June 24, 2025 • 62 mins
Abby and Alan continue their conversation about superhero history and horror. Diving into the most iconic superheroes of all time, and the best examples of superhero horror.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode
of the Lunatics Radio Hourpodcast.
I'm Abby Branker sitting herewith Alan Kudan, hello, and
today we are picking up ourconversation on superhero horror
, and I'm very, very, very happyto say that I started watching
Hercules.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You're talking about the Disney movie.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Okay, that's not exactly a great representation
of the myth of Hercules.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I'm just saying you made a big deal about it last
episode that I'd never seen it.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I mean yes because it's a pinnacle point of
childhood.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So I'm working on it.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
But for the point of this podcast, where we strive
for historical accuracy at everyturn and bend.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
It's wildly irrelevant.
Yes, I understand.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Although it's a great , I'm going to backtrack a
little bit.
I am a big fan of anything thatgets people interested in a
subject, whether that thing issuper accurate or not, if it
functions as a gateway into justgetting people excited about
the topic in this case, justGreek mythology great.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Another great jumping off point for Greek mythology
would be the God of War series,or at least the first trilogy.
What's that?
It's just a video game thatstarted in the PlayStation 2 era
.
That went all the way up untilI think PS3 was the God of War 3
.
But it's, yeah, just a guy thatis wronged by the gods.
It actually borrows a lot fromthe myth of Heracles, in that
(01:39):
the main character is tricked,in this case by Ares through an
illusion, into murdering hiswife and daughter.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yikes.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Sorry, into murdering his family.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Just like the original Greek myth of Heracles.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Right, and that was madness sent to him, and it's
basically the same thing.
And then he just goes on.
In this the main character'scalled Kratos and he just goes
on a quest effectively toextract vengeance by making
himself powerful enough to takeon gods.
Cool, it's cool, that's prettycool.
And, yeah, you see a lot ofvery non-historically accurate,
(02:16):
very, very cool depictions ofmythical beings and that got me
very interested in mythology asa whole and then you know that
gets you excited to go check outa more true telling of Greek
mythology.
I like the book by EdithHamilton, which became a
cornerstone jumping off point,because it's a retelling of the
Greek myths through a moremodern lens.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Very cool.
Yeah, I mean, mine was.
I hate to admit it now becausehe's canceled.
But Neil Gaiman right, myinterest in reading Neil Gaiman
novels and then his book NorseMythology really piqued my
interest.
But yeah, I get the point right, it's good to have a gateway.
So last episode we talked allabout the very early sort of
folk hero myths that we cantrace into today's superheroes,
(02:58):
and we talked about Heracles,like we're mentioning now.
We talked about Robin Hood,odysseus slightly there's so
much to really get into we spenta long time talking about Sun
Wukong, and today we're going toslip right into the most iconic
superheroes of all time.
And again, this is all leadingtowards superhero horror, but I
think we need to kind of set thegroundwork.
So that's what we're going topick up today.
(03:18):
All of the sources for thisepisode will be in the
description.
They were also read aloud inthe last episode.
Those serve as the sources forthe whole series.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So the most iconic superhero of all time is, on the
count of three one, two, three,Superman.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Who's Popeye?
Popeye Popeye the Sailor man.
Yeah, tell me, make your case.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
His feats are incredible.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Okay.
So for those who are notfamiliar with Popeye the Sailor
man, all he has to do is eatsome spinach and his feats of
strength become absolutelyincredible.
I'm pulling this from a Redditrespect thread for Popeye and
some of these like.
His nemesis is Bluto, the guywho's always after his damsel of
(04:04):
olive oil, and so, after eatingspinach, with a single punch he
can turn a bull into an entiremeat market.
Hell yeah, he has uppercutted agang of Nazis from the bottom
of the ocean all the way up tothe surface.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Dang.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
He can punch Bluto so hard that he goes all the way
around the earth.
Wow, so figure out the physicson that one.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Beyond just strength.
You know he's incredibly fast.
He's known to be able to playan entire game of baseball by
himself.
Wow, he's incredibly justtalented in general.
He can use a hair to cut asword in half.
Wow, he took down an entirebattleship with a can opener.
Like, wow, like, how does heeven do that?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
That's why it's important to eat your spinach.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
He blocks bullets with his bare hands.
He can even swing fromlightning bolts like they're
ropes.
It's pretty cool.
I mean, if this isn't asuperhero, then tell me who is.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
All right, point awarded.
I'm on your team, but I don'tthink he's more iconic as a
superhero than Superman.
Yeah, but can Superman punch sohard that it?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
causes tornadoes.
I don't know, maybe he doesn'tneed to, because he has his um
tornado eyes his tornado eyes.
No, he has his uh super breathhe can literally make gust of
wind.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, that's what it sounds like superman was first
released on april 18th 1938 inthe comic book Action Comics
number one.
He has been regularly publishedin some form or another since
that time.
Superman's birth name is Kal-El.
He hails from Krypton purely analien.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Purely an alien.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
He's an alien.
He's not a human.
He's from a different planet.
I don't think most people knowthat the nerds do, but I didn't
know.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Know that I think you don't know that I am the
everyman.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I would say I'm slightly nerdier than the
everyman, and if I didn't knowthat, how do you not know the
superman origin story?
Because I'm not aneight-year-old boy he's been
around since the 30s and I'vebeen busy.
I know, alan, you know so muchmore about Superman than I do,
but did you know this?
That Superman's creatorsinitially envisioned him as a
(06:08):
villain.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Ha ha, quoting from the Historycom article by Jesse
Greenspan.
Quote Recent high schoolgraduate Harry Seigel
self-published a story inJanuary 1933 called the Reign of
Superman, featuring a madscientist who plucks a vagrant
from a breadline and gives himtelepathic capabilities.
This so-called Superman,intoxicated by power, then kills
(06:33):
the mad scientist and beginstaking over the world, until the
enchantment wears off and heonce again becomes a nobody.
Soon after, seigel and hisfriend Joe Schuster, who
illustrated the piece, revampedSuperman as a good guy with an
alien backstory, a secretidentity and a cape, among other
features that would come todefine him For several years.
(06:53):
Seigel and Schusterunsuccessfully pitched their
comic strip idea to newspapersyndicates, to DC Comics, asked
them to rework it into a 13-pagestory for Action Comics no 1,
which would go on to become themost valuable comic book of all
time, with one copy selling for$3.21 million on eBay in 2014.
(07:14):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So it seems like they just had the name Superman and
that was it, Because if he justhad telepathy, he can read minds
.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, but that was V1 .
Those were his creators thateventually created him, and that
was the first draft.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Interesting.
He did go on to get somedifferent abilities and
certainly lose the telepathy.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, well, I think probably from their story they
realized and they had to workwith you know a big studio or
whatever comic book studio theysort of realized what was more
publicly appealing.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
So, abby, you know so much about Superman.
Yes, what are his powers?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Superman can fly.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
False, he can now.
In the beginning he was justreally good at jumping.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Okay, well, you didn't define at what point we
were talking about his powers.
So I'm correct he can fly, he'svery strong, he's a master of
disguises.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
He's a master of disguises.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
He goes into his phone booth and he comes out.
Clark Kent.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, he actually like shifts his internal bone
structure.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, so I'm correct.
That's kind of neat.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
He just to give himself like a hunchback.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
He has like lasers that come out of his eyes.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Heat vision he has.
What did you say earlier?
T Tornado breath.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
He has well, yes, he has super breath.
I don't know how to define it.
It's either like really strong,or he can also freeze things,
because he can make it reallycold.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, what else am I missing?
X-ray vision.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Unsurpassed durability.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Which is actually a force field that emits from his
body.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So Like Bella Swan.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Who.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
From Twilight.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
She has a force field .
Speaker 1 (08:42):
She creates a shield.
It's like her power.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
It doesn't go far from his body.
However, that is how the comicwriters explain why all these
bullets and explosions don'tcompletely destroy his costume
and also why he can just throwhis cape over somebody to
protect them from a nuclearblast.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It's pretty cool Superman came out only a few
months before the first Batmancomic.
During World War II, the USgovernment actually censored
Superman because of itsreferences to nuclear weapons
while the Manhattan Project wasin progress, so isn't that
really interesting?
The Manhattan Project, which weall know so much about now
because of Oppenheimer, Supermanwas talking about nuclear
(09:19):
weapons and the government waslike, hey, we got to stop this
comic series right now.
It's hitting too close to home.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Which Superman is it?
I series right now.
It's hitting too close to home.
Which Superman is it?
Is it the?
I don't know.
It's one of the ChristopherReeves movies.
It's either three or four.
I think it's definitely not one.
But Superman creates worldpeace by systematically
disarming all nuclear weapons onthe planet, put it into a big
net and throwing them into thesun.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Dang.
If only we had that right now.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I think about it all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So in the comic book in question, lex Luthor attacks
with what he refers to as anatomic bomb.
Fun fact, many side charactersin the series also share the
initials LL, lois Lane, lexLuthor, lana Lang, linda Lee,
lucy Lane, just to name a few.
Lucy Lane is Lana Lang's sister.
I know that.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Sure, I knew most of them.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Did you know about the LL thing?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, another horrific element of Superman to
briefly discuss is the Supermancurse, which manifests,
unfortunately, for the actorsportraying the man of Steel.
So this is kind of similar tothe Exorcist series we did all
about, like the true story thatinspired the Exorcist.
And then part two is about thecurse that people believed the
actors on set believed washappening during production.
(10:31):
When George Reeves portrayedSuperman in the 1950s TV show,
it felt like the character wasthe bottom of the barrel for him
.
After the show he struggled toget work after feeling like he
was only able to be typecast insimilar roles.
Reeves sadly took his own lifein 1959.
Christopher Reeves starred infour Superman movies.
In May of 1995, he wasparalyzed from the neck down
(10:54):
after a tragic accident onhorseback, and in 1991, lee
Quigley, who had portrayedSuperman as a baby in the same
movies, died at the age of 14after huffing solvents from a
can.
Don't do that, kids, that waspretty dark, so I'm going to
keep it lighter for a minutehere.
Spider-man was created by StanLee and illustrator Steve Ditko.
Spider-man first entered thescene in a comic called Amazing
(11:17):
Fantasy, no 15 from August of1962.
Take us away, alan.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
You just want me to talk about Spider-Man.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You know everything, take us away.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Alan, you just want me to talk about Spider-Man.
You know everything Not toomuch about Spider-Man, but first
off, I want you to quickly tellme the Spider-Man origin story.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, peter Parker.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
He's a teen living in New York City with his aunt and
uncle.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
He has a crush on Mary Jane.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
He goes to school.
He has a hard time, but he hashis nerdy friends.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Then somebody stabs his uncle in the street because
he lives in tough Manhattan orwherever.
Keep going and then he goeshome and he's sad, he's upset,
he's really bummed in his grief,mixed with his spider bite.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Spider bite yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's been by a spider in his room and he locks
himself in his room for a fewdays.
He thinks it's just teen angstand then boom, he's out there
slinging webs, got it breakinghearts perfect, you know, we can
just move to the next one.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Okay, a few points of order yeah so yes, peter parker
was living with his aunt mayand uncle ben yep because his uh
parents were mia.
He was told that they died in acar crash but, oh boy, do we
find out later what reallyhappened.
But yeah, while touring I thinkthis is the official canon of
Oscorp he gets bitten by aradioactive spider.
(12:35):
He indeed gets the abilities ofa spider so he can stick to
walls, he has spider sense, hehas incredible strength and
agility and he intrinsicallyknows how to create spider webs
and for most of the writers, heactually has mechanical devices
that shoot the webs, as opposedto the Tobey Maguire movies
(12:55):
where it just comes out of hisbody.
Now to your point.
His uncle is indeed murdered,but not stabbed, because he
lives in a rough and tumbleneighborhood.
His uncle Ben was driving Peterto a wrestling match because
Peter was just trying to makesome money on the side as a
professional wrestler because hehad abilities.
Now the guy booking him stiffedhim a bunch of money.
The guy gets robbed and Peterdecides to not stop the criminal
(13:19):
as he was fleeing because hehad just screwed over the guy
that had screwed over Peter.
He then finds out shortly afterthat that same criminal tried
to steal his uncle's car and hisuncle fought back and murdered
his uncle.
So it is sort of Peter's faultthat his uncle was killed.
So he carries this great guiltand that's why he fights for
justice.
That is the quick version ofSpider-Man.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Excellent.
We talked about Ultraman atlength during our series on
Kaiju, which you might allremember.
Ultraman is an incrediblypopular Japanese superhero.
His universe consists of films,a TV show and all of the other
mediums you would expect Comicbooks, video games, traditional
books.
You know, you get it.
Ultraman debuted in 1966 with aseries called Ultra Q that was
(14:08):
followed quickly the same yearby the Ultraman TV series.
It can be compared to Supermanor Spider-Man in the United
States in terms of popularity.
Ultraman became a sensation inJapan.
Between its release and untilthe 1980s, the franchise brought
in almost $7.5 billion inrevenue.
So between the 1980s and 1966,$7.5 billion in revenue.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Do you want to talk about the Ultraman origin story?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I mean, this one will keep very brief, just an
average dude.
