Episode 45: Black Panther

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Nerdificent. I am
one half of your host, Danny Branan is and sitting
to the side of me this time. How's everybody doing.
I hope everyone's feeling good listening to this. Just chilled
out on a good February mid February time of day,

(00:30):
if you know. We asked people to rate and review
us on iTunes and people have been sending a screenshots
and I have to say thank you so much for
taking the time to do that. It really does bump
up our numbers. It helps other people see the podcast.
And I don't know if you know this, but we
have been featured on the front page of Apple I
think like three or four times, and this podcast isn't

(00:51):
even a year old. Yeah, it'll be soon, though, It'll
be soon. That's a big accomplishment. I think that's really cool. Yeah,
especially to have like two nerds of color on the
front page. It's just holding it down, you know, like, Hey,
how's it going? Yep, yep, how you doing? Look at
these heads? I know it is just two heads of us.
I love it. And uh, today we are covering black Panther.

(01:15):
We're covering everything that is to Chaula how he came
to be the film, the TV show, and joining us
we have comic book writer, novelist, screenwriter, showrunner, A black
Panther's Quest, Jeff Thorpe, Wow, who's that guy? That is you?
I didn't even name all the things you did. Also,
actor that's dead. That's dead tweeter teeter extraordin there. I can't.

(01:38):
They're like all my friends are like, Jeff, get off Twitter,
Like it's too late. We're married. Don't you feel though
that your can connect? I feel like Twitter helps me.
I mean it hurts me for sure, but I feel
like it helps me stay relevant with everything going on. Yes,
on a certain level, that's true. Um. Also, uh, if
you use it properly, you meet a lot of people

(01:59):
you would not have or wise have met. I've had
lunches and made friends with screenwriters, directors like yourself, animators
who I would have never otherwise got to meet. I
put I put together these things called the battle books
that I'm selling, which I got. Um. There's a hashtag
called visible women. There's a hashtag called drawing well Black.
There's also a hashtag called drawing well Latin, and all

(02:20):
the other different things. But I found artists that I
would have never been able to find, and they're awesome
and they were affordable, And if I wasn't on Twitter,
I would not know who any of them were, and
I made initial contact with them. That way, I can
probably I can publicize my work in a very quick
effective manner. And frankly, if I want to tell the
President he's a jerk, I just tipped right over to

(02:41):
his account, right And it doesn't change anything, but it
makes my day a little lighter. Yeah, you know, I
feel like it's also helped me to be a better
person because I'm aware of people that exist outside of
my friend group, you know, and I have a very
diverse friend group. It's constantly changing, the world is constantly changing,

(03:02):
and I feel like I wouldn't be the woman that
I am without listening to all these other voices people.
The hard part about Twitter is the awful people that,
of course you have to put up with. But like,
for instance, I just I did not know what non
binary was until last year, Right, I thought I had
it all locked down and I'm all progressive and whatnot,
and they started throwing out ace and non binary and

(03:24):
all this stuff. But luckily there's Twitter, and I don't
even have to ask half of the questions, half of
the questions, or just somebody else going what the hell
and then someone graciously explains it and I follow follow, Right,
I wouldn't have watched Pose. I wouldn't have thought to
watch Pose if not for Twitter. Right. Uh, there are
some gorgeous people pose. Yes, Oh my god, some of

(03:47):
those ladies um flutter. But it wasn't the kind of
show regardless, because I generally like things with monsters or
some sort of supernatural or whatever thing in it. It
wouldn't have been the kind of show that I would
have even looked at because it's essentially it's soap opera,
right again, with no time travel. I'm fine, just put
in some time trying, right. But because of this sort

(04:09):
of presence that my Twitter, who I follow and who
follows me, there's conversations I don't even participate in that
makes me aware of things that I'm I'm gonna check
this album. Yeah, I mean that's that's kind of how
you know. I kind of sell people on Reddit because
every time people here red and they're like, oh, it's
a bad place, I was like, you can make it
a good place you have control, and as if you

(04:32):
follow the right subreddits, your feed becomes this, you know,
beautiful place. I mean, you know, just like yeah, people
can sneak in and you'll have to like squish accordingly.
Here's a good example. There's an artist called Jennifer Meyer
and after she's like an illustrator, painter, book covers, kids
books and fantasy novels and stuff. You can find her

(04:52):
on Twitter jail Meyer. She's awesome. I was really depressed
after the Trump election. Like I don't get depressed if
you follow Twitter. I'm rarely depressed, right, and I'm rarely
even dark. I'm just like, you know, I get angry.
I don't get sad, right, But after the election, I
was kind of down and I couldn't shake it. And
I was not used to feeling that way for any

(05:13):
extended period of time. I was like, I might have
to therapy or something for this. This is kind of
raw every day, every day day and this somebody else
followed her. Someone I followed followed her and reposted these
ridiculous sketches she was doing of bunnies. And these bunnies
were like dressed like wonder Woman or like having sword

(05:33):
battles with other bunnies riding a bunny, you know, And
I was like what, But they were delightful, man, they
were delightful and they lifted me and I was like,
how is this happening? And so I followed her and
she was doing this like while she was working on something,
she'd take a break and do these weird little quick sketches.
But it changed my life, Like it. I talked about
this with my friends all the time. It literally shifted

(05:55):
my perspective away from this sort of dark abyss place
I was going to. And once again, had I not
been on Twitter and following the right people, and now
we're kind of pals. We go back and forth. I said.
I sent her a thank you note, like I know
you weren't trying to do this, but had you not
done this, I would have been a way different place
last year. Thank you. And she was just what you'd

(06:15):
expect the lady who draws bunnies and dressed like wonder
woman to be like. And she's awesome. And that's a
Twitter connection. Um. Occasionally people yell at me or they
get mad at my political opinions, and okay, that's you,
you know, and I fight back. It's not like I'm
all like all gracious and Gandhia's or whatever. I go
right in on you do. But it's so funny because

(06:35):
you and I don't know how long you and I
have been following each other, yeah, while, But you know what,
it's so because we were talking and I think I
think the same way about myself is like, oh no,
I'm angry on there a lot, but you're actually funny
a lot like you. I mean, you know that, but
like I'm saying, you in your mind, but you are too.
You just do it with photography more so than I
do it. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably how we followed each

(07:01):
other is one of us was being petty and shot
down somebody and put them in their place. They deserve it.
They deserve it. But what I was gonna say is
that I think you're you. You're probably like me, and
that you think that you're like you, that you're tweeting
angrier than what you come across as. I just wanted
to say, you come across as very well like I
like your Twitter because it's very well rounded. Yeah, that's
what I'm trying to do. Yeah, I curated, like yeah,

(07:24):
I like I just like a lot of stuff and
there's no way well two things, let me stop. Sometimes
it's too much information just of any kind, and you
get to it. I'm like, all right, uh okay, I
gotta go like it doesn't matter. You can tell me
the greatest, most wonderful story, but it's above that line.
I can't hear it. I can't hear it. I gotta
go away from this. And I think everyone should step

(07:44):
back because it's just Twitter, But yeah, you you can
learn a lot. I saw, like, how about this when
there's something crazy going on in Syria and the news
hasn't got anybody in there yet, my Twitter feed is
showing me people on the ground, right, so when somebody
comes up and well, this isn't happening, and I'm like,
I saw Ahmed put his iPhone out the window to

(08:05):
show me that did actually happen. So what are you
talking about? Right? That kind of stuff or brand new
things from um what do you call it? Like a
web comic that you again would never have heard of?
Post one still from You're like, oh my god, who
is this person? How do they paint like that? What
is and you go look right, like if you use
it right, it's doing what it's designed to be done for.

(08:27):
It's just all these jerks coming in there going now
I can flex because no one can hit me back, right,
And I feel like, let me put it like this
and then I'll shut up about it because Twitter and
panis for this. You know what it's like. It's like
every time um Tucker Carlson would try to have a
debate with Jon Stewart, and I'm like, look, Tucker, first

(08:49):
of all you're asked is mediocre? Okay, just to begin with,
you probably couldn't debate me. But Jon Stewart, he's not
only wicked smart, he's a professional comedian. Do you understand
the process by which a person becomes a professional comedian?
The open mic night at the end of the night
where the only people in audience are other professional comedians.
So if you got heckled, you're getting heckled by a pro. Okay,

(09:12):
So if you survive that to become a real stand up,
regular professional comedian, These regular old folks who think they're funny,
they're like stepping into the ring with Muhammad Ali. Right,
So you decided to go on TV right with this
guy who's literally made himself a millionaire being funny every
day and you're gonna out with him. You're an idiot.

