Speaker 1: Warning, this podcast contained spoilers for Spider Man Across the
Speaker 1: Spider Verse in theaters now go see it, plus some
Speaker 1: MCU Spider spoilers. Hello, my name is Jason can Stepsi
Speaker 1: and I'm Rosy Night and welcome next Revision, the Crooked
Speaker 1: Media podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies,
Speaker 1: comics of pop culture.
Speaker 2: In this episode, on the Airlock, it's a spider bag,
Speaker 2: a spider male bag bag them and tag I'm the
Speaker 2: Bombastic bag Man.
Speaker 3: We're here.
Speaker 2: We here to answer your spider questions. Omnibus, Jason's doing
Speaker 2: a delightful deep dive discussing Spider Man twenty ninety nine,
Speaker 2: and in the Hive Mind it's an interview with Nick
Speaker 2: ash Shukla, the writer on the New Spider Man India comic.
Speaker 2: So if you're a fan of pav In Across the
Speaker 2: Spider Verse, make sure to listen to that one.
Speaker 4: Coming up.
Speaker 1: Your questions, Rosie, do you feel that it's our spider
Speaker 1: sense is tingling and we're stepping out of the airlock
Speaker 1: to some very very dangerous Spider Man themed mailbag questions
Speaker 1: straight from the nefarious laboratories of Alchemax.
Speaker 4: Question one from Dewan.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite oh shit or well damned Peter Parker
Speaker 1: Spider Man comic moment? One of mine is when May
Speaker 1: was shot in Peter rolled in jail and humiliated the Kingpin.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's good. What's yours?
Speaker 2: Mine is probably this is like less of Peter being
Speaker 2: a bad ass, because that's not really how I see him.
Speaker 3: But it did make me say, oh shit.
Speaker 2: Is when Peter is really broke so he tries to
Speaker 2: join the Fantastic Four because he wants to get a paycheck.
Speaker 3: That's like one of the funniest.
Speaker 2: Peter Parker moments in comics in my opinion, and I
Speaker 2: think about.
Speaker 3: It a lot.
Speaker 1: Okay, so my original answer, this is the real answer,
Speaker 1: and it's not that cool, but it's the answer that
Speaker 1: like twelve year old me would give, and that is
Speaker 1: black suit Peter Parker Spider Man crawling out of the
Speaker 1: grave in Craven's Last Hunt. Oh now, Craven's Last Hunt.
Speaker 1: Incredible art by Mike Zeck. Does the story hold up?
Speaker 1: I would say kind of.
Speaker 4: Not really.
Speaker 1: It's not my favorite Spider Man story, but at the
Speaker 1: time everything about it just floored me, including that like
Speaker 1: iconic cover where you know, Craven is like searching throughout
Speaker 1: his hunting lodge, you know for Spider Man, and Spider
Speaker 1: Man's like in the ceiling rafters like looking down at him,
Speaker 1: Like I remember looking at that on the Spinneract and being,
Speaker 1: holy shit, I gotta get that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's definitely one of those most influential story ocs.
Speaker 2: I think, even like you said, no matter how it
Speaker 2: holds up, I think a lot of us like that
Speaker 2: was a Spider Man story that we always remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then this is going to be a unoriginal answer,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, this early Steve Ditgo. They've retcon
Speaker 1: this moment so many times, both in shows and in
Speaker 1: other iterations of Spider Man comics, but it's that moment
Speaker 1: where he doesn't really know how strong he is yet
Speaker 1: early in the days of Spider Man. Right, this weight
Speaker 1: of like all this like rubble and stuff has collapsed
Speaker 1: and it's fallen down on him.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that's such a great panel.
Speaker 1: You see this moment in the Spider Man movie, you
Speaker 1: see it in other things, and water is filling up
Speaker 1: the space and like the concrete is crushing him and
Speaker 1: it's like pushing him down and he doesn't know if
Speaker 1: he's gonna make it, and he's thinking, oh god, I
Speaker 1: just might give up. I can't do it, and then
Speaker 1: he finds the strength somewhere inside of himself to be like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to escape.
Speaker 4: I'm going to push all this stuff off me.
Speaker 1: And that is just such an iconic Spider Man moment
Speaker 1: because Peter Parker figured it out on his own.
Speaker 2: Like you know, the X Men all have a school,
Speaker 2: Tony has billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Tony has billions of dollars. They all do regular training
Speaker 1: at the mansion. Like Daredevil got ninja training and boxing
Speaker 1: training from his dad. Peter Berger had none of that.
Speaker 1: He did like one amateur wrestling match and then was
Speaker 1: a superhero. So this is him really understanding how strong
Speaker 1: he is for the first time and letting loose.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's just an iconic Spider Man moment that has
Speaker 1: been recreated again and again and again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that panel is like still just as powerful
Speaker 2: every time you see it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just to add to this in case you didn't know
Speaker 2: about this ridiculous after Jason gave that incredibly good, sincere
Speaker 2: coherent answer, here is more of my chaotic facts about
Speaker 2: why this works, sure, so it happened. In the first
Speaker 2: issue of Amazing Spider Man, Peter goes to try and
Speaker 2: join this Fantastic Four because he needs a paycheck, right
Speaker 2: and they say no. But the issue I was actually
Speaker 2: thinking of is number one, what if Spider Man joined
Speaker 2: the Fantastic Four where they say yes? And because of this,
Speaker 2: because they let him into the group because he is broke,
Speaker 2: Sue ends up leaving Reed to go and be with
Speaker 2: the submarner nay More and ends up like dating him
Speaker 2: and finding solace in his arms because she gets left
Speaker 2: behind him favor of Peter. So that is another oh
Speaker 2: shit moment. Peter joining the Fantastic Four because he's broke
Speaker 2: leads to Sue cheating on read just iconic stuff. I
Speaker 2: love that weird shit, And for me Spider Man, I'm
Speaker 2: always just here to laugh about how he's broke. But yeah,
Speaker 2: those two moments are really great. Jason Joshua asks lots
Speaker 2: of discourse on how people are divided, on how they
Speaker 2: feel about how most of the Spider Force in across
Speaker 2: the Spider Verse react to the canon events and accepting
Speaker 2: that they need to happen. We'd love to hear Jason
Speaker 2: and Rosy's thoughts on this. Is it acceptable or out
Speaker 2: of characters for the Spiders or do we just chalk
Speaker 2: it up to the right as poking fun at how
Speaker 2: the comics editor's office won't seem to let Peter grow.
Speaker 1: I think what makes that movie so good is that
Speaker 1: everybody has a point.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: That's why it's a great, great conflict. Like I think
Speaker 1: we all would disagree with Miguel Spiderman twenty.
Speaker 4: Ninety nine's tactics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think it's also fair to say that
Speaker 1: keeping to the cannon in a multiverse sense has kept
Speaker 1: a lot of bad slash chaotic time stream events from
Speaker 1: happening like he's I think also clearly held the universe together.
Speaker 1: And to speak more to that, the Spider Force, the
Speaker 1: Spider Society, all of these Spider people that are helping
Speaker 1: the girl, they are all the heroes of their dimension
Speaker 1: and they look at McGall and go, this guy's right.
Speaker 1: So clearly there is something there that is worth doing.
Speaker 1: And what's so perfect about the conflict is that from
Speaker 1: Miles's perspective, now knowing what the outcome is going to be,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that flips it. If you knew Uncle
Speaker 1: Ben or police captain close to Spider Man was going
Speaker 1: to die, you know, much like Uncle Ben's words. You know,
Speaker 1: then you have the responsibility to do something about it.
Speaker 1: But looking from the you know, multiversal fifty thousand foot
Speaker 1: view where the hero doesn't know and the Spider society
Speaker 1: do know, and you're just letting events take their course.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they have a point as well.
Speaker 1: So I think that's why it's a great story is
Speaker 1: because you can see that both sides have an authentic perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I absolutely agree with you.
Speaker 2: And I think the other thing about it is it
Speaker 2: plays into that ultimate moral ethical question, which is like
Speaker 2: the good of the many versus the good of the few. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like if you could save the life of your loved one,
Speaker 2: but it would kill an entire universe, what would you do?
Speaker 2: And that is the position that Miguel puts people in,
Speaker 2: with the binary choice he's asking them to make. I
Speaker 2: also think Joshua makes a great point here where he
Speaker 2: says the thing about the writers kind of poking fun
Speaker 2: at how comics editors won't let Peter grow, you know,
Speaker 2: things like Peter can't stay married, but he can't get divorced,
Speaker 2: so he has to make a deal with Mephisto. I
Speaker 2: think that Josh makes a great point. I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: know if it's poking fun at I think it is
Speaker 2: done in a tongue in cheap way, but I do
Speaker 2: think has Kemp Powers said on our show, I do
Speaker 2: think that it is a acknowledgement of how Canon can
Speaker 2: force writers and creatives and characters to be put through
Speaker 2: the same kind of stories again and again and again.
