The Monstrefact Omnibus: Monsters of Marvel Comics

In this special omnibus episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, enjoy the first five episodes concerning monsters from the Marvel Comics universe: Marvel mummies, Mystique, the Symbiotes, the Thing and Ulvar the Giant. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Monster Fact omnibus. That's right. In this special episode of
The Monster Fact, please enjoy the first five episodes about
monsters and monster adjacent entities from the Marvel Comics universe.
And I say the first five because I think I'm
going to dip back into the Marvel universe in the

(00:29):
weeks or months ahead, so feel free to send suggestions
of popular and well known intrigues or more obscure entities
from Marvel Comics or other comics for that matter. We'll
probably dip back into DC and others in the future
as well. So up first, let's consider the mummies of
Marvel Comics. First up is Nakantu, the Living Mummy, created

(00:55):
by Steve Gerber and Rich Buckler for supernatural thriller back
in nineteen seventy three. The story goes that Nikantu was
a North African tribesman who, after capture by the Egyptians,
led her a vault, but was ultimately embalmed, alive and
sealed in a tomb by an evil priest. Three thousand

(01:18):
years later, he awakens in modern times, first as a
rampaging monster and ultimately as a monstrous hero who fights
alongside the likes of Morbius, the Living Vampire, Werewolf by
Night Man, Than and others as part of the Legion
of Monsters. In addition to his mystic senses, the Living

(01:41):
Mummy also boasts incredible strength, which isn't surprising given that
Marvel dot Com lists him at a height of seven
foot six or about two hundred and thirty two centimeters.
That's two inches taller than Andre the Giants build height.
You might guess then that Nakhan to the Living Mummy

(02:01):
is the tallest mummy in the Marvel universe, and you
would be dead wrong. Allow me to introduce you to Gomdola, who,
like Nikantu, looks like your standard bandage wrapped on dead
horror movie mummy, only he's roughly the size of King Kong. Yes,
Gomdola is a true giant mummy. He first rampaged in

(02:24):
the pages of Journey into Mystery back in nineteen sixty
and is credited by Marvel dot Com to the legendary
Jack Kirby and Dick Ayres. One of the books I
source for this series is monsters creatures of the Marvel
Universe explored by Kelly Knox. Knox lists Gomdola at a
height of up to sixty feet or eighteen meters, and

(02:46):
describes his awakening in a modern Egyptian museum, his subsequent rampage,
his pursuit by Interpole, his worship by cultists, and eventually
his battles with the Fantastic Four. The secret to his
great size, however, is that he's not a mummified human,
but an evil robot from another planet that terrorized ancient
Egypt before being deactivated and stuck away in a tomb.

(03:10):
Like a lot of classic curvy monsters, Gomdola is an
only big and physically powerful, he also has other crazy
powers like levitation and telekinesis. So at this point you
might be wondering, fine, given all of this, exactly how
tall is the tallest mummy actually unearthed in real life?

(03:32):
The answer would seem to be Third Dynasty Pharaoh Sonicate
during the third millennium BCE. By today's height standards, and
certainly by Marvel comic standards, he wasn't too terribly tall,
only one hundred and eighty seven centimeters or about six
foot one and a half, but for the time period,
based on what we know from skeletal evidence, he was

(03:53):
considerably taller than average. As discussed in the twenty seventeen
paper Oldest Case of Gigantism Assessment of the alleged Remains
of Sonicate, King of Ancient Egypt, published in The Lancet,
he is still the oldest known paleo pathological case of gigantism.
The authors Galassi at All indicate that skull measurements, photos,

(04:16):
bone data, and other measurements suggests gigantism and possibly acromagaly
in the facial features, though regressed through age. In analysis
of his physical and royal stature, the authors write the
following quote. The fact that he was buried with honors
in an elite Mastaba tomb after reaching adulthood suggests that

(04:39):
gigantism at the time was probably not associated with social margination.
While short people were much preferred in ancient Egypt, especially
in the early Dynastic period, we have no records that
very tall people had any special social preference or disadvantage.
Sonicut was originally unearthed in nineteen oh one, so it

