Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact. In this special omnibus episode of The Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: please enjoy the first four episodes concerning monsters from the
Speaker 2: DC Comics universe, Killer Crock, Swamp Thing, Doomsday, and Mister
Speaker 2: Mind Up. First, let's check in with Killer Croc. Batman's
Speaker 2: rogues gallery boasts an unbelievable variety of super villains, from
Speaker 2: chaotic clown criminals and calendar officionados to amorphous clay monsters
Speaker 2: and cryogenically frozen mad scientists. But in terms of more
Speaker 2: monstrous foes, a few names rise to the top. There's,
Speaker 2: of course, the Man Bat hybrid man Bat. But I
Speaker 2: thought we might discuss another famous foe of the caped crusader,
Speaker 2: Waylon Jones aka Killer Croc. Now, if you grew up
Speaker 2: on the nineties Batman animated series like I did, you'll
Speaker 2: probably remember this guy is a pale, gray, scaly humanoid
Speaker 2: with big shoulders, sharp teeth, and a skeletal face. He's
Speaker 2: at home in the waters, especially river and sewer waters,
Speaker 2: and he possesses great strength for grappling Batman. This character
Speaker 2: was created back in nineteen eighty three for the Batman
Speaker 2: comic by Jerry Conway, Don Newton, and Gene Colan. His
Speaker 2: original appearance was greener and scalier, and over the years,
Speaker 2: designs for Killer Crock have only grown more monstrous. In
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty three comic debut, he's roughly the size
Speaker 2: of a large man, but in the two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine video game Arkham Asylum, he's an absolute ogre that
Speaker 2: basically fills an entire prison cell by himself. The original
Speaker 2: explanation given for Killer Croc's appearance is a skin condition,
Speaker 2: probably meant to be something from the ichthiosis family of
Speaker 2: genetic skin conditions that can produce a scale like quality
Speaker 2: of the skin. Now, I'm not sure how tasteful this
Speaker 2: ultimately is, and besides, this is hardly an excuse for
Speaker 2: other aspects of Killer Croc's appearance and character. Plus, to
Speaker 2: be clear, killer Croc has dinosaur feet and other dinosaur
Speaker 2: like qualities in his later appearances. As such, these later
Speaker 2: incarnations of Killer Croc are often explained as a severe
Speaker 2: form of atavism, a real life recurrence of a genetic
Speaker 2: trait typical of an ancestral form. The topic is explored
Speaker 2: in the excellent book DC Anatomy of a Metahuman by
Speaker 2: SD Perry and Matthew K. Manning, with illustrations by Mean Dole.
Speaker 2: As the authors point out, a vestigial tail or an
Speaker 2: extra nipple in human beings is not too uncommon an
Speaker 2: example of this, but if the affected gene is old enough,
Speaker 2: a pre mammalian trait may be expressed in a human being.
Speaker 2: Some of our genetic pre mammalian traits can be seen
Speaker 2: in our embryotic development. We see temporary examples of this
Speaker 2: in the dental placodes of developing human fetuses, which, according
Speaker 2: to Petrokova at All in the two thousand and six
Speaker 2: paper for the Journal of Experimental Zoology, resemble early tooth
Speaker 2: primordia in reptiles. The human fetus also temporarily develops a tail.
Speaker 2: In a twenty nineteen Howard University study identified ancient reptilian
Speaker 2: limb muscles in human embryos during the early weeks of gestation.
Speaker 2: More startling, however, is a case reported by Walia at
Speaker 2: All in a twenty ten edition of the Texas Heart
Speaker 2: Institute Journal, when a fifty nine year old man sought
Speaker 2: medical attention concerning chest pains, doctors discovered some surprising myocardial architecture.
Speaker 2: Quote Remarkably, the morphology resembled that of the reptilian heart,
Speaker 2: that is, it featured direct communications to the ventricle cavity
Speaker 2: and had the sinusodal characteristics of non compacted myocardium. The
Speaker 2: authors note that this was the second known case of
Speaker 2: such a heart in human beings. While the medical curiosity
Speaker 2: certainly there was certainly nothing monstrous about this, the fictional
Speaker 2: case of killer croc would seem to involve a fantastic
Speaker 2: exaggeration of reptilian ativism in a human being, and multiple
Speaker 2: cases of it at bat, impacting various bodily systems and features,
Speaker 2: a kind of ridiculous atavism jackpot if you will now. Obviously,
Speaker 2: crocodilian morphology factors into various mythological creatures for various cultures
Speaker 2: and time periods around the world where crocodiles live or
Speaker 2: where stories of crocodiles would drift to. Traditions in Egypt, Zambia,
Speaker 2: and Indonesia involve humans that transform into crocodiles to harm others,
Speaker 2: akin to the werewolfs of Western lore. So it's likely
Speaker 2: here that we find the closest thing to Killer Krock
Speaker 2: outside of comic books, rather than in our own human
Speaker 2: medical history. Now, let's turn our attention to one of
Speaker 2: my all time favorite comic book characters, the swamp Thing.
