The Comics That Made the MCU (w/ Munsi Parker-Munroe)

Here in the heart of Peak MCU Times, we pause our trek through the 2010s to look at the actual Marvel Comics event books that at minimum leant their titles to major Marvel Studios movies. Munsi Parker-Munroe joins Dan to dig into the comic version of Civil War, Age of Ultron, Secret Invasion, and more to see why Kevin Feige borrowed the titles and left most of the actual stories behind. It turns out that massive event miniseries relying on dozens of tie-in issues don't fit easily into one movie. Join for the journey!

Find all of our episodes and the rest of Writing Therapy Productions' various entertainments at www.writingtherapyproductions.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Since 1928, the Academy of Ocean Picture Arts and Science is intended out awards what it considers the best films of the year, and know that a ton of audiences can have their own opinions. This is Academy vs. Audience, where we would be re-watching the best pictures of the corresponding box office champions. And I know we just did one of these, but it is time for another mini episode due to theatrical and vacation schedules, and not a deliberate attempt on our part to stretch this whole endeavor out until we also cover the best picture and box office champion of 2026. And why neither of them deserve that title as much as Coyote vs. Zachby. So, listeners, we find ourselves in peak Marvel times at this stage in the podcast. The MCU is as dominant as the Star Wars, and they mine decades of comic storylines to find fodder for the MCU mill, settling mostly on the last 20 years. And I've always been more of a DC kid growing up, so I'm not as overwhelmingly fluent in Marvel, so I perhaps need somebody to assist me in that. And I think I have a way of summoning such a person. Glob Herman is an overrated X-Men. Okay, first of all. Welcome back, Munsey Parker Monroe.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

It's good to be back. Uh, ever since the day where I randomly posted to our group chat, hey, are the Marvel movies getting worse or is the estrogen working? I knew that I would eventually be on here talking about Marvel.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

So what we're actually gonna do rather than get into deep on the Marvel movies of the 2010s, is we're gonna look at the Marvel comics that they're named after, how much got left out or reinvented, and why perhaps that always had to happen. Because there were a lot of big Marvel movies in the 2010s, certainly named after comics that at least I read.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, there were a bunch that claimed to be somewhat like seminal comic book stories. To a point.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

To a point. So why don't we start with what's about to be a topic on the podcast with the Claire and the Aaron, and look at Civil War, written by Mark Millar, and art by I really should have written all of this down before we started, instead of trying to ad lib it as we go.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

I mean, kind of art by everyone.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Well, yeah, I mean, it was a line-wide event book, kind of to its detriment. But the main art was by Steve McNivin.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

I think that at its core and at the core of comic book adaptations generally, the problem with movies based on iconic comic storylines is that comic storylines depend on the shared literary background of comics that goes back 80 years longer than the MCU has been making movies, and that the bigger stories in the comics can take years or decades to assemble all the pieces.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yes, there's at least one on our list that did spend years on the buildup, and that was the best part of that whole storyline.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, because like Civil War, how long was that movie? Two hours, 28 minutes. So they had two hours and 28 minutes to attempt to tell as much of the story that took seven issues and more than 100 tie-ins in various series.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Which tangentially brings me to one of my biggest complaints about that book as it was happening, that is now solved for everyone who decides to read it now, is that the production delays were so huge. Yeah, you didn't know what was coming out in what order. And the fact that three-quarters of their product line was tie-ins meant every time McNivin was late on the art or Millar was late on the plot, whichever one was doing it, most of Marvel's product line got shelved for three weeks. Yeah. And like, in terms of a story, was it worth it? Often, no, like every other issue was just like standing around their various headquarters saying, gosh, that last encounter really got out of hand. I know.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, and like they spent so much time trying to make us debate the efficacy of the registration act and put Cap versus Iron Man as a legitimate moral quandary, but no one was on Iron Man's side.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

No one. That's the saddest thing about this book that I have learned is that Mark Millar, who is like Garth Ennis, creator of the boys, without the camp or the satire. Yeah. Like, if picture what the vote comic book about the seven would be, that's basically Mark Millar's The Ultimates. He legitimately believed he was presenting Captain America and Iron Man's Sides equally, and he was not.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

No, absolutely not. And like, especially in a company like I was coming to Civil War having read mostly the mutant books, because I read mostly the mutant books. And I just in the very first issue, uh, they went, we're gonna do a registration act for superheroes generally, and my whole brain went, oh, that thing that I've spent decades reading was an evil thing that only fascists would do, but in a different context from this.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

But this time is supposedly cool. Guess we were three years away from that also becoming a plot line on Smallville as a thing that fascists do.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Just a thing that fascists do. Now, don't you want to hear both sides of it? And truly, as a society, we could stop hearing both sides of that.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

We really could. That was one of my letdowns, is I wasn't reading the mutant books, but just the fact there is one issue where I think both sides go to the X Mansion and try to ask Cyclops to join up. And I don't feel we spend enough time on that. I don't feel I got enough of Scott looking Captain America in the eye and saying, Oh, they're making you register because of your powers. Oh, that's gotta suck all of a sudden now that it's happening to you. Call me when they bomb an entire island nation of your children, would ya? And then turning over. Oh, sorry, Tony, I couldn't hear you over the giant murdery robots that monitor our house 24-7 so we don't leave and try to help what little remains of mutant kind. Sorry, you're asking me to help the government? Fun fact about civil war.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

What was the that and the DC crossover that was happening at the same time, the weekly one? Uh that was what was happening at that point.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Was that uh 52?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Uh it might have been 52. There were two of them back to back on consecutive years.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

I feel like the second one was closer to secret invasion, though.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah. No, the second one was happening during Civil War because both of them coming out simultaneously was the thing that drove me out of comics.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I suppose Countdown to Final Crisis did last an entire year, so Countdown to Final Crisis and Civil War as a one-two punch was enough to knock me out of big two comics for most of a decade.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Oh, yeah, that'd do it. Yeah. So the when this was announced is or when fandom was crying out for it and then was finally announced as being the third Captain America movie, I was confused. It's the central theme. One of the central issues is everyone needs to register their secret identity with the government. And nobody was saying they put Matt Murdoch in prison because they think he's Daredevil. So my trust in the government is not at an all-time high.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah, but they weren't acknowledging the Netflix ones yet.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

