kill Monger is the
Speaker 1: bad guy and be black that way. And the ladies
Speaker 1: you've never seen that many of different kinds of heroic
Speaker 1: black women in anything. Yeah, and anything even a bike
Speaker 1: Lee movies you've never seen, right, So of course they
Speaker 1: get all the juice. They're getting talked about the most
Speaker 1: because they're the new hot thing, and everybody tells their
Speaker 1: friends and half the audience is female. Y'all right, like
Speaker 1: maybe the reason, oh that's a whole other show, that
Speaker 1: all the show. But let me put it like this.
Speaker 1: I went on this whole thing, Where's my Black Widow Movie?
Speaker 1: For like two years, long before anyone was like I
Speaker 1: was doing posters, Where's my Black Widow Movie? And the
Speaker 1: rule of the rule in Hollywood was women can't do
Speaker 1: action movies. People won't go see them. And I was like,
Speaker 1: literally every franchise you've ever made alien, It was I
Speaker 1: was rinking up from TV. I freaking what Cleopatrick freaking
Speaker 1: Jones like, you go back as far as you want, right,
Speaker 1: So it was a lie. It was a lot of
Speaker 1: people kept telling themselves to be able to say no
Speaker 1: to the ladies. Basically, we don't, we don't wish to.
Speaker 1: Here's the stat we're gonna give you. The problem is
Speaker 1: you can actually go check the stats. You're you're you're
Speaker 1: either lying or you're stupid. Those are your choices, right. So, um,
Speaker 1: with the Black Panther movie, And this is why I
Speaker 1: always say it should be if there's such a thing
Speaker 1: as should I don't really believe in the oscars. It's
Speaker 1: just like a high school popularity contest to me. But
Speaker 1: it does sell. It makes careers go bigger, it makes
Speaker 1: it makes the ideas put in some of these movies
Speaker 1: go wider. Okay, we want to see more of a
Speaker 1: certain kind of movie. You wanted to win an oscar? Right? Um.
Speaker 1: I feel like just because of what the number of
Speaker 1: levels that the Black Panther operated on that maybe are
Speaker 1: invisible to a lot of white people, that they just
Speaker 1: went to a movie and saw a great action movie.
Speaker 1: I got some black people And that's kind of cool too.
Speaker 1: That my progressive. But I'm like that thing was working
Speaker 1: on like five levels. Yeah, are you sure you got
Speaker 1: all five? Because I don't think you did, you know,
Speaker 1: And one of them was this nuance of female power. Essentially, Um,
Speaker 1: you see a lot of women like I'm gonna pull
Speaker 1: Jessica Chas staying out and just for no reason. But
Speaker 1: she's very hardcore. She's like choosing movies and directors and
Speaker 1: stuff where she can show women in these different lights.
Speaker 1: And I think she absolutely should do that. But because
Speaker 1: she's the solo star, she's that woman. Right. What you
Speaker 1: want is ensemble pieces because they will show a variety
Speaker 1: of person approaching problems in different ways. Right, So like
Speaker 1: the Alien cast can be multi ethnic the next time,
Speaker 1: more multi ethnic the next time around, or like the
Speaker 1: Colonial Marines people forget Asian people, Latin people although played
Speaker 1: by Jewish woman, uh, black people whatever, but they were
Speaker 1: sort of all intermingled with each other and they all
Speaker 1: approach problems differently based on personality, right, rather than Oh,
Speaker 1: that's the Latin dude, he's gonna do this, that's the
Speaker 1: Chinese dude. You know, he's a martial artist, you know,
Speaker 1: or a tech head or whatever. Right, you just have
Speaker 1: to be thinking about it differently. And I think that's
Speaker 1: part of the giant, weird, sort of phenomena aspect of
Speaker 1: The Black Panther, which people aren't really quite twigging to yet.
Speaker 1: It has less to do with its blackness and more
Speaker 1: to do with the variety of women being shown. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: the kinds of women you can see. They're not just
Speaker 1: good girls and bad girls. There's not just mean girls
Speaker 1: and nice girls. There's not just smart girls and hot
Speaker 1: girls or dumb girls or fat girl or any of
Speaker 1: that crap. Right, It's just there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: kinds of people, and some of them spend money on movies.
Speaker 1: Maybe show them like it's there's seven and a half
Speaker 1: billion human beings. Show some of them, but it's not rockets,
Speaker 1: but they make it. They make it rocket science. So
Speaker 1: with the Panther, I think that's part of the big
Speaker 1: phenomenal success of the movie is that it actually pushed
Speaker 1: a lot of those buttons. I think wonder Woman did
Speaker 1: some of that, but I don't think it had frankly
Speaker 1: had one wonder Woman in it, right right, Like once
Speaker 1: you leave Paradise Islands, he's the only one you want.
Speaker 1: A room full of special women, that's what you went like,
Speaker 1: hidden figures, room full of special women. What happened? Blew up?