Speaker 2: You know, we did a chat with Nick Kesh, yeah,
Speaker 2: talking about how the original Spider Man India was basically
Speaker 2: them redoing the Uncle Ben origin story, but in India
Speaker 2: with this new character Pav And that's really interesting because
Speaker 2: again somebody else has to die. Somebody else has to die.
Speaker 2: So I think it's a really smart, cool way of
Speaker 2: building in a conversation with your audience as well as
Speaker 2: an interesting conflict that we're going to have conversations about
Speaker 2: this for years, because it does play into these big
Speaker 2: moral and ethical questions about being a hero and what
Speaker 2: that really means. Nobody can say Miles is wrong, but
Speaker 2: you also can't say that the Spider Society doesn't have
Speaker 2: a point when you see what happens in Pav's universe
Speaker 2: where this you know, black hole into the multiverse opens up.
Speaker 1: Nobody can say that. Jack w asks which Disney MCU
Speaker 1: care do you think will next appear in Tom Holan
Speaker 1: live action Spider Man movies and ek Spider Man four
Speaker 1: could be more street based, and since they tease Daredevil's
Speaker 1: run in No Way Home, it seems like the obvious
Speaker 1: choice any dark horses on your mind's rosy any thoughts.
Speaker 1: I think Jack is absolutely right, and I think the
Speaker 1: cash in our conversation is absolute right.
Speaker 4: It's going to be more of a street level og
Speaker 4: experience Spider Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree. My gut says, Look, this isn't
Speaker 2: fully MCU. But I also think we could see Miles.
Speaker 2: That's always been my thought about Spider Man four. You
Speaker 2: set it up so you have Peter as a street
Speaker 2: level hero, Spider Man gains more of that reputation, and
Speaker 2: near the end you meet Miles, and you set it
Speaker 2: up so that rather than Peter being dead, people just
Speaker 2: don't know Peter ever existed, and then you can have
Speaker 2: that mentorship. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a
Speaker 2: little Miles cameo a live action Miles cameo. But I
Speaker 2: think you're right. I think any dead evil characters are
Speaker 2: up for play. I think that we could see someone
Speaker 2: like Kate Bishop Hawkay. I feel like that is a
Speaker 2: very natural space.
Speaker 4: Oh, that would be cool.
Speaker 2: And she didn't know Peter Parker before, so you can
Speaker 2: also establish a world where she does know him. Does
Speaker 2: the spell keep going though? Does any time anyone learns
Speaker 2: that he's Peter Parker they forget? I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's like an ongoing, like Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Speaker 2: type spell, But I think a Kate Bishop Porkeye, someone
Speaker 2: young and fun could be like that Kamala and Peter.
Speaker 3: That could be really great.
Speaker 4: Oh that's a good one.
Speaker 3: I would like to see it.
Speaker 2: Also, we know that they like to take things from
Speaker 2: Miles's comic and kind of transplant them onto Tom Holland,
Speaker 2: and Miles and Kamala have an ongoing friendship, so those
Speaker 2: would be the ones. I think that street level vibe
Speaker 2: with maybe a few young kids. And let's be real,
Speaker 2: I mean, Kamala is only a like, she's not very
Speaker 2: far from New York City, so that to me really
Speaker 2: seems like the most obvious choice.
Speaker 1: What about you, Gosh, taking a king from you. I
Speaker 1: think it can make a lot of sense to see
Speaker 1: that kingpin.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I'd love to see it.
Speaker 1: Kind of an examination of the underlying organized crime forces
Speaker 1: in New York City. I know that, you know, Born
Speaker 1: Again is probably going to delve into that greatly. We
Speaker 1: haven't really seen anything like that on the big screen.
Speaker 1: It's been kind of, you know, much much larger scale
Speaker 1: threats than that Venom has been teased. So what about
Speaker 1: some sort of symbiote battle.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think the Symbia suit could be a big call
Speaker 2: for four.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What if the Symbia crawls over some big, muscle bound
Speaker 1: guy who already has a problem with Peter Parker And
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden you've got a built in antagonist.
Speaker 1: And then we've done the Green Goblin. What about the
Speaker 1: hob Goblin? M what about the hob I.
Speaker 3: Just want to say, I've talked about this a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, there is a version of the
Speaker 2: world where a certain Ned.
Speaker 4: Leads, and so I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Is the Hobgoblin. I would love to see it.
Speaker 2: I've talked to Jacob Alin about that before he plays Ned.
Speaker 2: I've said, like, is that something you would want to do?
Speaker 2: Imagine that friendship at torn apart, you know, Spider Man
Speaker 2: three style, the emotion, that would be extremely cool. Okay,
Speaker 2: what about this? What do you think the reality?
Speaker 3: You know, something I.
Speaker 2: Love about she Yock and that I loved about Hawkeye
Speaker 2: was that they reintroduced the dead evil characters in like
Speaker 2: a slightly new tone.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you imagine a world where we could see the
Speaker 2: MCU Netflix Punisher join the MCU again but in Spider Man.
Speaker 1: I think we could see it mm hmm. But of course,
Speaker 1: you know, for one, the character has been, through no
Speaker 1: fault of anyone's politicized by the fact that the Thin
Speaker 1: Blue Line movement has co opted the Punisher skull as
Speaker 1: like one of their pieces of iconography. I feel like
Speaker 1: this iteration of Disney, or really any iteration of Disney
Speaker 1: would be like, we don't need it. It's not like
Speaker 1: he's a major well, I mean, the people that like
Speaker 1: the Punisher, it's like a religion. Yeah, it's like licorice,
Speaker 1: you know, like, not a lot of people like the Punisher,
Speaker 1: but those who like it, like really really like it.
Speaker 1: And so I think that there's a way to do
Speaker 1: it you make the more of like a special forces
Speaker 1: guy and it maybe not so much like a vigilante.
Speaker 1: He was just like guns people down. And they've done
Speaker 1: that in the comics A little bit X did that,
Speaker 1: and Civil War did that where it's like the Punisher
Speaker 1: was involved and all the heroes were like, this guy's
Speaker 1: working with this. This guy's like a fucking mass murderer. But
Speaker 1: the stuff that he did was kind of like splinter
Speaker 1: Cell type activities where he's like sneaking into the Baxter
Speaker 1: building and.
Speaker 4: Stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: So I think that there's a world in which they
Speaker 1: could do it, but I think they would have to
Speaker 1: necessarily tone it down. There's a guy in a country
Speaker 1: racked by gun violence.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Here is a guy who unapologetically just like guns mafia
Speaker 1: dudes down in their hundreds like all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually just saw so John Burnhallpe is coming back
Speaker 2: in Dead Devil Born Again, So that could be our
Speaker 2: place where they reimagine him, because I feel like, if
Speaker 2: you're gonna put him back into the MCU, the version
Speaker 2: they did in the Marvel Netflix show.
Speaker 3: Was so dark.
Speaker 4: It was incredibly dark.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to put him in a Spandex costume
Speaker 2: and have him with like a paintball gun, Like you're
Speaker 2: really gonna have to go the other way with it.
Speaker 4: And I will say I kind of liked it.
Speaker 2: I get why they did it, but it doesn't fit
Speaker 2: into the Spider Man of it.
Speaker 1: All that said, I think that there is a way
Speaker 1: because you know, again, like Maral, comics is made up
Speaker 1: of characters with different tones, like oftentimes when Frank Castle
Speaker 1: gets in a room with Spider Man or whoever, they're.
Speaker 4: Just roasting the guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so I think that there is
Speaker 1: a world where he becomes, while still a very very
Speaker 1: dangerous individual, the butt of a lot of jokes.
Speaker 2: Oh, that could be fun. I think that that is
Speaker 2: a really fun, interesting way to do it. You make
Speaker 2: him the butt of the jokes and you take away
Speaker 2: the seriousness that he's been afforded by certain groups. I
Speaker 2: think that could be very good. Chauncey asks, it's controversial,
Speaker 2: but I like it. Which was the better series, nineties
Speaker 2: X Men animated series or nineties Spider Man animated series.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, they're both really really good. But the
Speaker 1: nineties X Men was iconic, and part of it is
Speaker 1: that it had a great theme. It was taking incredible,
Speaker 1: already legendary arcs from the X Men comics and like
Speaker 1: boiling them down into really really punchy, half hour animated episodes.
Speaker 1: And it had so much more interpersonal drama because you
Speaker 1: have this big team of heroes. It was just better.
Speaker 1: And this is no shots to anybody who likes the
Speaker 1: animated Spider Man, because we're.
Speaker 2: Fair and balanced here. I'm going to make the argument
Speaker 2: for the nineties Spider Man. I agree with everything you
Speaker 2: just said. I do believe that the X Men cartoon
Speaker 2: is iconic. I love the way that it takes those
Speaker 2: iconic classic arcs and truncates them and makes them accessible.
Speaker 2: I will say I do rewatch the Spider Man show more,
Speaker 2: and it is because of that same device that they use.