No, which is why it was weird to try to do this in the movie where nobody has a secret identity. Yeah. Where they threw that out in the first movie as a concept. Everyone, yeah, everyone does. Every single Avenger has their government name out there and poses for selfies, except Spider-Man, who they introduced and didn't care that he had a secret identity. Yeah. Tony never makes Spider-Man sign the Sokovia Accord.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

They introduced him, yeah, they introduced him on the side of the people who want him to have to register. It's somehow still better than the comic. I would watch Civil War right now. I would not reread that line-wide crossover ever again.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

No, I'm absolutely there with you because they at least try to make Tony's side seem reasonable, and the angry mother who guilts him into being pro-government is Alfrey Woodard, only has one scene and makes her point across because she's Alfrey Woodard. Yeah. And not an angry Karen who, fair. Her son was blown up by Speedball. That's bad. It's bad for that to happen. But she was around the whole time and was like on the helicarian in the final issue, drawn extra pretty, so that Tony could say, We're sailing into a brand new day. Everything's great. After a multi-page sequence where Reed Richards writes a letter to his wife, who is pro Captain America, saying, Look, I know, I know that we built a cyborg clone of Thor and it killed one of our friends. And I know we built an extra-dimensional gulag and shoved all of our friends in it without trial. And I know that we are continuing to enforce the thing that has been an X-Men villain plot since the Reagan administration. But but we did a poll and nobody minds. So I think that means we're okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, because like ultimately, if you think about it both sides, ultimately, if you think about it, both sides.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Both sides, right? Both sides. And Captain America having surrendered. And listeners, you are gonna have to hear this twice because it is that confounding to me as a moment, and I am going to need to hear Aaron and Claire react to it. Captain America surrenders to the government, moments away from beating Iron Man, because he is tackled by the real heroes of 9-11. A firefighter, a cop, a paramedic, and some other first responder all dogpile on Captain America saying, Iron Man's been the real hero this whole time.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Just really right up there with Superman, you've never seen a NASCAR rally or sent a tweet. And Superman going, My God, you're right. I'm going to set it on foot to walk across real America.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Oh, that also happened immediately after this. There was the frontline series where two journalists covered everything that was happening, and the younger journalist told Steve Rogers that he deserved to lose this fight against Iron Man because he doesn't care enough about the Kardashians. Just a dire year. He doesn't have a favorite Britney Spears song.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Okay, well, Tom, obviously. That is out of line for Cap.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

True. And that is why he was morally unjustified.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

I mean, like, I would even have I wouldn't even have accepted, like, gimme more or womanizer. Cap, you gotta have one.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

I just like the review I read of no stop. Stop, Ben Yurik's younger colleague. I am to believe that in a world with mutants and avengers and Johnny Storm turning into fire and doing publicity stunts. Anyone in this world still gives a single solitary fuck about Kim Kardashian. We care about it here because that's as impressive as people get. Be pretty and have sex on the internet. Just a paw. And yet the movie was really fun. The movie was really fun. So they corrected all of this. They made the almost see Tony's side. They had an actual villain pulling strings and not just Maria Hill being a little too cop about everything. Yep. And Zemo, he's one of their best villains.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

He's top tier. Like in the comics as well. If Zemo's turning up, you're gonna get some good storytelling. And then he's gonna be effortfully pile drived into the floor by Red Skull when he inevitably comes back. But until then. Until then, super fun.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

So yeah, it was it was hugely well known, but it really needed some work before it could get some to screen. And everything that I thought was a bug in trying to adapt it turned out to be a feature. Yeah. Like without a giant comic universe of superheroes, they had to focus on the ones we knew and we liked. Yeah. And also Spider-Man, who they assumed we'd have some vestigial affection for from every other Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

They weren't wrong.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

No, it paid off. Yeah. Like you can have a good movie that is also a bad adaptation. And that means that they didn't need to spend an entire issue convincing Namor to join Captain America's side to have a payoff that was two panels of Namor going, I'm here to yay! God, he didn't even Imperious Rex.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

He did, in fact, Imperious Rex.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

That's all he did.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Wait, why would he join the Avengers? Who would he cuck?

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Uh Spider-Man was still married.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Alright. That checks out. Because if there's one thing that I know, it's that he fights on the side of Fantastic Four for one reason. And during the period where he was uh living with the X-Men during the Utopia era, it was for one reason.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Who is he cucking from the X-Men?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

There was something going on with Emma Frost during the time.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

I just knew I just knew he was gonna be Emma Frost. Those two would match each other's freak.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

I'm not saying there was Imperious sex, I'm just hinting at it.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

They're both haughty and what's what's the phrase for obnoxiously upper crust?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Oh heavens, yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

And given a choice, neither of them will wear a full shirt as part of their uniform.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Just a nightmare for both of them. And like Emma was with somebody who did a good job of keeping her grounded, but that didn't mean that she wanted to be grounded all the time. No. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

So Civil War. Good movie, bad adaptation, and those two turn out to be directly connected. Feels right. Let's move along to the previous year's giant Marvel effort, the Age of Ultron. Which I think the connecting tissue between the book and the movie is that Ultron present. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

And Age of Ultron, going back to the expansive universe issue, ten issues, nine tie-ins, and counts on you to have read every appearance of Ultron that had occurred in every Avengers comic printed.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

It did really want you to be thoroughly invested in Ultron.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Which imagine how much better Age of Ultron could have been if they had been able to expect their audience to know what an Ultron is.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Instead of needing to spend a lot of the first act establishing this is an Ultron.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

And here's why it's bad. Now that we've taught you about building an Ultron in our iconic story, for the love of God, do not build an Ultron. It's time to watch Tony Stark build an Ultron. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