(04:59):
seems to possible that his discovery and subsequent writings about
his discovery or treatments of this general theme and other
works might have influenced the creation of these two Marvel mummies,
but I couldn't find any definitive mention of it. And
we also have to consider the influence of things like
the widespread hoax of the Cardiff Giant mixed with just

(05:21):
a little good old fashioned mummy mania. Now, to come
back to Nakantu, the Living Mummy and Gomdola, I have
to point out that, as far as I can tell,
these two never faced off against each other. Comic fans,
if I'm wrong, please write in and let me know. Also,
to date, neither Mummy has crossed over into the MCU

(05:42):
or other Marvel movies, but we can only imagine that
they are both out there waiting, sleeping, anticipating their release.
All right, now, let's move on into the world of mutants,
with Mystique going to continue our look at various monsters

(06:02):
from Marvel comics in this episode. Though today's pick is
probably better described as a human mutant. It's none other
than Raven Darkholme aka Mystique, the blueskinned, red haired shape shifter,
whose various affiliations have cast her at times as a
supervillain and other times as an anti hero in the

(06:25):
Marvel universe, created by Chris Claremont and Dave cockrum back
in nineteen seventy eight. She has a long history in
various X Men media. Mystique's most obvious mutant power is,
of course, her ability to alter her appearance and morphology,
taking on the likeness of anyone in her path, often

(06:46):
in order to carry out dastardly plots and assassinations. In
the excellent book Marvel Anatomy by Mark Sumarak and Daniel
Wallace with illustrations by Jonah Lowe, the authors point out
out that her shape changing occurs at a molecular level,
enabling her to even reproduce the semblance of clothing and

(07:07):
additional appendages as needed to enhance a disguise or to
aid in combat. She is, in short, the ultimate infiltrator
and the ultimate deceiver. Now on the shape shifting front,
attempting to compare her to the natural world's own shape
shifting expert, the mimic octopus. But I've discussed that particular

(07:28):
species on the Monster fact already, and besides, I was
even more intrigued by something else that the authors mention
concerning Mystique's abilities so advance is her ability to manipulate
her own form. She can actually move vital internal organs
around within her body to avoid fatal injuries. Now, this

(07:50):
would seem to include sliding her heart out of position
and into say her upper thigh, or squeezing her brain
down into her net or partially into her neck, or
perhaps even into her arm. Thus, coupled with accelerated healing,
she can plot to evade certain death blows, either in
disguise or out of it, and this has fooled her

(08:13):
would be killers many times over the years. This ability
really intrigued me. I was asking myself, are there species
in the natural world that can match or exceed this?
And I suppose it depends on how you choose to
compare it. Certainly we can think of various amorphous bodies
and start there. We can also think about metamorphosis. During metamorphosis,

(08:35):
most of a caterpillar's brain is broken down and ultimately
rebuilt into its adult form, which is one of nature's
stunning shape shifting feats. But this is almost too extreme
to compare the Mystique's shell game of sensitive organs We've
already discussed the shrew's ability to shrink their brains during
the winter, though they don't exactly reposition them. However, during pregnancy,

(08:59):
a mother's orgles will shift to accommodate the growing fetus.
The heart in particular is shifted during human pregnancy, though
the exact details vary depending on the individual. Beauterus grows,
elevating the diaphragm and pushing the heart upward and kind
of to the left. It may also push it forward
a little. While the heart itself does not enlarge, the

(09:22):
shift in position can lead to a misdiagnosis of an
enlarged heart. Likewise, the resulting distortions and the detectable sounds
of the heart may require further analysis by a specialist.
So that's one perfectly natural way that the human body
can and does go moving its heart around. It's not

(09:42):
as extreme as the exploits of a human mutant from
the Marvel Universe, but it's still absolutely amazing. One final
note on mystique is that, according to Sumarak and Wallace,
her cellular manipulation of her own body actually rejuvenates her
cells with each transformation, vastly extending her lifespan, or even

(10:03):
providing her a form of biological immortality. While rare and
still very much an area of interest and exploration for
natural world scientists, we seem to see something similar in
certain varieties of jellyfish and plenarian flatworms, though we always
have to remember there's a difference between what is likely

