[Rob]: welcome to Dear Watchers a comic book omni verse podcast where we do a deep dive
[Rob]: into the multi verse
[Guido]: Traveling through the storylines before way before and after that, inspired or took
[Guido]: inspiration from this week's alternate universe
[Guido]: and your Watchers on this journey continue to be me. Guido.
[Rob]: and me Rob the the uranium did i say that right
[Guido]: Oh, we'll talk about
[Rob]: but
[Guido]: why that means a lot.
[Rob]: well he's bob the Uranians and i'm Robed the Uranian so i had to go with it
[Guido]: That's true. that's true. but uh yeah, we. we'll get into that. my
[Guido]: gosh. what an episode this is going to be,
[Rob]: ooh i'm intrigued
[Guido]: But
[Guido]: hello, everyone and welcome back. We really excited with the
[Rob]: eight
[Guido]: reception to last week's episode where we went beyond the Marvel Multi Verse, We
[Guido]: returning to where we started with the Marvel Multi Verse Through What if today, but
[Guido]: the response to our Amalgam episode has been really great, so please keep listening.
[Rob]: okay
[Guido]: Keep sharing and continue to let us know what we should cover and what ideas you
[Guido]: have.
[Rob]: and of course i think this podcast geo is just an excuse for you to buy yet even
[Rob]: more comic related things because then after last week's amalgam episode you
[Rob]: went out and bought some wizards with dark claw on the cover and lots of other
[Guido]: That is true, and believe me, I have already searched online for some of the Golden
[Rob]: amalgam stuff
[Guido]: Age books that we read today and they're very expensive. but I may end up with some
[Guido]: anyway,
[Rob]: yes
[Rob]: well we are very excited to be back in the world of what if and if you are joining
[Rob]: us for the first time after a quick summary of our alternate earth we have origins
[Rob]: of the story discovering what may have inspired this other reality exploring
[Rob]: multiversity diving deeper into the alternate universe and pondering possibilities
[Rob]: examining the impact of this visit to the multiverse and what's followed or our
[Rob]: hopes for the future and with that dear Watchers let's check out what's happening
[Rob]: in the multi verse with today's alternate universe
[Rob]: and today we are discussing what if the avengers had been formed in the nineteen
[Rob]: fifties
[Guido]: and this is Earth Nine nine ▁zero four. Though we will get to why, that is
[Guido]: questionable, and on Earth nine ▁zero nine, nine, ▁zero, four or not get to the
[Guido]: Avengers At this time, we have Thor vision, Ironman Beast and Captain America are
[Guido]: watching an interdmensional screen where they see the Nineteen Fifties, and they
[Guido]: discover that Marvel Boy
[Guido]: from the Nineteen Fifties, as well as Venus Gorilla Man, Jimmy Woo,
[Guido]: Human Robot, and 3D Men, become the Avengers to take on Yellow Claw and a bunch
[Guido]: of other villains, including Skull Face,
[Guido]: the Great Video,
[Guido]: Electro, a different version, and Cold Warrior, and they. End up fighting and
[Guido]: ▁ultimately winning, But the Avengers have to stay a secret and will get more into
[Guido]: what all of that means and how this wraps up. But that's a very quick summary of what
[Guido]: happens and these, of course, are all existing pre Marvel brand Marvel characters.
[Rob]: yes and they're from atlas correct not ti i know cause there's atlas and then
[Rob]: there's timely those
[Guido]: Correct.
[Rob]: are the marvel predecessors
[Guido]: Yes, so Timely becomes Atlas, There's that's pretty
[Guido]: immediate that shift. It's just a brand shift. It doesn't mean too much Different.
[Guido]: Atlas was the name of the distributor that Martin Goodman had, and Timely, he just
[Guido]: stopp. Drops, the Timely imprint, starts putting Atlas on the books, and this is the
[Guido]: Atlas Era, which was for most of the fifties, all the Fiis. And then, as we know,
[Guido]: some books are called Marvel Mystery comics, Including some we read to day, and then
[Guido]: they start putting the Marvel imprint on a few books. pres Superhero books in the
[Guido]: early sixties, until they officially become Marvel Comics. Yes, though this is Atlas
[Guido]: era heroes, So
[Guido]: what was your background with Atlas Era heroes, or Golden Age, Marvel, or any of
[Guido]: these characters?
[Rob]: very very little i of course knew that na moor and the human torch and captain
[Rob]: american all predated marvel
[Rob]: but i was not familiar with a most of these heroes i knew marvel boy but i thought
[Rob]: he was quasar which i said to you well they look exactly the same they have similar
[Rob]: powers it seems but i didn't even know i think that marvel boy was his own
[Rob]: character
[Rob]: and the only other character i knew is a character who is not a golden age
[Rob]: character who will talk about later three d man him i was also aware of
[Rob]: a seventy second character shoe horned into some of these golden age but i didn't
[Rob]: know the rest of them but i'm a big fan of the j s a over at at dc i'm a big fan of
[Rob]: the squadron supreme who also seems like to have a lot in common with these kind of
[Rob]: characters so this definitely fit into my wheelhouse even though i didn't know
[Rob]: these particular heroes what about what about you
[Guido]: Was it your first reading? though of of nineteen fifties, Atlas era comics
[Rob]: yeah i think well we
[Guido]: probably be cause we read. I mean, you read the first Captain America when we covered
[Guido]: that,
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: but that was timely, and that was much earlier than these.
[Rob]: yes and we read na moore's first appearance as well but that was also
[Guido]: Uhhuh. We also read that, but that was also timely, and also
[Rob]: timely yeah
[Guido]: well before these. So yeah,
[Rob]: but these would be concurrent with a lot of the j justice society of america stuff
[Rob]: over at dc
[Guido]: I have no idea, but I would assume. I mean, I would
[Rob]: yeah similar
[Guido]: assume they were publishing ▁j A in the Forties and Fifties, which is when most of
[Guido]: these issues are from.
[Rob]: but what struck me too is the big difference is those were already
[Rob]: fairly coherent longer stories and a lot of these kind of bite size
[Guido]: I think then you're not thinking about Forties and Fifties era. ▁js. A, though cause,
[Guido]: I think there there was not a long coherent story being told by any comic company in
[Guido]: the Forties and Fifties.
[Rob]: yeah i guess that's
[Guido]: I mean, a lot of what we read today is pre comics code, preeduction of the innocent
[Rob]: oh well yeah there's there's some stuff i think we'll get into in a bit but there's
[Guido]: Frederick Worththha,
[Rob]: definitely more violence in these than they what you would have in marvel in the
[Rob]: sixties
[Guido]: Yeah, this is my biggest outing into Golden Age Marvel. For sure, I was familiar with
[Guido]: all of these characters. Well, not the human robot. That one I was not familiar
[Guido]: with, but guerrilla man I was familiar with. He shows up a lot later. He probably
[Rob]: yeah gosh yeah
[Guido]: shows up more than any of these other characters. Obviously, I was familiar with
[Guido]: Namoa. She does show up later. though she's dead for much of Uh recent publication
[Guido]: history. Obviously, I was familiar with the Yellow Claw, the very racist Yellow Claw,
[Rob]: yes i hear i did no as well and i knew jimmy
[Guido]: and I was familiar with ▁jimmy Woo, and I and I just looked up the ▁jimmy Woo first
[Guido]: appearance in when we were watching one division,
[Rob]: hm
[Guido]: so I was familiar with him, And then
[Guido]: the Three D Men is a later recond one which will get into and Marvel Boy in Venus. I
[Guido]: probably only knew from how they looked, and that Venus is a pretty remarkable
[Guido]: nineteen forty eight female cover title that goes into Scifi and Horror At some
[Guido]: point, so I always wanted to read more Venus, but Venus is not uh collected. It's not
[Guido]: in any reprint edition. A lot of the marble Golden Age stuff they've reprinted,
[Guido]: obviously Captain America name, or some of the key stuff, but they really haven't
[Guido]: done as comprehensive a reprint as I would like,
[Rob]: hey
[Guido]: and Venus is definitely in that. I would love the nineteen issues of Venus, and they
[Guido]: are very expensive to get. so yeah,
[Rob]: i wonder if they do do you think they exist
[Rob]: in forms that they can reprint them like does
[Guido]: yes,
[Rob]: does marvel have the they have the original it's not like a mood ' so often we know
[Rob]: that happens with movies where the movie just can get lost
[Guido]: no, and there are lost comics. Of course, but these. these are not lost comics.
[Guido]: without a doubt, So and they, you know. they, A lot of what you read today is
[Guido]: actually reprinted in a collection, which I'll get into that collection for for our
[Guido]: listeners who want to go learn more. It's a great source and that has Venus number
[Guido]: one in it. But the other issues of Venus are not collected anywhere but anyway. So
[Guido]: that's my familiarity with these Golden Age folks and I'm really excited to dive
[Guido]: deeper into them.
[Rob]: yes so we will be our tour guides today and we are gonna grab our atlas if you will
[Guido]: That one worked. All right.
[Rob]: to explore this week's origins of the story
[Rob]: okay strap yourself in because we've got
[Guido]: We have a lot of credits.