Speaker 1: It's not hard, it's not it's really not hard do
Speaker 1: the math man they make, but they try and make
Speaker 1: it seem like it is. Nobody knows anything. We have
Speaker 1: to take another quick break, but when we get back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna jump into Black Panther's question as well as
Speaker 1: the future of Black Panthers right after this and we
Speaker 1: are back and uh yeah, let's just let's just talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the film because something I
Speaker 1: don't know. These are some actual numbers. So the budget
Speaker 1: was two hudred million and it made one point three
Speaker 1: four seven billion dollars. Um. That's very exciting. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: if you're if you haven't seen it, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: you being a subscriber of this podcast. Um, but I
Speaker 1: know that it did, and I mean I think that
Speaker 1: it has influenced a show as well. Actually only in
Speaker 1: a couple of minor, minor ways, and not for any
Speaker 1: particular reason except that while they were in when they
Speaker 1: were wrapping up principal photography, they were still shooting when
Speaker 1: we started making our show. And quite as it's kept,
Speaker 1: Marvel is like working for the CIA. So people laugh.
Speaker 1: You just laughed. I'm not exaggerating. Um, projects do not
Speaker 1: cross pollinate. There's no unless somebody at the top says
Speaker 1: we want the Black Panther cartoon to be exactly like
Speaker 1: the movie. Therefore you need to sign all these non
Speaker 1: disclosure agreement and read the script so that it can
Speaker 1: be exact. Um, it's not going to be right. I
Speaker 1: forgot to mention that you were working on the comics, right, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I thought you did write a black well yeah. They
Speaker 1: pulled me in after like a weird thing. Should we edit? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's you decide I want. Okay. I saw that you
Speaker 1: had wrote a black Panther that was Alexis thing that
Speaker 1: they did as part of the promos for the movie
Speaker 1: when it came out, and they approached me because I
Speaker 1: was the guy who was on the Y and I
Speaker 1: created this other character for Marvel Mosaic. I was in
Speaker 1: the mix and they're like, oh, Jeff, you know he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's running the cell. He might want to
Speaker 1: do one of is right, And it was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: It was kind of weird because it was Alexis Diet.
Speaker 1: But by the way, it's free go read it. I
Speaker 1: had a ball well, I was looking at the cover
Speaker 1: art for it. Yeah, but yeah, so the timeline, even
Speaker 1: if we'd wished to, there really wasn't a way to
Speaker 1: do it. Also, everyone's crazy secretive about these movies, so
Speaker 1: unless it's everything to need to know and animation. As
Speaker 1: as much as we love it, we geeks love it, uh,
Speaker 1: we were not on the need to know list. What
Speaker 1: we learned about the movie was basically from whatever the
Speaker 1: public knew. So we saw the big kill Monger mask
Speaker 1: when it came out. That's when we saw the kill
Speaker 1: Monger man. We didn't know any of the actors until
Speaker 1: they announced who the actors were, so that's I would say,
Speaker 1: that's partly why the designs for our show don't match
Speaker 1: like the movie exactly. So um, I mean they're some
Speaker 1: of them are closer than others, but on the whole,
Speaker 1: like everybody kne who Claw was because he had already
Speaker 1: been introduced. So as soon as they mentioned Andy Serkis
Speaker 1: is going to reprise Claw where we already know what
Speaker 1: he looks like as we saw him in Age of
Speaker 1: Ultron right. So that's an easy design to do. But
Speaker 1: the rest were just designed. So you gotta give it
Speaker 1: up to the designers. For um, I'm pretty sure once
Speaker 1: they knew that Homeboy plays kill Monger, all the ladies
Speaker 1: love him and I can't. Ironically, was in the first
Speaker 1: episode of TV I wrote him and Jeff Goldblum, we're
Speaker 1: in the same episodes I wrote for kill Manger and
Speaker 1: the Grand Mask. Um. But um, I guess they got
Speaker 1: wind of who that was going to be, so they
Speaker 1: designed the character to sort of resemble the Killer characters
Speaker 1: esemble him. But the rest of it was just us
Speaker 1: like um, and it's probably probably not the best advertising
Speaker 1: tool to say we're not like the movie, but on
Speaker 1: another hand, if freed us up right. So now you
Speaker 1: have three versions. You have the movie version, you have
Speaker 1: the comic book version, which is wildly different in the movie,
Speaker 1: like wildly different. Um. Yeah, and before we move and
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention Tnahs Coats, who we shouldn't or
Speaker 1: else people will write us. Yeah. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: were even starting to write something thinking that you knew
Speaker 1: about Teneze Coats before two gentlemen in the room, I'd
Speaker 1: erase it and then feel about typing it. Wow. And
Speaker 1: then also there was the The Black Panther series that
Speaker 1: was by Marvel Knights. Yes, that was Reggie, Reggie Hudlin
Speaker 1: who did that. What was turned into the show was
Speaker 1: basically an adaptation of his one of his arts. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, I liked a lot of it. It was
Speaker 1: very slavish from my point of view. They wanted to sorry.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be the one to say it
Speaker 1: was it on. I didn't want to be the one,
Speaker 1: and he was a president at the time. Help it's helpful.