It all stems from advancedtechnological devices, these
little transformation devices,you know, the main one being the
beta capsule.
It's just this little buzzerlooking thing that you push the
button on and you turn intoUltraman for 10 minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So then you go from being just your average dude to
the size of a building for 10minutes and, like that's the
critical weakness of you, haveall these abilities, all these
powers, strength, speed, you getto shoot your cool laser beams,
but you only have 10 minutes tosave the day.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I would argue that Batman is the quintessential
dark superhero, especially inthe more modern film depictions.
Bob Kane created Batman inearly 1939.
He was first drawn with adomino mask, bat wings and
tights.
Collaborator Bill Fingersignificantly influenced the
evolution of the character,especially his costume.
(15:25):
Finger introduced a darkercostume cape, gloves and a cowl.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, bill Finger is the true creator of Batman.
Bob Kane came up with the nameand Bill Finger got completely
fucked over for rights.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Justice for Bill Finger.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yes, there's a big online community.
That would agree with you.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Hell yeah, the name Bruce Wayne was inspired by real
historic figures Robert theBruce and Matt Anthony Wayne.
Robert the Bruce was King ofScots from 1306 until 1329.
He led the country in the FirstWar of Independence with
England.
He's regarded as a nationalhero in Scotland.
Matt Anthony Wayne was afounding father and a soldier in
(16:06):
the United States.
He was born in 1745 and died in1796, but not before earning
himself the nickname.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
What nickname?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Matt Anthony.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
From his explosive personality and exploits during
battle.
Later, President Rooseveltwould deem Matt Anthony Wayne
America's best fighting general.
So Bruce Wayne's origin story.
He was motivated by the murderof his parents.
Even from the start of hisexistence as a character, he was
seen as a dark and broodingdetective with a secret.
Batman debuted in DetectiveComics number 37 in 1939.
(16:39):
Less than a year later, in 1940, he earned his own solo title.
The very same year, Robin wasintroduced as a supporting
character.
Batman went through manytransformations over the years.
In the 1950s, his stories tookon a lighter note, more focused
on science fiction.
In my opinion, Batman is asuperhero that veers into horror
the most organically.
(17:00):
He's also one of the mostpopular superheroes in Western
culture.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
If you really want a dark and brooding superhero,
look no further than Adam WestBatman.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
No, that's not a good example, Alan.
It's a great example.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
They love to dance.
I often think dark and broodingmen love to dance.
I feel like you know, everysuperhero should be
counterbalanced with some goodquips, some good jokes, some
good physical comedy.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, some pretty light and airy plots.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
The 1960s were a hell of a time.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Tim Burton directed Batman in 1989 and Batman
Returns in 1992.
Certainly not horror, but verymuch Tim Burton's signature
spooky style.
Both films star Michael Keatonas Batman.
The first gives us JackNicholson as the Joker, and
Returns gives us Danny DeVito asPenguin and Michelle Pfeiffer
as Catwoman.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Meow.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
At the time, batman from 1989, was a film that
pioneered a new era forsuperhero movies.
It was a huge blockbuster thatlived up to the extreme hype,
but also it came out at a timewhen comic books based on movies
were nowhere near as common asthey are today.
You don't say the DCcom articlereminds us that the last time
(18:15):
Batman appeared in a moviebefore Burton's was in an Adam
West Batman film from 1966.
It's so good and there wasnothing dark about it, so this
was a huge shift for theportrayal of Batman.
Many often acknowledge Burtonfor being the most faithful to
the comics.
There were dark storylines thatexisted in the comics, but
unless you were an avid readerof them, most people only knew
(18:36):
the Adam West version.
After the Burton movies, twomore films directed by Joel
Schumacher were released BatmanForever and Batman and Robin.
These films gave us Poison Ivyand Mr Freeze.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And and what?
And Two-Face and the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
And Two-Face and the Riddler.
Played by Jim Carrey and TommyLee Jones.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Uh-huh and Poison Ivy is played by.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Uma Thurman.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And Mr Freeze is.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Arnold Schwarzenegger .
Arnold Schwarzenegger, arnoldschwarzenegger, those are so
good ice to meet you.
The next live action seriescame to us from christopher
nolan with batman begins in 2005, the dark knight in 2008 and
the dark knight rises in 2012,and you guys already know how
much we love this series.
Christian bale stars as brucewayne and in batman begins,
(19:21):
killian murphy plays thescarecrow.
The dark knight gives us heathledger's infamous performance as
the Joker, and the Dark KnightRises stars Tom Hardy as Bane
and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The weakest of the Catwomen.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
When is Halle Berry?
She's, she's a Batgirl.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Halle Berry.
Yeah, halle Berry playsCatwoman in the Catwoman movie.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Oh, okay, it's awful.
Oh, that's too bad.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Except it has one of the most iconic scenes for bad
editing.
I remember even seeing this infilm school.
It's when she's playingbasketball and it's just they
cut every like half second.
It's ridiculous.
There's like thousands of cutswhile they're playing basketball
and it's like supposed to besexy but it just looks so
(20:05):
fricking stupid.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Oh, I cannot wait to watch that on YouTube.
Six months before the DarkKnight was released, but after
production wrapped, heath Ledgerdied from an accidental
overdose of prescriptionmedications in New York City.
He was 28 years old.
Ledger won a posthumous AcademyAward for the role, which is
incredibly important.
It's horribly sad and HeathLedger's performance was amazing
(20:27):
and he was an incredible actor.
But I think, that aside, it's areally important moment that
somebody playing a villain in acomic book superhero movie won
an Academy Award for his role.
Sure, that's a huge moment forthe genre.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Also I remember Jack Nicholson I think it was Jack
Nicholson during an interviewbecause he played the Joker in
the 1989 Batman movie how everyactor who has played the Joker
has had to deal with some kindof psychological repercussions
for playing the character.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I feel like any kind of method actor that really gets
into the head of the character.
It's a tough one to play and Iremember there was a lot of
speculation that Heath Ledgerjust took it too far in terms of
his own sanity, because boy didhe give a killer performance,
but it had a consequence.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, I've done a lot of reading on this and yeah, he
was suffering from insomnia andhe was just couldn't, I think.
Like, I mean, I'm not going tospeculate that much, but yeah,
there's a lot out there abouthow it impacted him.
Oh, and just for the record,I'm not interested in the
extended DC universe movie, sowe're going to jump ahead to the
very controversial film Jokerfrom 2019.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Hang on.
That is where true superherohorror comes into play.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
All right, you have the floor.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
No, I don't.
I don't want the floor, I justwant you.
I just want you to acknowledgethat the really good DC movies
that get really dark and reallygritty come from the DC Extended
Universe.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Name one.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It's more that they are far more true to the comics,
because, I don't know, there'smaybe it's it's for a different
audience.
It's usually for people thatlike superheroes as opposed to
just try to make blockbustermovies.
You can watch flashpoint, wherethe flash goes back in time to
make it so his mom does not getmurdered and in doing so
(22:19):
completely fucks up the timeline.
And then you get a version ofBatman where it's not Bruce
Wayne picking up the mantle,it's his father, thomas Wayne,
who watched his son get murdered.
And then just is this likeraging alcoholic with guns that
just goes around murderingcriminals.
It's a much darker take.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, sounds like it.
All right.
So 2019.
Directed by todd phillips andstars joaquin phoenix.
Obviously, this is a verycontroversial movie.
Joker premiered at the venicefilm festival and it won the top
prize at the prestigious event.
It tells a gritty origin storyof one of the most popular comic
book villains of all time.
The main controversy stemmingfrom joker centers around its
(22:59):
portrayal of violence and mentalillness In an era of mass
shootings.
Joker aimed to tell the storyof mental health behind violent
offenders, but did it glorifythe archetype too much Candidly?
When I first saw the movie, Ithought it was the best film I'd
ever seen.
I literally had that reaction.
To me, it connected a superherostory to something that felt
relevant in today's society andsomething important to
(23:22):
understand.
But also, in attempting torewatch it for this episode, I
found it almost unbearable.
So I had some sort of emotionalshift in my reaction to this
movie.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Which is crazy, because it's a great movie and
it's a character piece.
It is not a superhero movie atall.
It just kind of links to a veryiconic villain who calling the
joker a supervillain is hissuperpower is insanity yeah,
lack of empathy also, it dependson who is who's writing.
You know, yeah, the the joaquinphoenix joker is just someone
(23:57):
who's mentally disturbed.
The heath ledger joker issomeone who is just crazy like a
fox but heavy on the crazy likea fox.
But then you get, you know,different versions of Joker
throughout the comics,throughout the comics.
Who is just this absolutelunatic that will murder
thousands, if not millions, ofpeople.
(24:18):
Again, depends on who's writing.
There's, you know, onestoryline where he tricks
Superman into accidentallymurdering Lois Lane.
Oh yikes and in doing so alsoinadvertently sets off a nuclear
bomb that goes off inMetropolis.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
How much of the Batman comics have you read?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I mean a tiny, tiny fraction of what's out there.
The longest run of Batman thatI've done was the story arcs,
nightfall and no Man's Land, andactually those stories were
very, very loosely adapted forthe third Batman movie in the
Nolan series, where it's aboutBatman encountering Bane for the
(25:01):
first time, and Bane being acharacter that is supposed to be
the perfect counterpart to allof Batman's abilities he's
incredibly intelligent, he'sfaster, he's stronger and he's
absolutely obsessed with hisgoals.
So he breaks Batman's spine.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And then keeps him alive to watch as Gotham slowly
dies.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Wow, that's intense.
What superhero like in terms ofcomics.
Do you think you've read themost of Swamp Thing Spawn?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Overall pure volume probably Hulk.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Is Berserk superhero.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
No, I mean superhero, I really feel is an American
term.
Now, I mean, I know thatJapanese superheroes are.
I feel they're just kind oftheir own thing, because they're
also very contained.
The word superhero really feelslike part of a franchise,
whether it is DC, marvel,vertigo, image all these Dark
(25:53):
Horse.
Dark Horse, exactly Because theyall have their whole like
superhero universes In Japan.
All these you know so manypeople that check every single
box of like what a In Japan.
All these you know so manypeople that check every single
box of like what a superherowould be, but they're all in
their isolated universes.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
So it's just kind of hard dude comparing apples to
different apples.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I understand the survivors from the Aurora
Colorado Dark Knight shootingexpressed major concern and
disappointments when Joker wasreleased.
Quoting from the New York Timesreview by AO Scott.
Quote To be worth arguing about, a movie must first of all be
interesting.
It must have, if not a coherentpoint of view, at least a
(26:33):
worked out, thought-provokingset of themes, some kind of
imaginative contact with theworld as we know it.
Joker, an empty, foggy exercisein secondhand style and
second-rate philosophizing, hasnone of that.
Besotted with the notion of itsown audacity, as if willful
unpleasantness were a form ofartistic courage, the film turns
(26:55):
out to be afraid of its ownshadow, or at least of the
faintest shadow of any actualrelevance.
End quote.
The review also points outquote Todd Phillips' Joker has
stirred up quite a tempest.
Hands have been wrung about themovie's supposed potential to
inspire acts of real-lifeviolence, and criticism of its
brutal nihilism has been metwith a counter-backlash,
(27:16):
including from Phillips himself,who has been sounding off about
the far-left and woke cultureand other threats to the ability
of a murderous clown to makemoney unmolested.
Meanwhile, the usual armies ofskeptics and fans have squared
off with ready-made accusationsof bad faith, hypersensitivity
and quasi-fascist groupthink.
End quote.
In 2022, the Batman, a nearlythree-hour epic starring Robert
(27:41):
Pattinson, was released.
The film was directed by MattReeves.
Quoting from the Vice articleby Geeta Jackson.
Quote the story of Batman ispretty simple.
Bruce Wayne, the son of a richdoctor who could want for
nothing, is orphaned one nightby a mugger.
In response, after years of notrecovering from his grief, this
child decides to dress up as abat to fight crime.
(28:02):
Both Nolan and Snyder prettymuch stop there, with the
decision to dress like a bat andfight crime being the answer to
Bruce's problems.
Jumping ahead in the quote.
Nolan and Snyder made moviesabout a guy who is broken and
for whom being Batman is thereprieve from his brokenness.
It's an appealing fantasy ofrecovering from trauma by simply
transforming yourself, one thatmany people wish were true.
(28:25):
Matt Reeves and RobertPattinson's Batman is just a
step more complicated.
Being Batman can't save BruceWayne from his loneliness in
this movie.
He has to, however, slowlyactually process the emotional
pain that drove him to make suchan extreme life choice in the
first place.
End quote.
Do you like the RobertPattinson Batman?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's been a while since we've seen it.
I remember you really, reallyloved it.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, but I love all things Batman, especially if
they're dark and brooding andthey star a hot guy.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Like Adam West, I enjoyed it because, similarly, I
loved every.
There's not a Batman movie thatI won't watch.
It wasn't my preferred versionof Batman.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Which is.
You have to pick one.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
My preferred version of Batman is the TAS.
Batman, the animated series.
Oh, that would be Kevin ConroyBatman.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Okay, we like Harley Quinn a lot too.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Harley Quinn was invented for that series.