[Rob]: a lot of issues that we're going to rattle off here and then we'll dive in a little
[Rob]: deeper into these characters but we're gonna start off with marvel mystery comics
[Rob]: number eighty two from may nineteen forty seven the coming of nemo
[Guido]: and so with most of these issues Sadly, the writers aren't known. This is one of
[Guido]: those. So the Arts by Kenbald Andsid Shores, Its inked by George Klyin and edited by
[Guido]: Stanley.
[Rob]: next up is venus number one from august nineteen forty eight venus comes to earth
[Guido]: This is art by George Klyin and ▁lynn Streeter, possibly written by Stanley, who also
[Guido]: edited it.
[Rob]: i'm sure stan would have taken the credit
[Rob]: next up is marvel boy number one from december nineteen fifty marvel boy and the
[Rob]: lost world
[Guido]: This is art by Russ Heeath, edited by Stan.
[Rob]: then the fabulously innate titled men's adventures number twenty six from march
[Rob]: nineteen fifty four gorilla man
[Guido]: This is art by Robert ▁q. Sail and edited by Stan.
[Rob]: then we have menace from mens number eleven from may nineteen fifty four i the
[Rob]: robots
[Guido]: This is John Rumeda's senior art Rob writer. again. Stan edited it,
[Rob]: yellow claw number one from october nineteen fifty six the coming of the yellow
[Rob]: claw
[Guido]: So this is written by Alfeldtein, pencilled and inked by Jominily, cored by Stan
[Guido]: Goldberg, edited by Stanley.
[Rob]: and we're gonna jump to the swinging seventies with marvel premiere number thirty
[Rob]: five from april nineteen seventy seven the three d man
[Guido]: This is written by Roy Thomas, penciiled by ▁jim Craig. It is inked by Da Ve Hunt,
[Guido]: coled by Georruso's lettered by John Casanza and edited by Roy. So the reason we read
[Guido]: all of these, it's the first appearance of each of these individuals, So in order we
[Guido]: have the first name or the first Venus, the First Marvel Boy, First Girl Man, First
[Guido]: Human Robot, First, ▁jimmy, Woo, and Yellow Claw, and the first three D Man, which is
[Guido]: written in seventy seven, though it's written as if it took place in the fifties, So
[Guido]: we read these as the first appearance of the characters that mean a lot in the what?
[Guido]: If so, let's go through these in chronologtic order. So Namoa, what do you think
[Rob]: love the art and this is very striking very interesting arts
[Rob]: and the story of course is is pretty simple but like you said this came out before
[Rob]: the comics code and he's really violent so in the story these gangsters have
[Rob]: machine guns that can operate under water and they go in and basically kill all of
[Guido]: I know?
[Rob]: atlantis except for namora and namo who's not there at the time because they
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: wanna steal pearls that are there
[Guido]: I know I love all the stuff with the pearls,
[Rob]: and it's it's pretty crazy i was not expecting them to just murder everybody
[Guido]: No, and noy, or even comments on like the death that surrounds him. So even though
[Guido]: it's not gory in any way, it definitely I agree, does not leave any question as to
[Guido]: the fact that these are murderers.
[Guido]: So
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: it's fine na mora, you know, doesn't have a too well defined personality
[Rob]: no
[Guido]: Here she does. She ends up being Naymore's cousin, though in this golden age era they
[Guido]: sort of play with the possibility of romance, but
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: they, they never cement that romance, which, so it's not a a lukein laa kind of
[Guido]: situation
[Guido]: where they then could safely recon and make them cousins, And that's how they
[Guido]: continued and the art. I have to say, one thing, the eyebrows on both Namore and
[Guido]: Namora are amazing. They
[Rob]: yes well they
[Guido]: are drag inspiration.
[Rob]: yes super thin joan crawford eyebrows
[Guido]: Yeah, high arch, Yeah, it's pretty
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: amazing. Even Namore has. Like you know, these, these long eyelashes and
[Rob]: is it
[Guido]: there's something very. He's drawn like a pretty flat top from Dick Tracy.
[Rob]: yes yes totally ah yeah i can definitely see that and her outfit too very space a
[Rob]: even though she's under water it's definitely got that buck rogers kind of thing
[Rob]: she's wearing this fabulous headpiece there
[Guido]: Yeah, with the cock sheell, like a antenna on on her headdress. Yeah, I like that a
[Guido]: lot.
[Rob]: and i my favorite thing too is just how it ends where they wind up going to namo
[Rob]: news reporter friend betty dean and nemo is just gonna become a roommate share
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: her apartment
[Guido]: Yeah, I agree. it's fun start and then she shows up in more Golden age stuff
[Guido]: and on to Venus. So
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: Venus is the next year, Nineteen forty eight again. It's so cool to me, and I can't
[Guido]: remember what comic book history book I was reading in the last few months. that
[Guido]: cited how remarkable Venus was for Marvel. At least in terms of being a titular
[Guido]: female character. She's a hero. She is the lead. The book starts off with her getting
[Guido]: this job at the beauty magazine and fixing people's relationships, but like I said,
[Guido]: it apparently then starts to incorporate Scifi and horror stuff, so it's fun. I had a
[Guido]: lot of fun reading this. As I said, I want to read more. I think her design is
[Guido]: awesome. I love
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: the outfit and the white hair.
[Rob]: yes her her outfit even has this you could even call it shocking blue color they
[Guido]: Yeah.
[Rob]: did the song venus
[Guido]: Oh, I don't know what that means.
[Rob]: the song venus that then ban banana rama did
[Guido]: I know the Bananarama Venus. I thought it was by Frankie Avalon or something,
[Rob]: well there was a song by now a song by shocking blue earlier
[Guido]: originally
[Guido]: back to Venus,
[Rob]: no
[Guido]: the hero, who's also Afrodite and also a god and also an alien. So it's sort of a
[Rob]: yes and also an alien mm hm w which which comes up later
[Guido]: proto Thor
[Guido]: situation, which comes up in the What if? Yeah,
[Rob]: yes the art is really striking it's so interesting that i guess it just shows you
[Rob]: people maybe before there was a true house style because the art in this compared
[Rob]: to the art in name mora is so totally different this has i don't know how how would
[Rob]: you describe it but it this has a much more
[Rob]: less comic bookie
[Rob]: style to it to me yes it's very pulp yeah
[Guido]: it's very pulp.
[Guido]: It's very sci fi pulp and I'm sure that is what the the goal here was.
[Rob]: yes i absolutely love the very very first panel where she's sitting on a cloud
[Rob]: leaning back and then the
[Guido]: Yeah, it's like a good girl pin up. kind of. Yeah.
[Rob]: yeah and then the male character is just like floating on a planet and he's just
[Rob]: saying she's out of this world i could see that being appropriated day in like a
[Rob]: hipster context because it just is so striking and the fonts they use for venus as
[Rob]: well with this yellow and red very cool
[Guido]: Yeah, I, I liked this book a lot and it's fun that she has these sort of superps to
[Guido]: to make people feel love, but that she's going to live well in this. She doesn't have
[Guido]: her powers any morere on
[Rob]: she has
[Guido]: earth, but I think she gets them over the course of her solo title, and then, of
[Guido]: course, when we meet her again she has them, but
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: you know she can't walk through the wall, which is a very funny moment where
[Rob]: it is a very funny moment yeah
[Guido]: she's trying to prove she's a god to this guy and she hits the Wa,
[Rob]: yeah that guy would definitely be canceled today whitney he
[Rob]: definitely just kind of a jerk shoving her around
[Rob]: and i also love that the other woman in it the secretary is gonna become her
[Rob]: rival her nemesis
[Guido]: her nemesis.
[Guido]: Yeah, no, yeah, it's a lot of good, Setus, and it's fun.
[Guido]: so moving on to,
[Guido]: I
[Rob]: wolf
[Guido]: guess my favorite, it's hard to decide between Venus and Marvel boy. Yeah,
[Rob]: oh your favorites oh my gosh i i i i was thinking it's it's so funny how night and
[Rob]: day these are because venus is there's not too much text in it you know it's very
[Rob]: shar it's actually sharp and funny where there's some jokes and then we get to just
[Rob]: pages and pages of nonstop
[Guido]: there is so much text in this and we
[Rob]: yes so much text
[Guido]: don't know who wrote it, but someone wrote a lot of text.
[Rob]: it's not even dialogue it's just p pages of explanations and i i'm just looking at
[Rob]: this one page here i'll just hold up obviously no one else can see a
[Guido]: It is. it is intense, but I think so
[Guido]: I. I like how cookookie his design is. I love. As you know, I love Quazar, which is
[Guido]: sort of built on Marvel Boy.
[Guido]: There's something though that I. This is what I can't get over, and I, I, I don't
[Guido]: think I overly ▁queer code things that that don't have that in it, But an Ironian
[Rob]: yeah tell me what is it
[Guido]: is a word from the eighteen sixties onward, meaning someone gay.
[Rob]: oh
[Guido]: So I find it hard to believe that this man in this really flamboy outfit with a
[Guido]: headband that everyone comments how pretty he is
[Guido]: is an Uranian, and that when we get to To Eronus, like the men who approach the ship,
[Guido]: that his father are all wearing dresses.