(10:23):
under ideal lab conditions and what is likely given the
challenges of the wild. Mystique has already lived a long life,
but the Marvel universe is a dangerous place much like
the natural world, and she's made no shortage of enemies
over the years, but it would be a mistake to
underestimate her abilities. Up next, please destroy your other cards

(10:49):
here and add plus two power for each destroyed, because
we're going to be talking about the symbiits now. For
those of us less familiar with the intricacies of the
Marvel Universe, such as familiarity primarily through various films and
the ninety Spider Man cartoon, the basic origin story is
pretty straightforward. Here, Spider Man acquires a new black and

(11:13):
white costume from space that turns out to be a
kind of sentient alien ooze. It flows over him becomes
his new costume. It gives him enhance stabilities, but it
also becomes clear that the alien symbiant is slowly taking over.
Once successfully rejected, the alien suit finds a new host

(11:34):
in Eddie Brock, giving birth to the villain and ultimately
anti hero Venom. Initially introduced in the mid nineteen eighties,
the lore and legacy of the alien symbiant suit would
continue to grow in Marvel comics, eventually encompassing multiple Clintar
symbiants as they would come to be known, such as Carnage,

(11:56):
as well as a fleshed out origin story. They are
the ancient bioweapons of a dark stellar deity known as Knoll,
the King in Black, overthrown but not killed by his
own slimy creations. In ages past, Venom stands out as
the prime example of a Clintar symbiant merged with a

(12:17):
human being, while the case of Spider Man wearing the
alien suit suggests more of an exosymbiant, a layer of
living ooze that acts as a kind of organic power armor.
Venom is merged with host Eddie Brock. Ultimately, at a
cellular level, it flows over him, encompassing him in a
powerful artifice of pseudopods and muscles. This would be exosymbiosis,

(12:41):
but it also surges inside him, which would be endosymbiosis.
In a similar way, Venom's chaotic offspring carnage manages to
merge with host Cletus Cassidy's very blood. In the natural world,
symbiosis is a complex topic. At times, it can be
tricky to determine just where parasitism ends in some form

(13:02):
of mutualism or commensalism begins. A parasitic relationship between two
organisms can evolve into mutualism over time, for instance, with
a one sided relationship becoming something more balanced. But symbiosis
on its own need not benefit both organisms to be
symbiotic in nature. A twenty eighteen Yale study by Shapiro

(13:23):
and Turner published in the journal Evolution explored mutualistic relationships
between bacteria and viruses that were seemingly once parasitic in nature.
They found that these changes could evolve in either direction
in as little as twenty generations. The paper discusses parasitism
and mutualism as both being on the quote unquote symbiotic spectrum,

(13:45):
which is perhaps a term worth keeping in mind when
considering the Clintars of Marvel comics. Some view the Clintars
as parasites, others as symbiotic enhancements. Certainly they can be
either in the eye of the beholder, but the exact
balance of the change they bring to a host can
certainly adjust over time, as we see with Venom. Or Certainly,

(14:07):
this relationship could simply evolve over the vast expanse of
time since the King in Black first brought them into
the cosmos. Venom, the alien costume, and the various symbiants
are the creation of multiple Marvel artists and illustrators, but
the basic idea arises out of the zeitgeist of the
mid nineteen eighties, and various assessments have linked the entity

(14:30):
to various social and public health issues of the nineteen
eighties in compelling ways. From a purely scientific point of view,
beyond the mere treatment of symbiosis, Venom and his fellow
Clintars would also be examples of a kind of pan
spermic symbiosis. After all, the origin of the alien suit
is somewhere in outer space. Right. On one hand, even

(14:53):
a highly adaptive symbiotic organism just might not be able
to join with an extraterrestrial mode of life. The attempt
could simply be ineffective, or it could be catastrophic. On
the other hand, if one leans fully into the fringes
of panspermia hypothesis, then maybe maybe we'd have enough in common.
But again we're drifting into the unknown and the unprovable here,

(15:15):
especially since life on Earth is the only model of
life we know. But the Symbiants of Marvel are ultimately
less concerned with science and more concerned with power, identity,
and will, and also with lashing tendrils of ooze. Of course,