Speaker 2: You can watch that Spider Man show and you can
Speaker 2: find out the origin of any supervillain. You want to
Speaker 2: find out what happened to Venom, you can watch that
Speaker 2: story on there. You want to see this character, you
Speaker 2: can do it in the tradition of Spider Man as well. Wow,
Speaker 2: there are so many good villains in that show, Like
Speaker 2: every out there weird villain is around. So I will
Speaker 2: say that's the underrated gem. But obviously X Men ninety
Speaker 2: two everybody knows it. There's a reason that's getting a sequel.
Speaker 2: That shit's iconic. But Spider Man, I'm glad you brought
Speaker 2: up Chauncey because I don't think it gets the love
Speaker 2: it deserves.
Speaker 1: Should we do a rewatch of the original nineties X
Speaker 1: Men animated series in preparation for the upcoming X Men
Speaker 1: animated series on Disney Plus?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yes, And let's do Pride of the
Speaker 2: X Men two, you know, the one they made before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because that's like that shit.
Speaker 2: I will tell you the real truth when you watch that.
Speaker 2: You gotta watch it after you watch ninety two, because
Speaker 2: ninety two doesn't hold up to Pride. Oh wow, Pride
Speaker 2: is actually like you want to see that story. You
Speaker 2: want to see that story? Okay, yeah, it's so good.
Speaker 1: Ian asks, is the real hidden theme of our film
Speaker 1: that actual reality sucks ass because there's no Spider person
Speaker 1: in it. I think that might be to make it
Speaker 1: serious for a second, I think that part of the
Speaker 1: theme is that our reality actually success because they're you know,
Speaker 1: what are these stories? Generally speaking? They are like incredible
Speaker 1: wish fulfillment where we want to live in a world
Speaker 1: in which people with tremendous power and tremendous resources, who
Speaker 1: are geniuses and are rich and are incredibly talented and powerful,
Speaker 1: don't just like sit up in their skyscraper penthouses and
Speaker 1: like a crew capital and like build bunkers on islands
Speaker 1: off the coast of New Zealand waiting for the apocalypse.
Speaker 1: They go out and they try and save the world.
Speaker 1: We want that to be the case. It's clearly not
Speaker 1: the case in our world, but we want it to be.
Speaker 1: That's why these stories have so much staying power. That's
Speaker 1: why people still engage with them. That's why kids and
Speaker 1: adults and everybody are in a comic store anytime you
Speaker 1: walk in there. So, yeah, I think that you're right
Speaker 1: Ian in a certain kind of sense. You're correct.
Speaker 3: Nothing well to add that was perfect. I totally agree up.
Speaker 1: Next, return to the Omnibus to discuss Spider Man twenty
Speaker 1: ninety nine.
Speaker 3: We've got exciting news.
Speaker 2: Extra Vision will be recording our fifteenth Anniversary of The
Speaker 2: Dark Knight Retrospective episode live in Los Angeles on June
Speaker 2: twenty six, that's seven PMPT. Join us in person or
Speaker 2: via live stream from the comfort of your home. Tickets
Speaker 2: are More info available at Crooked dot com Slash Events.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another chapter in the Omnibus where lore, analysis
Speaker 1: and understanding come together. This week Miguel O'Hara Spider Man
Speaker 1: twenty ninety nine. Reboots and retcons are, of course a
Speaker 1: necessary part of serialized storytelling. That's particularly true in comics,
Speaker 1: right where you're trying to continuously engage a new audience.
Speaker 1: A new person whose next comics is their first comic.
Speaker 1: Talked a lot about the Marvel's Ultimate Universe, the two
Speaker 1: thousand's era line of books featuring Marvel's most popular heroes
Speaker 1: in a modern setting. Miles Morales, of course, makes his
Speaker 1: first appearance in twenty eleven's Ultimate Universe, number four and
Speaker 1: offshoot of Marvel's Ultimate Spider Man. The Ultimate Universe has
Speaker 1: been incredibly influential to all of the MCU properties. Fallout
Speaker 1: explored the repercussions of the shocking, tragic, and incredibly sorrow
Speaker 1: filled death of Peter Parker in the pages of Ultimate
Speaker 1: Spider Man. I won't spoil how and there's a long,
Speaker 1: long runway to get to that moment, but it's an
Speaker 1: incredible moment in comic storytelling, and it also acts. Fallout
Speaker 1: does as a kind of like soft reboot itself, like
Speaker 1: a reboot of a retcon, essentially of the Ultimate Universe,
Speaker 1: but before Ultimate Marvel, way back in the nineties, there
Speaker 1: was Marvel twenty ninety nine. The twenty ninety nine initiative,
Speaker 1: if we can call it, that launched with four titles
Speaker 1: in the Year of Our Lord nineteen ninety two, Ravage
Speaker 1: twenty ninety nine. Ravage was a new superhero, and really
Speaker 1: the marketing behind Ravage was that, Hey, stan Lee's got
Speaker 1: a new superhero, kids, and it's Ravage. You gotta love it.
Speaker 1: He is twenty ninety nine, his Ravage, stan Lee Excelsia.
Speaker 1: Do you know anything about Ravage? No, because nobody cares
Speaker 1: about Ravage anymore. This is also like they tried this
Speaker 1: in like I want to say, eighty six with Speedball
Speaker 1: and a bunch of new heroes too. Oh, Stanley's back
Speaker 1: with a new hair on. He Speedball. He bounceles around
Speaker 1: like a Speedball. Doom twenty ninety nine, Victor Ron Doom
Speaker 1: in the Year twenty ninety nine. Punish Shirt twenty ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Because if there's one thing that's for sure now, and
Speaker 1: one hundred years in the future, there's gonna be dudes
Speaker 1: killing dudes with guns. And of course Spider Man twenty
Speaker 1: ninety nine. Spider Man twenty ninety nine is the only
Speaker 1: one of those original four offerings that has any kind
Speaker 1: of staying power, has a real fan base of its own.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: The tone, as you can kind of guess just by
Speaker 1: the selection here, was very very nineties, kind of proto
Speaker 1: nineties to what it became. This is pre all the
Speaker 1: pockets and all the belts and guns and stuff, but
Speaker 1: the weird hairstyles were there, and the violent grittiness which
Speaker 1: had kind of been developing over the course of the
Speaker 1: mid eighties into the nineties with the offerings of Frank
Speaker 1: Miller and others, was here to see.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: The twenty ninety nine line didn't run all that line,
Speaker 1: like six years and change, seven years ish, but it
Speaker 1: acted as a launch pad for Miguel O'Hara aka Spider
Speaker 1: Man twenty ninety nine, who, as we have seen from
Speaker 1: across the Spider Verse and in other comics recent comic offerings,
Speaker 1: continues to be a character who is engaged with the
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on in story today and is a
Speaker 1: really fun character to explore. So how did Miguel O'Hara
Speaker 1: get the Spider powers? Well, created by legends Peter David
Speaker 1: and Rick learn Ardi, Miguel's origin is kind of the
Speaker 1: most original non clone Spider Man origin. The rest of
Speaker 1: them are, you know, Miles got his powers in a
Speaker 1: very similar way to Peter Parker and the rest of
Speaker 1: the Spider Society same thing. They got bit by the
Speaker 1: radioactive Spider. Some of them are just straight off clones
Speaker 1: of Peter Parker. Not so with Miguel. Miguel is a
Speaker 1: in the year twenty ninety nine. Is a brilliant genetic
Speaker 1: research brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, And you know where do you
Speaker 1: work if you're a brilliant genetic researcher, you work for
Speaker 1: the evil corporation alchem X, because I guess there's no
Speaker 1: other places than he could have possibly worked, but he
Speaker 1: decided to work at alcam X, and his work involved,
Speaker 1: you know, working on DNA, altering DNA, splicing different DNAs
Speaker 1: together to create hybrids. One inspiration of Miguel's is a
Speaker 1: mysterious figure from the Heroic Age aka the late twentieth
Speaker 1: century spider Man. Just imagine he's telling his supervisor Aaron,
Speaker 1: think of what we could do with the proportional powers
Speaker 1: of a spider. This guy would be quote an ideal
Speaker 1: corporate raider, meaning like he could like climb into our competitors'
Speaker 1: buildings and steal files and stuff.
Speaker 4: So maybe Miguel is.
Speaker 1: Actually like at the right place, the exact right company
Speaker 1: for him to work out. Miguel is excited about his work,
Speaker 1: but he's getting a lot of pressure from Aaron, his supervisor,
Speaker 1: and from CEO Tyler Stone, who really want him to
Speaker 1: hurry up. We got to start human trials already with
Speaker 1: this research. And me Guy's like, no, it's too early.