[Rob]: yes they are yes
[Guido]: so I find it hard to believe that there's not someone. And Now I asked you before we
[Guido]: recorded if you knew what an Ionnian was,
[Rob]: no yeah
[Guido]: and you did not, And so maybe it's so obscure a word. it's It's a sexology word. It's
[Guido]: a word that was used to in like scientific literature, predating, even I believe the
[Guido]: word homosexual. And
[Guido]: so I, you know, I was a. I studied gener studies like I, I guess I more likely to
[Guido]: know that word than most people. but I really wish I knew who wrote this. Maybe Russ
[Guido]: Heath, I mean, Russ Heeath has an the artist who maybe wrote it. Maybe didn't. It's
[Guido]: not clear who wrote it. he is. He's hard to find a lot of background information
[Guido]: about. I, I don't know. I tried to find if there was someone who might be gay related
[Guido]: to Marvel Boy. He only had two issues, and then they changed the title to Astonishing
[Guido]: Tales and keep telling a few Marvel Boy stories. But then he thought
[Rob]: h
[Guido]: of goes away for a while as all of these characters do. But I think I was so drawn in
[Guido]: by the fact that he's an Ironnian, that it just in my head I was like this has to be
[Guido]: gay. coed.
[Rob]: well he's very hunky he's super hunky with
[Rob]: blonde hair and he's he's huge gig you know very tall and built and of course his
[Rob]: most his biggest power aside from his telepathy comes from jewelry too
[Rob]: so there is that
[Guido]: That's true. It's true he has his light beams
[Rob]: yes yes
[Guido]: and he wants to bring peace everywhere And they, you know his father, who who went to
[Guido]: ▁uranus. Like talks about how it's everyone is peaceful. Everyone is superintelligent
[Guido]: and I,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: I, I'm just like. Oh, that sounds like a a gay utopia. To me.
[Rob]: yeah that's true
[Rob]: and do you think there's something to the fact that they that his last name and his
[Rob]: father's last name is grayson since there was already a super famous
[Rob]: como character with that last name
[Guido]: I have no idea it could have been a common name at the time. I, I don't. I don't see
[Guido]: it as a as a reference, but I have no idea. I don't see any connections to Dick
[Guido]: Grayson that they would be making here, so
[Rob]: no that's true yeah
[Guido]: I. I doubt it, so I enjoyed this. It is so dense, but I obviously I like his his
[Guido]: peace keeping thing. I love that he's fighting this character who's taking over a
[Guido]: continent
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: that raised itself out of the ocean. So
[Rob]: well that that's
[Guido]: it's such a weird story, too.
[Rob]: one of the biggest things with this issue is not only is it telling the origin of
[Rob]: marvel boy but there's this lost continent and it's kind of atlantis because
[Rob]: they're all fish people but they
[Guido]: Mhm.
[Rob]: never call it atlantis so there's just a lot you would think that alone would be
[Rob]: enough for a comic the fact that there's a continent coming up but it's also in
[Rob]: this guy's origin issue which is also just it's so weird there's so much happening
[Guido]: Yeah, and again with the precode stuff They,
[Guido]: they start slaughtering these fish, people,
[Rob]: oh my gosh
[Guido]: Uh, these
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: pirates or or whoever they are that are coming in, start slaughtering them. So it's
[Guido]: yeah. I I liked it. I like the art. Also, I think the it has. It's that pulp quality
[Guido]: again. The sci fi pulp quality, but it's a little more like Line heavy, and there's a
[Guido]: lot of shading in it, which I like, and then I do think they communicate well, Marvel
[Guido]: Boys prettiness, But and then if you look up against the pirate who has like this
[Guido]: beard and this mustusache, and all this chest hair like
[Rob]: a monic of course because every villain had a mole in these issues
[Guido]: a Monica, and an a weird symbol on his on his little black, like Biker's cap, and I
[Guido]: just think
[Rob]: he
[Guido]: you know for an artist in the fifties to be drawing such differentiated faces, it was
[Guido]: not always the case I. Think people often drew
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: one face. This one is not that case. So I liked Russ Ethart,
[Rob]: the villain is bas bosnian
[Guido]: Oh, was that where they
[Rob]: yes he was from bosnia but bosnia no longer existed i guess at this time
[Guido]: said he was fromm? So he was going to claim this continent, and
[Rob]: and he was denied citizenship by everywhere else so he's gonna claim this yeah and
[Guido]: even like at the end like he's He's still yelling that like this continent is his as
[Guido]: he's drowning to death. Like it. it's
[Rob]: yes it's
[Guido]: dark
[Rob]: y
[Guido]: and dramatic and I, I. I liked it. Yes, it's over written, but I like it.
[Guido]: You might have liked it more if we weren't reading it in the center of our biggest
[Guido]: readed ever, which I think was for this episode potentially our biggest read ever. So
[Guido]: Let's move on to the much shorter story Guerrilla Man,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: introducing us to Guerrilla Man as a weird men's adventure.
[Rob]: hm
[Guido]: The art and this is really great, too. This is
[Rob]: the art
[Guido]: much more in the E C style. I'd say
[Rob]: very easy very
[Guido]: yeah,
[Rob]: easy but also just looking at this first page the font which is in fur which i love
[Guido]: Yeah, very cool.
[Rob]: and this first image of one grilla man beating up another gorilla man doesn't it
[Rob]: read to you as very underground comics
[Guido]: Yeah, and I think that's yeah. I think E C sometimes looks underground to me, but
[Guido]: yeah, it could. especially. I think with all the there is a lot of line work like
[Guido]: the, even the fur on the gurillas, not just on the font
[Guido]: and then the shading that's on the people's faces. Yeah,
[Rob]: and and this is just this is it's so interesting because everything else we read up
[Rob]: to this point was superhero i mean you could say venus was superhero adjacent maybe
[Rob]: but here this is just definitely
[Rob]: not really a superhero story this is definitely very much ec kind of story
[Rob]: because he's got the he's having these visions the
[Guido]: Mhm.
[Rob]: sky is having these visions of a gorilla man he goes out to africa he finds a
[Rob]: gorilla man kills the gorilla man and then he becomes a gorilla man
[Guido]: yeah, yeah, and I don't know if they. I don't know if this story. I. I know it
[Guido]: continues, but I don't know if it then explains the origin, or if that doesn't happen
[Guido]: until more modern comics. But yeah, I think it's It is a fun
[Guido]: it. It also does that e c thing where it's narrating to
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: you the protagonist
[Guido]: And so you know at the end for it to say, Do you still want an answer to all this,
[Guido]: Then, look at your hands at your arms at your body. There's your answer. You are the
[Guido]: gurilla man, so I
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: like that way of it being constructed and that makes it feel. also.
[Rob]: definitely goes back to po and lovecraft too where you've got that narrator talking
[Rob]: about their journey and then that was so much stuff that tails from the crypt
[Rob]: picked up on as well
[Guido]: Yeah, so it's
[Rob]: yeah i love i love the i love the panel where he just shoots the snake
[Guido]: I know. Hope
[Rob]: there's a snake trying to kill him and he just again so pre code because he just
[Rob]: shoots that snake right in his head
[Guido]: well, I don't know if the code cared about killing a snake, but maybe they did.
[Rob]: i think they would yeah i mean not with a gun
[Guido]: I think they're more concerned about uh, gay people and women. So, Um, and I have to
[Guido]: say, too, I think
[Guido]: I, other than the The Africa as a place, which
[Rob]: hm
[Guido]: in of itself is racist,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: this girl, a man's story doesn't invoke any racist caricatures And I was surprised
[Guido]: because I was
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: expecting that with a story called Guerrilla Man, rightin in the fifties, where he
[Guido]: goes to ▁quote unquote Africa, But it it doesn't at all, and there's nothing ▁ coed
[Guido]: about race in it, so I
[Rob]: no although the
[Guido]: was glad to experience that.
[Rob]: the black people he does meet their has a bone in their hair and are basically
[Guido]: Oh, I miss that. Okay, so never mind.
[Rob]: colored completely blue and they're not even colored i mean they're they're
[Guido]: Okay, Okay, so I take it back. I'm wrong,
[Rob]: basically not colored okay you take that yes
[Guido]: I'm rugged, all right, so moving on we have the human robot. This is another mini
[Guido]: story in a larger anthology called
[Rob]: hm
[Guido]: Menace. It's a tale of maddening menace. I loved this story.
[Rob]: oh yeah me too
[Guido]: This was. This is pureies,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: because you know for anyone who's not familiar, Like the twist of it is that this,
[Guido]: the human robot will respond to the order that he's given. And and some one comes to
[Guido]: steal, like the a part of him, and blah blah blah, and then gives him an order
[Guido]: telling him to kill the man in the room. so he kills his creator. And then the guy
[Guido]: whos gave him that order comes into the room, and then the robot kills him because he
[Guido]: saying, kill the man in the room. Kill the man in the room, And I love the final
[Guido]: caption. It made me laugh out loud when we were reading it, because it says you know
[Guido]: it's talking again to the protagonist. The robot and says, your steel feet make
[Guido]: hollow clanking sounds at echo. raspingling in the narrow quarter. You're on your
[Guido]: way. You will kill men in rooms wherever you find them. You are a robot you must
[Guido]: obey. So I just love how threatening like any man in a room is at risk right now with
[Guido]: the robot's orders, So that's a fun easy twilight. ▁zone Ek ending.