Speaker 2: Swamp Thing was the creation of writer Lynn Wine and
Speaker 2: artist Bernie Wrightson, debuting in the House of Secrets horror
Speaker 2: comic back in nineteen seventy one. Since that time, swamp
Speaker 2: Thing has appeared in two live action eighties films, two
Speaker 2: live action TV series, and numerous animation and video game projects.
Speaker 2: But among comic fans, there's nothing to compare to Alan
Speaker 2: Moore's run with the character during the nineteen eighties. Swamp
Speaker 2: Thing's original origin story was not all but different from
Speaker 2: other lab accidents spawned monsters. Scientist Alec Holland his experimental
Speaker 2: formula and a lab explosion in the Bayou transforms man
Speaker 2: into plant based monster, who in turn battles various other monsters,
Speaker 2: often in the form of doctor Anton R. Kane's Unmen,
Speaker 2: plus many others. In Moore's run with the character, however,
Speaker 2: he subverted this troupe, invoking biochemical memory experiments about plenarian worms.
Speaker 2: We discussed these in our episode Devourer of Memories. His
Speaker 2: take is that Alik Holin does not survive the explosion
Speaker 2: in the swamp. He is not a man who becomes
Speaker 2: a plant like monster, but plant life of the swamp
Speaker 2: that generates a body and a sense of self in
Speaker 2: the likeness of the dead man. It consumes, in this
Speaker 2: more stripped swamp thing of any direct connection to his
Speaker 2: human identity and opens the door for a deeper connection
Speaker 2: to the green and the Parliament of trees, essentially recreating
Speaker 2: the character as a plant elemental, a warrior of Gaia,
Speaker 2: and overall super lorax if you will. If you haven't
Speaker 2: read the Saga of the Swamp Thing, I highly highly
Speaker 2: recommend it. Virtually nothing can touch it now. Long time
Speaker 2: listeners to Stuff to Blow your mind and general philosophy
Speaker 2: junkies might remember a similar creature. No, not Marvel's man Thing,
Speaker 2: though he's awesome as well, but philosopher Donald Davidson's swamp
Speaker 2: Man thought experiment. We've talked about this on the show
Speaker 2: as well, back in our Thought Experiment's episode. It basically
Speaker 2: goes as follows. If a lightning strike in the swamp
Speaker 2: were to destroy Davidson's body and transform an adjacent dead
Speaker 2: tree into an exact living replica of Davidson without reusing
Speaker 2: any of the previous Davidson molecules. Then what do we have?
Speaker 2: This tree double or swamp Man. It behaves just like
Speaker 2: the previous Davidson and seems to know what he knew,
Speaker 2: But does it really know anything? In this swamp Man
Speaker 2: is a rumination on thought and meaning in knowing one's mind.
Speaker 2: Davidson writes the following quote, My replica can't recognize my friends.
Speaker 2: It can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in
Speaker 2: the first place. It can't know my friend's names, though
Speaker 2: of course it seems to. It can't remember my house.
Speaker 2: It can't mean what I do by the word house,
Speaker 2: for example, since the sound house it makes was not
Speaker 2: learned in a context that would give it the right meaning,
Speaker 2: or any meaning at all. Indeed, I don't see how
Speaker 2: my replica can be said to mean anything by the
Speaker 2: sounds it makes, nor to have any thoughts. Now. It's
Speaker 2: worth noting that Davidson, who died in two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: published this idea on Swampman a few years after More
Speaker 2: recast the origin of swamp Thing, and as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell, no one is entirely certain on how
Speaker 2: and to what extent the two are connected. Authors Chris
Speaker 2: Galliver and Nathaniel Goldberg explored the connection or possible connection
Speaker 2: in the twenty nineteen book Superhero Thought Experiments, Comic Book
Speaker 2: Philosophy and contend Quote. While there's no evidence that either
Speaker 2: Moore or Davidson read each other, Moore's series appears to
Speaker 2: be philosophically influenced and Davidson's Thought Experiment appears to be
Speaker 2: pop culturally influenced. So perhaps it's just the case of
Speaker 2: two men on different tracks thinking deep thoughts about swamp
Speaker 2: and the self now. Gavalier and Goldberg also stress that
Speaker 2: there are distinct differences in their treatments quote. When it
Speaker 2: comes to meaning or semantics, swamp Man is a blank slate,
Speaker 2: while Moore's swamp Thing initially mistakes itself for Alec Holland,
Speaker 2: only later to realize that it isn't Alec Holland. Swamp
Speaker 2: Man never miss takes itself for Donald Davidson. It only
Speaker 2: appears to do so. If Davidson is right, swamp Man
Speaker 2: thinks no thoughts. It can't think it's Davidson because it
Speaker 2: can't think at all. Hmm, So ponder on all of that,
Speaker 2: and by all means, pick up a copy of Superhero
Speaker 2: Thought Experiments if you want to deeper dive on this topic.