And 2015, they say if you expose an AI to the internet, it will just decide that humanity needs to be wiped out really fast. And boy howdy, every tech bro in the Silicon Valley is trying to create that torment nexus.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah. And like, I like that they solved the problem the same way they caused it.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Build an Ultron.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Tony Stark builds an Ultron, and that Ultron turns on him. And then that Ultron tries to build an Ultron, and that Ultron also turns on him. Continues the cycle.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Now, when I first heard that this was going to be the title of the second Avengers movie, I like many people said, so we're just booting Thanos down the road a little while, huh? And then also thought, number one reason this is not gonna be able to be thoroughly based on the book is that book is a Wolverine story.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

That's yeah. And like some studios love doing Wolverine stories, others don't have the rights to Wolverine and don't have that luxury. No.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

And it had been one year since a different studio had also taken a s time travel story from the comics and said, but what if entirely Wolverine? They just Wolverine. That was X-Men, Days of Future Past, which is one of the best X-Men movies.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

As well as an actually good adaptation, because casting Wolverine in the kitty pride role aside, Days of Future Past was two issues. That's easy to fit into a movie. You could put that in a movie, and then you have a movie that tells the story that you were naming it after.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

I always assumed it was at least six.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

You'd think, right? But it was the 80s. They weren't writing for the trade yet.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

God loves Man Kills was a uh single giant-sized issue.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Well, Claire Monterra could really get a story done in a hurry and then get back to slowly turning Gene Gray evil.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Well, you gotta do that. They had their long ones too. The Phoenix and Dark Phoenix saga took a total of about three years.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

We've already done an entire episode of different podcasts on the problems of trying to make that fit into two hours. Yeah. So, for those listeners who did not read Age of Ultron, which I assume and hope is most of you, here's basically what happened is at some point in the future, an Ultron has just evolved to the point where defeating the Avengers was just a thing he could do. And now we're in a post-robot apocalypse.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

And who doesn't love the robot apocalypse?

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Amongst the surviving Avengers is Wolverine, who decides there's only one way to stop Ultron. I'm gonna go back in time and knife murder Hank Pym before he invents Ultron, which he does. And then Ultron doesn't exist. And they return to the present, and it has been conquered by King Arthur's nemesis, Morgana Le Fay, because there weren't a functional Avengers team around to stop her from creating a Arthurian legend magic apocalypse, and there's no way to inform an Avengers to stop her at this stage of the apocalypse. So Wolverine says, Alright, alright, alright. We still have a functional time machine. So I'm just gonna go back in time and knife murder my younger self to prevent me from knife murdering Hank Pym. And Hank Pym, upon encountering two Wolverines in a battle royale over who gets knife murdered, says, and I suppose Ask Me Not to Build Ultron wasn't in on the table at all. I'm just gonna put a failsafe so that when he hits the point of realizing he can evolve past us, something in his robot brain breaks and he remains just a kind of cool villain, not an unstoppable one. Wolverine says, Oh, I guess that would work. But then the fabric of time breaks because Wolverine has knife murdered the fabric of time.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

When all you have is knives, every problem looks like it needs stabbing.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

And the entire galaxy said, Hey, the fabric of time in space has been irrevocably damaged, apparently, and we're pretty sure it's all Earth's fault because they are always doing shit like this.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Every Marvel crossover that starts with the phrase age of is amazing, but exactly one inch deep and does not hold up to any scrutiny.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah. Oh man, how long would they have to put out X-Men content before they could do a functional Age of Apocalypse movie or series? Oh Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Years, but they'd try to do it in one.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yeah. Yeah, they'll probably call a thing Age of Apocalypse. Yeah. It'll be the first time we meet reboot apocalypse. He will be played by Jacob Alordi.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Yep. If I had to rank the ages of, and nobody's asked me to do that, and this reference isn't for anybody, I would go Age of X, Age of Apocalypse, Age of Genesis, Age of Ultron.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

I only basically know a few of those, but that seems accurate to me.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

It's Age of X, the Kirkoa saga.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Uh Age of X is when I think Legion took over the universe. And gave her perfect lives. Or was it?

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Well, of course there's gonna be some or was it. I watched three seasons of that show. That man was not capable of giving anyone their perfect life. No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Yeah, it was pretty good. It was all they never doing alternate reality stuff. Everybody was hiding away in a castle being heroic.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

As you do.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

See, I don't know that. Other than Ultron character, there was any part of that miniseries that could have been a functional Avengers movie. No. But it's in a cool sounding title with the word Ultron in it.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Which, if it's time to fight Ultron, which I'm not saying that it necessarily needed to be.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

I'm just saying maybe they need another Age of Ultron in between Thunderbolts and Secret Wars. There's not gonna be one.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Age of Ultron was the one that broke me on post-credit sequences.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

It's the one where Thanos comes out saying, fine, I'll do it myself.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Uh no, it's the one that starts with them completely destroying Strucker and the Last Remnants of Hydra, and they had teed it up so nicely for him to be a villain, you know, in a movie with his own soup super powered people. That felt like a movie. And then three minutes in, he's gone, they're good guys, and The Last of Hydra's destroyed off camera. I go, oh, so none of these mean anything.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

No, I mean, where's my Doctor Strange sequels, Charlie's Theron? Where's Harry Styles playing who the f was he?

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Star Fox?