Speaker 1: We're not ready to do human research. We can't go
Speaker 1: to human testing yet, and they're like wrong. I'm the
Speaker 1: CEO of this company, Tyler Stone, And guess what, I
Speaker 1: already got a guy. His name is Sims. He is
Speaker 1: a prisoner, and in exchange for commuting his sentence, which
Speaker 1: I have somehow bargained for with I don't know the
Speaker 1: Justice Department or somebody, because I'm a fucking billionaire, I've
Speaker 1: made them agree that they will shorten his sentence if
Speaker 1: he will undergo your gene splicing process. Miguel is like, fuck, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll do it. So they put him, you know, in
Speaker 1: the machinery and they splice him up in real time
Speaker 1: with the genes, and what bursts forth from the mechanized
Speaker 1: sarcophagus thingy is just like this melted horror. The origin
Speaker 1: story is clearly influenced by David Cronenberg's The fly By
Speaker 1: Blade Runner. All these kind of dark and mysterious and
Speaker 1: shadowy and somewhat discomfitting like dystopian futuristic stories. Right, and
Speaker 1: Sims grabs Miguel around the neck after breaking his bonds
Speaker 1: and bursting out of the machinery, and before he can
Speaker 1: do too much damage, he just fucking drops dead because
Speaker 1: the process was extremely destructive to his body on a
Speaker 1: cellular level. And Aaron and CEO stal are like, fuck, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was fucking great. Look at that he broke out
Speaker 1: of all that metal and stone. He was tied down,
Speaker 1: and this is awesome. And he goes like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about?
Speaker 4: This guy fucking died right away.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, but like in the five seconds before
Speaker 1: he died, he was super strong.
Speaker 4: This is great. Let's keep going and Miguel is.
Speaker 1: Like, no, I quit. He goes to the CEOs off
Speaker 1: was like, fuck this, I'm out. We just killed the guy.
Speaker 1: Like I can't, this is fucked up. Stone's like, I
Speaker 1: get it. You have a backbone, you have a moral compass.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 1: Here's a glass of wine. Have this glass of wine.
Speaker 1: It's not weird at all that we just watched a
Speaker 1: guy die. And now I'm offering you a glass which
Speaker 1: just drink the wine because all right. And so Miguel
Speaker 1: drinks the wine and immediately starts tripping balls. And that's
Speaker 1: because CEO Tyler Stone has slipped Rapture, a instantly addictive hallucinogen,
Speaker 1: into Mguel's wine. And why why would CEO Tylers don't
Speaker 1: do this?
Speaker 4: Here's the reason.
Speaker 1: Now you're fucking addicted to drugs and you're gonna need more.
Speaker 4: And guess who makes rapture? Alchem X.
Speaker 1: Why do they make this drug? No one fucking knows.
Speaker 1: It's like the Sacklers only if there was no medical
Speaker 1: use for this fucking drug. So ALCHEMX is the only people,
Speaker 1: the only corporation that makes this incredibly addictive, fucking street hallucinogen.
Speaker 1: And now Miguel is addicted to it, and if you
Speaker 1: want more, what do you have to do? You have
Speaker 1: to clock in and come back to work. Motherfucker. So
Speaker 1: Miguel home tripping, immediately attacks his girlfriend because he's hallucinating.
Speaker 1: Then he kind of wears off a little bit, and
Speaker 1: he's what am.
Speaker 4: I gonna do?
Speaker 1: He tells his girlfriend everything and desperation, he figures, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sneak back into my lab. I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: myself in the machinery, the other machinery that's not destroyed, right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna splice my own clean DNA that I have,
Speaker 1: like in a computer bank somewhere into my currently addicted
Speaker 1: to rapture DNA, and I'm gonna cleanse myself. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: replace all my DNA and sells with original, clean Miguel cells.
Speaker 1: It's fucking brilliant. He goes in there. He's doing it. Well,
Speaker 1: guess who's working late tonight, Aaron, the supervisor. Aaron walks
Speaker 1: in and sees mcguel in the machine AND's like, ohh,
Speaker 1: you don't wanna fucking push the human trials try to
Speaker 1: quit and all this stuff. I'm gonna kill you now
Speaker 1: would Aaron do this. If he understood that the CEO
Speaker 1: himself had just addicted Miguel to drugs in order to
Speaker 1: keep him working, he probably would not have done this,
Speaker 1: but he decided. He sabotages the machinery and just like
Speaker 1: because Miguel had earlier said, Hey, wouldn't it be great
Speaker 1: if we like spliced someone with a spider. Wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be cool? He is like, watch this, I'm gonna spice
Speaker 1: you with a spider and he pulls up spider file
Speaker 1: on the computer. The machinery goes haywire and fucking explodes,
Speaker 1: but Miguel is like emerges like shaken, but he comes
Speaker 1: out of it, and Aaron's like, holy shit, you stroubed.
Speaker 4: Not only did he.
Speaker 1: Survive, he's got like white eyes, he's super strong. He's
Speaker 1: got like fucking claws in his hands and his feet,
Speaker 1: and he looks like a vampire with fangs and stuff.
Speaker 1: He tries to save Aaron's life, who almost like falls
Speaker 1: out of the building that goes sideways. An alchemic swat
Speaker 1: team arrives. Miguel is like, coh, this is too crazy.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna end it all. He jumps out of the
Speaker 1: building as he's falling to his death. He's like, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I don't want to die actually, and he reaches out
Speaker 1: and he grabs onto the side of the building and
Speaker 1: with his claws. This is how Spider Man twenty ninety
Speaker 1: nine climbs walls, his talents in his hands and feet,
Speaker 1: just goes sink right into the concrete and steal and
Speaker 1: he's able to scale the side of the building.
Speaker 4: Now, superheroes from the heroic age in.
Speaker 1: The twenty ninety nine universe had taken on kind of
Speaker 1: like a cult like mythology. There are people who are
Speaker 1: followers of all the Avengers and the Es Guardians. A
Speaker 1: Thorite who's basically a worships thor As like a cult figure,
Speaker 1: is flying random shit they have as in comics, is
Speaker 1: flying a hang glider across New York City dressed as
Speaker 1: thor doing thor stuff. When Miguel comes flying off the
Speaker 1: side of the building and jumps onto the paraglider and
Speaker 1: they crash. But the Thorite actually gives Miguel a good
Speaker 1: bit of advice where he says, listen, Spider Man, you
Speaker 1: have to put on a mask. Spider Man is back.
Speaker 1: Spider Man was an ally of thor who I worship
Speaker 1: as a cult like figure. And you have to put
Speaker 1: on a mask now, because that's what Spider Man did.
Speaker 1: You have to hide your identity. And Miguel's like, that's actually,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea. So Stone then gets wind of
Speaker 1: Miguel's transformation, he hires like this cyborg to hunt him down.
Speaker 1: By that time, Miguel has obtained a costume, the costume
Speaker 1: that we see in the movie that kind of very
Speaker 1: very nineties, slightly techno, kind of grungy, webbed under the
Speaker 1: arms costume. And this you would think, did Miguel make
Speaker 1: this out of unstable molecules? He does talk about, oh,
Speaker 1: I need unstable molecules now with my claws and stuff. No,
Speaker 1: this is a Day of the Dead costume that he
Speaker 1: had just like in his closet somewhere. I guess they
Speaker 1: do Day of the Dead differently in twenty ninety nine
Speaker 1: and from there, Miguel of course defeats the cyborg with
Speaker 1: the help of the Asgardian cult followers, including the original
Speaker 1: Thorite and the legend of Miguel O'Hara. Spider Man twenty
Speaker 1: ninety nine is born. He is a spider but a
Speaker 1: lot of the weird parts of his power set, the fangs,
Speaker 1: the clause, et cetera, probably come from the interaction of
Speaker 1: the spider DNA plus the crazy crazy rapture drug that
Speaker 1: was like circling around in his bloodstream. That, folks, is
Speaker 1: Miguel O'Hara Spider Man twenty ninety nine. Up next, Hive
Speaker 1: Mind with Spider Man India writer Nikesh Shukla.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Hive Mind, where we explore a topic in
Speaker 2: more detail with an expert guest. This episode, we're thrilled
Speaker 2: to welcome Nikkesh Shukla, the writer of the brand new
Speaker 2: Spider Man India series for Marvel Comic and my friend Nikesh.
Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us revision. Thank you, Nikesh, Thanks
Speaker 4: so much for having me.
Speaker 5: Jason Hi, Rosie Hi.
Speaker 3: So happy that you're here. My friend.
Speaker 4: Before we get into the Spider Man of it all,
Speaker 4: how do you all know each other?
Speaker 5: Well, there was like a moment in the London poetry
Speaker 5: scene where you'd go to gigs and you'd have me
Speaker 5: and Rosie and amazing people like Musa Rock Gwango and
Speaker 5: Chimensu Leiman. Oh Wow, Beadles have Ed Sheeran and Sabrina, Mattheus,
Speaker 5: and Ahmed. Yeah, there are other people who ended up
Speaker 5: being massive as well. Wills and I think was around
Speaker 5: at the time as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we just became firm friends being the only
Speaker 5: two people who liked.