Speaker 2: It's really quite an excellent book. Comic fans, I will
Speaker 2: leave you with this. Here's a question for you. Has
Speaker 2: swamp Thing ever actually met Davidson's swamp Man in the
Speaker 2: pages of a comic book. It seems like in general,
Speaker 2: any kind of matchup or encounter that one could possibly
Speaker 2: imagine has occurred, or no doubt will occur. I can't
Speaker 2: help but wonder how this would go down. What would
Speaker 2: swamp Thing think about the encounter, and what would swamp
Speaker 2: Man seem to think about it but actually not think
Speaker 2: at all. Of course, we can't talk about DC monsters
Speaker 2: without talking about one of Superman's most monstrous opponents. It's
Speaker 2: time to talk about Doomsday, the brutal, spiny shouldered Kryptonian monster,
Speaker 2: best known for killing Superman in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: While the superhero's death didn't last too long, it was
Speaker 2: certainly a great way to launch a supervillain's career, and
Speaker 2: Doomsday has remained one of the resurrected Superman's most recognizable foes.
Speaker 2: His creation is credited to Jan Jurgens Brett, Breeding, Jerry Ordway,
Speaker 2: Louise Simonson, and Roger Stern. In DC Anatomy of a
Speaker 2: Metahuman by S. D. Perry and Matthew K. Manning with
Speaker 2: illustrations by Mean Doyle, the authors lay out Doomsday's tragic
Speaker 2: origin story. An alien scientist named Bertron takes a humanoid
Speaker 2: child and exposes that child to the deadly prehistoric environment
Speaker 2: of the planet Krypton. The child dies, that Bertrn resurrects
Speaker 2: the child via advanced cloning technology and reintroduces the child
Speaker 2: to the wild with added traits to protect them. The
Speaker 2: child dies again, and the amoral Bertrand continues the cycle
Speaker 2: over and over again, using sci fi cloning technology in
Speaker 2: the place of natural selection to eventually produce an incredibly
Speaker 2: tough super being, the ultimate metahuman combatant, now virtually undying
Speaker 2: himself incapable of amazing feats of regeneration, This is the
Speaker 2: being that will become known as Doomsday. However, as Doomsday
Speaker 2: retains the traumatic memory of his many formative deaths, he's
Speaker 2: ultimately tormented by the rage, so much that he eventually
Speaker 2: kills his mad scientist creator and continues to see the
Speaker 2: face of his hated creator in others and rages against
Speaker 2: them incessantly. It's a clever twist on evolution, melding the
Speaker 2: science of natural selection, the philosophy of Frederic Nietzsche, and
Speaker 2: the psychological trauma. It's also interesting when we start considering
Speaker 2: the idea of resurrection from a religious and mythological standpoint.
Speaker 2: Superman in the Death of Superman's story arc quite clearly
Speaker 2: echoes the religious motif of the dying and rising God
Speaker 2: famously seen in such figures as the ancient Egyptian of
Speaker 2: Cyrus and the Christian Jesus. Doomsday is seemingly something else,
Speaker 2: though not a god who has died and come back,
Speaker 2: but a mortal who has died and come back so
Speaker 2: many times that he has become at least a demi
Speaker 2: god and a potential slayer of the divine, though in
Speaker 2: many ways Doomsday is not so different. After all, there
Speaker 2: is a psychical aspect to the death and resurrection of
Speaker 2: such religious figures as of Cyrus and Jesus as well,
Speaker 2: making their deaths and resurrections also quite numerable. In a sense.