She wasn't in comics.
This is one of the rareexamples.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Oh, she wasn't.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, she started in this cartoon for kids and then
became such a favorite that theystarted making.
They put her into the comics.
Oh, cool and then she became awhole franchise that I'm not a
huge fan of.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Sure, yeah, I mean we like the one with Haley Cuoco
that animated Harley Quinn.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, it's fun and silly, yeah, and I think that is
the perfect use of Harley Quinn.
The Margot Robbie movies are Idon't know, they're just not my
cup of tea Surprised.
You know who Margot Robbie is,or money, or anything really,
(30:00):
except her.
Again, her superpower iscraziness and plot armor.
So yeah, she just like runsthrough a bullet fight and like
kind of you know, does someflips and dances and that's it
and gets them.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Right.
So in this article, rightJackson is making the point that
Pattinson is the best Batman wehave, that his performance and
the script itself goes deeperthan the others, and I don't
disagree necessarily.
While there have been manystunning portrayals of Batman on
film, most even Nolan's arefocused equally on the villains.
Right Like I think the DarkKnight Rises is Heath Ledger's
(30:34):
film, it's not Christian Bale's.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Correct, but that was a shift.
The first one was Batman movie.
Second one was Heath Ledger'smovie.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
But even with Christian Bale and Begins
there's nothing like that deepthat's coming out.
You know it's like, OK, we'retelling the origin story, we get
it, but it's not like, you know, I don't know.
I get what this author issaying.
I think it's very kind ofsurface level comic book-y,
whereas this one with RobertPattinson is much more about
like trauma in a way.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I'd have to rewatch it.
I do know that it's a verycommon discussion online of you
know who's the best Batman.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And it's really hard to pick just one.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Because everyone does something differently.
I think Christian Bale is thebest Bruce Wayne Sure, while Ben
Affleck is one of the bestBatman brawlers.
You know he's huge, he's builtand like Batman is supposed to
be.
He's not supposed to be thislike small scrappy guy.
No, he's supposed to be thistank of a man who punches
(31:33):
criminals out with one hit andsurvives hits because he's
covered in armor.
You need to have a reallystrong build for that.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's fair.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
But in terms of like being Bruce Wayne, Christian
Bale had all his training fromAmerican Psycho.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Not a movie, but I do want to take a moment for
Spider-Man Reign, one of myfavorite comic books of all time
.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Oh, what's this one?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Spider-Man Reign was a four-issue comic limited run
that you can now purchase as acomplete book.
It was written and illustratedby Kerr Andrews and released
between 2006 and 2007.
The story is set 30 years intothe future, after the events of
Spider-Man as we know it, andit's like a dark reimagining of
(32:14):
Spider-Man, which is why I likeit.
There's consequences,essentially, without giving much
away about it.
There's consequences to theactions of the canon of the
story and I think that's areally cool sort of creative
reimagining.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
So this is the one where Mary Jane doesn't make it.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
And how does that happen, Abby?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Because she dies from exposure to Spider-Man's
radioactive bodily fluids,uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Can you be more specific?
From having sex bodily fluids,uh-huh.
Can you be more specific?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
From having sex with him.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
I think that's as specific as I need to be.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So he gives her radiation poisoning, that's
right.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
If you want to say something, Alan, you're welcome
to say it.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
It's a it's funny.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
It's not funny.
It's sad, it's so sad.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
There's another running joke that the
Spider-Man's biggest nemesis isthe writers.
Because he has so manyabilities and he does so great
and he's like leagues above somany other superheroes that
don't have such a hard time, butin every single thing he's just
some punk kid who has todeliver pizzas to make ends meet
(33:19):
.
People around him areconstantly dying that he loves.
All of his villains target hisfamily and friends.
Do you think the same thinghappens to Popeye?
No, Popeye does just fine.
They do go after his friendsand family.
Yeah, his girlfriend.
Olive Oil, sure, but you knowwhat?
He just bops them on the noseand that solves that.
There is, to my knowledge, nostory arc where Popeye has to
(33:42):
bury Olive Oil because he killsher with radioactive semen.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
In 2010, super, starring Rainn Wilson, was
released by IFC Midnight.
Not a horror, but a dark comedy, a very dark comedy.
Super tells the story of aregular guy who believes that
God has chosen him to transformhimself into a superhero.
The film has a star-studdedcast.
Rain is joined by Elliot Page,liv Tyler, kevin Bacon, james
(34:06):
Gunn and Linda Cardellini.
Super was written and directedby James Gunn and, of course, in
2019, what's often referred toas the pinnacle of superhero
horror was released.
Brightburn was directed byDavid Yarovsky and produced by
James Gunn, written by Brian andMark Gunn.
The film stars Elizabeth Banksand David Denman and, unlike any
(34:28):
other movie we've talked aboutor will talk about, it feels
squarely like a horror movie andit's fucking scary.
It's really unnerving.
As Alan explained to me beforewe watched it, the movie tells
the story of Superman if hewasn't a good guy.
Fun fact, there's an Easter eggin Brightburn that ties Super
to it.
They're actually from the sameuniverse that James Gunn kind of
(34:48):
created.
What's?
Speaker 2 (34:50):
the Easter egg.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
In the end credits.
The conspiracy theoristYouTuber that's kind of talking
over the credits talks aboutother superhero sightings and
one of them is Rainn Wilson'scharacter in Super.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Brightburn is such a good example.
I'm glad we're pivoting intohorror because, like you know,
this is a horror podcast andwe've done so much stuff that is
not scary.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Take it away.
The floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So Brightburn is indeed the story of Superman,
just rebranded, and we reallyget into the crux of what is
superhero horror.
And that is when you havesomebody with incredible
abilities who doesn't act withthe greater good in mind.
And you know, we see that allthe time with supervillains, but
(35:33):
it's always like counterbalancewith the superheroes that stop
them.
That's the whole point of asuperhero is to stop
supervillains.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right, but what if there's no supervillains?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
But other way around.
What if there are nosuperheroes?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
What if you just have someone with absolutely world
shattering abilities and thereis no one to stop them?
And these are like thequestions that you have to start
looking like, and all thesethings have been explored in
comics.
There's a very famous run ofsuperman called superman red sun
and that is the.
(36:05):
You know.
The story of superman is hislittle space pod is flying
through, flying through spacecrash lands in kansas just like
the wizard of oz yep and red sunmakes the what if of say, he
got launched 50 somethingseconds later, you know, from
Krypton, just a very minutechange right.
(36:26):
Instead of landing in Kansas,he lands in the Soviet Union and
he is raised in the height ofmilitarization, just beaten into
him and he becomes thistotalitarian figure that ends up
taking over the Soviet Union.
And then the superheroes of theworld have to band together to
(36:46):
try to take down this godlikeperson, because he doesn't know
any better.
And bright burn is kind ofsimilar to that instead of like
you know it's.
This is a nature versus nurturequestion.
The Superman mythos.
It's all about who raises him.
In true Superman canon, he'sraised by just two farmers that
have the world's best values andthey impart them on their
(37:09):
adopted son and that's why hebecomes America's Boy Scout.
And you know, in the Red Sonhe's raised by a dictator.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Right Interesting, but in.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Brightburn, it doesn't matter.
He's raised by good enoughpeople, but he's raised by a
dictator.
Right Interesting.
But in Brightburn, it doesn'tmatter.
He's raised by good enoughpeople, but he's a psychopath.
And he's also brainwashed byhis little ship just to really
cement the idea home that he wassent to take over and destroy
the planet.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I got to say again it's very scary, it's very good
and if there's any film you walkaway from the series and watch,
I would suggest that you watchBrightburn.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
So circling everything back, as we always do
, to Dragon Ball Z.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Ah, yes.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
In this case it's actually just Dragon Ball which
predates Z, so it's based on themyth of Sun Wukong and Journey
to the West, but it's also itcombines the story of Superman.
You have a alien baby launchedin a ship, crash land on earth
and his whole point of beingsent to this planet is to
conquer it.
(38:07):
But in the crash landing hebonks his head and someone finds
him and he doesn't have anymemories and they just raise him
like a good guy and then hebecomes the, the champion of
earth, because why not?
He was raised with good valuesinstead of being a conqueror.
Minor details, but makes it aworld of difference.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Absolutely All right, I struggle to talk about this
movie, but we're going to talkabout it.
I'm going to preface it bysaying it's incredibly offensive
.
So take that with a grain ofsalt.
Toxic Avenger from 1984 isdescribed as a black comedy
splatter superhero film.
It was directed by Michael Herzand Lloyd Kaufman, written by
(38:42):
Joe Ritter.
It's again I cannot stress thisenough.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
It's incredibly incredibly offensive.
So good it's.
Just I don't know.
It's a cinematic masterpiece.
The fact that it's not part ofCriterion is a crime.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
We have different opinions on Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Toxic Avenger was my first introduction to Troma,
being a production company thatjust absolutely pumped out B
movies in the 80s and 90s andstill does, but that was really
their heyday of like ToxicAvenger and Tara Firmer and
Newcomb High.
There's just so many of thesemovies and every one of them has
(39:20):
like a full franchise and tonof sequels and everything.
They're so much fun.
Yes, they're gory, yes, they'rea bit dated and the types of
humor that are is currentlyacceptable, but I grew up with
these movies.
I think they're hilarious andtalk about a excellent example
of a horror movie about asuperhero, because I'm not going
(39:42):
to say this is superhero horror.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I don't know that.
I would say it's horror, it'sso kitschy and it's a
splatterfest.
Yeah, I guess it just doesn'tread as 100% a B-horror movie.
It's so campy and over the topit's.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
It's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, it's beyond.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
But it's still technically a horror movie, sure
it's just.
It's just as its own genre ofit.
Sure you know when the effectsare bad, and not even the
effects are bad at this.
It just can't be.
But I don't know.
You just get this guy thatlooks absolutely horrific and
he's just cleaning up the townthrough murder.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
I fucking love it 10 years later, the crow was
released in 1994.
The film stars brand Lee,rochelle Davis and Tony Todd.
The Crow is deemed asupernatural superhero movie and
it was directed by Alex Proyas.
Brandon Lee, the son of BruceLee, died during production of
the Crow when a prop gunmalfunctioned after a bullet was
(40:35):
stuck in the barrel.
Just like Heath Ledger, lee was28 years old.
Stunt performer Chad Stahelskifinished filming the remaining
scenes in Lee's place and he hadthe director sort of had the
blessing of Lee's family membersand girlfriend to finish the
movie.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So my understanding was that this was a legitimate
tragedy and accident thathappened on set.
That movie helped write a lotof safety precautions that we
now use on set.
Yeah, it's really a shame thatthese types of things need to
happen before we enact bettersafety precautions.
Rules are written in blood,which is really an unfortunate
(41:11):
truth of the industry yeah butit's also just a such a weird
thing because the movie is aboutsomeone who is murdered and
then comes back, you know, yeah,to have him actually get
murdered on set.
I mean, well, manslaughtertechnically, but like, wow, it's
just a kind of wild to thinkabout it is.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, it's very dark.
Jeff cadiente also stepped in,who is another stunt performer.
Some of the scenes relied oncgi effects.
At the time of the death, onlyeight days remained in
production.
Darkman from 1990 was directedby Sam Raimi and stars Liam
Neeson.
Darkman tells a familiarsuperhero story about a man
who's wrongfully beaten and leftfor dead by a mob, but an
(41:51):
experimental treatment ends upgiving him superhero strength.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Fun fact about Darkman.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Sam Raimi really wanted to make a Batman movie,
but he couldn't get the rights.
So instead he pivoted to try toget rights to make a movie
about the shadow.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
But similarly couldn't get the rights.
So he said, fuck you guys, I'mmaking my superhero movie, I'll
just make my own superhero.
And then he made Darkman.
And, yeah, it's really funnybecause it stars Liam Neeson and
Liam Neeson has such an iconicvoice.
Yeah, but you don't see hisface because he's wrapped in
bandages the whole time.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Like the Invisible man.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, so it's just very clearly Liam Neeson because
of how he sounds, but the wholeidea is he has no identity
anymore because he's all wrappedup.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Alan, I've hit most of the ones that I'm aware of,
but, from your perspective, whathave I left out?
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Now we're getting into a bit more niche territory
because to my knowledge there isnot any big budget live action
equivalent movie of thesestories.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Or sorry, that's not true.
There is, but they're notterribly scary because they lean
into the superhero aspect farmore than the horror aspect, the
first one being Swamp Thing,which, as you may know, I do
enjoy a good Swamp Thing story.
We've talked about this quite abit during the Killer Plants
episode.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
So you know Swamp Thing, having a pretty
traditional origin story of ascientist covered in chemicals,
falls into a swamp whilesimultaneously being murdered
and set on fire.
A lot of factors go into that,the horror aspect of it.
Swamp Thing is such a gooddepiction of body horror.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Ooh, love that take.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
First off, they are constantly.
He's this giant grotesque thingthat can't.
He's a pile of sentient plants.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
And while the mythos starts as a guy that's
transformed, is now basically anavatar of living plants, and
he's not at all Alec Holland,who's the guy who transformed a
Swamp Thing.