(15:42):
now onto a classic Marvel superhero, the Thing from the
Fantastic Four. So far in this series of episodes on
the Monsters of Marvel Comics, we've discussed mummies, mystique, and
the Symbiants, but now it's Coloperant. We're of course talking
about Ben Grimm, a human test pilot transformed into an

(16:06):
orange rock skin superbruiser by cosmic rays. The other humans
aboard the experimental spaceship would become Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman
and human Torch, and of course now we're talking about
the Thing all together. They're the Fantastic Four. Grim's skin
is encased in plates of stone reminiscent of the epidermal

(16:30):
scales or scoots found on various birds and reptiles, but
more importantly for our discussions here on a few mammals,
namely the extant armadillo and the extinct glyptodot. Though with
Marbles the Thing, these plates are not keratin, but some
form of indestructible rock. It's the perfect body armour for

(16:51):
the sort of superhero who regularly throws down with the
likes of Doctor Doom, Frankenstein's Monster, and The Incredible Hulk.
But I didn't decide to do this episode on the
Thing based purely on Ben Grimm's rocky skin. It was
actually his fingers that attracted me to the big luck.

(17:12):
I don't think I'd ever noticed this myself before. But
while human Grim of course had five digits on each hand,
thing has only four, you know, like Mickey Mouse or
a character on The Simpsons. In the excellent book Marvel
Anatomy by Mark Sumerek and Daniel Wallace with illustrations by
Jonah Loebe, the authors point out that on occasion, special

(17:35):
circumstances allowed Grim to retain his human form, including all
four original fingers, only to lose one in the transformation
back to the thing. The authors and illustrator here speculate
that beneath his armor plating, his ring and pinky fingers
are fused together into a single digit, and that X
ray imagery would reveal all the bones of two fingers

(17:58):
in things outer most digit. I love this detail, but
of course, what does it mean? Perhaps nothing, but it's
interesting to note that most of us non superheroes can't
move our pinky finger without also moving our ring finger,
and the reason for this is that the nerves for
these digits are intertwined. Perhaps this anatomical fact has something

(18:20):
to do with things tetradactyly. It makes it harder for
Grim to use normal devices, but perhaps the fused finger
aids him in grappling monsters and hurling debris during superhero battles.
A natural world form of this fusing, known as syndactyly,
occurs infrequently in humans, but is a common feature of

(18:41):
some organisms, such as the Siamang, a primate native to
Sumatra in the Melee Peninsula. They have naturally occurring webbing
between their second and third toes, and sometimes the fourth
and fifth toes are also webbed together as well. The
purpose of syndactyly in the cimang, however, remains elusive, as
pointed out by Weisbecker and Nielsen in a two thousand

(19:03):
and eight article published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. Past hypotheses
have explored the possibility that the webbed digits are adaptive
for the creatures are boreal lifestyle, or for use in grooming,
but the authors find these hypotheses unconvincing and stress that
it might not be a functional adaptive trait at all.
A true explanation remains elusive. Things fingers are not merely webbed, however,

(19:27):
but tightly fused into a single digit reminiscent of, say,
a whale's flipper, so the comparison is perhaps less than illuminating.
We might well compare it, however, to cases of complex
syndactally in the natural world, in which the bones are
fused together as well as the flesh. The kangaroo is

(19:48):
a great example of this, with its middle toes fused together.
According to John Simons in the twenty thirteen book Kangaroo Quote,
this seems to have been driven by a change from
tree dwelling to ground dwelling. But is now marvelously adapted
for hopping. By the way, connecting to our core stuffed
to blow your mind episodes on the Horse, you might

(20:10):
find it interesting to know that the extinct short faced kangaroo,
including the giant Procoptodon, actually evolved to feature hoofed single
digits on their toes as well. With the thing. However, Hmmm,
I'm gonna have to stand by my own hypothesis regarding
the fused digits that somehow this is aiding Ben Grimm

(20:33):
in clabbering time. But I would love to hear from
anyone out there if you have a hypothesis regarding the
curious hands of the thing. Finally, let's consider one last
weird entry with Ulvar the Giant. The Marvel Comics universe