Speaker 1: But they also were very They wanted to stick so
Speaker 1: close to the original artwork of John Remeda Jr. That
Speaker 1: I think ultimately just this is I know Reggie, Reggie's
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. I'm not saying anything I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say to him. Um. I can see why they chose
Speaker 1: to do it that way. It makes sense that he
Speaker 1: would want to do it that way. But in the
Speaker 1: long run, I think there's a reason certain kinds of
Speaker 1: art stay in the comics and other kinds of art,
Speaker 1: or best to make a move in animation, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that was the happiest marriage of styles. Um.
Speaker 1: But again, there's a lot of like, it's weird because
Speaker 1: these characters people think they're setting stone because when they
Speaker 1: see them in a movie, they think that's the character.
Speaker 1: That's the character, that's a black panther. Black panther has
Speaker 1: been around since before anyone in this room was born, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm way older than these two, so that's a
Speaker 1: long time. It's the point. Um. So what I feel
Speaker 1: like when I talk to people about it is like this.
Speaker 1: When the hell Boy movies came out, real gigs were like, oh, damn,
Speaker 1: hell Boy movie. I don't even know why they're making
Speaker 1: a hell Boy because all the all the characters. Why
Speaker 1: hell Boy? I mean, I'm glad, but damn right, And
Speaker 1: then it came out It's like, Okay, this isn't exactly
Speaker 1: the comic comics, way slower, it's way darker than this movie.
Speaker 1: It's funny, but it ain't like this. This movie is
Speaker 1: way more full of jokes and sort of sarcasm and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I can see what they did, but
Speaker 1: the weird thing was hell Boy was still hell Boy.
Speaker 1: And that's the point. He felt like hell Boy. He
Speaker 1: talked like hell Boy, he did hell Boy things, he
Speaker 1: looked like hell Boy. So regardless of what else was
Speaker 1: going around, little modifications that they had to make and
Speaker 1: all that from my little gee comic book head, it
Speaker 1: felt like I was watching a hell Boy. Then they
Speaker 1: put out some hell Boy cartoons which were not like
Speaker 1: the movie, and they weren't like the comic, but hell
Speaker 1: Boy remained hell Boy. He still acted like he felt
Speaker 1: like the hell Boy expected him to be. So if
Speaker 1: you look at the different Black Panther characters in the movie,
Speaker 1: the show in the comic, that character is essentially the
Speaker 1: same guy. Um Ours is slightly older than Chadwick Boseman's version,
Speaker 1: probably slightly younger than the comic book version. Based on
Speaker 1: the craziness Coats has got him going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: but um, but we were free um and I think
Speaker 1: that ultimately helped us. Uh yeah. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: one round I want to talk about, mostly because I
Speaker 1: talked about it a lot. I actually was a big
Speaker 1: fan of this. A lot of people fight me on this,
Speaker 1: But the most Dangerous Man Alive when he comes to
Speaker 1: Hell's Kitchen. I was all about it. That was that
Speaker 1: was that slapped. That was all about it. Plus I
Speaker 1: was like Shadowland was such a good like run and
Speaker 1: so I'm like geeked up off of that. Then my
Speaker 1: Man's to child gets to hang out in New York
Speaker 1: and then as a night here and once again his
Speaker 1: like which was a character from Things Fall Apart. It
Speaker 1: was it was like and there was only one part.
Speaker 1: One part that I was not a fan of. It
Speaker 1: was the Feared Self crossover when they put my Man's
Speaker 1: up against hate Monger and and this is like, if
Speaker 1: you look up hate Monger now they got the swoled
Speaker 1: up one that I'm like, oh yeah, who kind of
Speaker 1: reflects the literally literally actually ate off hit. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: this guy, I'm not kidding, but this is this is
Speaker 1: the hate monger that was in Feared Self was a
Speaker 1: dude in a pink KKK outfit terror I'm like, how
Speaker 1: is this dude terrorizing ta He's not. It was. It
Speaker 1: was such a pain but everything wrong that yeah, but
Speaker 1: well that's the thing, and that's another thing that could
Speaker 1: be a whole episode. As much as I love a
Speaker 1: good crossover, when when you forced because they because remember
Speaker 1: right when I started really getting into comics, which is
Speaker 1: around that time, a few years earlier, Like I'd say,
Speaker 1: right around like right after Darkest Night, I got your
Speaker 1: getting really in the capes. That's when they went crossover crazy.
Speaker 1: Everything had, every book had event stop it and they're like, man,
Speaker 1: and I remember like being like, has this always been there?