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Star Fox, the date rapiest Avenger.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

That can't be right. He can't be named Star Fox.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

He is in fact named Star Fox.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And they expected us to believe that he was gonna be in a hundred million dollar plus action movie as portrayed by Harry Stiles. That was just a thing that they said was gonna happen, and we were all meant to go, yeah, probably.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

That was the style of phase four and five in the Little Bit Six and credit scenes is look at this star that normies are familiar with playing a C-list character that hardcore Marvel fans will know, and everyone else is gonna have to Wikipedia tonight. And we will absolutely positively make that movie, maybe. They haven't made any of those movies.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

They've made none of those movies. Adam Strange got to be in one.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Adam Warlock.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Adam Warlock got to be in one.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Adam Strange was on Krypton.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yes, so he was. A good show that worked.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Yeah. For five episodes, it was Smallville that thought it was Game of Thrones.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Which was good. It was Smallville that thought it was Game of Thrones back when Game of Thrones was good.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Well, yes, actually being Game of Thrones was good. Being discount teamu Game of Thrones was less good. But they had a brainiac in there. They did have a really baller brainiac. I will grant that. And they did win me over with a mid-season plot twist.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Where for five episodes, Adam Strange, who is the most booster gold coded character I've ever seen in a DC thing, including at least one booster gold. Yep. Telling Superman's granddad, Seg L, look, one of your grandson's villains has come to Krypton to change history and we have to stop him. And we all assume it's Brainiac. Brainiac's gonna attack Krypton, and that's gonna prevent the Superman future. And then five episodes in, they realize the leader of the resistance is modern day General Zod. It's like I had to come here. Brainiac's attack on Argo City is one of the key moments that led to Krypton's destruction. And everybody turns and stares at Adam Strange and says, Adam, was there something about the future of our world you were maybe forgetting to tell us about?

SPEAKER_00 25:37

That is really good. God, we really don't want to talk about Age of Ultron. How are we discussing this show that was cancelled a decade ago after two seasons? I don't know. How is this the second time I've been on a podcast talking about this show? Just you have to talk about Krypton. Here's the thing, though, is that I don't know that I work as a foil for you. You need someone who hates the beekeeper. I do sometimes need someone who hates the beekeeper. Otherwise, every podcast becomes a beekeeper podcast. In this case, we're beekeepering about Krypton, a good show that works.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Sekel did keep the bees.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

That dude did his best. Anyway, Age of Ultron slid right off my brain. Back in an era where there was only like four or five Marvel movies that I would qualify as truly bad. I think Age of Ultron was probably on that list.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

It was one of the two big event books that really made me question how well Wolverine works as a central character in an event book.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah. Like Wolverine needs to be doing Wolverine shit. He cannot carry the friend.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

At least in Avengers vs. X-Men, Captain America threw him out of a quinchet over Antarctica, but he still ended up fighting a polar bear. Thanks, Avengers vs. X-Men writers. Great job. Saying, uh I know you. Your plan is to knife murder the teenager. Wolverine's like, it it works! And Steve's like, that's not the issue. Oh, Avengers vs. X-Men was fun. The tie-in book where they would actually do the marquee fights you wanted, instead of having like a big panel of Iron Man fighting Magneto, while a caption said, and if you think this is gonna be a one-stop fight, you don't know anything about Tony Stark. We will not discuss this fight for the rest of the issue.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

That was that was bad.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

But the Phoenix V- The Phoenix 5 was cute, but the fact is they had like four to six writers, and two of them were good, and that was a problem. Yeah. I guess we get a taste of Avengers versus X-Men in Doomsday, but we'll have no context and will mean much less.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Yeah. I look forward to watching that seven months after it comes out.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Shang-Chi will fight Gambit and it'll be a wicked cool fight scene. Will that happen? I I have heard that there are clips of that in the first teaser.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Okay. I would watch Shang-Chi fight uh Gambit.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

That's just a fun mix-up visually.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

That's a fun thing to watch. I'd be honest.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

There's absolutely no character stakes, but I do want to watch it happen.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Yeah. His comics always get cancelled after less than 10 issues. Because, like, nobody reads him, but he's really fun to write. Gambit, Shang-Chi, or both? Kind of both. That would be true of both. They finally figured out what to do with Gambit, which is he's uh the dirtbag wife guy who has zero interest in superhero things, which is a fun role for him. Yeah, he's good for that. Rogue is running a team doing superhero stuff. Occasionally she'll poke in. He's got an all-night poker game going on. She's like, hey honey, I'm taking the team out to save the world. You want to come? He's like, nah, sure, I'm good. And then that's the last we see of him for the issue. Yeah, that works. They got other people. Yeah, they got a whole ass team. You don't need everybody for every job.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Now, moving along to the one MCU property, I'm positive neither of us have actually seen more than one combined episode of Secret Invasion.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

I think the Secret Invasion Disney Plus series was better than the comic that it was based on.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

I think there's a distinct chance if we're specifically talking about the actual book. And again, I watched one episode and never went back.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

I did not watch one episode. I do know that it was eight issues and a hundred and five different tie-ins.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Oh my god, there were so many tie-ins because there were two Avengers books, and Bendis was writing both of them.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Jesus Christ. Why do you need that many comics to tell a story about how, no matter how integrated they seem, immigrants are dangerous and must be eradicated?

SPEAKER_01 29:37

I'm sorry. I even got into that being the secret message. But there were 16 tie-in issues of the Avengers alone, and he had three good stories for them. Two issues of worth of what have the scrolls been doing behind the scenes this entire time? Which actually I might disqualify that from being good because it turns out what the scrolls have been doing behind the scenes this entire time and been going, huh? The mutants are gone. Neat. Huh. The Avengers broke up. Neat. Do we have to like pull some strings or infiltrate? Nah, it's all working out. Everything's gravy. God.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Secret invasion was dire. I was like, okay, here's what I here's one good thing about Secret Invasion. If you want to assume that the goal of that crossover was to tank the Marvel universe so bad that when they put Norman Osborne in charge of everything, the readers would shrug and go, I guess it's at least something.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