Speaker 3: Comic books basically yeah.
Speaker 5: And meant it. Yeah, because we actually went to the
Speaker 5: comic bookshop and bought comic books and now we're here.
Speaker 2: What a journey and now we're here.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you seen Spider Verse? I have your thoughts on
Speaker 1: Spider Man India.
Speaker 5: My global thoughts on Spider Verse is going into it.
Speaker 5: Into the Spider Verse is a top ten movie for
Speaker 5: me of.
Speaker 4: All time, absolutely no question.
Speaker 5: So you're already going in going the bar is very
Speaker 5: very high. Yes, And I fucking loved it. I absolutely
Speaker 5: loved it.
Speaker 3: It's unbelievable.
Speaker 5: Two hours twenty minutes went by very quickly. I even
Speaker 5: sat through the credits when they flipped from the good
Speaker 5: credits to the weird the screen has slightly broken and
Speaker 5: you've got that purple hue credits. I just thought it
Speaker 5: was brilliant. Spider Man India was a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: Spider Punk was awesome. When Daniel Khala shouted man like Miles.
Speaker 5: I wanted to jump up in my seat and go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, bruh, yeah, I screamed.
Speaker 3: It was so perfect.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's talk more about before we get to you
Speaker 2: writing Spider Man India and stuff. What's your origin story
Speaker 2: with comics, like with Spider Man in particular and comics,
Speaker 2: which I know for you is like really intertwined.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, when I was six years old, I went
Speaker 5: to India for an extended period of time, and my cousins,
Speaker 5: who are all a lot older than me, they were
Speaker 5: all reading Archie comics and they all felt that a
Speaker 5: six year old probably didn't need to learn about jeloppies
Speaker 5: and double dates and and all the rest of it,
Speaker 5: probably too young to understand, you know, weird innuendos about
Speaker 5: making out and stuff. So they bought me a Spider
Speaker 5: Man comic and a Batman comic, and that Spider Man
Speaker 5: comic was just the one that I re read and
Speaker 5: reread and reread for the entire time I was there.
Speaker 5: I just absolutely fell in love with that comic. So weirdly,
Speaker 5: my comics journey started in India. And then in the
Speaker 5: mid nineties, me and my best friend Janade, we used
Speaker 5: to go to the comic shop every week and we
Speaker 5: would sit at the back of the comic shop and
Speaker 5: read all of the comics for free, and then whatever
Speaker 5: little money we had we would buy all those number ones,
Speaker 5: all those Yeah it was a mid nineties, so all
Speaker 5: those foil variant covers, and we were like, this is it.
Speaker 5: This is how we're going to make our fortune.
Speaker 3: We're going to buy a house.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, exactly, this is how we make our fortune.
Speaker 5: And we never did. And then years later, when I
Speaker 5: thought I was the only person left in my friendship
Speaker 5: with reading comic books, I started going to Orbital Comics
Speaker 5: in London, which Rosie was later worked out when they
Speaker 5: moved locations.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 5: But when it was in the original top of Totta
Speaker 5: Cook Road location basement, Yeah, in the basement it was
Speaker 5: me and in Ellam's the poet. We used to sit
Speaker 5: in there and read comics at the back. Turns out,
Speaker 5: twenty years after the fact, I was still a cheap.
Speaker 1: Skape thinking of those foil variant years and the collectible
Speaker 1: comic and the bag. Did you ever come up with
Speaker 1: this is my problem? Did you ever come up with
Speaker 1: a solution to getting the comic home without bending the pages.
Speaker 1: This was the issue I had coming from the shop
Speaker 1: with the super collectible comic. I thought that I had
Speaker 1: saved all my money for.
Speaker 4: It's in the bag.
Speaker 1: It's got the little extra sheet, it's got the little
Speaker 1: sticker pack, it's got.
Speaker 4: The foil thing.
Speaker 1: But how do you get it home on a bicycle
Speaker 1: in a backpack without bending the corners?
Speaker 4: How do you do it? How did you do it?
Speaker 5: Jason? Please don't let me tell the story because I'm
Speaker 5: going to lose so many cool creds.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Please tell us now, you have to tell.
Speaker 5: Us we had a briefcase.
Speaker 4: That's cool, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: That's like you're in pulp fiction, like the goal is
Speaker 2: yellowing when you put the hologram covers in there.
Speaker 5: No, you're putting twenty twenty three nostalgia onto the eighties
Speaker 5: briefcase that I was still using in the early nineties
Speaker 5: and the early nineties. That made me a preg and
Speaker 5: in the midnight when all this was happening, it made
Speaker 5: me somewhat of an odd ball Mede. We'd have the briefcase.
Speaker 5: It had all of the comics in the main cabin. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't know what.
Speaker 2: The compartment the first class comic book cabin in the suitcase.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and because we were teenage boys, you lifted up
Speaker 5: the compartment for the secret compartment and there was some
Speaker 5: naughty magazines.
Speaker 3: That was the most important briefcase in the world.
Speaker 5: I know exactly. Like I don't think my dad is
Speaker 5: going to listen to this podcast. Sorry, guys, I don't
Speaker 5: think he listens. Story vision.
Speaker 3: It's all right, heartbroken.
Speaker 5: So I feel like I can get away with confessing.
Speaker 2: That, Wow, who could have ever known there would have
Speaker 2: been such a good, unique story. Yeah, So sticking to
Speaker 2: that nineties kind of like because we don't really get
Speaker 2: to talk about these crazy speculation boom times. Do you
Speaker 2: remember like this single comic that you bought, you were like,
Speaker 2: this is the one, Like I remember getting Sporn number one.
Speaker 2: Like when I got a copy of that, I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be rich. I didn't know they printed like
Speaker 2: five million copies of it.
Speaker 5: It was a comic called Legionnaires. Oh yeah, I don't
Speaker 5: think it lasted more than ten issues. And then we
Speaker 5: upsold that so we could buy profit issue for which
Speaker 5: had the misprint in it. And that was the one
Speaker 5: where we were like this is the one, guys, this
Speaker 5: is the one we lived in a pre eBay world.
Speaker 5: What we were going to do just I was going
Speaker 5: to say the end of that story, and then I
Speaker 5: was like, dude, you already tell them about the briefcase.
Speaker 2: You're like, the briefcase has already come up, Guys.
Speaker 5: Don't tell them that you kept meaning to go to
Speaker 5: the various cons and sell profit issue for but you
Speaker 5: couldn't afford the drain fare.
Speaker 3: That's relatable.
Speaker 5: Much like Spider Man, he was always broke.
Speaker 2: I never even went to a proper comic book convention
Speaker 2: till I moved to America. They have an English comic
Speaker 2: convention MCM, but I went there like once or twice,
Speaker 2: and it was mostly just like because I could get
Speaker 2: there on the tube.
Speaker 5: The ones we went to, it was basically a bunch
Speaker 5: of people like us trying to sell things, trying to
Speaker 5: buy their house, and no one to buy because we
Speaker 5: just didn't realize that all of those comics were in
Speaker 5: abundance at the time.
Speaker 4: So how did you find yourself writing Spider Man?
Speaker 5: Because of the wonderful Jamie McKelvey basically icon on Twitter
Speaker 5: for years, I would just try and manifest that I
Speaker 5: wanted to write a Spider Man because like, I've had
Speaker 5: a long and varied career writing novels, working on TV
Speaker 5: shows and stuff, and I feel like I've done everything
Speaker 5: that I wanted to do. And then a couple of
Speaker 5: years ago, I turned down a major award in the
Speaker 5: UK called an MBE because it stands for Member of
Speaker 5: the British Empire, and I was like, I don't really
Speaker 5: want those letters after my name, and so when I
Speaker 5: did that, I kind of felt like maybe I should
Speaker 5: try and do something for myself. So one day I
Speaker 5: just wrote on Twitter one day, I want to write
Speaker 5: a Spider Man comic. I still filed it as you
Speaker 5: know when you're a kid and you're like, I want
Speaker 5: to be a fireman, I want to be a traffic warden,
Speaker 5: I want to be an astronaut. I want to write
Speaker 5: comic books. It still felt like one of those careers.
Speaker 5: And Jamie McKelvey, I think he still follows me. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he follows me on what a way to find out? Yeah,
Speaker 5: Jamie just DMed me and said, do you want me
Speaker 5: to introduce you to some people in Marvel if you're serious?
Speaker 5: And I was like, yeah, I'm serious. Sure In that
Speaker 5: way that like someone has just gone, oh, you know
Speaker 5: that pipe dream you have, I can definitely make it
Speaker 5: a reality if you want, And then you suddenly freak
Speaker 5: out because you're like, oh God, I've actually got to
Speaker 5: try and do this properly. So Jamie put me in
Speaker 5: touch with the people at Marvel. It was the pandemic times,
Speaker 5: so you know, they were busy trying to get comic
Speaker 5: books out and they had I was one of probably
Speaker 5: many people going hey, can I write a Spider Man comic?