(09:33):
You just showed your triple idiot. So it's the same
kind of thing on Twitter. A lot of us, you
mean a lot of people on that it's made out
of words. A lot of us make our believing with words.
So some rando who's got a problem with women being
geeks or about different minority group being involved with Star
Wars or something like that, thinks he's gonna be all
clever because he made his little cabal, his little claver

(09:56):
and laugh right, And then they stepped to the wrong
person that they might not have heard of. What that
person is a pro? Done? Go away, Now go go
play with your children, Go play with the other child.
So that's the vibe I try to. I know it
sounds vicious, but these people are awful. I think I
think that I'm all for flexing. I see, maybe I'll

(10:19):
see you flexing girl. No, hell yeah, flex away, flex away.
Speaking of flexing, look, I'm going to perfectly transition list.
You are the showrunner for Black Panther's Quest, And before
we get into the show, what was your first introduction
to Black Panthers? So I got a reprint, probably of

(10:43):
the Fantastic Fur issue where he my dad introduced me
to comics when I was probably about seven or eight,
maybe maybe as old as ten young at seven, and
Marvel used to put out these giants sort of I
mean literally giant omnibus comics, not like graphic novels are today,
like oversized weirdly, like how are you going to collect
this type stuff? And in that was the Fantastic Four.

(11:03):
He already liked Jack Kirby, so my dad was like,
he likes Jack Kirby, let me give him Matt And
I don't think Panther was in that, but at some
point I came across a reprint of that story, and uh,
I was okay, the black guy whatever. But I was
fascinated with the fact that his introduction was, well, here's
how I'm going to meet the Fantastic Four. I'm gonna

(11:24):
kick all of their access by myself, just to see
if I feel like talking to him. I was like, okay, dude,
wait a stepped up to the money. But then he
just became sort of a secondary character in the Avengers
for a billion years. He was just sort of like
from my point of view, he was the silhouette of
Batman without being Batman. They wanted a character that kind
of looked like Batman and this guy. Um, I mean,

(11:46):
we can just keep going on this. But the Black
Panther's mask used to have his face exposed for a
brief period. At his face exposed, I believe that they
shifted it to a full face covering so they could
sell the comic in the South. Um, and that he
wasn't obviously lack. You almost never saw him unmasked. He
almost never took that mask off. Even if he got
hit by something, his skin would never show in the

(12:07):
rip or whatever. That's not accidental. That's we got to
sell stuff to a very racist South in the sixties
and seven. Wasn't there a period of time when they
removed I know that he was for like one issue
he was the Black Leopard, Yes, to try and move
it away from being associated with the with the Black
Panther organization. But I do know also I think that

(12:27):
it was like the his one comic came out that
was like the history of Ta Chaula, Like they also
tried to do that to to change his name. Well,
the thing with that period of time, modern people think
that Stan and Jack uh saw the Black Panthers and
then made the character, but he predates them, yes, right,
especially one whole year before there you go, so um
my feeling. My guess is there was a comic book

(12:49):
when both Stan and Jack were kids that most people
don't know about, called All Negro Comics. All Negro Comics.
Number one only had one issue. There's a whole horrible
saga about why there was only one issue, which is
its own show. But inside that was a character called Lionman,
who was an African prince who protected his country, who

(13:10):
had a giant mound of exotic material that people kept
trying to come get. And I can't help but think
either Stand or Jack got exposed to that comic. They're
both New York kids, they were not rich. I'm sure
they picked up every rando five cent one cent comic
that they could get their hands on, and it probably
flitted away and went away, and then they pulled some
of that apple because it's very similar, but it's also

(13:33):
not the same, so um yeah. And so then it
went into Jungle Action. They had a book called Jungle Action,
which nowadays I don't know if that would flop one
of one of us is going to have to write that.
That was Don McGregor primarily, and he did a lot
of sort of taking onto the clan. Um. He was

(13:54):
ironically for an African king. He spent an awful lot
of time in the US fighting ratio is interesting with
a lot of superheroes. It's like, oh, these aliens, weirdly
all just hang out here in the United States of America.
Why wouldn't we go to China where most of the
human beings are New York especially um. But yeah, so

(14:15):
they did that for a while. He was the feature
in Jungle Action that kept trying to give him a
book and it wouldn't last and all the while while
I'm reading comics, he was always a second tier. People
pretend now that they always were into it. But if
you were, the book would have never died. So that's
a lot even you're lying, right, Um, he was a secondary.
He was there to be black. I think primarily he was.

(14:36):
I wouldn't call him as far as a token because
they always wrote him fairly well, like, he wasn't he
go iron man, He wasn't the cheerleader. He came to play,
but he was also there because we need a black
guy in there, just for that few black fans that
we have out there, they might want to see them.
I think stan Stan was very good about that. Yeah.
I think Jack Kirby also said that too in a
in an interview. I have my hands high up in

(14:57):
the air because I worship all things Jack Kirby. Yeah,
Jack Kirby would say that he wanted more followers to
feel represented. He was always that way, always that way,
and you can tell when I mean again, we'd go
off from just on Jack. But when he split off,
when it was just him, you could see that in
his work throughout he had much more prominent women. His
women were hard, they were all based all the really
tough ones were based on his actual wife, right, um. Heed,

(15:20):
He integrated all of his his little teams. They were
unnecessarily in a sense like I'm just throwing a black dude,
throwing a Heason dude. Why the hell not? And I
think it's largely because the soup that New York was
when those guys grew up was basically and it's apropos now,
it was chuck full of immigrants in a different way
than it is now. Um. The immigrants were much more

(15:43):
I think widely dispersed, so there was no dominant immigrant group, right,
so everybody just climbing all on top of each other.
New York is a very different kind of city in
that regard than as you go further west, it becomes
more and more segregated from my point of view, and
obviously South, but in New York, yeah, you get broken
up by neighborhood. But everybody's kind of on top of

(16:03):
each other all the time. So even if you don't
like the next person, you've got to get along with them.
You just have to where the city won't work. I
don't know if it's like that now, but I guarantee
it was like that when those boys were coming up.
This is probably aging us giving our age away. But
when I would watch and this animated show is the
first one that I saw that really did that was

(16:24):
Hey Arnold. Do you remember that Hey Arnold had one
of the most diverse cast that I can remember in cartoons,
And yeah, that was on purpose, but that was exactly
what you were talking about, um, And it was all
different types of immigrant families and and and immigrants coming
together in in that And I did I did love
that a lot. I think that's where Henson got The

(16:46):
Henson Company started with Street for that. Their model was
New York Street. In New York Street, it just had
muppets on it, you know. Um so yeah, So the
Black Panther rolls for a long long time is sort
of you know, in the mid to late seventies, and
they tried with Jungle Action. They gave him a little
mini series here and there. He was perennial in the

(17:07):
in the Avengers, he was on a lot of the
different rosters in the Avengers, but again kind of just
there to be black. He doesn't really have the juice
that they started him out with right when they started
about taking on the whole fantom which, to correct myself,
the cover that The Fantastic for he appeared in came
out in July six, nineteen sixty six, and Black Panther

(17:29):
was created in October sixty six and not even a year.
So he's like there's something in the in the air,
in the air, I like to imagine it was just
like Hughie be like, Huie, what were gonna name this group?
And look over to their stack. This works yeah black yeah, man,
oh man. I wanted to be the spot of man
so that won't work. That doesn't sell our our political

(17:51):
point of all. Right, but the spot of man's would
be cool. I'm not mad at your brother did You're right,
it would be cool. But you know, we could be
the Black Panthers. Let's ladies would be the Black Panther
or the Spider Man. They're like, are you your fool's fools?
Clearly it's Black Panther. Um, so that happened, right. They

(18:14):
did that for a while. Um, really up until either
the I guess it's the late eighties or the early nineties,
when Christopher Priest, uh, he shows up and I mean
his issue I remember what issue number it was. But
when he revealed what the Black Panther have been doing
all this time, if there had been an Internet back then,
it would have burned down that day because he basically

(18:36):
was like, wait, I'm not with you all, I'm in
spying on you all the star It's like, wait, what
it's like, No, No, I'm the king of a Nathan
What are you stupid? Of course you guys are crazy powerful.
Why would I play the backfield all these times? Dude?
Come on, now what I look like? Right? But it
was like and they were all like, oh, like even
in the book, right, Priest wrote it like the adventures

(18:59):
were like, wait, what are our friendly to challow? You know,
He's like, man, I'm a king. I've been telling you
this for thirty years. I'm a king. I do kings
stuff like and that just blew the doors off. And
I also feel like that kind of model to shallow
we know and love to he took. Basically, it was

(19:20):
almost like the and nothing against McGregor, who I met
and as a lovely guy and did great stuff for
the time period in which he is. But it's almost
like Priests reached back to that first issue of Fantastic
four and said, nope, that guy. And I was like,
oh my god, how they're gonna kill him? Why he's
gonna die? They're gonna kill the black panther. There's no
way he survives after that. He's gonna be a villain,