Speaker 1: Like no before that. It used to be a long
Speaker 1: period of time before there, so it would be an event. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then it was like there was And what the
Speaker 1: problem was because we're talking about this, uh, it kind
Speaker 1: of marries right into what you just said is because
Speaker 1: they wanted the crossovers to coincide with the movies. Itself
Speaker 1: happened only to promo Captain America because that's when Red
Speaker 1: Skull came back, and then they had the other one
Speaker 1: with Thor to promote the Thorn movie. All of the
Speaker 1: crossover events, it was like it was so transparent that
Speaker 1: you were just doing this to sell it. And then
Speaker 1: and then y'all went crazy and canceled, Uh, Fantastic four
Speaker 1: to be petty, and it was pettiness. People keep saying
Speaker 1: that in the fandom, that's not petty. Okay, what's what's
Speaker 1: the real money. When everybody, remember probably in the fan community,
Speaker 1: says it's petty, it's not they everyone who makes comics
Speaker 1: loves comics, the writers, editors that are everybody because the
Speaker 1: money is terrible. So if you don't love it, you're
Speaker 1: not in it, okay. But everybody above them in the
Speaker 1: executive suites, they're fighting the same fight that every publishing company,
Speaker 1: every studio fights. We don't own these guys. Fox is
Speaker 1: putting out movies with these guys. They would like Fox
Speaker 1: to give these guys back to us, but if these
Speaker 1: movies keep making money, they're not going to every comic
Speaker 1: we put out, since they own the rights to the movies.
Speaker 1: In the Fantastic Four, if Danny comes in with a
Speaker 1: great idea, is fantastic for our ever written? She comes in,
Speaker 1: she sells it, They do it, They put it out.
Speaker 1: She introduces six brand new characters that everyone in the
Speaker 1: audience loves. Marvel can't do anything with them, but Fox can.
Speaker 1: So you're just so so you're giving away you're giving
Speaker 1: away stuff. You're giving away free stuff to a company
Speaker 1: that you would like to give back your stuff, which
Speaker 1: they have no incentive to do and have no legal
Speaker 1: reason to do. They bought it fair and square, they're
Speaker 1: exploiting it fair and square. Now you got some juice
Speaker 1: because you just came hard with that iron Man stuff.
Speaker 1: So you're thinking, all, we want all of our property back. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess you shouldn't have sold it. Then it's hardball man.
Speaker 1: So people in the fandom communities wanted it to be pettiness, like, well,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna be stinty about it, but it isn't.
Speaker 1: It's this is billions of dollars at steak. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel you in in the in the like, I
Speaker 1: am fully aware of that sense. It's still just felt
Speaker 1: because I wanted my fantastic and they had. But you're right,
Speaker 1: You're right. The reason I'm mad is because they went
Speaker 1: a whole new route with it, switched it up, and
Speaker 1: Fox could have created something really nice with it. Lucky
Speaker 1: for Marvel, Fox was Fox. Wow, Fox, what were you thinking?
Speaker 1: How could you not get that? Right? Should call me?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, the Future Foundation, Oh my god, don't please,
Speaker 1: don't get me started on any of that. I I
Speaker 1: go weeks on that. So I think that we I'm
Speaker 1: going to just do this really lightning round of things
Speaker 1: that we haven't forgotten about Black Panther. We just have
Speaker 1: a lot to get through. And and Jeff is also
Speaker 1: a busy man. So also to put this energy out there.
Speaker 1: If Marvel you need a little buffer between movies, let
Speaker 1: me write the Most Dangerous Man mini seris. Let me
Speaker 1: write that. I'll write that mini series. We could throw
Speaker 1: it up on your weird app and I love this
Speaker 1: guy and it'll it'll like, it'll hold people over to
Speaker 1: the next movie. Let me have that. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: meant to do. Um. Wait, okay, so I have a Storm.
Speaker 1: He had to relate. He was married Storm. A lot
Speaker 1: of people love the Storm thing, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the Storm fans love. My beef with is very simple.
Speaker 1: My friend Reggie put that marriage together. I think it
Speaker 1: was a very business smart thing to do. Is putting
Speaker 1: a giant franchise together with a guy who needed some
Speaker 1: always needs a little bit of ex or whatever. Plus
Speaker 1: they're the most prominent black characters possibly in comics, the
Speaker 1: two of them. Um, it makes sense on that level.
Speaker 1: From my point of view, it is very simple. Every
Speaker 1: superhero should be unique. Everybody should have their own rogues gallery,
Speaker 1: their own love interests, their own storylines all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: so that when I pick up a Black Panther character,
Speaker 1: I'm picking it up for that it's not Captain America,
Speaker 1: it's not Spider Man. And then it's fun when there's
Speaker 1: a crossover because Spiderman gets to go, what these are
Speaker 1: the people you fight? Good Lord or vice versa? Right or? Uh?
Speaker 1: Lady Sift shows up Thor's love interest and she's kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, I know ever actually met Captain America before.
Speaker 1: He's kind of hot, Like, wait, you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: with me? Yeah, I know, Thor, but you know we're
Speaker 1: thousands of years old. I can get back to you.