I did think at least that's something. Because the good thing about Secret Invasion, the one good thing of that storyline was the build-up, the like two or three years spent on various Avengers books. Yes. Saying some sinister force is infiltrating Shield and Hydra and the Hand and all the Avengers, all the intelligence agencies. And the Avengers don't know who they can trust and who's compromised and who's doing it all. And then the revelation that Electra, leader of the hand, has been a scroll and nobody knows for how long. And nobody could tell until Wolverine knife murdered her. Everything comes back to that. Yeah. Wolverine couldn't smell it, Doctor Strange couldn't magic it, Spider-Man couldn't spidey sense it, although I don't even think his spider sense is that precise. And then all this build of like, well, who else? Who else has been secretly a scroll this entire time? And the answer was barely anybody. Yeah. Like they rolled out who's been a scroll. And it was Hank Pym and Iron Man's Butler and Dum Dum Dugan.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Not Dum Dum Dugan.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Oh, Dum Dum Dugan. And Spider Woman. And that was the big one because she'd been on the Avengers this whole time. And it kicks off with both teams of Avengers, because there's the pro-government Avengers and the Fugitive Anti-Government Avengers. And they all go to the Savage Land because a ship has landed and it's filled with recognizable heroes in their costumes from the 80s. You know, like, who in the Avengers is secretly a scroll? Who on this scroll ship has really been Avenger the entire time? And the answer was everyone, everyone on the ship was a scroll. One Avenger was a scroll. That took five issues.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Yeah. That was so uh I just I don't need a hundred plus issues. And I know that I'm too of an too much of an X-Men fan to say I don't need there are two Avengers now and they do not get along. Because there are three X-Men now, and none of them like anyone. No. And I am devouring them with rapacity.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

The Scott Summers team and the Rogue team do not get along, and the Kitty Pride team says nuts to all of you.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Every single one had to be bullied into being the leader of that team.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

So, yeah, five issues as two Avengers teams faff around the Savage Land, while the Skrull Queen does half-issue monologues about the inevitability of change, coded so we would know that change is a bad thing. Then in issue seven, Thor shows up in Central Park and slams his hammer on the ground a few times, and the entire global invasion force, global invasion force of scrolls, and all the superheroes show up, and the superheroes line up on one side of Central Park, and the entire global invasion force of scrolls lines up in the other, and they fight. I bet that Norman Oswald's less dumb than that. It feels like it has to be less dumb than that. There's nothing in this book. This this eight-issue mini-series could have been an email. Very easily. But now that it's all over, then Norman Osborne was in charge of Shield because he got the final shot on the Skrull Queen. I'm like, if his gun had jammed for half a second and Wolverine had knife murdered her in her face, would Wolverine be head of shield? I feel like, yeah. I'm surprised they haven't made him head of shield. He's been on every other team. I do kind of like the idea of Maria Hill and Phil Colson, if he's not currently evil. I forget where Marvel Comics have left him, chasing Wolverine around the world, demanding he fill out paperwork and order SHIELD investigations while he desperately asks them to leave him alone and stop making him the top spy in the world. I think it would be good. And just trick him into having patch time in Japan, but he's secretly uncovering a Hydra plot. Absolutely! Now, one of the tie-ins, which was not one of the Bendis written tie-ins, but one of the Thunderbolts issues, Norman Osborne successfully repels the scroll invasion of Washington, D.C. I felt that was important and maybe could have been in the main book instead of one of the half-issue monologues about change.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Yeah. Especially since the resolution of the story kind of hinged on him being put in charge of America.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yes, I feel like being put in charge of America because you saved the Capitol makes more sense than he got a lucky shot on the probably already mortally wounded Skrull Queen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Which is a shame because I actually did quite like that Thunderbolt's run.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

It was any Thunderbolts run. I don't have a whole segment for this, but I just want to call out Thunderbolts and Defenders. Two Marvel teams have had a lot of iterations and a lot of rosters, none of which were used in the MCU properties named after those teams.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

In fairness to the MCU, Doctor Strange, the Hulk, and Namor, while I would have enjoyed it a lot, would have been a super weird movie.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

If they based it on the GIF and Dematius McGuire mini-series about the Defenders, in which they get stuck in an alternate dimension, and Doctor Strange and Namor and Hulk have to stop an evil queen while Silver Surfer is just on a beach somewhere pondering life while hanging out with surfer folk.

unknown 36:16

That'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

They could do the weird cosmic defenders where one of the characters was Galactus's hot mom.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

That'd be neat.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

And as far as the thumb Thunderbolts go, the original lineup for the Thunderbolts was Baron Zemo, Goliath, Beetle, Moonstone, Screaming Mimi, Fixer, Jolt, and Hawkeye. Wait.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

None of who had been into the Hawkeye got surely not Clint Barton Hawkeye.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

We're talking Clint Barton Hawkeye, baby. They talked him into the villain Thunderbolts? They gave him control of the villain thunderbolts after they were revealed to be villains, but tried to do good anyway.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Okay, I thought maybe he was there from the beginning. It was like, as surprised as anybody that all of his teammates were super villains. That would be pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

But no, after uh Zemo and Fixer left to form their own rival Thunderbolts, and Goliath, Beetle, Moonstone, Mimi, and Jolt joined up with Hawkeye to try to legitimately reform.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Okay. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

All of this is fascinating, but completely impenetrable to anyone who's only seen the movies.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

And the movies just don't have enough like villains. Yeah. So assemblage of anti-heroes or relatable villains, mostly from the Black Widow movie, also a little from Ant-Man and the Wasp. Yeah. Makes more sense.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

They got the Thunderbolt's concept right. I think that when a film of this genre succeeds, see also like Superman uh 1978 or Batman 1989. It's because it takes characters and concepts from the source material rather than specific storylines, and then crafts an actual movie that is like movie length and of movie scale out of them, rather than trying to crunch it all down from hundreds of issues into two hours.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Because like Thunderbolts was not the story of Thunderbolts, but it was a story and it did work and it carried some of the themes of redemption from Thunderbolts.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

Which is what I wanted from that movie.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Yeah. Again, good movie, bad adaptation.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Secret Invasion, it's not said to be a great series, but at least it was trying to adapt the only interesting part of the Secret Invasion storyline, which is everything before the first issue of Secret Invasion, where it stops being a secret real fast.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