Speaker 5: And I was starting to feel like maybe I should
Speaker 5: just pitch them something properly rather than just going, hey,
Speaker 5: can we have a chat and we can fling some
Speaker 5: ideas around. Let me just go in with a pitch.
Speaker 5: And around the time I had that realization, that first
Speaker 5: teaser trailer for Across the Spider Verse came out and
Speaker 5: I was talking to Rosie about it. I think you
Speaker 5: guys even discussed it on the podcast at the time,
Speaker 5: but there's a moment where it kind of you hear
Speaker 5: a tablet on it and I thought, oh, I wonder
Speaker 5: if Puvito Probacco is going to be in this, that
Speaker 5: would be pretty cool. And then I thought, why has
Speaker 5: there not been another mini series since the original one
Speaker 5: that came out in two thousand and five. He's such
Speaker 5: a fun character and actually, whenever he's cropped up in
Speaker 5: all the Spider Versal adventures, he's always sort of in
Speaker 5: the background. He gets a call action shot, maybe a
Speaker 5: couple of quips, but we don't really actually know much
Speaker 5: about him. They haven't explored enough about him. Fuck it,
Speaker 5: I'm going to pitch Spider Man India. So I wrote
Speaker 5: them an idea, send it through, and they came back
Speaker 5: and said, you know what. Funnily enough, we were thinking
Speaker 5: about doing another mini series and I don't know if
Speaker 5: you know this, but he's going to be in the
Speaker 5: next across the Spider Verse, and so that's yeah, that's
Speaker 5: pretty much how it happened. Yeah, I got to write
Speaker 5: a new Spider Man and I got to like put
Speaker 5: my own stamp on it, which was the fun thing
Speaker 5: because there wasn't much about Bubvito that was sort of
Speaker 5: cannon and I hadn't seen the movie and read the
Speaker 5: script or anything, so I've got to just do what
Speaker 5: I wanted to do, which was great.
Speaker 2: So, like for people who haven't read that two thousand
Speaker 2: and five mini series, which I'm sure has been reprinted
Speaker 2: and is probably available to buy seeing as the movie
Speaker 2: is out. Who is pav Like, what's the story of
Speaker 2: Spider Man India?
Speaker 5: Correct me if I'm wrong, Rosie, I'm sure you will.
Speaker 5: He was one of the first sort of multiversal spiders
Speaker 5: to exist. I mean, it wasn't sort of clarified until
Speaker 5: later on that he was what earth he was in. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but that first forest you ark is very much like
Speaker 5: a retelling of the Spider Man origin story, with the
Speaker 5: death of Uncle Ben uncle be him in this case,
Speaker 5: and the introduction of like an Indian demon who is
Speaker 5: the Green Goblin and a doctor Octopus type villain. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's pretty much an origin story. That's pretty much it,
Speaker 5: and it's fun and it's interesting, like recontextualizing Spider Man
Speaker 5: and that iconic sort of New York skyline to somewhere
Speaker 5: like Bombay, which is you know, the skyline is very
Speaker 5: was very different in twenty and five, and in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty three is even more different because you know, there
Speaker 5: are so many more high rises now they were springing
Speaker 5: up then. So yeah, that was pretty much it. It
Speaker 5: was very much like a retelling of the origin story
Speaker 5: and sort of remixing it with sort of Indian mysticism
Speaker 5: and bits of Hinduism and just imbuing it with like
Speaker 5: Spider Man isn't bitten by radioactive Spider He's sort of
Speaker 5: chosen and given this sort of mystical power.
Speaker 1: I was reading through a bunch of your interviews and
Speaker 1: there's a quote in one of them that jumped out
Speaker 1: at me. You said, you know, telling I think the
Speaker 1: story that you told us about your comics origin story
Speaker 1: that reading Spider Man made you feel less alone. Could
Speaker 1: you explain that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, like the character of Peter Parker and to an
Speaker 5: exten Miles Morales, they're both such brilliant teenagers. They've got
Speaker 5: the weight of the world on their shoulders, They've got
Speaker 5: everything against them. They are so racked with guilt and shame,
Speaker 5: which as the child of immigrant parents, I grew up
Speaker 5: racked with guilt and shame all the time. And so
Speaker 5: whenever I read those comics, I just like, this superhero
Speaker 5: kid got me because he put on a mask to
Speaker 5: become his cocky, most powerful best. And so there was
Speaker 5: always this interesting thing of like, who is the real
Speaker 5: person Spider Man or Peter Parker? You know, that whole
Speaker 5: thing that's exploreding Issue thirty one, the sort of the
Speaker 5: duality of the selves, and it just really resonated with me.
Speaker 5: I think it's really hard to nail writing teenagers, and
Speaker 5: writing teenagers who feel like the world is against them,
Speaker 5: but also make them fun. That's the thing about Spider Man.
Speaker 5: He's a fun character. Theirs, even when they get dark,
Speaker 5: even when they get heavy, they're still fun. There's still
Speaker 5: a lightness to them that you don't often get all
Speaker 5: that the balance is always off in other books.
Speaker 2: I think, what's it like for you then, to come
Speaker 2: from loving Spider Man Peter Parker and that being such
Speaker 2: an influential kind of story in your life, to then
Speaker 2: getting to reintroduce readers to pav and to this, like
Speaker 2: you said, a story that hasn't been seen for almost
Speaker 2: twenty years, and to just get to kind of go
Speaker 2: wild and put your own stamp on it.
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna lie. The expectation of it was terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel you.
Speaker 5: I feel you, not just of like anyone else reading it,
Speaker 5: but like I'm still a reader, I'm still a comic
Speaker 5: book reader, so like it had to be something that
Speaker 5: I would read first and foremost and One of the
Speaker 5: things that I really loved about the end Beats of
Speaker 5: No Way Home was we get a street level Spidery back,
Speaker 5: and the first half of Homecoming when he is street
Speaker 5: level Spidy. That is my favorite Spider Man. I love
Speaker 5: writing that Spider Man, and that's what I decided to
Speaker 5: do with Pav. I just wanted to root him in
Speaker 5: his city and sort of make that background, that new
Speaker 5: setting just really feel like it's a character as much
Speaker 5: as he is. What was really fun was I got
Speaker 5: to write a small introductory like cold open adventure with
Speaker 5: Peter Parker and Mars Rylis Wow, which sets up the book,
Speaker 5: which is like absolute dream come true. And then you
Speaker 5: just roote him back in five oh one oh one
Speaker 5: in that Bombay where he is the only Spider Man.
Speaker 5: So Spider Man India. It's kind of a weird title,
Speaker 5: just saying I did a short backup story in Edge
Speaker 5: of Spider Verse last year called average reluctant teenage Superhero
Speaker 5: where he basically sort of questions the concept of him
Speaker 5: being called Spider Man India.
Speaker 3: It's very good, Go and read it.
Speaker 5: This comic book does well. Hopefully I'll get to bring
Speaker 5: him back or someone else will get to bring him
Speaker 5: back and we can kind of have that conversation about
Speaker 5: you know, him being not an Indian Spider Man, but
Speaker 5: being the Spider Man of verse five h one oh one.
Speaker 5: But yeah, writing a street level Spidery, I'm going to
Speaker 5: confess something here. When I was workshopping the idea of
Speaker 5: what my Spider Man story was gonna be, I workshopped
Speaker 5: it with a certain Rosie Night.
Speaker 3: I was me.
Speaker 5: Who was very very helpful. I had loads of thoughts.
Speaker 5: Nick Burno really helped me out with some thoughts and
Speaker 5: just to help me frame what I wanted to do,
Speaker 5: because my thing was I want him to be on
Speaker 5: the ground. I want him to be doing community based stuff.
Speaker 5: And that whole thing of like, with great power comes
Speaker 5: great responsibility is wonderful. It's like it's obviously set the
Speaker 5: tone for you know, all of Spider Man Cannon, but
Speaker 5: the thing that it has the potential to be is
Speaker 5: feel quite individualistic. And so when you have a street
Speaker 5: level hero who stands up for community, you kind of
Speaker 5: have to talk about what that community means to him
Speaker 5: and what he means to that community. And so I
Speaker 5: thought about the idea of this thing called Seva which
Speaker 5: is like this Hindu thing of like selfless community service,
Speaker 5: which to me like when one has great power and
Speaker 5: great responsibility and one decides to be a mass superhero,
Speaker 5: they might do selfless community service. And so the book's
Speaker 5: called Seva and it's basically about you know, it's that
Speaker 5: classic Why am I doing this storyline? But with some
Speaker 5: core fights and stuff.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to something you were talking about.
Speaker 1: You've written in a lot of different kinds of mediums.
Speaker 1: You've done journalism, you've written novels, you've written criticisms, you've
Speaker 1: written comic books. How do you because I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people that listen to this that either
Speaker 1: want to create something or want to write something, want
Speaker 1: in some fashion put something in the world that is
Speaker 1: going to require them asking someone to let them do it.