[Rob]: yeah and and didn't you you get that i guess it's supposed to be his eyes and it's
[Rob]: very similar robot design to the robot in
[Rob]: the day the earth stood still but
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: it also in some of the panels almost looks like a joker e smile or like the batman
[Rob]: who laughs that conrad vi smile too cause you could see it as his eyes so you could
[Rob]: see that almost as him laughing
[Guido]: as like a forced teeth
[Guido]: exposing smile. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't see that, but I can see it now. it's
[Rob]: mhm yes
[Guido]: interesting.
[Guido]: It definitely could fit.
[Rob]: and i would have never in a million years i think this goes with gorilla man too
[Rob]: but especially with this character i would have never seen that this character
[Rob]: would have ever come back
[Rob]: into some kind of ongoing story because it's so much just this one shot of this
[Rob]: really cool twist at the end and basically the whole thing seems like it's set up
[Rob]: for this twist so yeah
[Guido]: Yeah, he even gets a whole reconed origin. Something else happens that night with his
[Guido]: creator that we don't find out until decades later.
[Rob]: oh interesting
[Guido]: Ah, so, but let's move on to
[Rob]: speaking of racism
[Guido]: speaking of racism exactly to Yellow Claw number one. And this is you'll notice. it
[Guido]: does have the Comics Code Authority seal on it and
[Rob]: ah yes
[Guido]: it is the first of the books we read So you can tell the comics Coat didn't care so
[Guido]: much about racism. They cared about a lot.
[Rob]: yeah that's true yes you mean cause the cause the the tag line of of yellow claw is
[Rob]: who or what is he
[Rob]: just to
[Guido]: And
[Rob]: ne you know drive it home
[Guido]: now often you know people do site, obviously ▁jimmy Woo as
[Rob]: listen
[Guido]: being a really progressive
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: depiction representation because there is nothing caricaturish about him other than
[Guido]: the yellow coloring, which is a problem throughout this whole issue, but otherwise he
[Guido]: is a very capable serious hero who works for. In this. The He's a special agent.
[Guido]: Uh, do they name he? Yeah, he's a special f B I agent. This
[Rob]: is
[Guido]: is preshield. Obviously, so it's cool to see the introduction of ▁jimmy Woo, and to
[Guido]: know that it's a character that then gets resurrected in the modern age,
[Guido]: The Yellow Claw and his niece, and all that shows up in the whatff, But I couldn't
[Guido]: care less to to
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: explore it any further.
[Rob]: and we talked a lot about fu man chu when we did our shang shi episode and clearly
[Guido]: Mhm,
[Rob]: it is them ripping that off
[Rob]: down to the fact that fu manchu has his daughter and here there's a
[Rob]: a niece or
[Guido]: the niece, Yeah, yeah, I wonder why. I guess. I guess in nineteen fifty six, maybe
[Guido]: there were F Manu comics coming out, or maybe they didn't get the license, which they
[Guido]: then obviously did twenty years later when they started doing chunky comics, So
[Rob]: well and there was a series of christopher lee movies around this time too so there
[Rob]: might have been some popularity with that character
[Guido]: in fifty six
[Rob]: yeah i don't know the exact year but it would have been around that time karloff
[Rob]: played him first of course all these were
[Guido]: right,
[Rob]: people you know not who were not actually of asian descent but actually carlo at
[Rob]: least was part india indian so at least there was a little bit of a connection
[Rob]: there but
[Rob]: yeah no i think it was it was definitely around that time it's interesting too that
[Rob]: they called the comic yellow claw not jimmy mou since he is the hero it's pretty
[Rob]: uncommon to have a comic named after the villain
[Guido]: Well, I, I guess If you, what you're saying is why they created this to get on to any
[Guido]: sort of
[Guido]: movie craze, then they, that was what they were trying to sell. Not ▁jimmy
[Rob]: yes and and speaking of characters based on crazes
[Guido]: our last introduction to a not golden age, but ret cond Golden Age character here,
[Guido]: The three D men.
[Rob]: yes this was the one character of these that i was familiar with probably just from
[Guido]: Well, that'scause I've bought these issues. when, when we,
[Guido]: when we've been out years ago, I
[Guido]: saw these issues. the Marvel premiers with him and bought them And so that might be
[Guido]: why you're familiar with them. Because he. really.
[Rob]: i also think
[Rob]: he gets a bit of a bigger
[Guido]: it does show up in the late nineties reboot of Avengers, so that might be why. too.
[Rob]: well i was gonna say he gets a big of a bigger write up i think in the marvel
[Rob]: handbook as well maybe
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: because that was coming out a little closer to his debut so i remember him from
[Guido]: well, they change who he is, So it's not the person we meet in. whatever his name is,
[Rob]: that
[Guido]: Chad,
[Guido]: C. C. his name is. I don't even remember
[Rob]: well it's very confusing which we i wanna talk a little bit about because
[Guido]: his powers.
[Rob]: yeah well so first off they just keep saying that he has the strength the combined
[Rob]: strength and other things of three met which is kind of funny
[Guido]: Well, he has everything of three men. Yeah, he has the resilience of three men, the
[Guido]: endurance of three men, the speed of three men. Like it. It's an absurd nonsensical
[Guido]: power set. but yeah go
[Rob]: yeah because also it does it makes it sound like well that doesn't sound very
[Rob]: impressive
[Guido]: well, I guess
[Guido]: it's not it's. It's like it's being multiplied right. Like so it's not that he has
[Guido]: the speed of three men, It's that he
[Rob]: sure yes yes i got that yes yes but
[Guido]: has three times the speed of a man. So, I guess if you think about your strength and
[Guido]: multiply it by three that you know
[Rob]: but here's
[Guido]: would be quite strong,
[Rob]: here's the other weird here's the other thing that doesn't quite work is so his
[Rob]: name's three d man he's got the strength and speed of three people but his costume
[Rob]: which of course is based on the three d glasses of the of this era his costume is
[Rob]: the two colors he and he's basically two people combined together there's a it's a
[Rob]: little fire storm esque right where he's like
[Guido]: I guess I can't quite understand that, Because so yeah, he has this brother who he
[Guido]: sort of merges with, but he lives in his brother's glasses.
[Rob]: yeah he lives in his brother's glasses i i thought the whole time this was going to
[Rob]: be that the narration was gonna be tricking us and it was the brother the brother
[Rob]: is
[Rob]: disabled so i thought it was gonna be oh the brother is actually three d man not
[Rob]: the the
[Rob]: disabled brothers three d men not the jock but and then he kind of is but also then
[Guido]: Well, he is kind of
[Rob]: would it almost feels like there should be three people like there should have been
[Rob]: someone else involved that stick with the three angle
[Guido]: well. that's it's weird. I, and first of all, they add the absurd thing that he only
[Guido]: can stay this way for three hours. Um,
[Rob]: yes which you know you and i were just talking about that because we wa just
[Rob]: watched dark man where he
[Guido]: yes, that's true.
[Rob]: can only have his mask for ninety nine minutes of course our man can only be our
[Rob]: men for an hour even so yes
[Guido]: but but anyway, so at the, I guess as the three hours are ending, he splits into a
[Guido]: red and green man and
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: then the red and green man go into the glasses of his brother like I, so I don't
[Guido]: understand. I guess he's been split into two people and then he joins with his
[Guido]: brother. It's so ridiculous. I. I. that's it. I have nothing
[Rob]: yeah and
[Guido]: else to say, except it's ridiculous.
[Rob]: well and one last question before we move on to our what if why do you know Guido
[Rob]: why was he written in the fifties rather than being in the seventies
[Guido]: I have no idea. Wroy did that. Not a clue. it was. It was a choice. I mean it, and
[Guido]: some of it could have come from. I don't know. He might have wanted to add to Golden
[Guido]: Age heroes. build up that roster a little. He also
[Guido]: then can create a time line where the scrolls have existed. Even at the end, hints
[Guido]: that potentially Hitler was a scroll,
[Rob]: yes hitler was a scroll
[Guido]: because now the squirorels had been around since the fifties or the. Although, That
[Guido]: doesn't then make sense, But it says who can say which of humanity Scrges was truly
[Guido]: human, and which was a scralllcause. The scrollls have been on earth, so
[Rob]: well the first the first drawing there though was napoleon so maybe the s scrolls
[Guido]: yeah, I guess he's just sort of saying well, if the Scrollls were there in the
[Rob]: were actually that far back
[Guido]: fifties, they could have been there in the thirties, and they could have been there
[Guido]: in the seventeen hundreds, and all this stuff. So it's it is very strange. Three de
[Guido]: mend only lasted for three issues of Marvel Premiere and then was brought over in
[Guido]: different ways as different characters into more mainstream titles. But
[Guido]: yeah, it was a strange thing there, but those that was our team members. That's our
[Guido]: goal, Golden Age set of a team.
[Guido]: and that's it. I think those are all our origins issues. So
[Rob]: that's yes
[Guido]: fun. fun to read some weird stuff, but fun to read.
[Rob]: yes
[Rob]: and and now even perhaps weirder is that they all come together and form a team
[Guido]: Well,
[Rob]: which
[Guido]: let's talk about that.