Speaker 1: Steve Rogers cat over here, you know. Like that. That's
Speaker 1: sort of the fun of the crossover. But the mutant
Speaker 1: thing plus Wakonda, that's top heavy to me. I was
Speaker 1: just like, plus Storm doesn't need him and he doesn't
Speaker 1: need her. It's I feel like they should have built
Speaker 1: up their own each one who Storm's real love interest?
Speaker 1: Now she's been with Wolverine for God's sakes, Come on, no, um,
Speaker 1: So that was my only beef with it, and I
Speaker 1: feel like, now, especially since you've seen in the movies,
Speaker 1: they could have taken a time to just build up
Speaker 1: a character that was worthy of Like, look, Batman and Catwoman,
Speaker 1: how long have they been dancing around? Right? All you
Speaker 1: needed was somebody the end of time, till the end
Speaker 1: of time. They're not getting it. I feel bad. Well,
Speaker 1: they're getting it. That's not what I meant. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: my next one. Vibranium. Jeff, what can't it do? Okay? Now,
Speaker 1: there's kinds of vibranium, like there's different black panthers, and
Speaker 1: the comics is very specific. Vibranium eats and redistributes uh,
Speaker 1: kinetic or other forms of energy, but primarily kinetic. So
Speaker 1: it was in Africa billion billion years ago and the
Speaker 1: Wakanan's discovered it and went, what is this stuff? And
Speaker 1: create an entire technology based solely on that, And it's
Speaker 1: the only place in the world that exists, so no
Speaker 1: one else has that, and that's why their stuff is
Speaker 1: so crazy and futuristic, and they can do all the
Speaker 1: stuff that technically shouldn't be possible. But vibranium is unobtainium.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's just whatever. In the comics, in the movies,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting because again we don't have the X
Speaker 1: Men so we don't have access to adamantium, right, Marvel
Speaker 1: doesn't own that. That's all Fox, So vibranium starts to
Speaker 1: be sort of the place holder for both. Now it's
Speaker 1: the reason Captain America shields indestructible all of a sudden
Speaker 1: of stuff. That cap did have a sort of a
Speaker 1: vibranium adamantium alloy shield at one point. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the status is now, but the original version was
Speaker 1: not freaking vibranium, okay, but it was from a meteor,
Speaker 1: so you could say it was broken off from the
Speaker 1: central maybe, I don't know, a lot of writers write
Speaker 1: this stuff like over decades, so it gets fuzzy. But
Speaker 1: that means there's a planet somewhere that's made entirely vi
Speaker 1: or was maybe it was Krypton. I don't know. But
Speaker 1: but so in the movies, it's a it's a fuzzier thing.
Speaker 1: It's much more like adamantium. If you know comics, you
Speaker 1: know the different adam Mantium is that unbreakable, unstoppable, can't
Speaker 1: it can cut through anything if you hone it to
Speaker 1: an edge. It's it's sort of the thing that you
Speaker 1: would hit a god with because it can it can
Speaker 1: fight a god hammer that. But vibranium versus adamantium used
Speaker 1: to be a discussion which one would win, right, because
Speaker 1: if you come in with a slash, but you hit
Speaker 1: something made of vibranium and it eats all the energy,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like he just tapped it. So does
Speaker 1: it cut? You know, like that in the movies. In
Speaker 1: the cartoon, they're basically the same same. So anyway, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: he actually took over the mantle of Black Panther have
Speaker 1: to do more, Yes, And I love that. Um, that's
Speaker 1: actually what led into the comic I was talking about.
Speaker 1: He was filling salty because he couldn't protect his country,
Speaker 1: so he went to Hell's Kitchen. I'll take over for
Speaker 1: Daredevil while while my sister runs. That's your vacation. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go to Hell's kitten and fight criminals without my stuff,
Speaker 1: just to like relax and so sure, so he had
Speaker 1: that was the big thing about most dangerous man in life.
Speaker 1: He had no powers. Then they went ahead and tweet
Speaker 1: that by having sure he run by the god of
Speaker 1: light and not like life and uh to Charlotte, the
Speaker 1: god of death. Uh, he's the lord he's the Lord
Speaker 1: of the Dead. Yeah, yeah, uh yeah. I mean writers
Speaker 1: are crazy. They come out with wacky ideas and editors
Speaker 1: are like that sounds wild. Do that yeah, And then
Speaker 1: you look back on you're like, wow, was a weird
Speaker 1: phase my anyway, ask questions we were doing a lightning
Speaker 1: round now, I think that was my I was gonna So.
Speaker 1: Another thing is that even though in the movie Shure
Speaker 1: he has shown and she is she is one of
Speaker 1: the smartest people in the entire planet. But to Chola
Speaker 1: in Marvel's roster, I think it's like numbers, like, he's
Speaker 1: also one of the most brilliant men. Like people know
Speaker 1: that he's one of the richest men you know from
Speaker 1: he's like, but he's also, yeah, one of the most brilliant.