Speaker 1: What is your process for pitching something like you got
Speaker 1: to pitch Marvel Comics.
Speaker 4: How do you go about it? What do you do?
Speaker 5: It just kind of has some famous friends, Jason, right.
Speaker 2: The terrible, the terrible truth comes out.
Speaker 4: That really does help. Let's admit it, Yeah.
Speaker 5: It does help. I do honestly think that when people pitch,
Speaker 5: they often pitch the wrong way round. They pitch what
Speaker 5: they think the magazine or the publisher or the comic
Speaker 5: book editor wants, or what they think that the audience wants,
Speaker 5: rather than the story that they want to tell. The
Speaker 5: very earnest way to say this is you could write anything.
Speaker 5: You know, we're all in the imagination business. Like, we
Speaker 5: can make anything happen. We can make a meteorite crash
Speaker 5: towards Earth and the only people who can save humanity
Speaker 5: a ragtag group of industrial drillers. Or we can have
Speaker 5: a boy and a girl falling in out of love
Speaker 5: over three years at a prestigious Dublin college. Or we
Speaker 5: can have humanity try and put itself back together by
Speaker 5: watching a Shakespeare play following a global pandemic. I don't know,
Speaker 5: Like you know, we can do absolutely anything. So the
Speaker 5: thing that you kind of have to do when you're
Speaker 5: pitching is go, what is my unique take on this world?
Speaker 5: What is the one thing that I want to say?
Speaker 5: Because your idea is your unique perspective, the perspective that
Speaker 5: you have, that's your currency. Ultimately, those editors and Marvel
Speaker 5: have seen every single person try and imitate stan Lee.
Speaker 5: They've seen everyone try and imitate Tom McFarland. They've seen
Speaker 5: everyone trying to imitate all of the great They've seen
Speaker 5: all of that. So what do you want to say?
Speaker 5: When I was workshopping what I wanted to do with
Speaker 5: Rosie and a bunch of other friends, Like, the thing
Speaker 5: that I kept coming back to is what's the story
Speaker 5: I want to tell. I want to tell a street
Speaker 5: level spidery story. I want to tell a story that's
Speaker 5: about the pull between hustler culture, individualism, and standing up
Speaker 5: for your community. I want to tell a story that's
Speaker 5: about gentrification. I want to tell a story about Andrew
Speaker 5: Tate that got softened a little in the editorial process
Speaker 5: because it turns out I was trying to say a
Speaker 5: lot in five issues, so you know, we can come
Speaker 5: back to that. So I guess that's my best advice.
Speaker 5: Before you go out and get yourself a famous friend,
Speaker 5: work out what you want to say first.
Speaker 2: And when it came to writing this comic, like, was
Speaker 2: there something.
Speaker 3: Process wise that surprised you?
Speaker 2: Because you read comics your whole life, But when you
Speaker 2: read a book and when you write a book, the
Speaker 2: thing that you write, your manuscript looks a lot like
Speaker 2: the published book. When you write a TV show that
Speaker 2: is different, but you hear the words that you write
Speaker 2: on the page and you see the people doing the
Speaker 2: things you describe. When you write a script for a
Speaker 2: comic book, it essentially transforms completely when the artist gets
Speaker 2: their hands on it. So what was the process like
Speaker 2: of kind of getting comfortable with writing comics.
Speaker 5: Writing comics and working on TV shows are so collaborative,
Speaker 5: and when you've spent so long being the sole oteur writer,
Speaker 5: writing the literary great all by yourself, it becomes quite
Speaker 5: hard to work out the pie chart of collaboration. So
Speaker 5: working with Abishek Munsoni on this the artist, and working
Speaker 5: with the letters and the inkers and the colorizers, you
Speaker 5: can tell I've got the technical terms.
Speaker 3: Down, everyone's favorite colorizers.
Speaker 5: Color colorizers. It was really interesting because you know, there's
Speaker 5: a lot of collaboration going on, you know, between me
Speaker 5: and Ubbushek and the editors, and the way that the
Speaker 5: letterer might put everything in might make you review, like
Speaker 5: whether the panel just says it, or whether you need
Speaker 5: the dialogue, whether there's dialogue missing, whether dialogue just sort
Speaker 5: of is saying what's already happening in the panel. The
Speaker 5: whole thing is very iterative, and it's very flexible, and
Speaker 5: it's very emergent, and I really love that. Like today,
Speaker 5: I've been working on the script for issue three, which
Speaker 5: I turned in like back in se Tember. But now
Speaker 5: that all the artwork's done and it's been inked, there's
Speaker 5: new stuff that I'm finding, and there's new stuff that
Speaker 5: I'm able to kind of push on. And actually having
Speaker 5: written the script for issue five, like a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks ago, I now know where this is heading, so
Speaker 5: I can you know, this is the midpoint issue. So
Speaker 5: it is very iterative. But one hoping to do when
Speaker 5: that first issue dropped is go back to the first
Speaker 5: script that I wrote, the first draft of it, because
Speaker 5: I started writing the script not realizing that it would
Speaker 5: be helpful for me to draw out some pages with
Speaker 5: some stick figures and all the rest of it, and
Speaker 5: then write the script to that and then hand that
Speaker 5: script into the artist, and then talk with the artist
Speaker 5: about what I was hoping for and then give them
Speaker 5: like a visual palette from which to pull from and
Speaker 5: all the rest of it. I hope I can show
Speaker 5: that journey, because that journey was really fun for me,
Speaker 5: Like I've never worked like that.
Speaker 1: Before What did you think of Spiderman's costume in Across
Speaker 1: the Spider Verse.
Speaker 5: I thought it was great when it first came out.
Speaker 5: It looked very specifically like there's a Bollywood actor called
Speaker 5: Mithun Chukra Buddy who in the eighties or nineties, there
Speaker 5: was a very famous film called Disco Dancer.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love that movie.
Speaker 5: I am a Discord Dancers.
Speaker 3: Add you on Netflix. That's how I discovered it.
Speaker 5: It's great Jimmy samples one of the songs in that.
Speaker 5: I thought the look was very sort of inspired by
Speaker 5: that era of Bollywood, and it's obviously so different from
Speaker 5: what I was working with. Yeah, and so it's interesting
Speaker 5: now sort of seeing what they've done with pav and
Speaker 5: also listening to Kemp on the pod last week talk
Speaker 5: about how the film is basically a warning shot across
Speaker 5: the bowels of Cannon. Yeah, I was watching it going,
Speaker 5: oh God, do I have to go back to the
Speaker 5: drawing board. But actually, like my path and the path
Speaker 5: that's in the film, they come from the same essence,
Speaker 5: but you know, they are different characters. I don't want
Speaker 5: to ruin it too much, but there might be a
Speaker 5: meeting of minds when it comes to that outfit at
Speaker 5: some point.
Speaker 4: Oh wonderful.
Speaker 5: I haven't spoiled it too much. I hope my editors
Speaker 5: of Marvel don't mind me saying that.
Speaker 2: I think that's a wonderful tease that a lot of
Speaker 2: people have been wondering about since the film.
Speaker 4: And absolutely great teas.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, for me, PEVs costume in the film
Speaker 1: is a revelation because my personal theory up until that
Speaker 1: point was that open top masks don't work. I don't
Speaker 1: like when the hair comes out the top, whether it's
Speaker 1: Hank Pim as Goliath. You can go on and on
Speaker 1: the number of times people have tried a hawkeye. I've
Speaker 1: never seen it work until pav Across the Spider Verse
Speaker 1: is the first time I was like, that works, that
Speaker 1: looks good.
Speaker 5: It's because it's Bollywood hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, dream hair.
Speaker 5: It's almost like, you know, Bollywood is famed for loads
Speaker 5: of slow motion shots of like people whipping their hair
Speaker 5: across their across their perfectly chiseled faces, and it just
Speaker 5: it just made me think when I was watching it,
Speaker 5: I wonder if they like slowed the frame rate of
Speaker 5: like the way his hair moves, and then put it
Speaker 5: back up to normal speed. Almost like time stretching his
Speaker 5: hair because it looks amazing.
Speaker 2: I would believe it because I did learn this week
Speaker 2: thanks to all the other Hoby Brown fans out there,
Speaker 2: that they animated Hobie on that his body was animated
Speaker 2: on his on the threes, but his outline were always
Speaker 2: animated on the twos, and they had to create an
Speaker 2: entirely new animation device to do that. So I think
Speaker 2: that you're right about the hair.
Speaker 3: I could absolutely see that.