But he can manifest through anyplant material and you know
(44:10):
there's a great part of the AlanMoore run where Swamp Thing who
can travel through the green.
All plants have some kind ofconnection to each other.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Like a mesh network.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Like a mesh network and he's able to travel between
planets this way and he travelsto a planet where the plants are
sentient and the flesh andblood things are like trees.
So it's like red stuff isnon-sentient and green stuff is.
But his ability like kind oflike in the matrix, when agent
Agent Smith takes over somebodyrewrites them.
(44:41):
He accidentally startsrewriting children and families
and stuff as he travels around,because he's used to taking over
non-sentient things.
He's destroying familiesaccidentally and it's just like
a little.
He has so much to worry aboutalready and now he's just
destroying plant children justbecause of their biological
(45:03):
chemistry.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
I never realized how similar he is in some ways to
Poison Ivy, at least, I guesshow she's depicted in the Harley
Quinn animation, where it'slike yeah, I wish we would go
back and add an episode to ourplant horror series and talk
about them a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
So yeah, poison Ivy has also depends on who's
writing but has mental controlover plants.
Right, she can make things grow, she can, you know?
Kind of similar to what SwampThing does, but the like, the
levels of power are nowhereequal.
Where, for instance, to use aD&D reference, all right, poison
(45:39):
Ivy would be like a warlock whoborrows power from the green to
control everything, and SwampThing would be the deity from
which she's borrowing power.
Very cool so you know he is thepower.
She borrows the power.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
It's like also that in Fourth Wing the dragons have
the power and the people harnessit.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
I see.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, all right, alan alan.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
I also want to talk a little bit about hulk and how
hulk intersects with horror sohulk is such a great example, a
tragic hero, and he started off,as you know, just as dumb,
brute right, similar to swampthing in that, a horrible
accident.
In this, instead of chemicals,it's a gamma bomb, which is a
(46:21):
new type of bomb that releasesgamma radiation that is
originally designed to destroyall inorganic matter while
leaving organic matter untouched.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
That's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, right.
So that's why Bruce Banner,who's just a he's a gamma
scientist.
He signed onto the projectbecause theoretically this would
save a lot of lives.
It's through the Department ofcool?
Yeah, right, so that's whyBruce Banner, who's just a gamma
scientist, he signed on to theproject Because theoretically
this would save a lot of lives.
It's through the Department ofDefense, yeah, and they end up
kind of tinkering with shit andmaking him test it before it's
done and during the test he seeshis soon-to-be buddy named Rick
(46:55):
just riding his motorcycleacross the test field and Bruce
goes oh no, I got to save Rick.
And he pushes Rick into atrench just as the bomb is going
off and Bruce Banner is floodedwith gamma radiation and his
untested bomb has veryunpredictable side effects and
(47:16):
causes him to transform into theIncredible Hulk every time he
gets angry.
Tell us why it's horror.
The real horror comes fromlater runs, where he becomes a
far more complex character thanjust like a bruiser.
Sure, on one of the most recentruns of Hulk it's called the
Immortal Hulk and it is so muchbody horror.
(47:37):
I absolutely love it.
The mythos here is that thegamma bomb, so gamma is like
kind of rewritten, like gammaradiation is like a real thing,
but in this universe it's likehalf scientific radiation and
also like a good chunk of justmagic.
So gamma radiation, if enoughis released, it opens a little
(48:01):
door to a different dimension.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And that dimension is to the dimension beneath
everything, and the subdimension.
Yes, so this is it's literallyso.
Marvel has hell right.
The hell exists.
This is beneath hell.
Um, so in Marvel mythos youhave the one above all, which is
the equivalent of God right,and then you have the one below
(48:23):
all, which is not the devil,because that's sorry, it's not
like Lucifer, because that's anactual character, but it's just
called the one below all.
It was just like the anti-Godright.
And Hulk ends up becoming theavatar of this thing Two
straight-up, world-endingabilities.
He can be killed, but as soonas the sun sets he resurrects.
(48:46):
Every single time, people wantto hurt him because he's the
Hulk.
He's constantly victimized forjustifiable reasons.
Once he gets controlled by theOne Below All, he starts going
on a crusade to, effectively,the universe.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Very badass.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
His abilities are nondescript because they're like
, I don't know, whatever theopposite of divine are, but he
can get as strong as he needs tobe or as large as he needs to
be, and there's, like you know,like a fortune teller showing
the future, and it's likehundreds of millions of years
into the future.
All but one has gone out,because the Hulk just travels
(49:23):
around through space, slowly butsurely, crushing each star in
his hands, and it's all aboutthe final star, and they put up
as much of a defense as they can, but he's beyond a force of
nature.
Just watch the end of theuniverse.
It's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
That's very cool, that's very exciting.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Other notable mentions for horror.
Great For horror comics.
Yeah, for superhero horror,superhero horror.
There's a lot with Punisher, alot of these things.
It's just like tragic heroes.
You know, his family ismurdered, right, and so he goes
and he murders bad guys inreturn.
The writers usually just makethese absolutely brutal.
Even when your guy is doing allthe right things, trying to be
(50:02):
a good guy, the world just keepsthrowing really awful things at
him, very violent.
The law is always after himbecause he's a murderer.
But he has no faith in thejustice system because he's just
tired of criminals goingthrough the system and then back
on the streets and murderingmore people.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Do you think of Spawn as superhero?
Horror?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I was getting to Spawn.
Before we get to Spawn, though,I'll just mention Constantine.
So Constantine, I guess he's awizard.
This is a reallyoversimplification of what he
can do.
But the dude literally goes tohell on a regular basis, has
deals with demons.
If you want to get a goodmicrocosm of how horrific this
shit can be, watch it.
It's an animated movie, a DCExtended Universe.
(50:42):
In the movie Constantine's Cityof Demons, you know, he's kind
of like.
It's kind of like Scooby-Doo,where he's like a paranormal
investigator, except it's a lotdarker where you know they're
like we're getting all thesespooky noises in our factory.
Can you come check it out?
And then he'll find out thatit's like an all but forgotten
(51:03):
Aztec god that is just clingingto existence by siphoning the
souls from pigs that are beingslaughtered in the factory above
.
Oh yeah, and just in a lot ofDC mythos gods, the only way for
a god to truly die is to beforgotten same with uh neil
gaiman's neil gaiman's um.
(51:24):
That's rights for dc sandman ispart of the dc universe I see
and yeah, just like that's thetype of shit that he deals with,
and it's usually very, verydark, very cool and really good
horror writing.
But to your point, we shouldalso talk about spawn.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
I want to talk about spawn.
You love spawn I do.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
He is the quintessential anti-hero where
he was resurrected from the deadto be a uh, to lead the armies
of hell against heaven yeah, uh,but has to train on earth to
just become a good general andin his training days of he just
tries to be a good guy andeveryone just keeps beating him
(52:07):
down.
So much body horror, so muchmutilation.
It's one of the darkest comicruns I've ever read and I, I
don't.
I only I got through like 150issues or something before I was
like okay, this is enough.
Yeah, it's really, it's great,I absolutely love it.
And even when he like just, youknow, anytime you have a hero
(52:29):
that shamelessly murders,there's a good chance that the
consequences are going to beeven greater.
You know, in Spawn oftentimeshe murders a villain and then
the villain is going to beappropriated by hell because
they really just wanted one totheir ranks so like they
manipulated spawn into killingright it's or in its truest form
(52:49):
yeah, absolutely I would loveto.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
I've only read a few and we watch some spawn, but I'd
be interested to dive into it abit more deeply yeah, if you
want to check out goodsmattering of a good dark
version of Spawn, watch the HBOminiseries.
Oh, okay great.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
It's animated.
It's four episodes long.
Each episode is like a fullfeature film.
Don't watch the 1998 liveaction movie.
It's not good.
You can watch it, it's stillfine.
But when you have like a mainantagonist called the Violator,
you probably got a good idea ofthe tone of the piece, sure sure
(53:25):
, yeah, to me again.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
I've said this at the beginning of the first episode
on superhero horror, but I wasnot super interested in this
series.
The topic has been on our listfor a long time.
It's's obviously an Alan topicBecause I think it's about
(54:00):
somebody who usually hassupernatural abilities, using
them for evil.
Well, I also think I wasactually going to phrase that
question the other way.
What's the difference betweensuperheroes and superhero horror
?
Because so many superheroeshave villains and those villains
can be super dark andterrifying and even if the
(54:22):
superhero themselves likebrightburn, even if it's not
like a villainous superhero,there's horror elements.
So I actually think superherolike both sides of that question
are interesting, right likewhat defines something as a
superhero horror, but then alsowhat defines a superhero show
without horror?
You know, obviously, like AdamWest's, batman is not horror,
(54:42):
but a lot of these are reallyhard to define.
You know, the genres are reallywell blended.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
It's.
You know, it's a very blurryline.
That's certainly not cut anddry.
It just has to do with tone andtemperament.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yeah, you feel it.
You can feel it in your heart.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
The most cut and dry example is Superman versus
Brightburn.
Right, Because they areeffectively the same character,
except one just says fuck it,I'm going to be evil and there's
nothing to stop him.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
And you know there's plenty of villains just like
that throughout comic history,but without the temperament from
actual heroes it's.
They just become horrorvillains right you know freddy
krueger.
He has an origin story ofinvolved and you just say a
terrible accident, but there'snothing accidental.
He got burned alive, uh.
But now he has a supernaturalability to go into people's
(55:33):
dreams and murder yeah um or popout of their dreams, or if they
can yank his hat or somebullshit.
He could have very much justbecome.
If he had tried to not murderkids and just wanted to fight
crime, he could have 100% been asuperhero.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Just, you know, instead been haunting the dreams
of mob bosses.
You know, going after thewicked, it really just is a
choose to how they use theirpower.
Jason is, the is basically justa strong man.
You know, super strength anddurability.
No matter what you do, he keepspopping back up, but he's
undisputably a horror villain.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
It's very true.
I mean, you're right, it's allabout tone and set.
I mean he's not wearing acostume.
You know, I don't know, I feellike it's such a silly thing,
but in so many of these, like,one of the defining things is
these people are wearingcostumes, they're assuming an
identity.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
So the book I'm reading now because I've been on
this massive superhero kick, ofcourse, getting ready for this.
First I read through all ofSuper Powers, Silly name.
First I read through all ofSuper Powers Silly name
excellent five book series, wow.
And it's all about?
It's similar to if anyone'sfamiliar with, my Hero Academia,
it's that in book form it'sjust about a school that trains
superheroes Cool.
(56:49):
I'm now reading the follow-upseries, which is Villains Code,
which is just about a society ofvillains and just like what
does it mean to become aprofessional villain?
And they talk about thecostumes and the identity and
one of the reasons why they havea society.
Um, it's like what separatesthem from being thugs is very
(57:12):
defined rules, how, it's just anunderstanding between them and
the superheroes, right?
So like they're stillcommitting crimes, they're still
robbing banks, but what they'renot doing is finding out the
secret identities of superheroesand murdering their families.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
Which causes these people that are effectively gods
incarnate to just lose theirmind and destroy cities in grief
.
You know it's about the checksand balances that lets the
villains go out to thesupermarket on the weekends
because they have secretidentities, as opposed to like
the Joker right, who is?
(57:49):
He has no secret identity.
He is just the Joker and, yeah,if he goes out to the
supermarket on the weekend, he'sprobably killing some people on
the way.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Right, fascinating.
Thank you, guys, so much Again.
This has been a delight of aseries for me, and it's not over
yet, because next episode wehave three fantastic modern
short horror stories, all basedaround the superhero theme, and
we're incredibly excited toshare those.
They are very well acted, verywell written, so that is
(58:19):
something that I am very muchlooking forward to as we
continue on with our horrorsummer series.
Alan, thank you for putting inhours reading books and watching
films, and it's been fun toopen up my eyes to what the
superhero genre really is.
Speaker 2 (58:36):
So, abby, what did I hook you with most?
What are you going to follow upwith?
Speaker 1 (58:47):
Actually, this might surprise you, but what I would
like to do is read Batman comics.
I've never done that and I loveBatman so fun and I think that
would be a cool.
So which run would you say thatI should start with?
Speaker 2 (58:54):
So I mean, a very easy jumping off point is the
beginning of the new 52 run.
So that's when they justrebooted the entire DC universe.
Everything is starting fromscratch and you don't have to
know anything about the hero andyou can just start reading.
And it starts with the Court ofOwls plot.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
Sounds like a romantic novel.
Speaker 2 (59:15):
It's not.
You know, there's alwaysromantic entanglements with
Batman, but my favorite isindeed the nightfall into
cataclysm, into no man's land.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
Okay, understood.
Well, I'll need to borrow yourdevice that you use to read
comics on.
Speaker 2 (59:34):
My eyeballs.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Your iPad or whatever .
It's not an iPad, your knockoffiPad, all right.
Well, thank you guys so muchfor being here again.
We have one more episode inthis series, so keep watching
superhero stuff.
We have more to say nextepisode.
I hope you guys are having asafe summer everyone's, you know
, hanging in there the best youcan, given the state of the
world around us.
Stay spooky, stay safe andwe'll talk to you soon.
(59:56):
Bye, bye.