That's yeah, that's not for shape changey guys, little shape-changey dudes, little fellows who change their shape, they're not subtle, are the squirrels.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

They're not. Like, okay, infiltration's over, bring in every warship. And it was just underwhelming after years of speculation and fan theories, which I guess is very MCU to have all your fan theories lead to an underwhelming place of, oh, Maria Hill had like a dozen shield guys pull guns on Captain America the second he was kind of unsure about rounding up all of his friends and allies and putting them in an extra-dimensional prison for not turning over their identities. Maybe Maria Hill was a scroll. She's certainly adding fuel to this Civil War fire. Nope. Well, maybe the mom was a skull. She was really the one pushing Tony Stark from opposing registration into supporting it. And she looked demonstrably different by issue eight, so maybe she's a scroll. Nope. Just a Karen with not enough living kids and too much time. God.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

2000s was a wild ride for comic book fans. So we could take a step earlier than that. Look at the Infinity Gauntlet. Which, in case you were wondering, Silver Surfer, numbers 44 to 50, 19 distinct tie-ins, infinit the Infinity Gauntlet Saga, the Infinity War Saga, and the Infinity Crusade Saga, as well as all of Cosmic Marvel to that point, just everything.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Oh, yeah, there must have been so much buildup because the first issue of Infinity Gauntlet, motherfucking Thanos has the gauntlet.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

He has the whole ass gauntlet. And they spent a bunch of time like closing the Silver Surfer comic, which is a great way to give something scale and scope, is to have the last issues of a reasonably popular ongoing run be an attempt to stop a villain that fails, and the villain gets everything he wanted by the end, and then they don't publish the comic the following month.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Oof.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Yeah. Let's do an infinity gauntlet.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

And weirdly, I kind of refer that to what happened a few years ago with Justice League, where they reached the end of Scott Snyder, no relations run, and the Justice League had been thoroughly defeated by Lex Luthor's Legion of Doom, and the universe was falling to the cosmic beings he was in league with, but that was going to be resolved in the Death Metal miniseries, but they kept publishing Justice League. And so the next issue, it's just like a slightly different Justice League team just doing Justice League stuff. Like none of that was a problem.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

You need to tie it.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

We have one desperate hope to save our reality, and it's through this door. Well, we go through together, Clark. Like always, next issue. So Green Lantern stopping a bank robbery. Do we need to get involved? Well, let's see what's happening down at Star Labs. Like, did I miss an issue? Yeah, to see that you gotta do death metal. Did have to read death metal.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

God! Just like somebody wrote that title down and then sent it to an editor, and the editor read it and was like, great, and send it to the publisher, and then the publisher signed off on it, and then a crossover called Death Metal featuring the Justice League. Listeners, if you watch these movies but you do not read these comics, I would urge you to read these comics. They are deeply silly in the best possible ways.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

Comics are weird and it's a blast.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

At least Death Metal only had, I think, six tie-ins. I think there were two three-part tie-ins that various comics has to do one issue of. But Infinity War, named after the second Infinity miniseries, but based on the first, because the second one was all about Adam Warlock's evil alter ego trying to get his hands on the Infinity Gauntlet. And no one got time for that.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

I love that good, good Jim Starlin bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

They hadn't even introduced Adam Warlock yet. And wouldn't, because a pro-Trump rape apologist launched a fake outrage campaign that delayed Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 for like four years.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Oh God. Now, if you're assuming that the entire MCU up to 2019 is the Infinity Gauntlet adaptation, it's a pretty good Infinity Gauntlet adaptation.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

It is. I mean, still hadn't done quite enough Anna Warlock and Silver Surfer failed to let Thanos get the stones before we kicked off, and that thus it needed to be two movies.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Yeah. But they had some people failing to let keep Thanos from getting stones.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

They did. Many people failed to stop Thanos from getting stones.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

And they had enough Guardians content that you had some Cosmic Marvel? You did have a certain amount of Cosmic Marvel happening. And like I read Cosmic Marvel, if I'm being completely honest with you, of the different worlds within Marvel, it's probably X Men first, New York second, Cosmic Third. But I probably read more Cosmic Marvel nonsense than I do Avengers content. And I definitely think more read Spider Man.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

I mean, Avengers tried to get Cosmic right before I stopped reading it, and it wasn't super working for.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Them no, I like the Guardian stuff, I like a lot of the Nova stuff. I was really surprised by it. If they wanted to put out an annihilation movie, I would be right here on this podcast talking about it with you and why it didn't work.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

I think that would be fun to see Pedro Pascal's Mr. Fantastic Involved in. I think that'd be great. I don't think they'd be able to avoid using the bit from Ultimate Fantastic Four, where they meet Annihilus for the first time and Van Krim's like, ah, damn it, Steve, he's evil. What are you talking about? We just met him. You don't know that his name is Nihilis. His name is basically Evil O. Alright, I know where this is going. And it's a fair point. Call themselves Decepticons. I mean that is the trouble. So a lot of Infinity Gauntlet, again, couldn't be used. Because we did not have a Silver Surfer, and we did not have an Adam Warlock. And listeners, they did a lot of the heavy lifting in the original miniseries. The Avengers were there to have one giant fight scene that literally all of them lost to the death. Yeah. As a distraction while Adam Warlock and Silver Surfer did the actual work.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

And they didn't have the moral courage or fortitude to make Thanos murder half the universe in order to make Death fall in love with him. And you know what?