(19:41):
now what. I was ready to be outraged, Right, They're
gonna pick the black panther, but no, and it's stuck
and it it resonated. It was like he became unique.
I think in that moment his blackness wasn't the uniqueness factor.
It was this is a different kind of hero than
you've seen before. Right, the closest thing would have been
nay more this the Mariner. But he has always played

(20:01):
as a villain. Yeah right, he's sort of a what
is it chaotic? He was lawful evil yeah right, So,
which to me is fascinating that to Chala didn't end
up being that since he was technically fighting against the heroes,
right Fantastic four, Right, Like they're the good guys and
he's beating their asses as his debut and right, well

(20:21):
that's just your typical, like, you know, wrestling way of
putting someone over. I'm the only one in here watches
wrestling to prove yourself a lot of fake nerds, and
I've been given all the static about my lack of
wrestling model. Well that's that's typically how you put someone over,
and wrestling you have a really good person and then
the new guy comes out beats the mess out of

(20:44):
the guy who we've established is the strongest kind of
jail rules and so everyone's like, oh yeah, so like
essentially they Kirby and uh and late you know, put
Black Panther over, which I often that I think that's
what kind of always gave them a special part of

(21:04):
my heart to not only create a black the first
black hero, but also put him over and be like this,
this is like, this is what I think. It couldn't
have been conscious, Right, there was no conversations like the
kind we have now going on back then, certainly not
across ethnicity. Right. So there's these two white aspect Jewish
dudes running a comic book company. It's like, I almost

(21:28):
feel like it had to be Jack who brought this in, right,
you know, we need a black guy. What wait, what, Yeah,
we need a black guy. We need a black guy.
And you've seen the designs for the original version. It
was cold Tiger or something. They're terrible, terrible, terrible, Like
Jack was my man, but occasionally he'd have a dude
and they were like no, no, no, they we find
it down a black panther. But on some basic human level,

(21:50):
they had to know he has to come in so strong, right,
he has to come in so hard, or the audience
will never accept that he's appear with these people. He
will always be in the backfield. And by the way,
they introduced whyatt Wingfoot, Johnny's Native American best friend, for
no damn reason. Why is he? Like why and he
was cool. And then this. I was just talking to

(22:11):
some guys about this on the web, the Kiwazi tribe
that they made up, the Native American tribe. People don't know,
and no one's used this in Marvel, and I probably
shouldn't blow this because I probably should use it for
my own stuff. There's a Native American Wakonda sitting under
the soil in New Mexico in the Marvel universe called
the Kawazi tribe, and they're just as high tech as Wakonda, Okay,

(22:32):
but they have nothing's been done with them. I'm like,
somebody ought to. It's probably not gonna be me because
I'm not in position to do that, but that's what
Jack and Stan would do, and I have to have
I kind of have to feel like a lot of
that came from Jack because when he went off in
his solo, it just became much more crazy. He was
like black Jewish people and you know, Chinese Muslims like

(22:53):
this whatever, Just like when you hear stuff like that.
And then we did a Twilight Zone episode with Rod
Serling and how progressive he was. It kind of just
really completely destroys that argument of they were a product
of their time, that's always been Yeah, that's always been
hard like, but you know, it just kills that argument

(23:13):
because you see all these people and if you're if
you're talking about the people who were talented enough to
be like the pinnacle of entertainment at the time, there
had to be more people like them who just didn't
have the same microphone. That's right. So so I think
that are and I trust me old if you're on
a porch and gonna let anyone get away with telling
their grandfathers who was around when I am back, it's like, oh,

(23:35):
they were probably like now, we were all woke. People
were getting digital backpacks and it was actually real popular
to almost almost kind of diluted the wrongness of it all,
you know, just because I've been woke before. We were
getting digital grounding points back when you were back when
you would lose friends. Remember that we're the only one yelled.

(24:00):
We have to convince people it wasn't No one was
putting it on T shirts and it's somewhere on the internet.
Is my hour long tirade about how awful Tier Rock
character Tier Rock though it's a d C character from
second But yeah, so Priest shows up and sort of
Really the best thing about it was I have this

(24:21):
thing called UM. I call this at Moore's law, Alan
Moore's law for comics. I made this up. It's not
a real law. Please make it a law. Always attribute me.
But UM. Basically, he takes over the Swamp Thing comic
and he made he told him. He says to himself,
Look a lot of people, not enough because it had
been canceled, but a lot of people liked the original thing.

(24:41):
Now I want to do this all this other stuff
with it. I can't really, I can't really spit on
these existing fans. That's not fair. So he came up
with a story called Anatomy Lesson, which is everything you
read happened. All those stories are real. I'm not changing
one word of that. All those events occurred in the
contact to this story. Except after this story, all the

(25:03):
rules are different. And it was called, i think not coincidentally,
the Anatomy Lesson, where you find out all this different
stuff and everything you thought was true was not true,
but not in a cheap, crazy way. I feel the
same way about Priest taking over Black Panther. All the
things that he did with the character, they hit so hard.
I think because they were in it. It was already there,

(25:24):
like it just needed a writer to come in and go, well,
if this is true, then these X the six or
seven other things have to also be true. Right, If
these are the conditions of his normal life at home,
why is in the US so much? Like? Why would
the king of this most advanced nation on Earth spend
all of his time in New York City? Doesn't he

(25:44):
have a country to run? Like? And even who is
he leaving behind to run in for him? When he's
like all these questions probably were not asked by any writers.
Why would they nothing against them? They got other things
to deal with. But Priest comes in and goes, well,
you know, and all that's in the character. If it
had not been, it would have felt paste it on.
It would have felt like, oh, here's this black rider.

(26:06):
He came in. He's gonna you know, he's gonna make
him the Batman of the Marvel Universe or whatever. And
I feel like the reason that he didn't get that
backlash is because the character had had been already teed
up for two decades for someone to come in and
do it, and he just said, oh, I'll do it,
you know. Yeah. But you know, then some funky stuff happened,
like Casper Cole, which we'll get into. Well, that's writer's personalities.

(26:32):
After this break. Hey, what's up, y'all? We are back
and you know, yeah, I guess we can talk about
Casper Cole. You know, well, there's two things that he did, right,
Priest did. He creates Casper Cole and he also creates Hunter, right,

(26:54):
the the Caucasian half brother of Actually, you know, as
as unnecessary is that is? I actually liked that aspect.
It turned out to be cool, right, How what it
would it be like to be the one white dude? Right,
and you're part of the royal family, but you're not
part of the royal dude. Come on, that's genius. Also

(27:16):
the way Priests did it at the time, people forget
Everett Ross. They've never talked about Everett Ross, who actually
was the character telling the story, right, the white CI agent.
He's like, who, how is the black panther? That guy?
But I gotta remember, when this book came out, it
had to sort of feel like lethal weapon. There had
to be a sort of humorous component. I'm sure that

(27:36):
was part of the pitch, right, Uh, there couldn't just
be like strong black lead, Like I can see that.
They would be like, oh here comes a black dude
with a pit for the black panther. Oh it's delightfully funny.
We thought it was gonna be all hard and political
and oh this is great, go go crazy, right. I
think Casper Cole comes out of the idea that they
don't have an American right, they don't have a back

(27:58):
then everybody was. I remember this from my own trying
to write, trying to sell scripts. Uh, quite as it's
capt I write primarily fantasy and science fiction. Um, there's
no rhyme of reason to the ethnicities and my stories. Uh,
there's a lot. All you can say is there's gonna
be a lot of different ethnicities and gender types of
my stories. But just looking at me and going, oh
he's a black guy, it's always going to be black people.

(28:20):
That's foolish. I don't do that. Um. What I do
do is the rainbow. Right, So what would happen with
my scripts would be can it be more urban? And
I'm like, what are you saying? Right? Do you mean
it should take place in a different city, because that's
what urban means, like they meant black. I think that

(28:40):
there was a certain like the way he was writing
The Black Panthers, the way we have him, the way
Kirby and Leep presented him. Was a high tech genius
running the most advanced company cooks last country in the world,
and he acted like it. There was nothing street at
all about this royal this you know, hereditary ruler of
a nation. Why would there be is Dr Doom street? Right?