[Rob]: yes let us explore the multiversity
[Rob]: things
[Rob]: and today we are going back to the world of what if what if volume one issue number
[Rob]: nine from june nineteen seventy eight and the question is what if the avengers had
[Rob]: been formed during the one thousand nine hundred fifty seconds with a slightly
[Rob]: different cover question
[Rob]: of what if the avengers had fought evil during the one thousand nine hundred fifty
[Rob]: seconds neither of those questions really summarize what this issue is really about
[Rob]: but
[Guido]: Well now, I think, if it for, I think if they formed it does, but we'll get there. So
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: it's written by Roy Thomas and Don Glutt, pencill by Alan Cupperberg, inked by Bill
[Guido]: Black, coolored, by Call Gafferd, letter by Thomaszksky edited by Roy It, his Earth
[Guido]: Nine nine, ▁zero four. I'll get to that in just a second, a little bit on the
[Guido]: background, so Roy came up with the question, but then didn't actually write it and
[Guido]: he later said, I wish I'd written the Nineteen Fifties Avenger story myself. I really
[Guido]: wanted to, not to fault Don's story, which was along lines of what I wanted. Allan
[Rob]: very
[Guido]: worked really hard on the penciling. Though his art wasn't as developed as I would
[Guido]: have liked. I think that my input was a general plot line or concept, and at most a
[Guido]: couple of sentences. Even with the nineteen Fifties Avengers, I had a general idea
[Guido]: that Three De Man, Venus and Marvel Boy would be in the book. Gri Man, Human Robot
[Guido]: were Donwn's edions, which I think worked very well, And Don then says that Yes, Roy
[Guido]: would come up with an idea and then let him run with it. The only rule was that he
[Guido]: could not use Captain Americas Submariner or the original Human Torch,
[Guido]: and this was one of his favorite stories or his favorite What if story. He said. He
[Guido]: grew up in the fifties, which was not that long
[Rob]: it just
[Guido]: ago when writing this in the seventies, and he had so many fond memories of that era
[Guido]: and could insert a lot of injokes and references to the Fifties in this story.
[Guido]: So, let me talk about the Earth designation
[Guido]: and some of this is going to come up in our future issue that, in our pondering the
[Guido]: possibilities segment, but you'll notice in the framing device that while Uatu is
[Guido]: present,
[Guido]: Walter doesn't have a lot to do here, because in fact the Avengers are the framing
[Guido]: device, so the question is raised in the text
[Guido]: whether or not this is the six one six that they're watching in the nineteen fifties,
[Guido]: or whether or not it's an alternate timeline
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: and it's not even answered in the text, so that's why. The Earth nine nine o Four
[Guido]: designation is controversial.
[Rob]: na yes
[Guido]: Now it's It's potentially settled and then potentially disturbed by the two things
[Guido]: that we read next. but to say focused on the What if we even have U. ▁ought to
[Guido]: staying at the end. Still you may ask. Did this adventure just witnessed occur in
[Guido]: your reality or in some other parallel cosmos? Did those avengers of a bygone day
[Guido]: ever return to fight once more together? Perhaps I shall provide the answer in time,
[Guido]: and
[Rob]: is
[Guido]: perhaps not, for it is my task only to observe.
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: So there is a question that was left on the table for at least twenty years
[Guido]: as to whether or not they were seeing a ret con story for the six one six They were
[Guido]: seeing that the Avengers formed in the fifties with this team at the end We see the
[Guido]: pres say to them. You know what? I want This to be a secret. These are suspicious
[Guido]: times people are are very suspicious of communists, and I love that he says a few
[Guido]: simplistic souls even feel that comic books, and anything resembling Hanbook
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: characters are responsible for every social
[Rob]: love that line yeah
[Guido]: ill. And so he tells them that he has to cover up the fact that they existed, so it
[Guido]: actually would have worked as a recon. Now having read it for the first time. Like,
[Guido]: what did you think? Did you feel like it was a recon of the Six? One Six? Did you
[Guido]: feel like it was an alternate earth? What did you think?
[Rob]: i i think i thought it was a recon of the six one six because everything else
[Rob]: eisenhower's the president he's the president you're talking about there
[Guido]: Mhm?
[Rob]: so everything else
[Guido]: But is king?
[Rob]: seems to exist out well
[Guido]: They make sure
[Rob]: de
[Guido]: to say Elvis is king and that everyone loves Lucy?
[Rob]: yes yes exactly so there there are so again there's references to people in our
[Rob]: earth yellow claw was a whose the villain here was also a villain in the six
[Rob]: hundred one six and in nick fury agents of shield which i love so it seems like
[Rob]: there's so much stuff from the six hundred one six i just figured it really was
[Rob]: this timeline we had just never really heard of
[Guido]: Yeah, well, we'll get. We'll get to the answer of that question or a potential answer
[Guido]: later. And then what do you think of just the issue overall,
[Rob]: i really enjoy the issue i actually think they really work well as a team each one
[Rob]: of them has
[Rob]: their personality that fits in really well three d man is the wise cracking one and
[Rob]: gorilla man is very much the ben grim of the group kind of a sour push but with
[Rob]: also some good lines there
[Rob]: then you have the robot which actually has some really funny jokes because he
[Rob]: doesn't really understand a lot of stuff gets lost in translation for him
[Guido]: Mhm, and that's where a lot of the time references Donngle. it talks about like the
[Guido]: pop
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: culture references come in for sure.
[Rob]: then yeah you have venus which there's some fun stuff with her love powers which
[Rob]: actually get explored here and one marvel boy is just kind of the general he leader
[Rob]: leader type with little less personality but i think i think it works really well
[Rob]: as a unit
[Guido]: Yeah, it is. And so you asked me before we record it like, Had this group been a team
[Guido]: and no, this is the first time they're a team. So whether it's
[Guido]: Roy's idea or don's writing, or just the nature of them, I agree. I think they work
[Guido]: well as a team. I think they do what you like so much about the ▁j. s. a, which is
[Guido]: that they
[Guido]: such a random hodgepodge of people of weird people and flambmboyant people, and
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: that works really well for a fun team. I mean that's what makes the Thunderbolts work
[Guido]: really well. It makes a few teams work really well. That are not the Adventurs, even
[Guido]: though they call
[Rob]: y
[Guido]: themselves the Avengers here. so I think that is cool that Th these people had never
[Guido]: been on a team. and just by virtue of all being Fifties characters, with the
[Guido]: exception of that three de mans shoe horn in
[Guido]: they, he decided to throw them together, and it works.
[Rob]: yeah it's funny because you you and i were talking actually a little bit right
[Rob]: before we started recording that the vendors that are
[Rob]: the vendors we know who are you know book handing this
[Rob]: are the aren't super fun you've got thor
[Guido]: No,
[Rob]: ironman captain america the vision and beast beast is the only one really with any
[Rob]: kind of personality in these pages so actually when you contrast them where they're
[Rob]: all kind of super serious with these characters i would actually prefer the
[Rob]: nineteen fifties avengers
[Guido]: even at the end when they each likened themselves to one of
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: these nineteen fifties aveenders, they choose the most boring characteristic. like
[Guido]: Captain America says that he's mu like three de men because it's so much like the
[Guido]: Super Soldier Serra made him stronger and faster. And then Iron Man chooses Marvel
[Guido]: Boy because they both have repulsor rays.
[Guido]: Now Beast makes a joke here, he says he chose Guerrilla Man, even though he likes his
[Guido]: own haircut better than Goerrilla. Man's vision chooses human robot because he's a
[Guido]: noble creature, And yet Ananroid and I love that Thor chooses Venus because they're
[Guido]: both like, have these immortal powers and are from a pantheon of gods. So but those.
[Guido]: they're also boring. I'm like, give gim mee, the nineteen Fifties ones backcause.
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: You guys are not very interested.
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: I agree with that and then the villains.
[Rob]: oh my gosh
[Guido]: the assemble, I am. I'm actually a little upset with myself that I didn't have us
[Guido]: read each of these villain's first appearance
[Rob]: oh my gosh
[Guido]: because they are.
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: They are acastic characters again. We have.
[Rob]: yeah we should say who they are
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: because they they are not they're not characters that anyone will be familiar with
[Rob]: i think
[Guido]: no, so we have skull faceac, whose, a skeleton of a demon burned at the stake
[Rob]: of an alleged demon
[Guido]: and restored
[Rob]: sorry he's an alleged demon
[Guido]: in this century by fifty million volts of electricity. And so
[Rob]: mmm hmm
[Guido]: that apparently happens in Mystic number six. So these are still some Golden age
[Rob]: mm hm and he looks just like marvel marvel death
[Guido]: Marvel books.
[Rob]: he's wearing the purple purple cloak yeah
[Guido]: Yeah, he looks just like death. Yeah,
[Guido]: and so then Electro, the Russian assassin has, it looks like a, I don't know a sort
[Guido]: of Frankenstein creature, but wearing like a feez hat,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: and with
[Rob]: with
[Guido]: a a hammer and sickle
[Rob]: mm
[Guido]: etched on his chest, and he, I guess just has electricity, and he debuts in an early
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: Captain America.
[Rob]: yeah at least the spiderman electro you know his costume reads as electricity i
[Rob]: don't know why this guy's powers are electricity and yet he
[Guido]: No, he's like a ▁zombie creature.
[Rob]: he's like a green lizard man with a fez yeah
[Guido]: Yeah, and then we have the Cold Warrior who's like a Ice man, mixed with like ▁zoom
[Guido]: from the Flash because he has like a more
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: of a slick sort
[Rob]: um
[Guido]: of helmet on. And he just is Ice Man, though his name is the Gold Warrior
[Rob]: well speak yeah
[Guido]: and his debut is in Marvel Premier, So he debuts with the Three D man.