Speaker 1: The easiest described to Chila is in the comics, certainly
Speaker 1: is if you know comics, especially Marvel comics, what if
Speaker 1: Dr Doom was a good guy. Yeah, that's the Black Panther.
Speaker 1: It's basically him, right, and there's no reason he there's
Speaker 1: no dying, why he's in the Illuminati. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised he to just kill all of them, Like
Speaker 1: the Illuminati is such a fun idea because it's like
Speaker 1: none of these people's ego should let them work together.
Speaker 1: But I like seeing all these smart people, how they
Speaker 1: punk out some of the ones you thought, like you think, no, no, no, no, anyway,
Speaker 1: Read we were talking. So for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: the Illuminati is to Challa nay More, Professor x Read Richards,
Speaker 1: doctor Strange and there's one more. No, no, that should
Speaker 1: be it because they all have an infinity stone and
Speaker 1: black panther. Yeah uh and so like that. That was
Speaker 1: like they that started beasts. That's literally how to Chala
Speaker 1: nay More ended up with a blood feud. That's how
Speaker 1: like so much. That was such a fun run when
Speaker 1: they really were hitting uh the Illuminati, Yeah man, that
Speaker 1: was that was some wild times. Just like they pumped
Speaker 1: out Captain America. He's like, you guys, they were like, dude,
Speaker 1: we are the smartest, most powerful people. We don't we
Speaker 1: don't listen, just go away and hit stuff. Cap. We're
Speaker 1: not talking about that stuff. But the Illuminati, like in
Speaker 1: a weird way, they're kind of villains though yea, they
Speaker 1: wanted they were the most ruthless good guys in the
Speaker 1: history of good guys. Like they were like we will
Speaker 1: do anything to save the world, even blow up another
Speaker 1: planet full of people. Yeah, like at which they did do,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, how are these Yeah? That that was
Speaker 1: that was that run when you had that, like the
Speaker 1: teams of people who made the hard decision because you
Speaker 1: got the uncanny what you call it, X Force and
Speaker 1: they were now, we better just kill this one. If
Speaker 1: you want to listen, if you're if you're like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: capes are too lollipop for me, read Illuminati Read Uncanny
Speaker 1: at X Force, because they Luminati were hard and those
Speaker 1: were some fun runs. Oh my god, you couldn't make
Speaker 1: a whole like they had to basically disband or die
Speaker 1: out whatever, because there's no way that comic could remain
Speaker 1: that hard. Yeah, you can't say same people, both of them.
Speaker 1: They were just like, all right, we've we've gone as
Speaker 1: hard as we could. Let's send them back. But personality wise,
Speaker 1: with Black Panther, one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: Priest and Hudlin both did excellently was had to differentiate
Speaker 1: him from He's not Marvel's batman. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of people in comic book were, well, he's just a
Speaker 1: black man in Marvels. They need a batman guy. I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's not crazy. He doesn't fight crime, he's not putting
Speaker 1: criminals in jail like that. He's richer than everybody. He's
Speaker 1: just as smart as the smartest dude, and his skill
Speaker 1: really is tactics. Also another thing powers. People always forget
Speaker 1: about this because they didn't do it in the movie.
Speaker 1: They put all his powers into the suit. In the comics,
Speaker 1: he's he's Captain America level. You got this thing called
Speaker 1: the heart shaped herb the Black Panthers eat. There's a
Speaker 1: ritual around it, but it basically they're like what they
Speaker 1: call meta humans. He's like Captain and all the stuff
Speaker 1: they did to make Skinny Steve into Captain America. What
Speaker 1: con has just been doing that with this one fruit
Speaker 1: for like ten thousand years, right, So he's that, right,
Speaker 1: So even with nothing, with no gadgets, no nothing, just
Speaker 1: naked on a beach. Please don't start a fight with
Speaker 1: this man. Yeah, like really, like I think I think
Speaker 1: that's uh, well, I just wanted to tap on the future.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can't talk about the future of we
Speaker 1: know there's a movie. That's why I thought. I mean,
Speaker 1: if he and I talked about this and if he
Speaker 1: and I know this is me, like just when I'm
Speaker 1: throwing shade. Um if he and I talked about this
Speaker 1: with Infinity War when he disappeared and everyone cried and
Speaker 1: we're like, but he has like a three picture deal,
Speaker 1: so idiot people, we're mad and I'm like, no, but
Speaker 1: Spider Man also has a three picture deal. Tom Holland
Speaker 1: accidentally already gave it as never been to the movies
Speaker 1: before a movie. It's half a movie, true, right, they
Speaker 1: tell you part one, It's right in the title. But
Speaker 1: also they're not going to just kill off this huge
Speaker 1: character that they've just made a billion dollars. Let's tell
Speaker 1: you what. Let's stock at that billion dollars versus the
Speaker 1: Infinity Gar see which one wins. I guess, what do
Speaker 1: you think that they might tackle in the second film
Speaker 1: or what do you want to see more? Christ I
Speaker 1: mean for me, Um, I liked what they did in
Speaker 1: the first one. They opened up a lot of doors. Um,
Speaker 1: I would like to see what they did with the women.