(29:03):
But I can bet there was some kind of a
vibe like we need a street version, right, And I
think that's where Casper Cole comes from. You sort of
a street version of the Black panth a multiracial New
York City police officer. Yeah. I mean, but by this
time we had Luke Cage. So it's like, get out
of here, and we've got we've gotten some cool cages
like Cage that run which one not the one as

(29:26):
Arello because I'm not to have We're not that. Look.
I'm a child of the nineties, grew up in Compton.
That was me. I was like, let's go. I wanted
to find him and beat him down over that. I
was like, you're gonna never come with an arms reach now,
Like I you know what. At the time, I was

(29:46):
up to here with all of that, so just to
have Cage be that. And also Cage was already kind
of a regular, that's the thing. It was written by
someone who's outside that life. Yeah, there's a difference between
growing up on this as what you would think of
a a street level, which would be lower middle class
basically um, iron worker family or something like that in
the city, bus drivers and all that, and being you know,

(30:10):
a crip. Yeah, okay, but there's a lot of people
who can't tell that difference. They shouldn't be writing Cage. Yeah,
you can't tell that difference. I'm not ironic. You can't.
You don't get to be ironic about this. And the
first picture that pops up when you search Brian Azarella
makes you think that's the gold tooth Cage, you know.
And that's what's funny is see this is this is

(30:33):
that's the that's the majesty of being an author. And
I'm and I'm just at that because there are ways
we could take it. Like, you know, in my head,
I didn't know what Brian Azarella looked like, So in
my head he was a Latin next dude. I thought
he was a Latino dude. I'm looking at him now

(30:53):
and uh, and I see, I see why you might have.
But it was not just that it was like what
they did. It was a lot of things at the
same time. It's what it was done to hip hop, right.
Hip hop was a very diverse sort of movement at
its roots at the beginning, it started with a bunch
of Latin and Black kids, just poor as hill chopping

(31:14):
it up. And they had all they had, like trance
hip hop, they had, you know, just for dancing. They
had like message hip hop, they had all of that stuff.
And then the freaking West Coast came in and it
was all gangster all the time. Right, You're welcome. Okay,
you can say that if you want to. But even
the West Coasters, like I'm thinking like dilated People's and

(31:35):
some of the other sort of have the hieroglyphics down
down look native but you know what I'm saying. But
they didn't get as much purchase, right the main line
with because came over and took over and everybody had
to Right, I felt like this was out of that.
I felt like I'm getting enough of that in my movies,

(31:56):
I'm getting enough of that on my TV. I see
I don't. I'm not against this life because it's a life.
It's legitimate to discuss and show and all that. But
it's not even clo it's not even fifty, it's not
even forty. It's not of what's going on out there.
So when that Cage book came out, I was like, yeah, done, well, yeah,
because you know, just to you know, get just a
real tap into that next truly like explained, because I

(32:21):
know exactly what you you feel. There was an authenticity
when it first came up. When n w A was
coming out. N w A was like, look at our
struggle and somehow it like evolved and grown into a
glorification of it. And we felt that here in the hood.
Like you know, like I said, I grew up in Compton, California,
was in Downey to go to high school, but I
lived in Compton till about I was like in ninth grade.

(32:44):
Then by senior year, I was back in Long Beach,
uh north side Long Beach, across the street from Jordan's High.
You may know Vince Staples, and like it was like
it was like a whole lifestyle. Like if you remember,
like the punk kids at your school and the metal
heads like gang banging became this lifestyle. But it wasn't like, no,

(33:08):
you didn't wash out the spikes, you didn't take off
the It was a real lifestyle that kids got caught
up in. And also was the effect of you know, uh,
you know, systematic issues that people of color dealt with
in the hood and it seemed like there was no
way out. It seemed like the only way to survive
in those situations was to either be a rapper, a
basketball player, and or a gangster. Like that was that

(33:31):
was the only way you survived because when you got
home there was no food. So what this group of
people that you called the gang, you know, would take
care of you, feed you, and that's all you had,
you know. That's that's the thing about this that people
I mean again, we can do a whole show about this,
actually the whole series about this, but there's a reality
of that life. Uh it's too simple to just write

(33:53):
everybody off as though they just have a hard, vicious,
criminal thug. There are significant number of them that are
just hard, vicous, but there's also the complete lack of
family structure that this thing takes the place of that.
Like that's basically every terrorist it's exactly the same. You
destroyed their culture. There's no unit, there's no unified families
where all these testesterone testosterone filled boy is going to do.

(34:17):
I'm going to join up with the Taliban, or I'm
going to become a crip or a blood or whatever
it is. It's very simple equation. But I don't want
to some outsider who only knows about it from MTV
turning Luke Cage into that, right, right, if you're gonna
have the discussion, dig deep. Well, Also because you don't
like if if we want to go back to the
n w A analogy, you lose that that that you know,

(34:40):
explanation of what the struggle is to kind of shine
light on what the the the the sources versus like
someone glorifying it and being like this is cool, thus
leading to more kids wanting to do that, so much
so that the Gangster Rappers themselves had to go and
do an armistice. Hey stop, we're happening about this. We

(35:03):
know we make it sound cool, but it ain't. I
remember Snoop Dogg and Game had to come out and
do a whole so like, if you look at the
actual lyrics, they're not always making it sound that cool,
talking about my friends getting chopped down in front of
the cops, beating them up and treating them like hell
just for standing around, Like it's not a life you
want to do unless somebody's glorifying it. Which watch watch

(35:24):
what I do now, uh, Which I think that's where
Casper Cole came from, that same sort of soup of
we need it to be hood, we need to be street,
not necessarily, and even with the cage thing, not necessarily
because it's in the person's mind. I don't think they're
doing it to be negative or whatever they're like. Remember
Marvel Comics is we used to be called Marvel pop comics,

(35:44):
pop art comics. Their whole reason why they always beat
DC once they showed up was they try to keep
their finger right on the pulse right. So whatever those
kids out there are doing, we're gonna have some comics
about it. If you look at that stuff from it,
it was all hippies and whatever. So that was the
street culture became kid culture came youth culture. In some ways,
I think it's a problem, but I can see the

(36:07):
people at Marvel, editors at Marvel going, hey, there's a
black guy we're gonna do this. Hey, I don't know this.
I have no inside knowledge about this, but I would
be willing to bet that that was a discussion rather
than writer going hey, you know what else I want
to do? I want to do this too, would be
more like, hey, we need this gap field, can you
can we use your popularity with the Panther right now
to fill that gap? Sure, let's go, you know, and

(36:29):
that's where you get I think that's where you get
Casper call from ohay, I was going to say the
talk about the portrayal of Techaula, like how that is
so important then because you have a black king who
is royal, you have royalty, you have a sister shrer
who like especially if we're talking about the film, like

(36:51):
how important it was to see that, to see I'm
sorry introduced create. He created the dor Malaje, who were
only two when he created them, just the two sort
of wives, protector wives of the Black Panther, like ceremonial marriage.
Reggie Hudlind comes in among many other things. When he
takes over, he adds Shrei, the little sister, and you're like, oh, okay,

(37:16):
and she's a genius too. All right, let's go. And
it's interesting that she took off in the movie because
once again we've sort of been talking about this off
off the mic. But there's a whole bunch of people
who haven't been getting served, and sureI typifies of that
to some degree. Right, she shows up and she feels

(37:36):
a space that all of us could go. You know,
there's this empty space you could fill up with money
if you just did this, right, I don't know what
you're talking about. You guys are crazy. That's some Pine
the Sky progressive stuff. You guys are crazy. And then
she shows up and takes over the movie. Right, everyone
wants to talk about Shrei. Where Suri? What's what's she doing?
Which the most popular character you've seen it all year?

(37:57):
You know, because there's there's a need for it, wonder
woman Captain Marvel, like, there's a need for this. People
want to see it. I mean, yeah, if we if
look but by now, anyone who's against this has already
turned off that. But they turned it off last week,

(38:20):
the same damn last week. But but there you're I
I think you're speaking to something very very true. Whereas
the sense of like, you know, if I just take
a step back. There's been a lot of badass black
dudes on on screen. Black Panther isn't new. It's you know,
I was happy because Black Panther does happen to be
my favorite comic book character as a Nigerian American. It

(38:42):
like touches me in a very specific way no other hero. Yeah,
it's like, oh, this is you even to the max.
So I've I've had that attachment. But you know I
can I can go in and see you know, Idris
Elba kick someone's but or you know, Chadwick in another movie,
Michael b But you know, you don't have opportunities for

(39:04):
young black women and not only see like you know,
a woman who is beautiful, but someone who's smart. She
like dominates the movie. Everyone wants to talk about her too.
Yeah you you really, you really got like two fold.
You got your badass black woman and you've got your
intelligent black woman, two things you never see you got
your third one? Right? Uh n? Right? Who? By the way,

(39:27):
is it completely different from the way she is in
the comics. They just took her and made her into
their own thing. But what you this is the thing
we all come from. Variations of what mainstream American culture,
which is white. Uh would deem minority cultures were what
they would think of his niets cultures. But we know
within the culture there's all these nuances. It's not just like, oh,

(39:49):
there's the Latin chick interchangeable with the other Latin chick, right,
there's the black dude, Like I've been mistaken so many
times for a football player because of my size, or
if I happen to be in another the country, or
you must be on the local basketball team that we've
We only fly in black athletes to play basketball for MS, right.
The only place that doesn't happen Africa because everybody is black. Right.