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode
of the Lunatics Radio Hourpodcast.
I'm Abby Branker sitting herewith Alan Kudan, hello, and
today we are picking up ourconversation on superhero horror
, and I'm very, very, very happyto say that I started watching
Hercules.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You're talking about the Disney movie.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Okay, that's not exactly a great representation
of the myth of Hercules.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I'm just saying you made a big deal about it last
episode that I'd never seen it.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I mean yes because it's a pinnacle point of
childhood.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So I'm working on it.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
But for the point of this podcast, where we strive
for historical accuracy at everyturn and bend.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
It's wildly irrelevant.
Yes, I understand.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Although it's a great , I'm going to backtrack a
little bit.
I am a big fan of anything thatgets people interested in a
subject, whether that thing issuper accurate or not, if it
functions as a gateway into justgetting people excited about
the topic in this case, justGreek mythology great.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Another great jumping off point for Greek mythology
would be the God of War series,or at least the first trilogy.
What's that?
It's just a video game thatstarted in the PlayStation 2 era
.
That went all the way up untilI think PS3 was the God of War 3
.
But it's, yeah, just a guy thatis wronged by the gods.
It actually borrows a lot fromthe myth of Heracles, in that
(01:39):
the main character is tricked,in this case by Ares through an
illusion, into murdering hiswife and daughter.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yikes.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Sorry, into murdering his family.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Just like the original Greek myth of Heracles.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Right, and that was madness sent to him, and it's
basically the same thing.
And then he just goes on.
In this the main character'scalled Kratos and he just goes
on a quest effectively toextract vengeance by making
himself powerful enough to takeon gods.
Cool, it's cool, that's prettycool.
And, yeah, you see a lot ofvery non-historically accurate,
(02:16):
very, very cool depictions ofmythical beings and that got me
very interested in mythology asa whole and then you know that
gets you excited to go check outa more true telling of Greek
mythology.
I like the book by EdithHamilton, which became a
cornerstone jumping off point,because it's a retelling of the
Greek myths through a moremodern lens.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Very cool.
Yeah, I mean, mine was.
I hate to admit it now becausehe's canceled.
But Neil Gaiman right, myinterest in reading Neil Gaiman
novels and then his book NorseMythology really piqued my
interest.
But yeah, I get the point right, it's good to have a gateway.
So last episode we talked allabout the very early sort of
folk hero myths that we cantrace into today's superheroes,
(02:58):
and we talked about Heracles,like we're mentioning now.
We talked about Robin Hood,odysseus slightly there's so
much to really get into we spenta long time talking about Sun
Wukong, and today we're going toslip right into the most iconic
superheroes of all time.
And again, this is all leadingtowards superhero horror, but I
think we need to kind of set thegroundwork.
So that's what we're going topick up today.
(03:18):
All of the sources for thisepisode will be in the
description.
They were also read aloud inthe last episode.
Those serve as the sources forthe whole series.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So the most iconic superhero of all time is, on the
count of three one, two, three,Superman.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Who's Popeye?
Popeye Popeye the Sailor man.
Yeah, tell me, make your case.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
His feats are incredible.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Okay.
So for those who are notfamiliar with Popeye the Sailor
man, all he has to do is eatsome spinach and his feats of
strength become absolutelyincredible.
I'm pulling this from a Redditrespect thread for Popeye and
some of these like.
His nemesis is Bluto, the guywho's always after his damsel of
(04:04):
olive oil, and so, after eatingspinach, with a single punch he
can turn a bull into an entiremeat market.
Hell yeah, he has uppercutted agang of Nazis from the bottom
of the ocean all the way up tothe surface.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Dang.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
He can punch Bluto so hard that he goes all the way
around the earth.
Wow, so figure out the physicson that one.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Beyond just strength.
You know he's incredibly fast.
He's known to be able to playan entire game of baseball by
himself.
Wow, he's incredibly justtalented in general.
He can use a hair to cut asword in half.
Wow, he took down an entirebattleship with a can opener.
Like, wow, like, how does heeven do that?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
That's why it's important to eat your spinach.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
He blocks bullets with his bare hands.
He can even swing fromlightning bolts like they're
ropes.
It's pretty cool.
I mean, if this isn't asuperhero, then tell me who is.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
All right, point awarded.
I'm on your team, but I don'tthink he's more iconic as a
superhero than Superman.
Yeah, but can Superman punch sohard that it?
Speaker 2 (05:06):
causes tornadoes.
I don't know, maybe he doesn'tneed to, because he has his um
tornado eyes his tornado eyes.
No, he has his uh super breathhe can literally make gust of
wind.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, that's what it sounds like superman was first
released on april 18th 1938 inthe comic book Action Comics
number one.
He has been regularly publishedin some form or another since
that time.
Superman's birth name is Kal-El.
He hails from Krypton purely analien.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Purely an alien.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
He's an alien.
He's not a human.
He's from a different planet.
I don't think most people knowthat the nerds do, but I didn't
know.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Know that I think you don't know that I am the
everyman.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I would say I'm slightly nerdier than the
everyman, and if I didn't knowthat, how do you not know the
superman origin story?
Because I'm not aneight-year-old boy he's been
around since the 30s and I'vebeen busy.
I know, alan, you know so muchmore about Superman than I do,
but did you know this?
That Superman's creatorsinitially envisioned him as a
(06:08):
villain.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I did not know that.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Ha ha, quoting from the Historycom article by Jesse
Greenspan.
Quote Recent high schoolgraduate Harry Seigel
self-published a story inJanuary 1933 called the Reign of
Superman, featuring a madscientist who plucks a vagrant
from a breadline and gives himtelepathic capabilities.
This so-called Superman,intoxicated by power, then kills
(06:33):
the mad scientist and beginstaking over the world, until the
enchantment wears off and heonce again becomes a nobody.
Soon after, seigel and hisfriend Joe Schuster, who
illustrated the piece, revampedSuperman as a good guy with an
alien backstory, a secretidentity and a cape, among other
features that would come todefine him For several years.
(06:53):
Seigel and Schusterunsuccessfully pitched their
comic strip idea to newspapersyndicates, to DC Comics, asked
them to rework it into a 13-pagestory for Action Comics no 1,
which would go on to become themost valuable comic book of all
time, with one copy selling for$3.21 million on eBay in 2014.
(07:14):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So it seems like they just had the name Superman and
that was it, Because if he justhad telepathy, he can read minds
.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, but that was V1 .
Those were his creators thateventually created him, and that
was the first draft.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Interesting.
He did go on to get somedifferent abilities and
certainly lose the telepathy.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, well, I think probably from their story they
realized and they had to workwith you know a big studio or
whatever comic book studio theysort of realized what was more
publicly appealing.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
So, abby, you know so much about Superman.
Yes, what are his powers?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Superman can fly.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
False, he can now.
In the beginning he was justreally good at jumping.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Okay, well, you didn't define at what point we
were talking about his powers.
So I'm correct he can fly, he'svery strong, he's a master of
disguises.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
He's a master of disguises.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
He goes into his phone booth and he comes out.
Clark Kent.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, he actually like shifts his internal bone
structure.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, so I'm correct.
That's kind of neat.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
He just to give himself like a hunchback.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
He has like lasers that come out of his eyes.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Heat vision he has.
What did you say earlier?
T Tornado breath.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
He has well, yes, he has super breath.
I don't know how to define it.
It's either like really strong,or he can also freeze things,
because he can make it reallycold.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, what else am I missing?
X-ray vision.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Unsurpassed durability.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Which is actually a force field that emits from his
body.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
So Like Bella Swan.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Who.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
From Twilight.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
She has a force field .
Speaker 1 (08:42):
She creates a shield.
It's like her power.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
It doesn't go far from his body.
However, that is how the comicwriters explain why all these
bullets and explosions don'tcompletely destroy his costume
and also why he can just throwhis cape over somebody to
protect them from a nuclearblast.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
It's pretty cool Superman came out only a few
months before the first Batmancomic.
During World War II, the USgovernment actually censored
Superman because of itsreferences to nuclear weapons
while the Manhattan Project wasin progress, so isn't that
really interesting?
The Manhattan Project, which weall know so much about now
because of Oppenheimer, Supermanwas talking about nuclear
(09:19):
weapons and the government waslike, hey, we got to stop this
comic series right now.
It's hitting too close to home.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Which Superman is it?
I series right now.
It's hitting too close to home.
Which Superman is it?
Is it the?
I don't know.
It's one of the ChristopherReeves movies.
It's either three or four.
I think it's definitely not one.
But Superman creates worldpeace by systematically
disarming all nuclear weapons onthe planet, put it into a big
net and throwing them into thesun.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Dang.
If only we had that right now.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I think about it all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So in the comic book in question, lex Luthor attacks
with what he refers to as anatomic bomb.
Fun fact, many side charactersin the series also share the
initials LL, lois Lane, lexLuthor, lana Lang, linda Lee,
lucy Lane, just to name a few.
Lucy Lane is Lana Lang's sister.
I know that.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Sure, I knew most of them.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Did you know about the LL thing?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
No.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, another horrific element of Superman to
briefly discuss is the Supermancurse, which manifests,
unfortunately, for the actorsportraying the man of Steel.
So this is kind of similar tothe Exorcist series we did all
about, like the true story thatinspired the Exorcist.
And then part two is about thecurse that people believed the
actors on set believed washappening during production.
(10:31):
When George Reeves portrayedSuperman in the 1950s TV show,
it felt like the character wasthe bottom of the barrel for him
.
After the show he struggled toget work after feeling like he
was only able to be typecast insimilar roles.
Reeves sadly took his own lifein 1959.
Christopher Reeves starred infour Superman movies.
In May of 1995, he wasparalyzed from the neck down
(10:54):
after a tragic accident onhorseback, and in 1991, lee
Quigley, who had portrayedSuperman as a baby in the same
movies, died at the age of 14after huffing solvents from a
can.
Don't do that, kids, that waspretty dark, so I'm going to
keep it lighter for a minutehere.
Spider-man was created by StanLee and illustrator Steve Ditko.
Spider-man first entered thescene in a comic called Amazing
(11:17):
Fantasy, no 15 from August of1962.
Take us away, alan.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
You just want me to talk about Spider-Man.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You know everything, take us away.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Alan, you just want me to talk about Spider-Man.
You know everything Not toomuch about Spider-Man, but first
off, I want you to quickly tellme the Spider-Man origin story.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, peter Parker.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
He's a teen living in New York City with his aunt and
uncle.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
He has a crush on Mary Jane.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
He goes to school.
He has a hard time, but he hashis nerdy friends.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Then somebody stabs his uncle in the street because
he lives in tough Manhattan orwherever.
Keep going and then he goeshome and he's sad, he's upset,
he's really bummed in his grief,mixed with his spider bite.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Spider bite yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's been by a spider in his room and he locks
himself in his room for a fewdays.
He thinks it's just teen angstand then boom, he's out there
slinging webs, got it breakinghearts perfect, you know, we can
just move to the next one.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Okay, a few points of order yeah so yes, peter parker
was living with his aunt mayand uncle ben yep because his uh
parents were mia.
He was told that they died in acar crash but, oh boy, do we
find out later what reallyhappened.
But yeah, while touring I thinkthis is the official canon of
Oscorp he gets bitten by aradioactive spider.
(12:35):
He indeed gets the abilities ofa spider so he can stick to
walls, he has spider sense, hehas incredible strength and
agility and he intrinsicallyknows how to create spider webs
and for most of the writers, heactually has mechanical devices
that shoot the webs, as opposedto the Tobey Maguire movies
(12:55):
where it just comes out of hisbody.
Now to your point.
His uncle is indeed murdered,but not stabbed, because he
lives in a rough and tumbleneighborhood.
His uncle Ben was driving Peterto a wrestling match because
Peter was just trying to makesome money on the side as a
professional wrestler because hehad abilities.
Now the guy booking him stiffedhim a bunch of money.
The guy gets robbed and Peterdecides to not stop the criminal
(13:19):
as he was fleeing because hehad just screwed over the guy
that had screwed over Peter.
He then finds out shortly afterthat that same criminal tried
to steal his uncle's car and hisuncle fought back and murdered
his uncle.
So it is sort of Peter's faultthat his uncle was killed.
So he carries this great guiltand that's why he fights for
justice.
That is the quick version ofSpider-Man.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Excellent.
We talked about Ultraman atlength during our series on
Kaiju, which you might allremember.
Ultraman is an incrediblypopular Japanese superhero.
His universe consists of films,a TV show and all of the other
mediums you would expect Comicbooks, video games, traditional
books.
You know, you get it.
Ultraman debuted in 1966 with aseries called Ultra Q that was
(14:08):
followed quickly the same yearby the Ultraman TV series.
It can be compared to Supermanor Spider-Man in the United
States in terms of popularity.
Ultraman became a sensation inJapan.
Between its release and untilthe 1980s, the franchise brought
in almost $7.5 billion inrevenue.
So between the 1980s and 1966,$7.5 billion in revenue.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Do you want to talk about the Ultraman origin story?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I mean, this one will keep very brief, just an
average dude.
It all stems from advancedtechnological devices, these
little transformation devices,you know, the main one being the
beta capsule.