Speaker 1: I would like to see a real black villain that
Speaker 1: wasn't like killer because kill Marker is basically what Conda focus.
Speaker 1: I would like to see a global level threat that
Speaker 1: happens to be a black person. Right. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen that in a movie? I don't think you have,
Speaker 1: or if they've been played evil or whatever, they've been
Speaker 1: played like crazy, weird evil, like maybe Sam Jackson in
Speaker 1: the was it in The Queen and the Kingsman? Maybe,
Speaker 1: But that was just Russell Simmons as Dwayne. Dwayne already
Speaker 1: beat Marvel to that with this hobby. Straight up put
Speaker 1: a superhero in a car movie. You know what? Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: don't even get me started on that franchise that was
Speaker 1: a rip off of Point Break and it's now become
Speaker 1: the car Acrobatic Team versus Seal. What the hell? I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm here for it to bring you back by the way,
Speaker 1: I love those movies. Familiar. Yeah, I was so on
Speaker 1: the train before everyone figured out that you don't have
Speaker 1: to ironically like it. No, it's hey, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: And this is the last for this show. They did
Speaker 1: a trick that most franchises can't do. It started out
Speaker 1: as a completely one kind of franchise and then they
Speaker 1: had one movie where they had a chance to flip
Speaker 1: it and if it hadn't worked, that would have been
Speaker 1: the end. And not only did you drift still to
Speaker 1: this day, and I promise I have no plans to
Speaker 1: change it. Have not seen Tokyo Drift. I was like,
Speaker 1: no good soundtrack. I mean, yeah that karaoke boys slaps
Speaker 1: they turned that. I'm gonna see it. Dan, I turned
Speaker 1: that corner. I don't know how they did. I still
Speaker 1: don't watch Initial D another. I'll watch a whole season
Speaker 1: of a D before I watch Tokyo Drift. They got
Speaker 1: a feud going out of it? Are yeah, nerdificent? Come
Speaker 1: for the topic, we're talking about other topics. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've done this now that people are used to. That's
Speaker 1: what kinda drift to that? Right? Um, so let's just
Speaker 1: close up shop. We've we've flown. This has been an
Speaker 1: amazing conversation. Thank you for coming on my pleasure. I
Speaker 1: love talking about the show and even though we barely did. Um.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you want to promote? Where can people
Speaker 1: find you? You can find me, Uh well, apparently on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I got a Patreon, which is I think it's Jeff
Speaker 1: Thorn Patreon. But what I really like the hype is
Speaker 1: I got these things called The Battle Books on Amazon
Speaker 1: at three Digital Comics, uh all brand new characters, superheroes, whatever,
Speaker 1: not all superheroes, science fiction, adventure or whatever. But they're
Speaker 1: competing because I don't have time. So whichever one of
Speaker 1: them selves the most by the first of Spring is
Speaker 1: the first chapter of three different stories, completely different stories.
Speaker 1: Whichever one of them selves the most, even if it's
Speaker 1: by one sale, that's the story that gets to live,
Speaker 1: and the rest of them are just gonna sit in
Speaker 1: my vault, right. Yeah, And just to help out some
Speaker 1: of the people listening, is Jeff spelled the other way? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the British way, the proper way, o f f Thorn
Speaker 1: with an e. It's all British from front to bat.
Speaker 1: Hey whatever, man, I didn't do any of that, that's
Speaker 1: all real. My parents did that. And if you wanted
Speaker 1: to catch up on Black Panthers quest, I know that
Speaker 1: it's online for people that you can get it on
Speaker 1: the Disney app uh Disney now app the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I think. Also, there's five free episodes up on um
Speaker 1: uh YouTube. The first episode and then we did a
Speaker 1: sort of a weird time travel thing, so that whole
Speaker 1: arc is up there for free. And then there's this
Speaker 1: one weird one with bats and cloth. I don't like.
Speaker 1: I don't know why he chose that one. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's awesome, so random, but that's up there too. Um
Speaker 1: we had a ball, we got um please do watch it.
Speaker 1: One thing about the show is that it took a
Speaker 1: minute for people to sort of figure out. It was
Speaker 1: a little different than the other seasons of the show
Speaker 1: because it's the season five of The Avenger Show, not
Speaker 1: season one of the Black Panther Show. Although it feels
Speaker 1: like season one of the Black Panthers Show, it's really
Speaker 1: season five of the Adventure Show. So I think people
Speaker 1: were like, oh, I've seen that before, I can wait
Speaker 1: on it. It's not gonna be new, but it is new.
Speaker 1: It's brand new, completely different approach, completely different style. And
Speaker 1: now there's enough of it that you can binge it.