(40:10):
But from the point of view of these executives and
their lifestyles and the people who make the decisions about
all this stuff, their their job is I'm not letting
them off the hook because a lot of them are
just bags of but the But a lot of them
are just comple ignorant in an innocent, childlike ignorance way

(40:31):
where they literally are like, Okay, how can I put
you in the quickest box? So I got to move
on to the next Oh yeah, no, We'll go into
this because I don't I don't. I don't think anyone
should hop on you for a quote unquote letting them off,
because this is a very interesting and true thing that
I think needs to be talked about. Where it's like
everyone is MORENC is only aware of the world they're experienced.

(40:52):
And if you grew up like you know, primarily not primarily,
if you grew up white and a primarily white upbringing,
you're you're not checking for those things. It's just not looking.
I could tell you, like, you know, look, I'll you know,
I write for TV. I have I'm on a group
of people who write for very popular TV shows, calls

(41:13):
writing for Brooklyn nine nine right now, the Mars writing
for Single Parents, and went on to write for other stuff.
I'm not gonna say no names because I ain't trying to.
I'm gonna get into a story, you know. I don't
want people trying to Yeah, you know, and this isn't
like a knock or anything. This is just you know,
something that I hope like if the room or someone

(41:34):
associated or showrunner here's this, they do take notice of this.
You know. One of the guys they were writing for
a show, a network show with a black character on it,
and they and he and he came to me one
day he was like, Oh, I totally see you know
how like black characters end up not being written well
and it's kind of not their fault. What ends up

(41:54):
happening is you have this black character and it's the
only black character in the show, so you're afraid to
make them flawed in any way because you have inadvertently
accidentally made this one person of colors represent representative. So
any flaws now the writers are worried of coming off racist.
You're almost too work for your own good because you

(42:16):
don't put there and that creates a boring to have more.
Oh my god, how dare you exactly? Well? I did
want to say this is because when this is one
of the biggest things that I loved Girls Trip for
because it was like you had all of these black women,
but they all were different, Like you had the wild child,
you had, the loving mother, you had, the professional you have,

(42:38):
and it was like, oh weird that we could be
like all you could have, you know, but we're all diverse,
Like we're all different. And when you see it, what
happens the box office blows up and the reporters talk
about it like it's an anomaly. You're not interchangeable, is
what I mean. Like, we're all different. That's what happened.
They went home. The people who went the first weekend

(42:58):
went home and went, girl, did you What I want
to say is I am not Gina Rodriguez. Not you're not.
Of course, people are still going to make that because
you're not there. You should never be there to be Latin.
That's the point tagged in all of her stuff, and
I think she's I'm just like, I'm not her though,
and so it's just racist at this point. She is

(43:18):
not in the end, Like no, I could go on
this forever, but what I'm saying is we are not interchanged.
We are not. But you're an actor and you know this.
Many auditions have you been to. When you go to
the audition, rod not not even that you're just walking
cold and you see like nine thousand versions of everybody
there could be your sister, Like literally, like I just
always get Gina Rodriguez type. Like I'm just saying that

(43:40):
I understand that we look similar, but we're our personalities are.
So what I wanted to say is that's why I'm
I was excited that there was a film like Girlshrip
and just like what Black Panther did where it showed
these women all have all different types of person all
different types, and the audiences qualities and yeah, right, and
so what happened with Black Other people talk about kill

(44:01):
Monger because they've never seen a brother quite like that
in the movie. And as you said, you have seen
a brother like to challenge in a movie before, not
quite that extreme, but he's been around. You've never seen
somebody quite as smooth as uh kill Monger is the
bad guy and be black that way. And the ladies
you've never seen that many of different kinds of heroic

(44:23):
black women in anything. Yeah, and anything even a bike
Lee movies you've never seen, right, So of course they
get all the juice. They're getting talked about the most
because they're the new hot thing, and everybody tells their
friends and half the audience is female. Y'all right, like
maybe the reason, oh that's a whole other show, that

(44:44):
all the show. But let me put it like this.
I went on this whole thing, Where's my Black Widow Movie?
For like two years, long before anyone was like I
was doing posters, Where's my Black Widow Movie? And the
rule of the rule in Hollywood was women can't do
action movies. People won't go see them. And I was like,
literally every franchise you've ever made alien, It was I

(45:10):
was rinking up from TV. I freaking what Cleopatrick freaking
Jones like, you go back as far as you want, right,
So it was a lie. It was a lot of
people kept telling themselves to be able to say no
to the ladies. Basically, we don't, we don't wish to.
Here's the stat we're gonna give you. The problem is
you can actually go check the stats. You're you're you're

(45:31):
either lying or you're stupid. Those are your choices, right. So, um,
with the Black Panther movie, And this is why I
always say it should be if there's such a thing
as should I don't really believe in the oscars. It's
just like a high school popularity contest to me. But
it does sell. It makes careers go bigger, it makes
it makes the ideas put in some of these movies

(45:51):
go wider. Okay, we want to see more of a
certain kind of movie. You wanted to win an oscar? Right? Um.
I feel like just because of what the number of
levels that the Black Panther operated on that maybe are
invisible to a lot of white people, that they just
went to a movie and saw a great action movie.
I got some black people And that's kind of cool too.

(46:12):
That my progressive. But I'm like that thing was working
on like five levels. Yeah, are you sure you got
all five? Because I don't think you did, you know,
And one of them was this nuance of female power. Essentially, Um,
you see a lot of women like I'm gonna pull
Jessica Chas staying out and just for no reason. But
she's very hardcore. She's like choosing movies and directors and

(46:34):
stuff where she can show women in these different lights.
And I think she absolutely should do that. But because
she's the solo star, she's that woman. Right. What you
want is ensemble pieces because they will show a variety
of person approaching problems in different ways. Right, So like
the Alien cast can be multi ethnic the next time,

(46:55):
more multi ethnic the next time around, or like the
Colonial Marines people forget Asian people, Latin people although played
by Jewish woman, uh, black people whatever, but they were
sort of all intermingled with each other and they all
approach problems differently based on personality, right, rather than Oh,
that's the Latin dude, he's gonna do this, that's the
Chinese dude. You know, he's a martial artist, you know,

(47:15):
or a tech head or whatever. Right, you just have
to be thinking about it differently. And I think that's
part of the giant, weird, sort of phenomena aspect of
The Black Panther, which people aren't really quite twigging to yet.
It has less to do with its blackness and more
to do with the variety of women being shown. Right, Um,
the kinds of women you can see. They're not just
good girls and bad girls. There's not just mean girls

(47:37):
and nice girls. There's not just smart girls and hot
girls or dumb girls or fat girl or any of
that crap. Right, It's just there's a lot of different
kinds of people, and some of them spend money on movies.
Maybe show them like it's there's seven and a half
billion human beings. Show some of them, but it's not rockets,
but they make it. They make it rocket science. So

(48:00):
with the Panther, I think that's part of the big
phenomenal success of the movie is that it actually pushed
a lot of those buttons. I think wonder Woman did
some of that, but I don't think it had frankly
had one wonder Woman in it, right right, Like once
you leave Paradise Islands, he's the only one you want.
A room full of special women, that's what you went like,
hidden figures, room full of special women. What happened? Blew up?

(48:22):
It's not hard, it's not it's really not hard do
the math man they make, but they try and make
it seem like it is. Nobody knows anything. We have
to take another quick break, but when we get back,
we're gonna jump into Black Panther's question as well as
the future of Black Panthers right after this and we

(48:49):
are back and uh yeah, let's just let's just talk
a little bit more about the film because something I
don't know. These are some actual numbers. So the budget
was two hudred million and it made one point three
four seven billion dollars. Um. That's very exciting. Yeah, man,

(49:10):
if you're if you haven't seen it, I can't imagine
you being a subscriber of this podcast. Um, but I
know that it did, and I mean I think that
it has influenced a show as well. Actually only in
a couple of minor, minor ways, and not for any

(49:31):
particular reason except that while they were in when they
were wrapping up principal photography, they were still shooting when
we started making our show. And quite as it's kept,
Marvel is like working for the CIA. So people laugh.
You just laughed. I'm not exaggerating. Um, projects do not
cross pollinate. There's no unless somebody at the top says

(49:54):
we want the Black Panther cartoon to be exactly like
the movie. Therefore you need to sign all these non
disclosure agreement and read the script so that it can
be exact. Um, it's not going to be right. I
forgot to mention that you were working on the comics, right, No, no, no,
I thought you did write a black well yeah. They
pulled me in after like a weird thing. Should we edit? No, no, no, no,