It's just this little buzzerlooking thing that you push the
button on and you turn intoUltraman for 10 minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So then you go from being just your average dude to
the size of a building for 10minutes and, like that's the
critical weakness of you, haveall these abilities, all these
powers, strength, speed, you getto shoot your cool laser beams,
but you only have 10 minutes tosave the day.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I would argue that Batman is the quintessential
dark superhero, especially inthe more modern film depictions.
Bob Kane created Batman inearly 1939.
He was first drawn with adomino mask, bat wings and
tights.
Collaborator Bill Fingersignificantly influenced the
evolution of the character,especially his costume.
(15:25):
Finger introduced a darkercostume cape, gloves and a cowl.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, bill Finger is the true creator of Batman.
Bob Kane came up with the nameand Bill Finger got completely
fucked over for rights.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Justice for Bill Finger.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yes, there's a big online community.
That would agree with you.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Hell yeah, the name Bruce Wayne was inspired by real
historic figures Robert theBruce and Matt Anthony Wayne.
Robert the Bruce was King ofScots from 1306 until 1329.
He led the country in the FirstWar of Independence with
England.
He's regarded as a nationalhero in Scotland.
Matt Anthony Wayne was afounding father and a soldier in
(16:06):
the United States.
He was born in 1745 and died in1796, but not before earning
himself the nickname.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
What nickname?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Matt Anthony.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
From his explosive personality and exploits during
battle.
Later, President Rooseveltwould deem Matt Anthony Wayne
America's best fighting general.
So Bruce Wayne's origin story.
He was motivated by the murderof his parents.
Even from the start of hisexistence as a character, he was
seen as a dark and broodingdetective with a secret.
Batman debuted in DetectiveComics number 37 in 1939.
(16:39):
Less than a year later, in 1940, he earned his own solo title.
The very same year, Robin wasintroduced as a supporting
character.
Batman went through manytransformations over the years.
In the 1950s, his stories tookon a lighter note, more focused
on science fiction.
In my opinion, Batman is asuperhero that veers into horror
the most organically.
(17:00):
He's also one of the mostpopular superheroes in Western
culture.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
If you really want a dark and brooding superhero,
look no further than Adam WestBatman.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
No, that's not a good example, Alan.
It's a great example.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
They love to dance.
I often think dark and broodingmen love to dance.
I feel like you know, everysuperhero should be
counterbalanced with some goodquips, some good jokes, some
good physical comedy.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, some pretty light and airy plots.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
The 1960s were a hell of a time.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Tim Burton directed Batman in 1989 and Batman
Returns in 1992.
Certainly not horror, but verymuch Tim Burton's signature
spooky style.
Both films star Michael Keatonas Batman.
The first gives us JackNicholson as the Joker, and
Returns gives us Danny DeVito asPenguin and Michelle Pfeiffer
as Catwoman.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Meow.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
At the time, batman from 1989, was a film that
pioneered a new era forsuperhero movies.
It was a huge blockbuster thatlived up to the extreme hype,
but also it came out at a timewhen comic books based on movies
were nowhere near as common asthey are today.
You don't say the DCcom articlereminds us that the last time
(18:15):
Batman appeared in a moviebefore Burton's was in an Adam
West Batman film from 1966.
It's so good and there wasnothing dark about it, so this
was a huge shift for theportrayal of Batman.
Many often acknowledge Burtonfor being the most faithful to
the comics.
There were dark storylines thatexisted in the comics, but
unless you were an avid readerof them, most people only knew
(18:36):
the Adam West version.
After the Burton movies, twomore films directed by Joel
Schumacher were released BatmanForever and Batman and Robin.
These films gave us Poison Ivyand Mr Freeze.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And and what?
And Two-Face and the Riddler.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
And Two-Face and the Riddler.
Played by Jim Carrey and TommyLee Jones.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Uh-huh and Poison Ivy is played by.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Uma Thurman.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And Mr Freeze is.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Arnold Schwarzenegger .
Arnold Schwarzenegger, arnoldschwarzenegger, those are so
good ice to meet you.
The next live action seriescame to us from christopher
nolan with batman begins in 2005, the dark knight in 2008 and
the dark knight rises in 2012,and you guys already know how
much we love this series.
Christian bale stars as brucewayne and in batman begins,
(19:21):
killian murphy plays thescarecrow.
The dark knight gives us heathledger's infamous performance as
the Joker, and the Dark KnightRises stars Tom Hardy as Bane
and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
The weakest of the Catwomen.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
When is Halle Berry?
She's, she's a Batgirl.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Halle Berry.
Yeah, halle Berry playsCatwoman in the Catwoman movie.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Oh, okay, it's awful.
Oh, that's too bad.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Except it has one of the most iconic scenes for bad
editing.
I remember even seeing this infilm school.
It's when she's playingbasketball and it's just they
cut every like half second.
It's ridiculous.
There's like thousands of cutswhile they're playing basketball
and it's like supposed to besexy but it just looks so
(20:05):
fricking stupid.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Oh, I cannot wait to watch that on YouTube.
Six months before the DarkKnight was released, but after
production wrapped, heath Ledgerdied from an accidental
overdose of prescriptionmedications in New York City.
He was 28 years old.
Ledger won a posthumous AcademyAward for the role, which is
incredibly important.
It's horribly sad and HeathLedger's performance was amazing
(20:27):
and he was an incredible actor.
But I think, that aside, it's areally important moment that
somebody playing a villain in acomic book superhero movie won
an Academy Award for his role.
Sure, that's a huge moment forthe genre.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Also I remember Jack Nicholson I think it was Jack
Nicholson during an interviewbecause he played the Joker in
the 1989 Batman movie how everyactor who has played the Joker
has had to deal with some kindof psychological repercussions
for playing the character.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I feel like any kind of method actor that really gets
into the head of the character.
It's a tough one to play and Iremember there was a lot of
speculation that Heath Ledgerjust took it too far in terms of
his own sanity, because boy didhe give a killer performance,
but it had a consequence.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, I've done a lot of reading on this and yeah, he
was suffering from insomnia andhe was just couldn't, I think.
Like, I mean, I'm not going tospeculate that much, but yeah,
there's a lot out there abouthow it impacted him.
Oh, and just for the record,I'm not interested in the
extended DC universe movie, sowe're going to jump ahead to the
very controversial film Jokerfrom 2019.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Hang on.
That is where true superherohorror comes into play.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
All right, you have the floor.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
No, I don't.
I don't want the floor, I justwant you.
I just want you to acknowledgethat the really good DC movies
that get really dark and reallygritty come from the DC Extended
Universe.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Name one.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
It's more that they are far more true to the comics,
because, I don't know, there'smaybe it's it's for a different
audience.
It's usually for people thatlike superheroes as opposed to
just try to make blockbustermovies.
You can watch flashpoint, wherethe flash goes back in time to
make it so his mom does not getmurdered and in doing so
(22:19):
completely fucks up the timeline.
And then you get a version ofBatman where it's not Bruce
Wayne picking up the mantle,it's his father, thomas Wayne,
who watched his son get murdered.
And then just is this likeraging alcoholic with guns that
just goes around murderingcriminals.
It's a much darker take.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, sounds like it.
All right.
So 2019.
Directed by todd phillips andstars joaquin phoenix.
Obviously, this is a verycontroversial movie.
Joker premiered at the venicefilm festival and it won the top
prize at the prestigious event.
It tells a gritty origin storyof one of the most popular comic
book villains of all time.
The main controversy stemmingfrom joker centers around its
(22:59):
portrayal of violence and mentalillness In an era of mass
shootings.
Joker aimed to tell the storyof mental health behind violent
offenders, but did it glorifythe archetype too much Candidly?
When I first saw the movie, Ithought it was the best film I'd
ever seen.
I literally had that reaction.
To me, it connected a superherostory to something that felt
relevant in today's society andsomething important to
(23:22):
understand.
But also, in attempting torewatch it for this episode, I
found it almost unbearable.
So I had some sort of emotionalshift in my reaction to this
movie.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Which is crazy, because it's a great movie and
it's a character piece.
It is not a superhero movie atall.
It just kind of links to a veryiconic villain who calling the
joker a supervillain is hissuperpower is insanity yeah,
lack of empathy also, it dependson who is who's writing.
You know, yeah, the the joaquinphoenix joker is just someone
(23:57):
who's mentally disturbed.
The heath ledger joker issomeone who is just crazy like a
fox but heavy on the crazy likea fox.
But then you get, you know,different versions of Joker
throughout the comics,throughout the comics.
Who is just this absolutelunatic that will murder
thousands, if not millions, ofpeople.
(24:18):
Again, depends on who's writing.
There's, you know, onestoryline where he tricks
Superman into accidentallymurdering Lois Lane.
Oh yikes and in doing so alsoinadvertently sets off a nuclear
bomb that goes off inMetropolis.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
How much of the Batman comics have you read?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
I mean a tiny, tiny fraction of what's out there.
The longest run of Batman thatI've done was the story arcs,
nightfall and no Man's Land, andactually those stories were
very, very loosely adapted forthe third Batman movie in the
Nolan series, where it's aboutBatman encountering Bane for the
(25:01):
first time, and Bane being acharacter that is supposed to be
the perfect counterpart to allof Batman's abilities he's
incredibly intelligent, he'sfaster, he's stronger and he's
absolutely obsessed with hisgoals.
So he breaks Batman's spine.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
And then keeps him alive to watch as Gotham slowly
dies.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Wow, that's intense.
What superhero like in terms ofcomics.
Do you think you've read themost of Swamp Thing Spawn?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Overall pure volume probably Hulk.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Is Berserk superhero.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
No, I mean superhero, I really feel is an American
term.
Now, I mean, I know thatJapanese superheroes are.
I feel they're just kind oftheir own thing, because they're
also very contained.
The word superhero really feelslike part of a franchise,
whether it is DC, marvel,vertigo, image all these Dark
(25:53):
Horse.
Dark Horse, exactly Because theyall have their whole like
superhero universes In Japan.
All these you know so manypeople that check every single
box of like what a In Japan.
All these you know so manypeople that check every single
box of like what a superherowould be, but they're all in
their isolated universes.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
So it's just kind of hard dude comparing apples to
different apples.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I understand the survivors from the Aurora
Colorado Dark Knight shootingexpressed major concern and
disappointments when Joker wasreleased.
Quoting from the New York Timesreview by AO Scott.
Quote To be worth arguing about, a movie must first of all be
interesting.
It must have, if not a coherentpoint of view, at least a
(26:33):
worked out, thought-provokingset of themes, some kind of
imaginative contact with theworld as we know it.
Joker, an empty, foggy exercisein secondhand style and
second-rate philosophizing, hasnone of that.
Besotted with the notion of itsown audacity, as if willful
unpleasantness were a form ofartistic courage, the film turns
(26:55):
out to be afraid of its ownshadow, or at least of the
faintest shadow of any actualrelevance.
End quote.
The review also points outquote Todd Phillips' Joker has
stirred up quite a tempest.
Hands have been wrung about themovie's supposed potential to
inspire acts of real-lifeviolence, and criticism of its
brutal nihilism has been metwith a counter-backlash,
(27:16):
including from Phillips himself,who has been sounding off about
the far-left and woke cultureand other threats to the ability
of a murderous clown to makemoney unmolested.
Meanwhile, the usual armies ofskeptics and fans have squared
off with ready-made accusationsof bad faith, hypersensitivity
and quasi-fascist groupthink.
End quote.
In 2022, the Batman, a nearlythree-hour epic starring Robert
(27:41):
Pattinson, was released.
The film was directed by MattReeves.
Quoting from the Vice articleby Geeta Jackson.
Quote the story of Batman ispretty simple.
Bruce Wayne, the son of a richdoctor who could want for
nothing, is orphaned one nightby a mugger.
In response, after years of notrecovering from his grief, this
child decides to dress up as abat to fight crime.
(28:02):
Both Nolan and Snyder prettymuch stop there, with the
decision to dress like a bat andfight crime being the answer to
Bruce's problems.
Jumping ahead in the quote.
Nolan and Snyder made moviesabout a guy who is broken and
for whom being Batman is thereprieve from his brokenness.
It's an appealing fantasy ofrecovering from trauma by simply
transforming yourself, one thatmany people wish were true.
(28:25):
Matt Reeves and RobertPattinson's Batman is just a
step more complicated.
Being Batman can't save BruceWayne from his loneliness in
this movie.
He has to, however, slowlyactually process the emotional
pain that drove him to make suchan extreme life choice in the
first place.
End quote.
Do you like the RobertPattinson Batman?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's been a while since we've seen it.
I remember you really, reallyloved it.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, but I love all things Batman, especially if
they're dark and brooding andthey star a hot guy.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Like Adam West, I enjoyed it because, similarly, I
loved every.
There's not a Batman movie thatI won't watch.
It wasn't my preferred versionof Batman.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Which is.
You have to pick one.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
My preferred version of Batman is the TAS.
Batman, the animated series.
Oh, that would be Kevin ConroyBatman.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Okay, we like Harley Quinn a lot too.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Harley Quinn was invented for that series.
She wasn't in comics.
This is one of the rareexamples.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Oh, she wasn't.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, she started in this cartoon for kids and then
became such a favorite that theystarted making.