[Rob]: yeah he's the most
[Rob]: he's the one that you could see in something else because it's so okay his his
[Rob]: powers are ice his costume is pretty standard i could see that what makes him
[Rob]: really weird is he's called the cold warrior because he hates commies
[Guido]: But he's been like tricked by by Yellow Claws potion
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: or whatever, or by the German assistant at Yellowlaw Has he's been tricked into
[Guido]: joining this team, But I
[Rob]: um
[Guido]: saved the best for last,
[Rob]: yes of course
[Guido]: of course, because this was obviously going to be your favorite. So who's that
[Rob]: that is the great video
[Guido]: the Great video,
[Rob]: a laboratory explosion gave him x ray vision but also the power to kill with his
[Rob]: prolonged stare
[Guido]: And so he debuts in Marvel Boy. He's actually in a story from Marvel Boy number One
[Guido]: that we didn't read. We only read one of the stories in that book And he was another
[Guido]: of the stories in that book and he.
[Rob]: and he's dressed like a stage magician basically he's
[Guido]: Yeah, are like, um, ▁zatara, ▁. Aana's father
[Rob]: yes yes
[Guido]: in D. C. Yeah,
[Rob]: totally yeah
[Guido]: yeah, so this assemblage to villains is awesome
[Guido]: even though the battle scene, you know, it works kinda well. They do the typical like
[Guido]: Te Moont Team thing where they discover that they're with the wrong person, Like
[Rob]: listen
[Guido]: Three D Man, and the Great Video are not a good match. They like Great Video is able
[Guido]: to hurt Three D Man, And so Marvel Boy comes over and hits them and so like they do
[Guido]: that good sort of team thing with it. But they're just so fon. I love that they punch
[Guido]: Electro into the Skeleton guy, whatever his name, even, was, Uh, Skull face, and he
[Guido]: shatters and becomes a bunch of bones. And
[Rob]: yes and then they knock somebody else out with one of his bones at the end
[Guido]: yeah, it's it's really fun that they introduced all those people into it.
[Rob]: yeah there's a fabulous sense of fun throughout all of this a definitely a wink and
[Rob]: a nudge but not in a
[Rob]: not not too much of that i i
[Guido]: No,
[Rob]: love the other thing i really love throughout this and he says this so many times
[Rob]: is whenever three d man gets hit or something he'll always say well that would have
[Rob]: really hurt if i didn't have my try strength or
[Guido]: Yes,
[Rob]: whatever and it almost seems like don glut probably may be giving a little bit of a
[Rob]: poke to roy's creation of okay this this guy's powers is that he's as strong as as
[Rob]: three people combine really that's it
[Guido]: yeah, I think that could be true, and I also love. On that note, their official
[Guido]: battle cry is Go, Avengers. Go. like I, I
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: love that. it's you know. it's meant to be different. It's meant to not be a venter's
[Guido]: assemble, of course, but it's just Govengers go. I don't know
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: if that's pulling on any Fifties reference that I'm missing, but it's silly and fun,
[Guido]: so I like that now Venus is blonde. I would. I like her better when she has white
[Guido]: hair, but I'm willing to look past that and of course Auatu in this is
[Guido]: real beefy,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: real thick, and has like an eye of osyis. Like if you
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: look on his costume in the final panels, like his costume is very different than it's
[Guido]: ever looked before or since.
[Rob]: mmm hmm
[Guido]: But it's fun to see a different version.
[Rob]: yeah and it almost feels like maybe because you said roy started this and then don
[Rob]: took it over because
[Rob]: o wau is kind of then you know as you said he's he's we see him at the very
[Rob]: beginning but really it's the avengers that are the wrap around and then about
[Rob]: halfway through the issue they just plop wau down and its almost like he hits the
[Rob]: pause button and says okay wait a second maybe i should explain who all these
[Rob]: people are
[Guido]: Yeah, and he gives the origin for each person, which is fun because he does a good
[Guido]: job. Each one is like three panels, and he captures pretty much everything that we
[Guido]: read.
[Guido]: So I'm not going to talk about this earth being revisited because we're about to get
[Guido]: into that detail. so I'm not going to go into whether or not we want to go back to
[Guido]: this earth. We can save that question
[Rob]: mm
[Guido]: as we uh, ponder. So
[Rob]: yes well let's jump in our space needle wait that's now silver bullet so our silver
[Rob]: bullet which
[Guido]: is that what Marvel Boys rocket is?
[Rob]: is the name of marvel boyce that's marvel boy's rocket is this silver bullet and
[Guido]: He also has the flying saucer, Though,
[Rob]: he yes there's they're not always super consistent
[Rob]: and while we do that we will ponder possibilities
[Rob]: and Guido how did you come up with this list
[Guido]: so this was hard. I started with a very big list. You might have remembered that I
[Guido]: warned you when we were beginning to read for this that we were going to be reading a
[Guido]: lot. I ended up trimming it.
[Rob]: yes and we had already read a lot all of our
[Rob]: origin issues and then you were like there's even more
[Guido]: I know I knew the origin,
[Guido]: so so some of that is because.
[Guido]: All right, So what happens with the agents of Atelat, They they end up becoming Call
[Guido]: the A. S. Valllic,
[Rob]: eight
[Guido]: spoiler alert. So what happens with the agents of Alice is that they don't show up
[Guido]: for another,
[Guido]: as as a unit. Certainly they don't show up for another thirty years,
[Guido]: and one story happens in that thirty years that goes into the What if Which will get
[Guido]: into on this list. But and outside of that Venus shows up a little bit in Thor. they
[Guido]: end up confirming that there's an aphrodite that's different from Venus. Naymoa shows
[Guido]: up. She's been dead for a while. She ends up getting resurrected
[Guido]: around what we read. Guerrilla Man shows up a bit. They do some ret Connie stuff
[Guido]: where the Agents of Atlas. some of them met the ▁x Men in the Silver Age. That's in a
[Guido]: much later series though that they wreck con. So I had to go into their history and
[Guido]: figure out what pieces
[Guido]: seem to derive from
[Guido]: the world that we visited, And so we start with
[Guido]: an issue that actually
[Guido]: directly takes on the whatff,
[Rob]: is
[Guido]: and then we move into the more modern interpretations, which and I just ended up
[Guido]: having us read the introductory issues so you could get a sense, even though a lot
[Guido]: happens off out of the issue that we read. So I'll film a lot of blanks, but I ended
[Guido]: up with three issues that I thought were necessary for us to understand how this
[Guido]: story has created a lot of possibilities.
[Rob]: yes so first up is avengers forever issue number five from april nineteen ninety
[Rob]: nine and the story is past imperfect future tense
[Guido]: So this, of course is the mini series Aveenters for ever, really important series.
[Guido]: For the Avenger's history, Lots of time travel, Earth travel, Immorts and Rick Jones
[Guido]: are really important. In this, it's written by Kert Bussiac, Roger Stern, pencilled
[Guido]: by Carlos Potco, Inced by Hazoos Marrio, coloured by Steve Oliff, lettered by Richard
[Guido]: Sarkings and Albert to Sheens, and edited by Tom Brivt,
[Guido]: So here's why we read this and here's the deal with this issue and then and then you
[Guido]: can talk a little bit about what we see. So Rick Jones, when he is looking at all the
[Guido]: different time lines and the different versions of Avengers, he ends up seeing this
[Guido]: version of Avengers,
[Guido]: And so what this story ends up doing
[Guido]: is
[Guido]: potentially not sure. I agree. But at this point in Nineteen Ninety Nine, it ends up
[Guido]: answering the question as to what were Beast, Iron Man Vision and Captain America and
[Guido]: Thorpe seeing? Was it our past or an alternate history, And this ends up saying it's
[Guido]: an alternate timeline.
[Guido]: So we meet the team. We find out a little bit about where the team has been and
[Guido]: what's been happening and what's going on with them. It's still though in the past
[Guido]: here, but it's later in the past because we have Richard Nixon and then they end up
[Guido]: dying and that time line ends up getting wiped out. so that's pretty much it. But
[Guido]: what do you think about just getting to meet this team again, and then all this
[Guido]: subplot with Richard Nixon, and whether or not Nixon was a scroll in all stuff?
[Rob]: yeah and i don't think it's necessarily that much later because i no actually it's
[Rob]: not because um nixon was eisenhower's vice president and they say
[Rob]: uh that he is the vice president here so
[Guido]: Okay, so then it's still taking place in the fifties.
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: Okay,
[Rob]: exactly
[Rob]: well i i i i liked it but i don't
[Guido]: I mean, you got dropped into the middle of a very
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: dense story.
[Rob]: i thought and this is going to be a course i think this is going to be across the
[Rob]: other two issues that we're going to discuss in a second i just didn't think that
[Rob]: it had
[Rob]: the magic interactions as a group
[Rob]: that they had in the what if
[Guido]: Yeah, I agree with that.