(50:18):
it's you decide I want. Okay. I saw that you
had wrote a black Panther that was Alexis thing that
they did as part of the promos for the movie
when it came out, and they approached me because I
was the guy who was on the Y and I
created this other character for Marvel Mosaic. I was in
the mix and they're like, oh, Jeff, you know he's
you know, he's running the cell. He might want to

(50:39):
do one of is right, And it was kind of fun.
It was kind of weird because it was Alexis Diet.
But by the way, it's free go read it. I
had a ball well, I was looking at the cover
art for it. Yeah, but yeah, so the timeline, even
if we'd wished to, there really wasn't a way to
do it. Also, everyone's crazy secretive about these movies, so

(51:01):
unless it's everything to need to know and animation. As
as much as we love it, we geeks love it, uh,
we were not on the need to know list. What
we learned about the movie was basically from whatever the
public knew. So we saw the big kill Monger mask
when it came out. That's when we saw the kill
Monger man. We didn't know any of the actors until

(51:22):
they announced who the actors were, so that's I would say,
that's partly why the designs for our show don't match
like the movie exactly. So um, I mean they're some
of them are closer than others, but on the whole,
like everybody kne who Claw was because he had already
been introduced. So as soon as they mentioned Andy Serkis
is going to reprise Claw where we already know what
he looks like as we saw him in Age of

(51:42):
Ultron right. So that's an easy design to do. But
the rest were just designed. So you gotta give it
up to the designers. For um, I'm pretty sure once
they knew that Homeboy plays kill Monger, all the ladies
love him and I can't. Ironically, was in the first
episode of TV I wrote him and Jeff Goldblum, we're

(52:02):
in the same episodes I wrote for kill Manger and
the Grand Mask. Um. But um, I guess they got
wind of who that was going to be, so they
designed the character to sort of resemble the Killer characters
esemble him. But the rest of it was just us
like um, and it's probably probably not the best advertising

(52:24):
tool to say we're not like the movie, but on
another hand, if freed us up right. So now you
have three versions. You have the movie version, you have
the comic book version, which is wildly different in the movie,
like wildly different. Um. Yeah, and before we move and
I forgot to mention Tnahs Coats, who we shouldn't or
else people will write us. Yeah. I mean, if you

(52:48):
were even starting to write something thinking that you knew
about Teneze Coats before two gentlemen in the room, I'd
erase it and then feel about typing it. Wow. And
then also there was the The Black Panther series that
was by Marvel Knights. Yes, that was Reggie, Reggie Hudlin

(53:10):
who did that. What was turned into the show was
basically an adaptation of his one of his arts. Um
and uh, I liked a lot of it. It was
very slavish from my point of view. They wanted to sorry.
I didn't want to be the one to say it
was it on. I didn't want to be the one,

(53:31):
and he was a president at the time. Help it's helpful.
But they also were very They wanted to stick so
close to the original artwork of John Remeda Jr. That
I think ultimately just this is I know Reggie, Reggie's
a friend of mine. I'm not saying anything I wouldn't
say to him. Um. I can see why they chose
to do it that way. It makes sense that he
would want to do it that way. But in the

(53:52):
long run, I think there's a reason certain kinds of
art stay in the comics and other kinds of art,
or best to make a move in animation, and I'm
not sure that was the happiest marriage of styles. Um.
But again, there's a lot of like, it's weird because
these characters people think they're setting stone because when they
see them in a movie, they think that's the character.

(54:13):
That's the character, that's a black panther. Black panther has
been around since before anyone in this room was born, right,
And I'm way older than these two, so that's a
long time. It's the point. Um. So what I feel
like when I talk to people about it is like this.
When the hell Boy movies came out, real gigs were like, oh, damn,
hell Boy movie. I don't even know why they're making
a hell Boy because all the all the characters. Why

(54:35):
hell Boy? I mean, I'm glad, but damn right, And
then it came out It's like, Okay, this isn't exactly
the comic comics, way slower, it's way darker than this movie.
It's funny, but it ain't like this. This movie is
way more full of jokes and sort of sarcasm and
stuff like that. I can see what they did, but
the weird thing was hell Boy was still hell Boy.

(54:56):
And that's the point. He felt like hell Boy. He
talked like hell Boy, he did hell Boy things, he
looked like hell Boy. So regardless of what else was
going around, little modifications that they had to make and
all that from my little gee comic book head, it
felt like I was watching a hell Boy. Then they
put out some hell Boy cartoons which were not like
the movie, and they weren't like the comic, but hell

(55:17):
Boy remained hell Boy. He still acted like he felt
like the hell Boy expected him to be. So if
you look at the different Black Panther characters in the movie,
the show in the comic, that character is essentially the
same guy. Um Ours is slightly older than Chadwick Boseman's version,

(55:37):
probably slightly younger than the comic book version. Based on
the craziness Coats has got him going, oh my god,
but um, but we were free um and I think
that ultimately helped us. Uh yeah. And you know, there's
one round I want to talk about, mostly because I

(55:58):
talked about it a lot. I actually was a big
fan of this. A lot of people fight me on this,
But the most Dangerous Man Alive when he comes to
Hell's Kitchen. I was all about it. That was that
was that slapped. That was all about it. Plus I
was like Shadowland was such a good like run and
so I'm like geeked up off of that. Then my
Man's to child gets to hang out in New York

(56:20):
and then as a night here and once again his
like which was a character from Things Fall Apart. It
was it was like and there was only one part.
One part that I was not a fan of. It
was the Feared Self crossover when they put my Man's
up against hate Monger and and this is like, if
you look up hate Monger now they got the swoled

(56:42):
up one that I'm like, oh yeah, who kind of
reflects the literally literally actually ate off hit. Yeah, but
this guy, I'm not kidding, but this is this is
the hate monger that was in Feared Self was a
dude in a pink KKK outfit terror I'm like, how
is this dude terrorizing ta He's not. It was. It

(57:06):
was such a pain but everything wrong that yeah, but
well that's the thing, and that's another thing that could
be a whole episode. As much as I love a
good crossover, when when you forced because they because remember
right when I started really getting into comics, which is
around that time, a few years earlier, Like I'd say,
right around like right after Darkest Night, I got your

(57:26):
getting really in the capes. That's when they went crossover crazy.
Everything had, every book had event stop it and they're like, man,
and I remember like being like, has this always been there?
Like no before that. It used to be a long
period of time before there, so it would be an event. Yeah,
but then it was like there was And what the
problem was because we're talking about this, uh, it kind

(57:49):
of marries right into what you just said is because
they wanted the crossovers to coincide with the movies. Itself
happened only to promo Captain America because that's when Red
Skull came back, and then they had the other one
with Thor to promote the Thorn movie. All of the
crossover events, it was like it was so transparent that
you were just doing this to sell it. And then

(58:11):
and then y'all went crazy and canceled, Uh, Fantastic four
to be petty, and it was pettiness. People keep saying
that in the fandom, that's not petty. Okay, what's what's
the real money. When everybody, remember probably in the fan community,
says it's petty, it's not they everyone who makes comics
loves comics, the writers, editors that are everybody because the

(58:31):
money is terrible. So if you don't love it, you're
not in it, okay. But everybody above them in the
executive suites, they're fighting the same fight that every publishing company,
every studio fights. We don't own these guys. Fox is
putting out movies with these guys. They would like Fox
to give these guys back to us, but if these
movies keep making money, they're not going to every comic

(58:52):
we put out, since they own the rights to the movies.
In the Fantastic Four, if Danny comes in with a
great idea, is fantastic for our ever written? She comes in,
she sells it, They do it, They put it out.
She introduces six brand new characters that everyone in the
audience loves. Marvel can't do anything with them, but Fox can.
So you're just so so you're giving away you're giving

(59:14):
away stuff. You're giving away free stuff to a company
that you would like to give back your stuff, which
they have no incentive to do and have no legal
reason to do. They bought it fair and square, they're
exploiting it fair and square. Now you got some juice
because you just came hard with that iron Man stuff.
So you're thinking, all, we want all of our property back. Well,
I guess you shouldn't have sold it. Then it's hardball man.
So people in the fandom communities wanted it to be pettiness, like, well,

(59:37):
we're just gonna be stinty about it, but it isn't.
It's this is billions of dollars at steak. Oh yeah,
I feel you in in the in the like, I
am fully aware of that sense. It's still just felt
because I wanted my fantastic and they had. But you're right,
You're right. The reason I'm mad is because they went

(01:00:00):
a whole new route with it, switched it up, and
Fox could have created something really nice with it. Lucky
for Marvel, Fox was Fox. Wow, Fox, what were you thinking?
How could you not get that? Right? Should call me?
Oh my gosh, the Future Foundation, Oh my god, don't please,
don't get me started on any of that. I I

(01:00:22):
go weeks on that. So I think that we I'm
going to just do this really lightning round of things
that we haven't forgotten about Black Panther. We just have
a lot to get through. And and Jeff is also
a busy man. So also to put this energy out there.
If Marvel you need a little buffer between movies, let

(01:00:43):
me write the Most Dangerous Man mini seris. Let me
write that. I'll write that mini series. We could throw
it up on your weird app and I love this
guy and it'll it'll like, it'll hold people over to
the next movie. Let me have that. That's what I'm
meant to do. Um. Wait, okay, so I have a Storm.