They put her into the comics.
Oh, cool and then she became awhole franchise that I'm not a
huge fan of.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Sure, yeah, I mean we like the one with Haley Cuoco
that animated Harley Quinn.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, it's fun and silly, yeah, and I think that is
the perfect use of Harley Quinn.
The Margot Robbie movies are Idon't know, they're just not my
cup of tea Surprised.
You know who Margot Robbie is,or money, or anything really,
(30:00):
except her.
Again, her superpower iscraziness and plot armor.
So yeah, she just like runsthrough a bullet fight and like
kind of you know, does someflips and dances and that's it
and gets them.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Right.
So in this article, rightJackson is making the point that
Pattinson is the best Batman wehave, that his performance and
the script itself goes deeperthan the others, and I don't
disagree necessarily.
While there have been manystunning portrayals of Batman on
film, most even Nolan's arefocused equally on the villains.
Right Like I think the DarkKnight Rises is Heath Ledger's
(30:34):
film, it's not Christian Bale's.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Correct, but that was a shift.
The first one was Batman movie.
Second one was Heath Ledger'smovie.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
But even with Christian Bale and Begins
there's nothing like that deepthat's coming out.
You know it's like, OK, we'retelling the origin story, we get
it, but it's not like, you know, I don't know.
I get what this author issaying.
I think it's very kind ofsurface level comic book-y,
whereas this one with RobertPattinson is much more about
like trauma in a way.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I'd have to rewatch it.
I do know that it's a verycommon discussion online of you
know who's the best Batman.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And it's really hard to pick just one.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Because everyone does something differently.
I think Christian Bale is thebest Bruce Wayne Sure, while Ben
Affleck is one of the bestBatman brawlers.
You know he's huge, he's builtand like Batman is supposed to
be.
He's not supposed to be thislike small scrappy guy.
No, he's supposed to be thistank of a man who punches
(31:33):
criminals out with one hit andsurvives hits because he's
covered in armor.
You need to have a reallystrong build for that.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
That's fair.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
But in terms of like being Bruce Wayne, Christian
Bale had all his training fromAmerican Psycho.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Not a movie, but I do want to take a moment for
Spider-Man Reign, one of myfavorite comic books of all time
.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Oh, what's this one?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Spider-Man Reign was a four-issue comic limited run
that you can now purchase as acomplete book.
It was written and illustratedby Kerr Andrews and released
between 2006 and 2007.
The story is set 30 years intothe future, after the events of
Spider-Man as we know it, andit's like a dark reimagining of
(32:14):
Spider-Man, which is why I likeit.
There's consequences,essentially, without giving much
away about it.
There's consequences to theactions of the canon of the
story and I think that's areally cool sort of creative
reimagining.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
So this is the one where Mary Jane doesn't make it.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
And how does that happen, Abby?
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Because she dies from exposure to Spider-Man's
radioactive bodily fluids,uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Can you be more specific?
From having sex bodily fluids,uh-huh.
Can you be more specific?
Speaker 1 (32:43):
From having sex with him.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
I think that's as specific as I need to be.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So he gives her radiation poisoning, that's
right.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
If you want to say something, Alan, you're welcome
to say it.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
It's a it's funny.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
It's not funny.
It's sad, it's so sad.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
There's another running joke that the
Spider-Man's biggest nemesis isthe writers.
Because he has so manyabilities and he does so great
and he's like leagues above somany other superheroes that
don't have such a hard time, butin every single thing he's just
some punk kid who has todeliver pizzas to make ends meet
(33:19):
.
People around him areconstantly dying that he loves.
All of his villains target hisfamily and friends.
Do you think the same thinghappens to Popeye?
No, Popeye does just fine.
They do go after his friendsand family.
Yeah, his girlfriend.
Olive Oil, sure, but you knowwhat?
He just bops them on the noseand that solves that.
There is, to my knowledge, nostory arc where Popeye has to
(33:42):
bury Olive Oil because he killsher with radioactive semen.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
In 2010, super, starring Rainn Wilson, was
released by IFC Midnight.
Not a horror, but a dark comedy, a very dark comedy.
Super tells the story of aregular guy who believes that
God has chosen him to transformhimself into a superhero.
The film has a star-studdedcast.
Rain is joined by Elliot Page,liv Tyler, kevin Bacon, james
(34:06):
Gunn and Linda Cardellini.
Super was written and directedby James Gunn and, of course, in
2019, what's often referred toas the pinnacle of superhero
horror was released.
Brightburn was directed byDavid Yarovsky and produced by
James Gunn, written by Brian andMark Gunn.
The film stars Elizabeth Banksand David Denman and, unlike any
(34:28):
other movie we've talked aboutor will talk about, it feels
squarely like a horror movie andit's fucking scary.
It's really unnerving.
As Alan explained to me beforewe watched it, the movie tells
the story of Superman if hewasn't a good guy.
Fun fact, there's an Easter eggin Brightburn that ties Super
to it.
They're actually from the sameuniverse that James Gunn kind of
(34:48):
created.
What's?
Speaker 2 (34:50):
the Easter egg.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
In the end credits.
The conspiracy theoristYouTuber that's kind of talking
over the credits talks aboutother superhero sightings and
one of them is Rainn Wilson'scharacter in Super.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
Brightburn is such a good example.
I'm glad we're pivoting intohorror because, like you know,
this is a horror podcast andwe've done so much stuff that is
not scary.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Take it away.
The floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So Brightburn is indeed the story of Superman,
just rebranded, and we reallyget into the crux of what is
superhero horror.
And that is when you havesomebody with incredible
abilities who doesn't act withthe greater good in mind.
And you know, we see that allthe time with supervillains, but
(35:33):
it's always like counterbalancewith the superheroes that stop
them.
That's the whole point of asuperhero is to stop
supervillains.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right, but what if there's no supervillains?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
But other way around.
What if there are nosuperheroes?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Well, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
What if you just have someone with absolutely world
shattering abilities and thereis no one to stop them?
And these are like thequestions that you have to start
looking like, and all thesethings have been explored in
comics.
There's a very famous run ofsuperman called superman red sun
and that is the.
(36:05):
You know.
The story of superman is hislittle space pod is flying
through, flying through spacecrash lands in kansas just like
the wizard of oz yep and red sunmakes the what if of say, he
got launched 50 somethingseconds later, you know, from
Krypton, just a very minutechange right.
(36:26):
Instead of landing in Kansas,he lands in the Soviet Union and
he is raised in the height ofmilitarization, just beaten into
him and he becomes thistotalitarian figure that ends up
taking over the Soviet Union.
And then the superheroes of theworld have to band together to
(36:46):
try to take down this godlikeperson, because he doesn't know
any better.
And bright burn is kind ofsimilar to that instead of like
you know it's.
This is a nature versus nurturequestion.
The Superman mythos.
It's all about who raises him.
In true Superman canon, he'sraised by just two farmers that
have the world's best values andthey impart them on their
(37:09):
adopted son and that's why hebecomes America's Boy Scout.
And you know, in the Red Sonhe's raised by a dictator.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Right Interesting, but in.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Brightburn, it doesn't matter.
He's raised by good enoughpeople, but he's raised by a
dictator.
Right Interesting.
But in Brightburn, it doesn'tmatter.
He's raised by good enoughpeople, but he's a psychopath.
And he's also brainwashed byhis little ship just to really
cement the idea home that he wassent to take over and destroy
the planet.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I got to say again it's very scary, it's very good
and if there's any film you walkaway from the series and watch,
I would suggest that you watchBrightburn.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
So circling everything back, as we always do
, to Dragon Ball Z.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Ah, yes.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
In this case it's actually just Dragon Ball which
predates Z, so it's based on themyth of Sun Wukong and Journey
to the West, but it's also itcombines the story of Superman.
You have a alien baby launchedin a ship, crash land on earth
and his whole point of beingsent to this planet is to
conquer it.
(38:07):
But in the crash landing hebonks his head and someone finds
him and he doesn't have anymemories and they just raise him
like a good guy and then hebecomes the, the champion of
earth, because why not?
He was raised with good valuesinstead of being a conqueror.
Minor details, but makes it aworld of difference.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Absolutely All right, I struggle to talk about this
movie, but we're going to talkabout it.
I'm going to preface it bysaying it's incredibly offensive
.
So take that with a grain ofsalt.
Toxic Avenger from 1984 isdescribed as a black comedy
splatter superhero film.
It was directed by Michael Herzand Lloyd Kaufman, written by
(38:42):
Joe Ritter.
It's again I cannot stress thisenough.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
It's incredibly incredibly offensive.
So good it's.
Just I don't know.
It's a cinematic masterpiece.
The fact that it's not part ofCriterion is a crime.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
We have different opinions on Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Toxic Avenger was my first introduction to Troma,
being a production company thatjust absolutely pumped out B
movies in the 80s and 90s andstill does, but that was really
their heyday of like ToxicAvenger and Tara Firmer and
Newcomb High.
There's just so many of thesemovies and every one of them has
(39:20):
like a full franchise and tonof sequels and everything.
They're so much fun.
Yes, they're gory, yes, they'rea bit dated and the types of
humor that are is currentlyacceptable, but I grew up with
these movies.
I think they're hilarious andtalk about a excellent example
of a horror movie about asuperhero, because I'm not going
(39:42):
to say this is superhero horror.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
I don't know that.
I would say it's horror, it'sso kitschy and it's a
splatterfest.
Yeah, I guess it just doesn'tread as 100% a B-horror movie.
It's so campy and over the topit's.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
It's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, it's beyond.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
But it's still technically a horror movie, sure
it's just.
It's just as its own genre ofit.
Sure you know when the effectsare bad, and not even the
effects are bad at this.
It just can't be.
But I don't know.
You just get this guy thatlooks absolutely horrific and
he's just cleaning up the townthrough murder.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
I fucking love it 10 years later, the crow was
released in 1994.
The film stars brand Lee,rochelle Davis and Tony Todd.
The Crow is deemed asupernatural superhero movie and
it was directed by Alex Proyas.
Brandon Lee, the son of BruceLee, died during production of
the Crow when a prop gunmalfunctioned after a bullet was
(40:35):
stuck in the barrel.
Just like Heath Ledger, lee was28 years old.
Stunt performer Chad Stahelskifinished filming the remaining
scenes in Lee's place and he hadthe director sort of had the
blessing of Lee's family membersand girlfriend to finish the
movie.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
So my understanding was that this was a legitimate
tragedy and accident thathappened on set.
That movie helped write a lotof safety precautions that we
now use on set.
Yeah, it's really a shame thatthese types of things need to
happen before we enact bettersafety precautions.
Rules are written in blood,which is really an unfortunate
(41:11):
truth of the industry yeah butit's also just a such a weird
thing because the movie is aboutsomeone who is murdered and
then comes back, you know, yeah,to have him actually get
murdered on set.
I mean, well, manslaughtertechnically, but like, wow, it's
just a kind of wild to thinkabout it is.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, it's very dark.
Jeff cadiente also stepped in,who is another stunt performer.
Some of the scenes relied oncgi effects.
At the time of the death, onlyeight days remained in
production.
Darkman from 1990 was directedby Sam Raimi and stars Liam
Neeson.
Darkman tells a familiarsuperhero story about a man
who's wrongfully beaten and leftfor dead by a mob, but an
(41:51):
experimental treatment ends upgiving him superhero strength.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Fun fact about Darkman.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Tell us.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Sam Raimi really wanted to make a Batman movie,
but he couldn't get the rights.
So instead he pivoted to try toget rights to make a movie
about the shadow.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
But similarly couldn't get the rights.
So he said, fuck you guys, I'mmaking my superhero movie, I'll
just make my own superhero.
And then he made Darkman.
And, yeah, it's really funnybecause it stars Liam Neeson and
Liam Neeson has such an iconicvoice.
Yeah, but you don't see hisface because he's wrapped in
bandages the whole time.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Like the Invisible man.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, so it's just very clearly Liam Neeson because
of how he sounds, but the wholeidea is he has no identity
anymore because he's all wrappedup.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
Alan, I've hit most of the ones that I'm aware of,
but, from your perspective, whathave I left out?
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Now we're getting into a bit more niche territory
because to my knowledge there isnot any big budget live action
equivalent movie of thesestories.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Or sorry, that's not true.
There is, but they're notterribly scary because they lean
into the superhero aspect farmore than the horror aspect, the
first one being Swamp Thing,which, as you may know, I do
enjoy a good Swamp Thing story.
We've talked about this quite abit during the Killer Plants
episode.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
So you know Swamp Thing, having a pretty
traditional origin story of ascientist covered in chemicals,
falls into a swamp whilesimultaneously being murdered
and set on fire.
A lot of factors go into that,the horror aspect of it.
Swamp Thing is such a gooddepiction of body horror.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Ooh, love that take.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
First off, they are constantly.
He's this giant grotesque thingthat can't.
He's a pile of sentient plants.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
And while the mythos starts as a guy that's
transformed, is now basically anavatar of living plants, and
he's not at all Alec Holland,who's the guy who transformed a
Swamp Thing.
But he can manifest through anyplant material and you know
(44:10):
there's a great part of the AlanMoore run where Swamp Thing who
can travel through the green.