SPEAKER_01 45:20

You know what? If Agatha all along came out first, they could have done that and no one would have questioned it.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Yeah. And then get to the end, Thanos snaps his fingers, half the universe dies. Thanos turns to Aubrey Plaza, goes, Eh? Aubrey Plaza goes, Bro, I'm still gay as fuck.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

Oh, Thanos, you're never gonna kick that football. That ain't happening. He can't sit in a chair in the corner of the room while she hooks up with Deadpool, but that's about as good as it's gonna get.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

That's unfortunately going to be the case.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

So in an Avengers movie, they kind of want the Avengers to do things. So it had to be that. It really had to involve mostly Avengers. It could not involve Adam Warlock juicing up Silver Surfer with so much cosmic energy that he became a silver surfing blip and then trying to 9-11 Thanos.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

It's so crazy. How central to the existence of the universe someone on a surfboard is. Lynchpiniverse's existence. Because Jack Kirby was listening to a lot of Beach Boys that week.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Crazy. Crazy what happens.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

And that's the linchpin of Cosmic Marvel.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

So much comic book nonsense involves someone coming up with some dumb idea and someone else saying that's canon now, and it's just there forever. God, did you read the Silver Surfer run where he was Doctor Who?

SPEAKER_00 46:58

I did not read the Silver Surfer Run where he was Doctor Who. It's very good. In the first issue, he finds a human and then offers to show her the universe. Huh.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Is it quite like Doctor Who or horrifying, like grabbing someone off the street, sticking them on the back of a surfboard, and flying to Alpha Centauri would be?

SPEAKER_00 47:16

It's quite like Doctor Who.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

I really want to assume that answered my question.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

She's always wanted to travel. That is a lot of travel. She travels, and the surfboard gets a name. Is it Carl? Nope. I don't know why I thought it would be. Bordy. Nope.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

Surf Brad.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

Even dumber. She refers to the surfboard as Toomy. To me? Yes, because Silver Surfer keeps going, To me, my board.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

I actually don't hate that.

SPEAKER_00 47:45

It's pretty good. It's a cute run.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

As someone who intentionally watched Matt Granny's Christmas special, All of the Other Reindeer, did get a laugh out of her meeting a bartender named Round John Virgin.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

Yeah. And then the first time she goes, Come on, to me. And the board does respond. Board just like being seen.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

The name sticks and good. So there's another podcast which you might drag you on to to talk about days of future past. So do we want to just like quick pitch the Marvel Comics series that we absolutely least want to see turned into a movie? Oh god. In the spirit of please never make me sit through a dark death metal adaptation. I cannot do anything more with the Batman Who Laughs. I simply cannot.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

I would love to never have to watch any X-Men crossover that starts with Age of. They all require you to know so much about X-Men lore for any of the references to make sense. Unfortunately, the one that I least want to watch is one that's definitely happening. And that is uh Secret War?

SPEAKER_01 48:55

That is Secret War. It's too much to hope that it's going to be based on the first miniseries where a cosmic being named the Beyonder grabs all the heroes and all the villains and says, What if I put you on a planet and just had you fight and then smash all the X Men together? And all the X-Men said, My name's Paul, that's tween y'all. This sounds like normie bullshit to us.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Yeah, no, it's gonna be the 2015, and I love, love, love me that good Jonathan Hickman bullshit. But that was 40 issues of introduction, a nine-issue series, and 202 tie-ins investing you in every single universe that Doom created so that when they were destroyed at the end, you would care individually about each one of them.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

Yes. Whereas now we have seven minutes around the middle of Doctor Strange and the multiverse of madness setting up the idea of incursions. And what if the Avengers had to fight the X-Men film franchise that we've already retired twice? Yeah, it's gonna be and I worry, Munzie. I worry that they are gonna bring back Anchor Beings. They are Anchor Beings works as a joke in a Deadpool movie where they say that the X-Men franchise fell apart without Wolverine.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Yeah, I yeah, it's just I liked Secret Wars so much, but I do not have hopes for this.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

We don't have decades of investment in Reed and Doom because every big screen Doctor Doom has been awful.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Yeah, we don't have the universes presented as though they have equal weight so that when they incur, you care what happens to either of them. In fact, they've trained their audiences to not care if a parallel universe is destroyed.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

They have really made that seem like not a big deal. Yeah. Uh we don't have dozens of issues of the Avengers trying to find a way to stop incursions without destroying another universe and being driven to darker and darker lengths because there just keeps not being one. So they gotta keep destroying that other universe.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

They do not have the final issues of every book that's not coming back after the line-wide reset be of that character trying and failing to protect people during an incursion.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

But at least we don't also have to end on de-serumed 90-year-old Steve Rogers in a mech suit fighting Iron Man who figured out how to stay evil after there was a good evil swap event.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

Oh yeah. That was dire as well. Is that your call for the one you least want to see?

SPEAKER_01 51:41

Strangely, no. I'm torn between 1602, but I think that's already been an episode of what if, so it's too late. Yeah. Because maybe we stop giving Neil Gaiman royalties. It's probably fine that we stop doing that. So above that, I would have to put Civil War II. Ooh, with the psychic inhuman? With the psychic inhuman. And Carol says I'm gonna use him to stop crimes before they start. And Tony's like, no, say more before I'm on board. By like evacuating Aries before Thanos shows up. No, by arresting people and having Hawkeye murder Bruce Banner before he could do a Hulk rampage.

SPEAKER_00 52:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

And then they fight and they fight, and they didn't even have the sense to put the there were two Captain's America and two spider men, and they were all on one side. And I'm like, put the Captain America's on different sides. If it's awkward that Steve Rogers is siding with Carol's aggressively future thought crime side, technically he's a Nazi right now. It'll all wash out, it'll be fine.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

I just can't with that.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

And then the resolution was that the inhuman uh evolved to a higher plane. Carol's like, well shit, there goes my future crimes division. I guess this was all for nothing. And now Tony's in a coma.

SPEAKER_00 53:05

It surely was. But I mean at the same time, when the heroes and the villains all switched their alignments, that would be uniquely badly suited to the MCU, in that the villains would then have to be the main characters. And who's your fourth Marvel favorite MCU villain?

SPEAKER_01 53:24

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Because you know they're fielding a team of seven.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

We got Zemo. Zemo's still evil.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

He could probably be one of the good guys.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

That's one. Number two is is dead.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 53:37

That would be Killmonger.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Yep, he was great. Now he's dead. You can't have him.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

No. Kingpin. He's he's can't.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Alright.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

Uh running out of the city.