(01:01:05):
He had to relate. He was married Storm. A lot
of people love the Storm thing, and a lot of
the Storm fans love. My beef with is very simple.
My friend Reggie put that marriage together. I think it
was a very business smart thing to do. Is putting
a giant franchise together with a guy who needed some
always needs a little bit of ex or whatever. Plus

(01:01:26):
they're the most prominent black characters possibly in comics, the
two of them. Um, it makes sense on that level.
From my point of view, it is very simple. Every
superhero should be unique. Everybody should have their own rogues gallery,
their own love interests, their own storylines all of that stuff,
so that when I pick up a Black Panther character,
I'm picking it up for that it's not Captain America,

(01:01:46):
it's not Spider Man. And then it's fun when there's
a crossover because Spiderman gets to go, what these are
the people you fight? Good Lord or vice versa? Right or? Uh?
Lady Sift shows up Thor's love interest and she's kind
of like, well, I know ever actually met Captain America before.
He's kind of hot, Like, wait, you're supposed to be
with me? Yeah, I know, Thor, but you know we're

(01:02:06):
thousands of years old. I can get back to you.
Steve Rogers cat over here, you know. Like that. That's
sort of the fun of the crossover. But the mutant
thing plus Wakonda, that's top heavy to me. I was
just like, plus Storm doesn't need him and he doesn't
need her. It's I feel like they should have built
up their own each one who Storm's real love interest?

(01:02:27):
Now she's been with Wolverine for God's sakes, Come on, no, um,
So that was my only beef with it, and I
feel like, now, especially since you've seen in the movies,
they could have taken a time to just build up
a character that was worthy of Like, look, Batman and Catwoman,
how long have they been dancing around? Right? All you
needed was somebody the end of time, till the end

(01:02:50):
of time. They're not getting it. I feel bad. Well,
they're getting it. That's not what I meant. Okay, Okay,
my next one. Vibranium. Jeff, what can't it do? Okay? Now,
there's kinds of vibranium, like there's different black panthers, and
the comics is very specific. Vibranium eats and redistributes uh,

(01:03:13):
kinetic or other forms of energy, but primarily kinetic. So
it was in Africa billion billion years ago and the
Wakanan's discovered it and went, what is this stuff? And
create an entire technology based solely on that, And it's
the only place in the world that exists, so no
one else has that, and that's why their stuff is
so crazy and futuristic, and they can do all the

(01:03:34):
stuff that technically shouldn't be possible. But vibranium is unobtainium.
It's it's it's just whatever. In the comics, in the movies,
it's very interesting because again we don't have the X
Men so we don't have access to adamantium, right, Marvel
doesn't own that. That's all Fox, So vibranium starts to
be sort of the place holder for both. Now it's

(01:03:56):
the reason Captain America shields indestructible all of a sudden
of stuff. That cap did have a sort of a
vibranium adamantium alloy shield at one point. I don't know
what the status is now, but the original version was
not freaking vibranium, okay, but it was from a meteor,
so you could say it was broken off from the
central maybe, I don't know, a lot of writers write
this stuff like over decades, so it gets fuzzy. But

(01:04:19):
that means there's a planet somewhere that's made entirely vi
or was maybe it was Krypton. I don't know. But
but so in the movies, it's a it's a fuzzier thing.
It's much more like adamantium. If you know comics, you
know the different adam Mantium is that unbreakable, unstoppable, can't
it can cut through anything if you hone it to
an edge. It's it's sort of the thing that you
would hit a god with because it can it can

(01:04:41):
fight a god hammer that. But vibranium versus adamantium used
to be a discussion which one would win, right, because
if you come in with a slash, but you hit
something made of vibranium and it eats all the energy,
it's sort of like he just tapped it. So does
it cut? You know, like that in the movies. In
the cartoon, they're basically the same same. So anyway, Yeah, sure,

(01:05:03):
he actually took over the mantle of Black Panther have
to do more, Yes, And I love that. Um, that's
actually what led into the comic I was talking about.
He was filling salty because he couldn't protect his country,
so he went to Hell's Kitchen. I'll take over for
Daredevil while while my sister runs. That's your vacation. I'm
gonna go to Hell's kitten and fight criminals without my stuff,

(01:05:26):
just to like relax and so sure, so he had
that was the big thing about most dangerous man in life.
He had no powers. Then they went ahead and tweet
that by having sure he run by the god of
light and not like life and uh to Charlotte, the
god of death. Uh, he's the lord he's the Lord

(01:05:47):
of the Dead. Yeah, yeah, uh yeah. I mean writers
are crazy. They come out with wacky ideas and editors
are like that sounds wild. Do that yeah, And then
you look back on you're like, wow, was a weird
phase my anyway, ask questions we were doing a lightning
round now, I think that was my I was gonna So.
Another thing is that even though in the movie Shure

(01:06:08):
he has shown and she is she is one of
the smartest people in the entire planet. But to Chola
in Marvel's roster, I think it's like numbers, like, he's
also one of the most brilliant men. Like people know
that he's one of the richest men you know from
he's like, but he's also, yeah, one of the most brilliant.
The easiest described to Chila is in the comics, certainly

(01:06:29):
is if you know comics, especially Marvel comics, what if
Dr Doom was a good guy. Yeah, that's the Black Panther.
It's basically him, right, and there's no reason he there's
no dying, why he's in the Illuminati. Oh my god,
I'm surprised he to just kill all of them, Like
the Illuminati is such a fun idea because it's like

(01:06:51):
none of these people's ego should let them work together.
But I like seeing all these smart people, how they
punk out some of the ones you thought, like you think, no, no, no, no, anyway,
Read we were talking. So for those who don't know,
the Illuminati is to Challa nay More, Professor x Read Richards,
doctor Strange and there's one more. No, no, that should

(01:07:15):
be it because they all have an infinity stone and
black panther. Yeah uh and so like that. That was
like they that started beasts. That's literally how to Chala
nay More ended up with a blood feud. That's how
like so much. That was such a fun run when
they really were hitting uh the Illuminati, Yeah man, that

(01:07:36):
was that was some wild times. Just like they pumped
out Captain America. He's like, you guys, they were like, dude,
we are the smartest, most powerful people. We don't we
don't listen, just go away and hit stuff. Cap. We're
not talking about that stuff. But the Illuminati, like in
a weird way, they're kind of villains though yea, they
wanted they were the most ruthless good guys in the

(01:07:57):
history of good guys. Like they were like we will
do anything to save the world, even blow up another
planet full of people. Yeah, like at which they did do,
and I'm like, how are these Yeah? That that was
that was that run when you had that, like the
teams of people who made the hard decision because you
got the uncanny what you call it, X Force and

(01:08:17):
they were now, we better just kill this one. If
you want to listen, if you're if you're like, oh, man,
capes are too lollipop for me, read Illuminati Read Uncanny
at X Force, because they Luminati were hard and those
were some fun runs. Oh my god, you couldn't make
a whole like they had to basically disband or die

(01:08:38):
out whatever, because there's no way that comic could remain
that hard. Yeah, you can't say same people, both of them.
They were just like, all right, we've we've gone as
hard as we could. Let's send them back. But personality wise,
with Black Panther, one of the things that I think
Priest and Hudlin both did excellently was had to differentiate
him from He's not Marvel's batman. There was a lot
of people in comic book were, well, he's just a

(01:08:59):
black man in Marvels. They need a batman guy. I'm like,
he's not crazy. He doesn't fight crime, he's not putting
criminals in jail like that. He's richer than everybody. He's
just as smart as the smartest dude, and his skill
really is tactics. Also another thing powers. People always forget
about this because they didn't do it in the movie.
They put all his powers into the suit. In the comics,

(01:09:22):
he's he's Captain America level. You got this thing called
the heart shaped herb the Black Panthers eat. There's a
ritual around it, but it basically they're like what they
call meta humans. He's like Captain and all the stuff
they did to make Skinny Steve into Captain America. What
con has just been doing that with this one fruit
for like ten thousand years, right, So he's that, right,

(01:09:42):
So even with nothing, with no gadgets, no nothing, just
naked on a beach. Please don't start a fight with
this man. Yeah, like really, like I think I think
that's uh, well, I just wanted to tap on the future.
I mean, we can't talk about the future of we
know there's a movie. That's why I thought. I mean,
if he and I talked about this and if he

(01:10:04):
and I know this is me, like just when I'm
throwing shade. Um if he and I talked about this
with Infinity War when he disappeared and everyone cried and
we're like, but he has like a three picture deal,
so idiot people, we're mad and I'm like, no, but
Spider Man also has a three picture deal. Tom Holland
accidentally already gave it as never been to the movies

(01:10:25):
before a movie. It's half a movie, true, right, they
tell you part one, It's right in the title. But
also they're not going to just kill off this huge
character that they've just made a billion dollars. Let's tell
you what. Let's stock at that billion dollars versus the
Infinity Gar see which one wins. I guess, what do

(01:10:47):
you think that they might tackle in the second film
or what do you want to see more? Christ I
mean for me, Um, I liked what they did in
the first one. They opened up a lot of doors. Um,
I would like to see what they did with the women.
I would like to see a real black villain that
wasn't like killer because kill Marker is basically what Conda focus.