Speaker 1: I know all you young people like to do, so
Speaker 1: please bench the hell out of it. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: you also had a Nika. Yes, she plays and yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's really cool because for those of you that
Speaker 1: don't know, which I totally know because she's in my
Speaker 1: Spotify because they listened to the soundtrack all the time
Speaker 1: that she was a voice of Tiannas. So she was
Speaker 1: the first black Disney Princess, which is cool because she's
Speaker 1: in an animated show with the first black superhero. Also
Speaker 1: unique to our show. We created that character. She's a
Speaker 1: past black panther. She's the Queen of Wakanda from like
Speaker 1: two thousand years ago, like something crazy like that. Um,
Speaker 1: she was great by the way, I love her. Did
Speaker 1: you get her to sing? Not for me? Please please
Speaker 1: bring her back and have her do your voice? And
Speaker 1: we love a Nika she was. She's lovely, so great.
Speaker 1: We got to where I got to Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I got to meet stan Lee. I got to work
Speaker 1: with our Hamil Hayley at Well, Haley at Well, y'all.
Speaker 1: I mean that that one aspect of the show, but
Speaker 1: also the regular cast, the people who play the Avengers, Uh,
Speaker 1: James and Daisy, who play to Challa and Shari. These
Speaker 1: people are lovely, lovely, lovely. One you had our friend
Speaker 1: Roger Craig Smith. He was on our sonic episode. That
Speaker 1: man is a madman. Have you seen those things he
Speaker 1: does with her episode? But if you see those things
Speaker 1: that he does where he's just trying to get her
Speaker 1: to smile and see nope, I'm like, what is this.
Speaker 1: It's hysterical. It makes my day whenever I see him. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's awesome. She she roasted him on our on our show.
Speaker 1: Of course she did, because he's evil. He's my Captain
Speaker 1: America by the way, like everybody, all y'all can have
Speaker 1: Chris Evans. I'm gonna take my Roger Craigsmith. That that's right.
Speaker 1: He's capt to me. Yeah. He loves the Blue Sonic
Speaker 1: and Calves anyway, So that's that's you know. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. I love it. You guys are great. Um,
Speaker 1: this is great. Thanks for speaking out about Black Panther
Speaker 1: and his history. I would just be doing this at
Speaker 1: my house. You know. My wife's like, are you still
Speaker 1: talking about Um? I am at ms Danny Fernandez on
Speaker 1: all the things. Pick up The Good Immigrant Book, UM,
Speaker 1: which is out now. I think when is this drop?
Speaker 1: What's the date it should be dropping? On Tuesday? What's
Speaker 1: the day of it is? Yes, pick it out, it's
Speaker 1: out today and follow me on on Twitter where we
Speaker 1: tweet things, and oh yeah, check out our tea public
Speaker 1: side is te public dot com. Slash are difficent and
Speaker 1: send us pictures of you in our merch and we
Speaker 1: will retweet them or share them on Instagram if you
Speaker 1: and I love doing that. Y'all look good all right?
Speaker 1: And me, you know me, I'm at iffy. I have
Speaker 1: Y N B A D I W E on Twitter
Speaker 1: the nerve to mock my name, the nerve. I mean
Speaker 1: you got the British name. I got the British colonial
Speaker 1: eyed name. That's the difference. Uh, they can they visited
Speaker 1: and left. If D's on Twitch, if you like to
Speaker 1: watch me play video games, lots of NERD fam coming through.
Speaker 1: And the Discord Salt Squad, I mean Discord Dot g
Speaker 1: G Slash Salt Squad. We're in there, Danny's in there.
Speaker 1: We're continue the combo and uh, you know a few
Speaker 1: shows to promote. Uh if you're listening to this on
Speaker 1: the nineteen run, uh from from tonight when you're listening
Speaker 1: to it on Tuesday, because I hope you don't wait
Speaker 1: till anything besides Tuesday to listen to it. I'll be
Speaker 1: on the last show at the friend Bar at eight
Speaker 1: eight pm. On the one. At a p m. I'll
Speaker 1: be at the R and B lip Sync Battle at
Speaker 1: uc B Franklin. On the two, I'll be at the Complex,
Speaker 1: uh doing the Color Collective, doing stand up there three
Speaker 1: at twelve thirty in the more Ting, so I gotta
Speaker 1: wake up, gonna be after I hit the gym, be
Speaker 1: doing Cold Cereal. It'll be there two year Anniverse eight.
Speaker 1: That night I'll be doing Turtle Hour and sometimes within
Speaker 1: that same time period, I'll be doing the Color Collective again.
Speaker 1: It's a two time, two day show. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much all the shows you have to see
Speaker 1: me do stand up talking smack. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of probably what you just heard here. Are you
Speaker 1: sure you're not Jamaican? I mean, I'm gonna sign off now, Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: y'all too far. Look I was gonna go even first,
Speaker 1: uh and talk about my secret family. All right, Everybody
Speaker 1: but Nigerian's doing too, so it's not even that offensive.
Speaker 1: Stay near to y'all,