SPEAKER_00 53:48

So it'll be Zemo against the entire MCU. And Julie Louis Dreyfus? Yeah, alright. I'll give it to you. And then she would bring the Thunderbolts, except that they're all evil now, but she's still manipulating them the way that she did when they were good and she was evil. So that'd be like a fun little that feels like a fun little twist.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

If we're gonna do this story, I would rather it be forever evil. But I don't think James Gunn's gonna get us there.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

I don't think James Gunn needs to get us there. I think James Gunn is doing a good job of realizing that the way that you make a adaptation of a long-running comic book is that you take characters and concepts from it without actually trying to directly adapt anything.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

That does seem to be more his approach.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

And I think that he should continue doing that because it has been creatively fulfilling and also financially successful.

SPEAKER_01 54:40

Yeah, that is working out. Yeah. I would not want to see Kevin Feige adapt infinity disc because or identity disc because that would mean that someone at DC was doing an adaptation of Identity Crisis. Yep. And the time for that was year seven of the Aeroverse, when it would be as similar to this topic, most of the details would get omitted because late-stage Aeroverse did not want to do the reading before they adapted the storyline for the comics.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

A truly hateful comic. I have often said, and will say often in the future, but I don't think I've actually said it on this podcast specifically. Marvel is at its worst when they are telling you that if you read all 114 issues of Secret Empire, you'll find that we think Nazi Captain America is bad actually. And DC is at its worst when it decides that comic books are stupid and for babies, and what you really want is Deathstroke the Terminator.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Yeah, those are some fair assessments. And I would not want a movie of Marvel Zombies, but I think we're on like season three of that animated series. Wow, that show keeps going.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

I don't watch any of the series. I should watch one of the series. Should I watch one of the series?

SPEAKER_01 56:00

There's two seasons of Born Again. You could watch that. The first season's a bit of a surf Dracula. Oh, I watched the first season. I'm halfway through the second season. I have not seen that.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

You eventually put Dracula on a surfboard.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

They did. They only took like two-thirds of the season to get Dracula on that surfboard.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

And I read I read the run from which they drew most of that story. And for some reason, that was what they chose to be weirdly faithful during.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Yeah. Odd. Oh, I have my hottest take, apparently. Marvel book, I don't want to see a movie. World War Hulk. Ooh! That book was nothing if you hadn't been reading Planet Hulk.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

Hear me out though. Okay, I will grant you, a Hulk movie that is good has never in the history of humanity existed. But what if this time they got it right? Did Planet Hulk and then brought him back to Earth for Avengers World War Hulk?

SPEAKER_01 56:58

Uh, it's just there was so little to it. Sentry, only you can stop the Hulk, but I don't want to. Okay, I'll try to stop the Hulk. Oh, I couldn't. Next issue. Sentry, only you can stop the Hulk. Uh I don't want to. Then I'll try.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Oh, it didn't work. Write it.

SPEAKER_01 57:17

Three and a half issues in, Sentry says, God, fine. And then they like fight in a giant dust cloud until one of they both get tired.

unknown 57:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:26

And then Red Hulk exists all of a sudden. It's just it's just Am I the only one who wants to see Mark Ruffalo play Grey Hulk Mob Enforcer, Mr. Fixit? I want that too. I can want two things. In a noir shade, black ass mystery set in Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

Yes, I want that as well. I want all kinds of things. I just want good Hulk media. In spite of the fact that they've demonstrated time and time again that they do not know how to deliver that. I thought She-Hulk was good, actually. Apparently, no one agrees with that hot take, and I have chosen to let the matter drop.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

Oh, get on threads. People are still taping She-Hulk and angry at everyone who's cost us more. And their right to be. It's the correct take.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

Did the thing that I wanted it to, she was a single female lawyer trying to have it all in a way that was totally different than Marvel content TM. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

And apparently everybody flipped out because I think if we drill down, this is why they want World War Hulk. Not because they're that big on the Planet Hulk saga and this resolution. Because they want a movie where Hulk smashes things. And I put it to you that any movie with the Hulk could involve the Hulk smashing things. That's so true. The things don't have to be Tony Stark, who until the reboot that we think is coming, is still dead, or Reed Richards, who with whom he has no relationship.

SPEAKER_00 58:58

The thing could literally be the thing. Thing could just be the thing. They have one of those now. The Hulk could smash him. He has a beard.

SPEAKER_01 59:06

Could punch the beard right off Ben Grimm.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

Punch the beard. Okay, we need to double down on the silliness of comic books in these movies now that they're finally during comic accurate universes. I want to see the Hulk punch the beard all the way off the thing.

SPEAKER_01 59:24

That does sound great, and I do want it now. So I guess that's our final takeaway. Have the Hulk punch the beard off the thing. Make some more comic nonsense, but do so responsibly. Next time we'll be back to talk about how one of these things actually worked as a movie as much as we can. Also talking about how it is difficult to be gay in the ghetto. Fair. And how it is really hard to run a rebellion without a Jedi. Also fair. Hey Bunsey, be hiding somewhere. Oh, there's gonna be more Star Wars. And you get to hide and not engage with it. Thank you so much. Until then, we are writing Therapy Productions.com. Find all of our episodes there and our other projects. We are Oscar V audience on Fred's Instagram and Blue Sky, where perhaps you will find us engaging with Munzie about how good She-Hulk was. It was good. You can find all of Aaron's stuff at a flimsyplant.com, and you can follow Claire by following me or Aaron.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

You can follow me on Bluesky at Munzi or on TikTok at Munzikus, which I guess I post to now.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

I have not been calling you Munzikus this whole time. You haven't? Probably trying to figure out how to make Munzerina work.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

Ooh. No, instead we're going Munzikus on TikTok, because for some reason Munziey was taken, in spite of the fact that that is not a name of anyone but me.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

Weird. And until next time, we'll see you at the ceremony.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

Don't know why I felt I needed to strike a pose for that.