[Rob]: their their personalities were a little less defined in many ways and i thought
[Rob]: especially when you have these
[Rob]: big characters who are
[Rob]: inherently ridiculous on some level that you have to embrace that a little bit more
[Rob]: and this was playing it a little bit more seriously serious
[Guido]: Yeah, it's a very. Yeah, it's a very serious run. They're also in it very briefly. I
[Guido]: mean they're basically in it to to destroy them. ▁ultimately, in this attempt to
[Guido]: destroy all these different iterations of aveenters in the multi verse,
[Guido]: so
[Guido]: yeah, I don't. I don't have much else to say, I wish for more from it, but I think we
[Guido]: can move on because I think the next thing is really important and starts to make me
[Guido]: question this issue. So what are the next two things we read
[Rob]: well the next two things are agents of atlas number one from october two thousand
[Rob]: six the golden history
[Guido]: And that's
[Rob]: and agent
[Guido]: written by Jeff Parker and pencilled by Leonard Kirk, inked by Chris Justice, colored
[Guido]: by Mi. Michelle Maden lettered by David Landnfer and edited by Mark
[Rob]: wait
[Guido]: Panacea and Nathan Cosby,
[Rob]: and then the agents of atlas from october twenty nineteen
[Rob]: behind the veil and it's a backup story
[Guido]: This is Yes, and this backup is written again by Jeff Parker. It's pencilled by Carlo
[Guido]: Pugulian inked by Jason Paz, colored by Donno Sancho, ▁ Almara Letter by Josebinno,
[Guido]: edited by Mark Pancha, Lindsey Kohck and Tom Gronman So you can see Jeff Parker, sort
[Guido]: of owned the Agents of Atlas, while he created
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: the Edge of the Fallacy, Own these characters for fifteen years, pretty much, and
[Guido]: then handed them off to Greg Pack, So Gregg Pack was writing the new Agents of
[Guido]: Atlas's story in twenty nineteen, That out of War of the Realms, this backu is
[Guido]: helping bridge the original Agents of Atlas to the new one, so. We read these two
[Guido]: things because the Two thousand Six Agents of Atlas is the first time that these
[Guido]: characters are together,
[Guido]: Arguably in the six, one six, but definitelyi, Since the what if
[Guido]: and then
[Guido]: they try to make them a team. So this is a mini series. As this is the six issue mini
[Guido]: series About two years later, they get an ongoing series. They play a medium role,
[Guido]: small, medium role in the Darken Ren. Their show up in Secret Invasion. They get
[Guido]: another ongoing title in Two thousand Nine. Then they show up when ▁x Men versus
[Guido]: Agents of Atlas, than they shop in Avenger's versus Agents of Atlas. So there is
[Guido]: really an attempt to build this team as something important in the Marvel universe
[Guido]: during this era. But the Two thousand Six mini series is what reintroduces them, and
[Guido]: then the Two thousand Nineteen is what positions them with where they are now, and
[Rob]: is it
[Guido]: before we get into detail what I want to say about what this means for the Earth
[Guido]: designation
[Guido]: is
[Guido]: that in this first issue of Two thousand Six,
[Guido]: ▁jimmy, Woo
[Guido]: recounts the What if events
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: as if they happen in the six One Six, so to me that this
[Guido]: proves that this team existed in the nineteen fifties as the Avengers,
[Rob]: hm
[Guido]: and there's just no way around that like
[Rob]: yeah no it
[Guido]: unless you want to. Dismiss every agents of Atlas story that's come out over the last
[Guido]: eighteen years. You have to accept that the what if, either the what if is just a
[Guido]: different version of the events, the same events happening in the six, one six, or,
[Guido]: or we ignore the aveenters forever, or the event forever found a very similar world.
[Guido]: That's
[Rob]: yeah
[Guido]: not the W, and destroys it. But this proves the the only way this works. The only way
[Guido]: the agents of Atlas work in any of the story telling over the last sixteen years. Is
[Guido]: that what if happened? Because otherwise
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: there's no reason for this team to be together and again. ▁jimmy actually recounts
[Guido]: exactly the what if, including the kidnapping of the President? Everything?
[Rob]: yeah and yellow claw and all those things yeah
[Guido]: So I kind of love that, like there's something.
[Guido]: I, the reason I, I'm so into this episode and that we did this reading is cause I
[Guido]: love that sort of weaving of story and
[Rob]: is
[Guido]: you know it's sort of retcon. But it's not like Jeff Parker's clearly taking pieces
[Guido]: from the What if that he thinks are
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: canonical, or he wants to be canonical. And then he's building from them and I think
[Guido]: it works really well. It's really cool.
[Guido]: So what did you think of this sort of relaunch Attempt to to build them out again?
[Rob]: yeah i mean i actually i really love the part of this
[Rob]: of the two thousand six issue where we're actually
[Rob]: exploring going back and seeing this story from kind of a new perspective i thought
[Rob]: it was really good there's some fun
[Rob]: uh moments in there i love when they rescue eisenhower and he actually doesn't
[Rob]: necessarily want almost be rescued
[Guido]: Yes,
[Rob]: because he's being tampered by these women who are fanning him and everything so i
[Rob]: thought that was really uh fun and you know i didn't love some of the changes the
[Rob]: so the human robot does not speak anymore in these ones which i miss because i
[Rob]: thought some of the best moments from the what if were him not understanding things
[Rob]: the little he does speak in that one so i i would like him to have spoke
[Rob]: but
[Rob]: then the other thing i'm kind of uh interested in and i don't know if you know
[Rob]: anything more about this is the way they manifest
[Rob]: venus' powers which is
[Guido]: Yeah, through singing.
[Rob]: a very specific way well uh not just through singing but then you see her giant
[Rob]: naked body in the sky
[Guido]: Well, I don't know if that's I think. that's more just
[Guido]: a visual trick to sort of understand her on the presence, but the singing thing shows
[Guido]: up a lot. I don't know why. In the in the next issue she actually is singing Joene,
[Guido]: like they always actually
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: have her singing recognizable love songs and that's kind of fun.
[Rob]: well it actually say in the twenty nineteen issue that she is a former siren of
[Rob]: ancient myth
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: so i guess they and she's and she's a red head now too so
[Guido]: yes.
[Rob]: she's got some changes so maybe they changed it from her being a god to her being
[Guido]: well,
[Guido]: yeahcause, like I said, they established that Aphroditeite exists and she is not
[Rob]: a mythical siren
[Guido]: aphroity, so they had to differentiate her slightly from afroditeing. The Two
[Guido]: thousand Six series
[Guido]: is huge, Especially I mean this series. I think people are sleeping on. You know, to
[Guido]: talk about speculation. I, I'll have to mention it to our our friends at Spectilles,
[Guido]: because this reintroduces ▁jimmy Woo
[Rob]: is he
[Guido]: ▁jimmy Woo. At this point they've aged him in real time, and in a similar
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: way to they did with Nick Fury, And this Two thousand Six series reintroduces a young
[Guido]: ▁jimmy Woo.
[Rob]: mhm
[Guido]: So it is the reason we have the ▁jimmy woo that we have now in the M C U, and in any
[Guido]: comics is because of Agents of Atlas, and ▁jimmy Woo was actually playing a huge role
[Guido]: in the current iteration of Agents of Alice, although the title keeps getting
[Guido]: cancelled. Sadly, and so, I don't think Gregg Pack has gone to tell the whole story
[Guido]: that he wants to. But yeah, it's pretty
[Guido]: important that they resurrect this young ▁jimmy woo, because otherwise it's an old
[Guido]: ▁jimmy, who's dying
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: until the final page of the first issue.
[Guido]: And so that's really important about this and then the just real quick one tid bit.
[Guido]: I. I jumped ahead to this mini series. even though I didn't have us read the whole
[Guido]: thing. It closes with the ret con that the human robots creator that night, when he
[Guido]: was before, he sort of retooled him, and then he ended up getting corrupted by the
[Guido]: other instructions.
[Guido]: He like
[Guido]: super shocked himself to put part of his consciousness into the robot. And that's
[Guido]: what makes the human robot human is that he actually has a part of the creator
[Rob]: yes well they keep calling him the human robot and he's it's like no he's he's just
[Rob]: a robot but
[Guido]: right, Just a smart. A I. So, yes,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: that sort of Jeff Parker, sort of fixes that, I guess, with that.
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: Um, So so again all this stuff happens post two thousand six and then we get to two
[Guido]: thousand nineteen and so in two thousand nineteen. ▁jimmy, Woo
[Guido]: reassembles a
[Guido]: ex, exclusively Asian based cast of characters as the Agents of Atlas, and it's
[Guido]: actually a great
[Guido]: set of stories that Greggpck tells against spinning out of Wharf Realms into their
[Guido]: own title that is cut short or gets cancelled, and then goes into Atlanta's attacks,
[Guido]: which then gets cut short or cancelled And so we don't have all of this story told,
[Guido]: But the backu that we read is what brings us back the characters who've now been
[Guido]: missing only a few years, because again they show up as Agents of Atlas, that team
[Guido]: sort. Of functions on the edge of the Marvel Universe, six, one, six for a while, and
[Guido]: then in this mini series in twenty nineteen, we're meeting the new Agents of Atlas,
[Guido]: and then this old team. the Atlas Foundation are
[Guido]: brought together and we get to see where they've been. So what do you think of seeing
[Guido]: that stuff?
[Rob]: yeah i i it's interesting again seeing some of the changes that they made and so
[Rob]: he's no longer marvel boy he's the i can never
[Guido]: The Inian.