Speaker 2: Even in cases where there is only the singular death
Speaker 2: in the singular resurrection. These events are often remembered or
Speaker 2: celebrated alongside cyclical events like the passing of the seasons
Speaker 2: and the inundation of the Nile River, but they are
Speaker 2: still singular resurrections celebrated cyclically in multitude. Doomsday, however, has
Speaker 2: experienced a multitude of deaths across linear time. In this
Speaker 2: you could argue that he is a modern secular linear
Speaker 2: perversion of the cyclical sacred and mythic and therefore a
Speaker 2: fitting opponent for the godlike Superman. But I would be
Speaker 2: very interested to hear what you think about the matter. Finally,
Speaker 2: here's a more obscure DC villain, though he has shown
Speaker 2: up in the movies. It's mister Mind. Meet mister Mind,
Speaker 2: a tiny Venusian worm or caterpillar to be clear, he
Speaker 2: has legs with enormous power at its disposal. Created in
Speaker 2: DC com comics in the early nineteen forties by Auto
Speaker 2: Bender and C. C. Beck, mister Mind stands as one
Speaker 2: of the primary supervillains of Captain Marvel. Not the Marvel
Speaker 2: Captain Marvel, but the DC Captain Marvel. Minds you this
Speaker 2: is the one that moviegoers may know best as Shazam.
Speaker 2: Mister Mind also makes a couple of cameo appearances in
Speaker 2: those films. Now, mister Mind boasts incredible psychic powers in
Speaker 2: a genius level intellect to back those powers up, so
Speaker 2: he's gotten into all sorts of mischief over the years,
Speaker 2: including founding the Monster Society of Evil. He also employs
Speaker 2: at least two key bits of technology, special classes and
Speaker 2: an audio amplifier to interact with the larger world, because again,
Speaker 2: despite his powers, he is a tiny worm or caterpillar.
Speaker 2: But what I want to focus on is his old
Speaker 2: and frankly odd origin story from the Silver Age of comics,
Speaker 2: in which he makes the interplanetary void from Venus to
Speaker 2: Earth in order to meet ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy.
Speaker 2: This was Slash is a real ventriloquist dummy. Mister Mind,
Speaker 2: you see, had heard Charlie McCarthy on Earth's radio program
Speaker 2: Transmissions and apparently mistook fiction for reality. He was, of
Speaker 2: course disappointed upon learning the truth. It's a common sci
Speaker 2: fi trope explored on Futurama and elsewhere. Extraterrestrials pick up
Speaker 2: on transmissions from Earth and either misunderstand the difference between
Speaker 2: fiction and reality or simply lack the ability to tell
Speaker 2: the difference. There are even more sci fi works that
Speaker 2: explore the larger idea of intercepted Earth transmissions, most notably
Speaker 2: Carl Sagan's nineteen eighty five novel Contact the Si. In
Speaker 2: the sci fi here is of course that for more
Speaker 2: than one hundred years we've been busting out commercial radio
Speaker 2: transmissions here on Earth. However, as Robert Matthews points out
Speaker 2: in a BBC Science Focus article, most of these signals
Speaker 2: were absorbed by the atmosphere or drowned out by solar
Speaker 2: radio transmissions, so our radio leakage as a planet was
Speaker 2: perhaps minimal. However, Matthew stresses that Cold War military radar
Speaker 2: transmissions are strong enough to have already broadcast our presence
Speaker 2: out to anyone listening within sixty light years. There have
Speaker 2: also been deliberate radio transmissions aimed at communicating our existence,
Speaker 2: such as the nineteen seventy four Arecibo message sent to
Speaker 2: Messia thirteen, or at least in the spirit of such communication,
Speaker 2: but the basic idea of such transmissions either emanating from
Speaker 2: us or potentially picked up from an extraterrestrial source has
Speaker 2: garnered much discussion and debate over the decades. How likely
Speaker 2: is alien reception or our reception of an alien transmission
Speaker 2: based on the vast distances involved in limits of possible
Speaker 2: travel speeds as we know them, How should we approach
Speaker 2: such long term concerns, and just how careful should we
Speaker 2: be when it comes to such radio transmissions or even
Speaker 2: our radio leakage. Because while our most optimistic views of
Speaker 2: extraterrestrial contact are rosy, indeed some of the more pessimistic models,
Speaker 2: based in large part on Earth's own history of outside contact,
Speaker 2: situations in which one culture encounters a technologically superior one
Speaker 2: are perhaps best avoided. And then there's the mister Mind model,
Speaker 2: in which we managed to attract a caterpillar supervillain to
Speaker 2: our planet with our tantalizing nineteen forties radio comedy shows.
Speaker 2: Thank goodness, we have so many Captain Marvels to deal
Speaker 2: with that sort of thing. All right, we're going to
Speaker 2: go and close it out here, but I'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from you if you have suggestions for future installments
Speaker 2: of the Monster Fact or the Artifact. You can contact
Speaker 2: us at Contact at stuff to Blow your Mind.
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