All plants have some kind ofconnection to each other.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Like a mesh network.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Like a mesh network and he's able to travel between
planets this way and he travelsto a planet where the plants are
sentient and the flesh andblood things are like trees.
So it's like red stuff isnon-sentient and green stuff is.
But his ability like kind oflike in the matrix, when agent
Agent Smith takes over somebodyrewrites them.
(44:41):
He accidentally startsrewriting children and families
and stuff as he travels around,because he's used to taking over
non-sentient things.
He's destroying familiesaccidentally and it's just like
a little.
He has so much to worry aboutalready and now he's just
destroying plant children justbecause of their biological
(45:03):
chemistry.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
I never realized how similar he is in some ways to
Poison Ivy, at least, I guesshow she's depicted in the Harley
Quinn animation, where it'slike yeah, I wish we would go
back and add an episode to ourplant horror series and talk
about them a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
So yeah, poison Ivy has also depends on who's
writing but has mental controlover plants.
Right, she can make things grow, she can, you know?
Kind of similar to what SwampThing does, but the like, the
levels of power are nowhereequal.
Where, for instance, to use aD&D reference, all right, poison
(45:39):
Ivy would be like a warlock whoborrows power from the green to
control everything, and SwampThing would be the deity from
which she's borrowing power.
Very cool so you know he is thepower.
She borrows the power.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
It's like also that in Fourth Wing the dragons have
the power and the people harnessit.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
I see.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, all right, alan alan.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
I also want to talk a little bit about hulk and how
hulk intersects with horror sohulk is such a great example, a
tragic hero, and he started off,as you know, just as dumb,
brute right, similar to swampthing in that, a horrible
accident.
In this, instead of chemicals,it's a gamma bomb, which is a
(46:21):
new type of bomb that releasesgamma radiation that is
originally designed to destroyall inorganic matter while
leaving organic matter untouched.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
That's kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, right.
So that's why Bruce Banner,who's just a he's a gamma
scientist.
He signed onto the projectbecause theoretically this would
save a lot of lives.
It's through the Department ofcool?
Yeah, right, so that's whyBruce Banner, who's just a gamma
scientist, he signed on to theproject Because theoretically
this would save a lot of lives.
It's through the Department ofDefense, yeah, and they end up
kind of tinkering with shit andmaking him test it before it's
done and during the test he seeshis soon-to-be buddy named Rick
(46:55):
just riding his motorcycleacross the test field and Bruce
goes oh no, I got to save Rick.
And he pushes Rick into atrench just as the bomb is going
off and Bruce Banner is floodedwith gamma radiation and his
untested bomb has veryunpredictable side effects and
(47:16):
causes him to transform into theIncredible Hulk every time he
gets angry.
Tell us why it's horror.
The real horror comes fromlater runs, where he becomes a
far more complex character thanjust like a bruiser.
Sure, on one of the most recentruns of Hulk it's called the
Immortal Hulk and it is so muchbody horror.
(47:37):
I absolutely love it.
The mythos here is that thegamma bomb, so gamma is like
kind of rewritten, like gammaradiation is like a real thing,
but in this universe it's likehalf scientific radiation and
also like a good chunk of justmagic.
So gamma radiation, if enoughis released, it opens a little
(48:01):
door to a different dimension.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And that dimension is to the dimension beneath
everything, and the subdimension.
Yes, so this is it's literallyso.
Marvel has hell right.
The hell exists.
This is beneath hell.
Um, so in Marvel mythos youhave the one above all, which is
the equivalent of God right,and then you have the one below
(48:23):
all, which is not the devil,because that's sorry, it's not
like Lucifer, because that's anactual character, but it's just
called the one below all.
It was just like the anti-Godright.
And Hulk ends up becoming theavatar of this thing Two
straight-up, world-endingabilities.
He can be killed, but as soonas the sun sets he resurrects.
(48:46):
Every single time, people wantto hurt him because he's the
Hulk.
He's constantly victimized forjustifiable reasons.
Once he gets controlled by theOne Below All, he starts going
on a crusade to, effectively,the universe.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Very badass.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
His abilities are nondescript because they're like
, I don't know, whatever theopposite of divine are, but he
can get as strong as he needs tobe or as large as he needs to
be, and there's, like you know,like a fortune teller showing
the future, and it's likehundreds of millions of years
into the future.
All but one has gone out,because the Hulk just travels
(49:23):
around through space, slowly butsurely, crushing each star in
his hands, and it's all aboutthe final star, and they put up
as much of a defense as they can, but he's beyond a force of
nature.
Just watch the end of theuniverse.
It's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
That's very cool, that's very exciting.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Other notable mentions for horror.
Great For horror comics.
Yeah, for superhero horror,superhero horror.
There's a lot with Punisher, alot of these things.
It's just like tragic heroes.
You know, his family ismurdered, right, and so he goes
and he murders bad guys inreturn.
The writers usually just makethese absolutely brutal.
Even when your guy is doing allthe right things, trying to be
(50:02):
a good guy, the world just keepsthrowing really awful things at
him, very violent.
The law is always after himbecause he's a murderer.
But he has no faith in thejustice system because he's just
tired of criminals goingthrough the system and then back
on the streets and murderingmore people.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
Do you think of Spawn as superhero?
Horror?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I was getting to Spawn.
Before we get to Spawn, though,I'll just mention Constantine.
So Constantine, I guess he's awizard.
This is a reallyoversimplification of what he
can do.
But the dude literally goes tohell on a regular basis, has
deals with demons.
If you want to get a goodmicrocosm of how horrific this
shit can be, watch it.
It's an animated movie, a DCExtended Universe.
(50:42):
In the movie Constantine's Cityof Demons, you know, he's kind
of like.
It's kind of like Scooby-Doo,where he's like a paranormal
investigator, except it's a lotdarker where you know they're
like we're getting all thesespooky noises in our factory.
Can you come check it out?
And then he'll find out thatit's like an all but forgotten
(51:03):
Aztec god that is just clingingto existence by siphoning the
souls from pigs that are beingslaughtered in the factory above
.
Oh yeah, and just in a lot ofDC mythos gods, the only way for
a god to truly die is to beforgotten same with uh neil
gaiman's neil gaiman's um.
(51:24):
That's rights for dc sandman ispart of the dc universe I see
and yeah, just like that's thetype of shit that he deals with,
and it's usually very, verydark, very cool and really good
horror writing.
But to your point, we shouldalso talk about spawn.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
I want to talk about spawn.
You love spawn I do.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
He is the quintessential anti-hero where
he was resurrected from the deadto be a uh, to lead the armies
of hell against heaven yeah, uh,but has to train on earth to
just become a good general andin his training days of he just
tries to be a good guy andeveryone just keeps beating him
(52:07):
down.
So much body horror, so muchmutilation.
It's one of the darkest comicruns I've ever read and I, I
don't.
I only I got through like 150issues or something before I was
like okay, this is enough.
Yeah, it's really, it's great,I absolutely love it.
And even when he like just, youknow, anytime you have a hero
(52:29):
that shamelessly murders,there's a good chance that the
consequences are going to beeven greater.
You know, in Spawn oftentimeshe murders a villain and then
the villain is going to beappropriated by hell because
they really just wanted one totheir ranks so like they
manipulated spawn into killingright it's or in its truest form
(52:49):
yeah, absolutely I would loveto.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
I've only read a few and we watch some spawn, but I'd
be interested to dive into it abit more deeply yeah, if you
want to check out goodsmattering of a good dark
version of Spawn, watch the HBOminiseries.
Oh, okay great.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
It's animated.
It's four episodes long.
Each episode is like a fullfeature film.
Don't watch the 1998 liveaction movie.
It's not good.
You can watch it, it's stillfine.
But when you have like a mainantagonist called the Violator,
you probably got a good idea ofthe tone of the piece, sure sure
(53:25):
, yeah, to me again.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
I've said this at the beginning of the first episode
on superhero horror, but I wasnot super interested in this
series.
The topic has been on our listfor a long time.
It's's obviously an Alan topicBecause I think it's about
(54:00):
somebody who usually hassupernatural abilities, using
them for evil.
Well, I also think I wasactually going to phrase that
question the other way.
What's the difference betweensuperheroes and superhero horror
?
Because so many superheroeshave villains and those villains
can be super dark andterrifying and even if the
(54:22):
superhero themselves likebrightburn, even if it's not
like a villainous superhero,there's horror elements.
So I actually think superherolike both sides of that question
are interesting, right likewhat defines something as a
superhero horror, but then alsowhat defines a superhero show
without horror?
You know, obviously, like AdamWest's, batman is not horror,
(54:42):
but a lot of these are reallyhard to define.
You know, the genres are reallywell blended.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
It's.
You know, it's a very blurryline.
That's certainly not cut anddry.
It just has to do with tone andtemperament.
Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yeah, you feel it.
You can feel it in your heart.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
The most cut and dry example is Superman versus
Brightburn.
Right, Because they areeffectively the same character,
except one just says fuck it,I'm going to be evil and there's
nothing to stop him.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
And you know there's plenty of villains just like
that throughout comic history,but without the temperament from
actual heroes it's.
They just become horrorvillains right you know freddy
krueger.
He has an origin story ofinvolved and you just say a
terrible accident, but there'snothing accidental.
He got burned alive, uh.
But now he has a supernaturalability to go into people's
(55:33):
dreams and murder yeah um or popout of their dreams, or if they
can yank his hat or somebullshit.
He could have very much justbecome.
If he had tried to not murderkids and just wanted to fight
crime, he could have 100% been asuperhero.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Just, you know, instead been haunting the dreams
of mob bosses.
You know, going after thewicked, it really just is a
choose to how they use theirpower.
Jason is, the is basically justa strong man.
You know, super strength anddurability.
No matter what you do, he keepspopping back up, but he's
undisputably a horror villain.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
It's very true.
I mean, you're right, it's allabout tone and set.
I mean he's not wearing acostume.
You know, I don't know, I feellike it's such a silly thing,
but in so many of these, like,one of the defining things is
these people are wearingcostumes, they're assuming an
identity.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
So the book I'm reading now because I've been on
this massive superhero kick, ofcourse, getting ready for this.
First I read through all ofSuper Powers, Silly name.
First I read through all ofSuper Powers Silly name
excellent five book series, wow.
And it's all about?
It's similar to if anyone'sfamiliar with, my Hero Academia,
it's that in book form it'sjust about a school that trains
superheroes Cool.
(56:49):
I'm now reading the follow-upseries, which is Villains Code,
which is just about a society ofvillains and just like what
does it mean to become aprofessional villain?
And they talk about thecostumes and the identity and
one of the reasons why they havea society.
Um, it's like what separatesthem from being thugs is very
(57:12):
defined rules, how, it's just anunderstanding between them and
the superheroes, right?
So like they're stillcommitting crimes, they're still
robbing banks, but what they'renot doing is finding out the
secret identities of superheroesand murdering their families.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
Which causes these people that are effectively gods
incarnate to just lose theirmind and destroy cities in grief
.
You know it's about the checksand balances that lets the
villains go out to thesupermarket on the weekends
because they have secretidentities, as opposed to like
the Joker right, who is?
(57:49):
He has no secret identity.
He is just the Joker and, yeah,if he goes out to the
supermarket on the weekend, he'sprobably killing some people on
the way.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Right, fascinating.
Thank you, guys, so much Again.
This has been a delight of aseries for me, and it's not over
yet, because next episode wehave three fantastic modern
short horror stories, all basedaround the superhero theme, and
we're incredibly excited toshare those.
They are very well acted, verywell written, so that is
(58:19):
something that I am very muchlooking forward to as we
continue on with our horrorsummer series.
Alan, thank you for putting inhours reading books and watching
films, and it's been fun toopen up my eyes to what the
superhero genre really is.
Speaker 2 (58:36):
So, abby, what did I hook you with most?
What are you going to follow upwith?
Speaker 1 (58:47):
Actually, this might surprise you, but what I would
like to do is read Batman comics.
I've never done that and I loveBatman so fun and I think that
would be a cool.
So which run would you say thatI should start with?
Speaker 2 (58:54):
So I mean, a very easy jumping off point is the
beginning of the new 52 run.
So that's when they justrebooted the entire DC universe.
Everything is starting fromscratch and you don't have to
know anything about the hero andyou can just start reading.
And it starts with the Court ofOwls plot.
Speaker 1 (59:13):
Sounds like a romantic novel.
Speaker 2 (59:15):
It's not.
You know, there's alwaysromantic entanglements with
Batman, but my favorite isindeed the nightfall into
cataclysm, into no man's land.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
Okay, understood.
Well, I'll need to borrow yourdevice that you use to read
comics on.
Speaker 2 (59:34):
My eyeballs.
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Your iPad or whatever .
It's not an iPad, your knockoffiPad, all right.
Well, thank you guys so muchfor being here again.
We have one more episode inthis series, so keep watching
superhero stuff.
We have more to say nextepisode.
I hope you guys are having asafe summer everyone's, you know
, hanging in there the best youcan, given the state of the
world around us.
Stay spooky, stay safe andwe'll talk to you soon.
(59:56):
Bye, bye.
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