(01:11:10):
I would like to see a global level threat that
happens to be a black person. Right. Have you ever
seen that in a movie? I don't think you have,
or if they've been played evil or whatever, they've been
played like crazy, weird evil, like maybe Sam Jackson in
the was it in The Queen and the Kingsman? Maybe,
But that was just Russell Simmons as Dwayne. Dwayne already
beat Marvel to that with this hobby. Straight up put

(01:11:34):
a superhero in a car movie. You know what? Okay, wait,
don't even get me started on that franchise that was
a rip off of Point Break and it's now become
the car Acrobatic Team versus Seal. What the hell? I'm like,
I'm here for it to bring you back by the way,

(01:11:55):
I love those movies. Familiar. Yeah, I was so on
the train before everyone figured out that you don't have
to ironically like it. No, it's hey, I'll tell you what.
And this is the last for this show. They did
a trick that most franchises can't do. It started out
as a completely one kind of franchise and then they

(01:12:17):
had one movie where they had a chance to flip
it and if it hadn't worked, that would have been
the end. And not only did you drift still to
this day, and I promise I have no plans to
change it. Have not seen Tokyo Drift. I was like,
no good soundtrack. I mean, yeah that karaoke boys slaps

(01:12:37):
they turned that. I'm gonna see it. Dan, I turned
that corner. I don't know how they did. I still
don't watch Initial D another. I'll watch a whole season
of a D before I watch Tokyo Drift. They got
a feud going out of it? Are yeah, nerdificent? Come
for the topic, we're talking about other topics. I mean,
we've done this now that people are used to. That's
what kinda drift to that? Right? Um, so let's just

(01:13:00):
close up shop. We've we've flown. This has been an
amazing conversation. Thank you for coming on my pleasure. I
love talking about the show and even though we barely did. Um.
Is there anything you want to promote? Where can people
find you? You can find me, Uh well, apparently on Twitter.
I got a Patreon, which is I think it's Jeff

(01:13:22):
Thorn Patreon. But what I really like the hype is
I got these things called The Battle Books on Amazon
at three Digital Comics, uh all brand new characters, superheroes, whatever,
not all superheroes, science fiction, adventure or whatever. But they're
competing because I don't have time. So whichever one of
them selves the most by the first of Spring is
the first chapter of three different stories, completely different stories.
Whichever one of them selves the most, even if it's

(01:13:43):
by one sale, that's the story that gets to live,
and the rest of them are just gonna sit in
my vault, right. Yeah, And just to help out some
of the people listening, is Jeff spelled the other way? Yeah,
the British way, the proper way, o f f Thorn
with an e. It's all British from front to bat.
Hey whatever, man, I didn't do any of that, that's

(01:14:04):
all real. My parents did that. And if you wanted
to catch up on Black Panthers quest, I know that
it's online for people that you can get it on
the Disney app uh Disney now app the whole thing.
I think. Also, there's five free episodes up on um
uh YouTube. The first episode and then we did a
sort of a weird time travel thing, so that whole

(01:14:24):
arc is up there for free. And then there's this
one weird one with bats and cloth. I don't like.
I don't know why he chose that one. I mean,
it's awesome, so random, but that's up there too. Um
we had a ball, we got um please do watch it.
One thing about the show is that it took a
minute for people to sort of figure out. It was
a little different than the other seasons of the show
because it's the season five of The Avenger Show, not

(01:14:44):
season one of the Black Panther Show. Although it feels
like season one of the Black Panthers Show, it's really
season five of the Adventure Show. So I think people
were like, oh, I've seen that before, I can wait
on it. It's not gonna be new, but it is new.
It's brand new, completely different approach, completely different style. And
now there's enough of it that you can binge it.
I know all you young people like to do, so
please bench the hell out of it. I was gonna say,
you also had a Nika. Yes, she plays and yeah,

(01:15:10):
and it's really cool because for those of you that
don't know, which I totally know because she's in my
Spotify because they listened to the soundtrack all the time
that she was a voice of Tiannas. So she was
the first black Disney Princess, which is cool because she's
in an animated show with the first black superhero. Also
unique to our show. We created that character. She's a

(01:15:32):
past black panther. She's the Queen of Wakanda from like
two thousand years ago, like something crazy like that. Um,
she was great by the way, I love her. Did
you get her to sing? Not for me? Please please
bring her back and have her do your voice? And

(01:15:53):
we love a Nika she was. She's lovely, so great.
We got to where I got to Oh my god,
I got to meet stan Lee. I got to work
with our Hamil Hayley at Well, Haley at Well, y'all.
I mean that that one aspect of the show, but
also the regular cast, the people who play the Avengers, Uh,
James and Daisy, who play to Challa and Shari. These

(01:16:16):
people are lovely, lovely, lovely. One you had our friend
Roger Craig Smith. He was on our sonic episode. That
man is a madman. Have you seen those things he
does with her episode? But if you see those things
that he does where he's just trying to get her
to smile and see nope, I'm like, what is this.

(01:16:36):
It's hysterical. It makes my day whenever I see him. Yes,
he's awesome. She she roasted him on our on our show.
Of course she did, because he's evil. He's my Captain
America by the way, like everybody, all y'all can have
Chris Evans. I'm gonna take my Roger Craigsmith. That that's right.
He's capt to me. Yeah. He loves the Blue Sonic
and Calves anyway, So that's that's you know. Thank you

(01:16:57):
for having me. I love it. You guys are great. Um,
this is great. Thanks for speaking out about Black Panther
and his history. I would just be doing this at
my house. You know. My wife's like, are you still
talking about Um? I am at ms Danny Fernandez on
all the things. Pick up The Good Immigrant Book, UM,
which is out now. I think when is this drop?

(01:17:20):
What's the date it should be dropping? On Tuesday? What's
the day of it is? Yes, pick it out, it's
out today and follow me on on Twitter where we
tweet things, and oh yeah, check out our tea public
side is te public dot com. Slash are difficent and
send us pictures of you in our merch and we
will retweet them or share them on Instagram if you

(01:17:41):
and I love doing that. Y'all look good all right?
And me, you know me, I'm at iffy. I have
Y N B A D I W E on Twitter
the nerve to mock my name, the nerve. I mean
you got the British name. I got the British colonial
eyed name. That's the difference. Uh, they can they visited

(01:18:04):
and left. If D's on Twitch, if you like to
watch me play video games, lots of NERD fam coming through.
And the Discord Salt Squad, I mean Discord Dot g
G Slash Salt Squad. We're in there, Danny's in there.
We're continue the combo and uh, you know a few
shows to promote. Uh if you're listening to this on
the nineteen run, uh from from tonight when you're listening

(01:18:29):
to it on Tuesday, because I hope you don't wait
till anything besides Tuesday to listen to it. I'll be
on the last show at the friend Bar at eight
eight pm. On the one. At a p m. I'll
be at the R and B lip Sync Battle at
uc B Franklin. On the two, I'll be at the Complex,
uh doing the Color Collective, doing stand up there three

(01:18:52):
at twelve thirty in the more Ting, so I gotta
wake up, gonna be after I hit the gym, be
doing Cold Cereal. It'll be there two year Anniverse eight.
That night I'll be doing Turtle Hour and sometimes within
that same time period, I'll be doing the Color Collective again.
It's a two time, two day show. And then, uh,
that's pretty much all the shows you have to see

(01:19:12):
me do stand up talking smack. It's gonna be a
lot of probably what you just heard here. Are you
sure you're not Jamaican? I mean, I'm gonna sign off now, Okay, alright,
y'all too far. Look I was gonna go even first,
uh and talk about my secret family. All right, Everybody

(01:19:36):
but Nigerian's doing too, so it's not even that offensive.
Stay near to y'all,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 45: Black Panther