[Rob]: say the word you y the uranian and he also now looks like an alien but not all all
[Rob]: the time and he's wearing a gla a glass fish bowl over his head
[Guido]: Yes, he can't breathe and I knew that that happened, but I don't know the thing about
[Guido]: how, when he loses control of himself, he starts to look alien. He has a. So so most
[Guido]: of these characters during this fifteen years that Jeff Parker is sort of rebooting
[Guido]: them. They get like mini series. So I think there's a three issue Guerrilla man.
[Guido]: There's the three issue
[Guido]: Um, Uranian marble boy.
[Guido]: So yeah, I haven't read all of that and and I definitely now want to.
[Rob]: yeah i i really liked everything when it was involving them i i also really like
[Rob]: the art i wasn't in love with the two thousand and six art which is very that kind
[Rob]: of not incredibly detailed art style
[Guido]: Yeah, it is very sparse. Yeah,
[Rob]: but here i really like this which is it's got a cartoony quality to it that i
[Rob]: really enjoy of course i it kind of lost me a bit when it gots into heavy dragon
[Rob]: territory and i'm not sure fully what's going on
[Guido]: Yes, there is a lot of dragon stuff. I think it's causecause Greg Pack is is pulling
[Guido]: on a lot of different mythologies
[Rob]: hm
[Guido]: with the Asian characters and this dragon stuff, though, I think does come from some
[Guido]: of the Jeff Parker series, but it shows up a lot in these miniiseries. and then
[Guido]: Atlantis Attacks has all to do with that.
[Guido]: Did you catch also the the before the letters page of this issue? You have a whole
[Guido]: letter from Jeff Parker,
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: and a whole letter from Greg Pox, So it's kind of a bit of a hand off here describing
[Guido]: the Agents of Atlas, And it has the What if cover and it has art from the What if in
[Guido]: it, too. And
[Guido]: and again, he, he. He doesn't question that it just exists in six, one, six, So I
[Guido]: think it does. I think it's one of the very rare.
[Guido]: if not only what if that is actually a six one, six issue, no
[Rob]: hm
[Guido]: matter what anyone else says,
[Guido]: so
[Rob]: read
[Guido]: yeah, that's pretty much our reading. So
[Guido]: a few questions as
[Rob]: really
[Guido]: we are exploring these possibilities, Did the What if inspire these? I mean, that's
[Rob]: yo yes yeah yes
[Guido]: not even a question worth asking. The. the What if didn't just inspire these? These
[Guido]: are built from the. What? The What if is made cannon by these titles. For sure. Do
[Guido]: you want? I, I mean, we can't even ask. Do you want to go back to this world now,
[Guido]: because it's the six One six.
[Rob]: yeah but i i would i guess i can say do i want to
[Rob]: see more of these characters which i think is definitely yes
[Guido]: Do you want to read more?
[Rob]: i i i don't think anyone captured them as well i mean i definitely would read more
[Rob]: this run i think don glut captured the camaraderie between the characters the best
[Rob]: and i think i also was just attracted to the use of those crazy villains there and
[Guido]: Yeah,
[Rob]: really embraced that ridiculousness which i think is one of the reasons why i
[Rob]: sometimes love js a too and and and jazan and those kind of characters where they
[Rob]: have that silliness but they're they're play it very seriously in that way so i
[Rob]: would love to see a little bit more of that come into the series and maybe it does
[Rob]: but i would certainly read more with these characters what if about you
[Guido]: Well, once they get reestablished too, I think they probably lean more into the the
[Guido]: character and comedic elements like you'll notice. in this first issue of The Two
[Guido]: Thousand Six, we don't even meet all of them yet and we
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: barely see Marvel Boy And so it slowly rebuilds the team. and then, like I said, they
[Guido]: go up against ▁x men. And and I think that's a very funny, silly, two issue or three
[Guido]: issue mini series that happens. And so I think they get back into some of the weird
[Guido]: stuff.
[Rob]: and there is a good light of humor too throughout i mean three d man still has a
[Guido]: Yeah, I, I love it.
[Rob]: lot of jokes and
[Guido]: Yes, and this is
[Rob]: yeah so
[Guido]: the different three D men, which I don't
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: know how that happens. But this is a different one.
[Guido]: Um, this, and so, a side note for people who want to read more,
[Guido]: there are two trade paperback collections called the Complete Agents of Atlas. The
[Guido]: first one has
[Guido]: this mini series. the first mini series, It has the first half of their ongoing
[Guido]: series. It has some of their crossover issues with A with a Spider Man Family title
[Guido]: and the Secret Invasion title. And then it actually Cool enough has every one's
[Guido]: Golden Age first appearance.
[Guido]: It doesn't include the Three De Man's first appearance, but it includes all the
[Guido]: others, and the Three Man's first appearance Actually is not easy to find. It's one
[Guido]: of those issues, not digital. and then volume too, has the rest of their ongoing run,
[Guido]: as well as a few crossover series. Uh, when Hercules dies, there's a. There's a bit
[Guido]: of a big plot with Venus in there, And so those issues are in that second trade
[Guido]: paperback. So those who trade paperbacks, which are only a few years old, tell pretty
[Guido]: much the whole story up until the War of the Realm's relaunch of Agents of Atlas and
[Guido]: Gregpcks, carrying the Torch with them, and then, like I said, that continues through
[Guido]: Atlantis' attacks. But that title ended over a year ago and and the Agents of Atlas
[Guido]: haven't been seen, so I hope that that changes, and I hope that they show up in more
[Guido]: stuff, but right now they're sort of
[Guido]: off doing something.
[Rob]: yeah i would love to see them in
[Rob]: the m c
[Guido]: same.
[Rob]: i don't know if you will because they're probably gonna introduce this qu squadron
[Rob]: supreme before they introduce
[Rob]: this group and there are a lot of similarities in the fact that they both are tied
[Rob]: very well these characters are actually from the forties and fifties the squadron
[Rob]: supreme always feels like they are playing off of a variation of forty seconds and
[Rob]: fifty seconds characters since they're based on those dc characters right
[Guido]: Yeah, yeah, although I do think I mean, I definitely think that
[Guido]: I. I. It surprises me that that that Gregpox's titles like again, I don't know for a
[Guido]: fact that they kept getting canceled, but it feels like they did because there was a
[Guido]: lot of build up in story and they would all end pretty quickly. I think some of them
[Guido]: were designed as Minni's but
[Rob]: so
[Guido]: they were designed to sort of build on each other. Um, I wouldn't be surprised if we
[Guido]: saw that team because it's also a super diverse team. It's a. It's again. It's people
[Guido]: from representing all different Asian cultures on that team, but you could intersect
[Guido]: the two agents of Atlas, which happens in one of these series. ▁jimmy. Woo introduces
[Guido]: the old agents of Atlas to the new agents of Atlice, And
[Guido]: yeah, I mean, Namora would definitely be a character that that. I think they could
[Guido]: get some use from three D men would be silly human robot, Maybe would be silly
[Guido]: guerrilla Man and Venus, I think could be fun, Marvele boy. I think would be hur
[Guido]: hard. They. if they do the retooled, ▁onian'd be fine, but Marble Boy would be hard
[Guido]: because you have both quasar and then you have no var, Marvel boy, a different Marvel
[Guido]: boy. That would create some confusion that I think we'll see down the line, so Yeah,
[Guido]: I'd like them to show up to them.
[Rob]: yeah i was getting also
[Rob]: a very doom patrol vibe maybe because they also have a robot
[Guido]: Well, that's true.
[Rob]: and jimmy woo is almost less always a less benevolent chief too i mean you have
[Rob]: that kind of
[Rob]: leadership role who's a little outside of the group like he doesn't have the
[Rob]: superpowers so i was definitely getting that vibe and i think that would be a s a
[Rob]: good tone if they explored it in a in a live action medium
[Guido]: Yeah, well, the other thing it made me think of with the M C U, was even the Reccon
[Guido]: with Captain Marvel in the M C U,
[Guido]: leading to the creation of the Avengers
[Guido]: and having Nick Fury take the name from that, it reminded. I was reminded of that a
[Guido]: bit in
[Rob]: oh yes yeah
[Guido]: this idea, this idea that these,
[Guido]: that, if we take it a six one, six canon, which I think we' established I do, then
[Guido]: this team formed the Avengers in the fifties, and fought as the Avengers and then
[Guido]: that history was wiped out, and then the Avengers were reformed after that, But it's
[Guido]: a cool recon that reminded me of the Captain Marble, one a bit.
[Guido]: Yeah, so
[Guido]: that's it and I've been Guido your watcher
[Rob]: and i have been rob the uranian in more ways than one
[Rob]: i don't know why i can't say that word it's like oh
[Guido]: Well, because it's you know. it's I think. it's because of my uh, past history with
[Guido]: astrology that
[Guido]: I think to avoid the ▁uranous thing
[Rob]: yes
[Guido]: that people say ▁nus, or or, And so I'm used to hearing that And so ▁onnian
[Guido]: makes sense to me to say you could say ▁urraanian. That's fine.
[Rob]: uranian yes exactly
[Guido]: So
[Rob]: well
[Rob]: the that
[Guido]: the
[Rob]: is a rap for this episode but thank you dear Watchers for listening
[Guido]: and the really extra long reading list is in the show notes. You can follow us on
[Guido]: Twitter at dear Watchers
[Rob]: and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts we'll be back soon with another
[Rob]: trip through the multiverse
[Guido]: in the meantime, in the words of Uatu, keep pondering the possibilities.