Speaker 2: Also, what I loved the way that Pav got to
Speaker 2: be He is like the carefree, non depressed, charming, everything
Speaker 2: goes right Spider Man. That feels very different than anything
Speaker 2: we've seen of any Spider Man. So did you like
Speaker 2: that kind of reinterpretation?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I loved it. I'm really glad that he got
Speaker 5: to be happy, go lucky and just seemed like he
Speaker 5: was having a whale of the time because obviously a
Speaker 5: lot of the Spider society is having a miserable I've
Speaker 5: had loads of messages from people in recent weeks. They
Speaker 5: know I'm writing a Spider Man Indian comic book, but
Speaker 5: I think they sometimes don't know the difference between a
Speaker 5: comic book and an animated film because this isn't a spoiler,
Speaker 5: but there's a couple of lines in it where he
Speaker 5: talks about chi t means te te and non bread
Speaker 5: means bread, bread and stuff. And I wrote an essay
Speaker 5: in a in a book that sort of blew up
Speaker 5: in a big way called The Good Immigrant, which sort
Speaker 5: of pokes fun at all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's not like it's an original thought,
Speaker 5: like people have said it. Those of people have said
Speaker 5: it over the years, but it's such a well worn
Speaker 5: diaspora complaint that obviously it would shut up in a
Speaker 5: Spider Man. But like, I've had lots of people go,
Speaker 5: I love those lines you wrote for that Spider Man.
Speaker 5: I was like, that's not sadly, that's that's not me.
Speaker 3: Maybe the next movie maybe maybe and beyond.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh well, where can people find you? Where?
Speaker 1: Can where can people find your stuff? Are you posting
Speaker 1: out there? Where on the internet? Can people find your material?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you said on the internet, because I
Speaker 5: was going to say, if you want to find me
Speaker 5: at my house, please don't. I'm a very private person, guys. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm at Nick Schukler writer on Instagram. I'm at Nick
Speaker 5: Schukla on Twitter. If that's still a thing by the time.
Speaker 1: This appears to be still a thing today, who knows
Speaker 1: the tomorrow or in the future.
Speaker 5: Yeah and yeah. Spider Man India Issue one is out
Speaker 5: fourteenth of June, and I've just hope you know, mind
Speaker 5: me plug And I've just had a new YA book
Speaker 5: come out called stand Up, which is a fun, fun, little,
Speaker 5: fun little story about about a young kid who wants
Speaker 5: to be a stand up comedian. And also how you
Speaker 5: should never meet heroes because they are always disappointing.
Speaker 3: Important lessons, important life lesson.
Speaker 5: Important life lessons to bum out. All of the teenagers
Speaker 5: who now are going to listen to this and go
Speaker 5: I need a famous friend. And I've read a book
Speaker 5: basically mitigating that, going don't find a thing. It will
Speaker 5: be terrible, exactly.
Speaker 3: The ad Spider Man India through your pull list.
Speaker 2: Who knows, maybe one day we'll just get a main
Speaker 2: title Spider Man and it will be about pav We
Speaker 2: can dream.
Speaker 5: Yeah, buve do Probacus Spider Man. That's what I want
Speaker 5: to go for.
Speaker 3: I think that's really cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, thanks so much for having me guys. I'm
Speaker 5: a big fan of the podcast. I love I've always
Speaker 5: loved your work, Jason and Rosie. You are one of
Speaker 5: my favorite people in the whole world.
Speaker 2: Ah, thank you so much, so happy you can be here,
Speaker 2: and so excited for everyone to read this book. Also,
Speaker 2: the Edge of the Spider Verse story is like illustrated by.
Speaker 3: Non Stop Bangers.
Speaker 2: It was Nickash's first ever comic, so go out and
Speaker 2: finding a copy, Niggas's first ever comic, and it was
Speaker 2: like some of the artists who worked on his stories,
Speaker 2: like Mark Bagley, Adam Cuber like only the most famous
Speaker 2: Spider Man artists of all time on his first ever comic.
Speaker 5: I mean, Adam Cuber has done all of my covers.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely crazy, so I cannot believe it. So please
Speaker 5: please buy the book. This has been so much fun.
Speaker 5: I want to do more. And also I'm just putting
Speaker 5: I'm just going to manifest this now. I really want
Speaker 5: to write a Dared Devil.
Speaker 3: Love it. That's the next.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love Dared Devil. I feel like Dared Devil
Speaker 5: is consistently.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is the correct opinion.
Speaker 1: It has for forty ish years been mostly very very
Speaker 1: very good.
Speaker 2: Maybe this okay, this is going to be outrageous Okay,
Speaker 2: let's take X Men out of the equation. But maybe
Speaker 2: the book without X Men, maybe the single superhero who
Speaker 2: has the most like iconic runs that you can just
Speaker 2: bring up because you have like Born Again, you have
Speaker 2: the Charles Sewell run. Zadarski just did a run that's
Speaker 2: already been seen as in the modern classic.
Speaker 3: You've got the Bend this run.
Speaker 2: You've got so many different people who've taken on that character,
Speaker 2: and each of those trades people will be buying them
Speaker 2: for like a really long I've.
Speaker 4: Got them all. I've got here.
Speaker 1: I've got like six omnibuses Bending the shelf online, my bookshelf.
Speaker 1: I think it's for this reason, now that we've been derailed,
Speaker 1: I'll say this is my theory, and you tell me
Speaker 1: whether you agree or disagree. It's one Daredevil has been
Speaker 1: mostly held aside from big events. He's in his own
Speaker 1: little world, running street level. He doesn't have to punch
Speaker 1: Thanos or anything. You know, it's not fucking around with
Speaker 1: the beyonder when you know world dimensional interactions happen. He's
Speaker 1: really not involved in that. He's just like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: keeping the streets of Hell's Kitchen clean.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: And then two that's the place where they put like
Speaker 1: the up and coming, really really good comics writer. Often
Speaker 1: it will put them there and say okay, let's see
Speaker 1: what you got, and then they.
Speaker 4: Just turn out to always deliver.
Speaker 3: Oh it sounds sound like that would be a good
Speaker 3: place for you.
Speaker 2: I think you're right, Jason, up and coming new comic
Speaker 2: writer who needs to show that he can deliver.
Speaker 3: It's time. I'm ready and he do.
Speaker 1: He's written, he's written several several well regarded novels. He's
Speaker 1: already writing comics. But can he do it this time?
Speaker 1: Can he do it again?
Speaker 3: Can he.
Speaker 4: Turn He's turned out an m b E.
Speaker 3: Who is this guy?
Speaker 4: To be continued?
Speaker 5: Just because you said you could write there, devil nick
Speaker 5: case doesn't mean you should look call me Marvel. You
Speaker 5: know where I live. Actually, Marvel, you can come over.
Speaker 2: Marvel's the only people who turn up.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks so much for joining.
Speaker 5: Us, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4: Big thank you to Nikesha. And that's it for us.
Speaker 4: Rosie any plugs, Yes, you.
Speaker 2: Can find me as always Rosie marks on Instagram and letterbox.
Speaker 2: I'm here twice a week and on Saturday, tenth of
Speaker 2: June I will be at Universal City Walk doing a
Speaker 2: signing for my Godzilla comic with Nick Marino, and we
Speaker 2: will be at T four, which is Things from Another World,
Speaker 2: a really fun comic shop owned by dark Horse Comics.
Speaker 2: So if you're in the Valley, if you've never come
Speaker 2: down to the South Bay for any of our signings,
Speaker 2: you can find us there. Also, if you're in the SGV,
Speaker 2: you can go to Nostalgia Comics. We did a really
Speaker 2: fun Spider Verse inspired our exhibition, and I did a
Speaker 2: big piece of Hobie Brown. So spider Punk Forever.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is taking a week off for many
Speaker 1: similar vacations. There'll be no episodes next week on either
Speaker 1: June fourteenth or sixteenth. We'll be back rested and ready
Speaker 1: with more deep dives and theories on June twenty.
Speaker 2: First subscribe on YouTube so you can keep up with
Speaker 2: us while you miss us. While we're on vacation. You
Speaker 2: can watch full episodes of the show.
Speaker 3: There, and if you check out our discord, you.
Speaker 2: Can hang out with loads of cool fans who love
Speaker 2: all the same stuff as you, same stuff as us.
Speaker 3: I'm with us sometimes too.
Speaker 1: Five star ratings, five star reviews, We need them.
Speaker 3: You gotta give it to us.
Speaker 1: Here's one from Naroho forty four, best pot out there.
Speaker 1: This pod, which has allowed me to fully embrace my Internet,
Speaker 1: has become my favorite to listen to by far. Jason
Speaker 1: and Rosie seem like genuinely great people. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, and they cover all the movies and shows
Speaker 1: I watch, providing great fan level deep dives. They've also
Speaker 1: helped me rediscover my lovel comics and graphic novels. I
Speaker 1: appreciate their suggestions for additional reading, viewing, and listening. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Narojo forty four, See you next time.
Speaker 4: X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rumin
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Jason Concepcion. Our editing at
Speaker 1: sound design is by Facillis Fatopoulos. Video production by Delon
Speaker 1: Villanueva and Rachel Gaieski. Social media by Awa Oklatti and
Speaker 1: Caroline Dunfe. Thank you to Brian Basquez for our theme music.