(20:54):
is full of giant monster conquerors with crazy powers, and
yet a giant by the name of Ulvar manages to
stand out. A creation of stan Lee, Larry Lieber and
Jack Kirby from a nineteen sixty edition of Journey into Mystery,
The story, as recounted in Monsters Creatures of the Marvel

(21:14):
Universe explored by Kelly Knox, actually begins with another giant
alien conqueror Gagants, the Atlantean who arises from his undersea
kingdom to lay claim to coastal San Diego and also
presumably the world. After poking around the surface world for
a bit staking out the claim, if you will, Gagantis

(21:36):
returns to the waters to report back home to Atlantis,
and here he encounters an even taller, even more intimidating
giant standing in the ocean. It is Oulvar. Oulvar stands
a good thousand feet or three hundred and four point
eight meters tall, and absolutely towers over the puny Atlantean

(21:57):
far beneath him. In a booming voice, it proclaims that
Earth is now the property of the planet Centaurus too,
so hands off. This, of course, leaves Gagantis with no
other option but to return home to the ocean depths
in defeat. It's only then in the comic that it's
revealed that Olvar is not an alien conqueror at all,

(22:19):
but a giant decoy built by humans to scare away
there would be conquerors. The illustrations in Knox's book revealed
that Olvar was atomic powered and commanded from a central
control room inside the body. Yet this is not a
fighting robot like your mecha godzillas or your voltrons. No,
Olvar was nothing but a highly successful technological bluff. Later

(22:44):
we learned that Olivar was eventually dismantled, so complete was
his victory, and his head now rests on the ocean floor.
Now I love this story the moment I read it,
such a ridiculous twist, but I was at a loss
as how to really tie it into anything on the
monster fact, aside from decoys and scarecrows, which we may
come back to this Halloween and stuff to blow your mind.

(23:06):
But then I heard the story of Italian fishermen and
conservationist Paolo Fancioli, as detailed in a twenty twenty Guardian
story by Giorgio Giglioni. Italian law already banned environmentally destructive
trawling nets in its waters, and Tuscan authorities took to
dropping blocks of concrete on the seafloor to disrupt the

(23:29):
nets of illegal trawlers, but Fancioli and others noticed that
these were spaced too far apart to make much difference
with permission. He began to sink more blocks of stone,
but decided to take things in a more artistic direction.
A local quarry donated one hundred blocks of granite, and
local artists volunteered to shape them into stone guardians that

(23:51):
now occupy an underwater sculpture garden to both deterillegal fissures,
but also to attract scuba diving tourists. Like Ulvar, they
serve as stone guardians on the seafloor, though they're a
direct physical deterrent rather than a communicative one. Now another
possible connection to make with the real world and Ulvar

(24:12):
here would be the concept of using artistic creations such
as sculpture to warn future generations about radioactive sites. The
Landscape of Thorn's concept by architect Michael Brill, proposed in
nineteen ninety three, is one of the more evocative of these.
Proposed for the US Department of Energy report for the
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant or WIPP. It envisioned a series

(24:36):
of jagged concrete thorns emerging from the ground of a
radioactive site. This was one of several proposed long term
nuclear waste warning messages from the nineteen ninety three Sandia
National Laboratories report that included other threatening works of stone
or earth, but no giant aliens at least with the

(24:57):
fictional Ulvar example, humans knew who Tod direct the message
at Gagantis, the Atlantean in the comics. They'd already met him,
they'd seen him around the surface world. But creating a
non linguistic message for human beings ten thousand years in
the future is another matter altogether. Finally, Oulvar can be
thought of as a kind of tongue in cheek opposite

(25:19):
to the Pioneer plaque. It would be later placed on
board the nineteen seventy two Pioneer ten and nineteen seventy
three Pioneer eleven spacecraft, serving as a kind of time capsule,
but also potentially as a message to alien beings, this
is what we are, and here is what we were.
Olvar's message, however, is simply, don't mess with us. We're

(25:40):
one thousand foot tall monsters. Tune in for additional episodes
of The Monster Fact each week. As always. You can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Stuffed Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.