Fantastic Four MEGA EPISODE (Fantastic Four Pt 1 & 2, Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom, Best FF Team Ever)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to a geek history lesson.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm Jason Van, I'm Astra Victoria Robinson. Welcome to your
mind University because you have stumbled onto the podcast where
one Canadian comic book writer and one screenwriter from Kansas
teach you everything you need to know about a character.
And today we have a very special mega episode where
we're going to do this for about six hours today

(00:24):
celebrating this is a six hour one.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's going to be real close to six hours celebrating
the release of Fantastic Four for steps.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yes, So everyone pull out your tri quarders, get into
the excelsior, slam together your suits because we're hopping into
the negative zone. But we're gonna be calling at the
positive zone because we're celebrating one of the greatest superhero
families of all time, the Fantastic Four. We're going to

(00:53):
be talking about a lot of Doctor Doom saying bah.
We're going to be talking about Ben Grimm sounding like
rocks every time he takes a bath, because he would.
He would sound like a boulder rolling down a hill
everywhere he went.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
It sound like a rock tumbler.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah he would, Yeah, he would.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Oh, let's get your opinion on this quick sure far
bit for the Fantasy four mega episode here, some people
are a little mad that the thing's voice and all
the trailers for the new film that's coming out, he
doesn't have like a rocky voice. He just has a
normal human voice.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Thoughts doesn't bother me.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I I have no opinions either way. No, I like
the actor a lot, so I'm fine with it, sure so.
But a lot of people are like, his voice has
to sound rocky. It makes me so bad, And I'm
just like, there's a lot of other stuff worried about.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, yeah, I'm also sure that's not gonna be the
thing in the movie that you find. The most weird.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Things that you might find weird is some of the
fun facts we're going to tell you in this episode. Okay,
so we're gonna celebrate Fantastic four. We got a bunch
of episodes ready for you six hours.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Apparently.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Who's gonna feel like you're stuck in a Secret Wars
battle world for way too long? Ashley? Yeah, what are
some of the companions they're going to have in this
mega episode journey today?

Speaker 2 (02:03):
This is very fun because this is going to take
you on a journey from the very beginning of geek
history lesson over about the seven years worth of content.
We are starting with episode seventy five, The Fantastic Four.
Then we are following up with The Fantastic Four Part two.
Then we are heading into the world of Doctor Doom,

(02:26):
followed by the Silver Surfer, and we are ending up
with our best fans Yeah. Yeah, best Fantastic Four team
ever where Jason and I build our own ff Tam.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
I've completely forgot our teens, but I will tell you
the one memory that came back to me is I
do you remember I introduced a Silver Surfer impression and
I think he's just a stoned out hippie.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yes, I believe in that episode he also talks to
your impression of Talkie Tawny.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yes, I think from the extended DC and doesn't isn't
he like call me nor? Yeah, he's very ull. Yes,
that may be complete. You're going to find out, would
you keep listening exactly that you're.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Gona find out about three hours?

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Wow, So this is this is a nice cut back
into twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen, Ashley, Jason, this condo
pers all right to sit back, relax, set your chronometers
to crazy, and get ready for a cosmic journey through
Jack Kirby and stan Lee history with the Fantastic Four.
And remember, if you don't stick around to the end,

(03:24):
you're going to miss the post credit scene where Ashley
and I argue about who is the best member of
the Fantastic Four. Spoiler it's Herbie, all right, true. Without
further ado, take it away past Ashley and past Jason.

(03:45):
On this Geek History Lesson, we're going to travel back
to a time of the nineteen sixties. Is about the
First Family, our family, the changed America.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
We are going to talk about the Kennedys.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Aren't we No, we're going to talk about the Fantastic Four.
They're movies coming out, So we're gonna give you the
origin of the Fantastic Four. Because this Geek History Lesson
is fantastic. Geek History Lesson is now in session. Hello,
and welcome to Geek History Lesson. I'm Jason Richards inman.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
I am Ashley, not Richards Robinson, and welcome to your
mind University. Because you have stumbled upon the podcast where
we take one character construct or team slash family in
popular culture and explain to you why they are awesome.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
And today we're doing the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, because their movies dropping in theaters this week. No way, yep,
and we're kind of worried about it, if.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
We're going to be honest.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, we have not seen the movie at the time
this recording, but we'll see it soon.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
So there you.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Go, the Fantastic Four. This was suggested actually by a
listener of this podcast, Jonathan Adkins.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Jonathan, he is one of our listeners who's been here
since the beginning. Oh, that's one of our original crops,
and that's probably one of our original episode requests.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, he put it out there a long time, and this,
since I am a big fan of the Fantastic Four,
I thought that I would oblige him. And so we're
gonna drop right into the podcast of the Fantastic Four.
And here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
When you do a gey history lesson on a Fantastic Four,
you cannot split them apart. You have to do them
as a team.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
You can't just do Read and you can't just do Ben.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
You probably could, but most of their adventures are together cool,
so it has to be together. They are a team.
We're gonna do it as a team. Great, So let's
drop into the first section of this podcast, the ten
cent Origin, Ashley, what is the tencent origin?

Speaker 2 (05:32):
The ten cent origins is where we give you all
the basic information who created, what they do, why, they're awesome,
facts that you need to know about a character. Should
you go to a cocktail party and then your future
and someone's like, yo, who are these Fantastic Four folks?

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Which they might do after that movie?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (05:44):
All right, here we go, the tencent Origin of the
Fantastic Four. They are published by Marvel Comics.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
No Way.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Their first appearance was in The Fantastic Four number one
in November nineteen sixty one. They were created by stan
Lee and Jack Kirby, and their base is the Baxter Building,
which is actually at forty second Street in Madison Avenue.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
That's a really nice neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah. Also Avengers Mansion, four, Freedom's Plaza and Peer number four.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Four Freedom's Plaza, yep.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Four Freedom's Plaza. You will learn more about it later on. Okay,
all right, now we all know some of us may know,
but there are four core members of the Fantastic Four. No,
but there haven't they all haven't always been those four members. Okay,
so I am going to now tell you every member
of the Fantastic four that has ever.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Been everyone who has ever been on the team.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
He's ever been on the team. Here we go, mister
Fantastic read Richards. He was in Fantastic four number one.
Invisible Woman, Susan Storm also in Fantastic four number one,
The Thing Benjamin J. Grimm also in Fantastic four number one,
and the second Human Torch not the first versus an

(06:59):
android yep, Jonathan Storm in Fantastic four number one. Now
Here are some of the other recruits, Okay, Crystal of
the Inhumans in Fantastic four number eighty one, Medusa the
Queen of the in Humans in Fantastic four number one
thirty two.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Interesting that both of the in Humans were not on
the same issue.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yes, Luke Cage formerly power Man heyk Carl Lucas he
legally changed his name to Lucas Cage in Fantastic four
number one sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
The Human Torch also known as Nova also known as
Frankie Ray in Fantastic four number two thirty nine. She
Hulk Jennifer Walters, who we have.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Talked about before I save an episode and even go
to it.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Fantastic four number two sixty five. Miss Marvel also known
as She Thing, also known as Sharon Ventura, Fantastic four
number three oh six, ant Man Scott Lane.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
We also have an episode on Fantastic.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Four number three eighty four Storm of the X Men. Aurora, however,
you say a Aora Monroe Monroe, Fantastic four number five
forty three. Also in that same issue, Black Panther to
Chala her husband.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Oh so we're going for the diversity card in that issue.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yep. Franklin Richards, the son of mister Fantastic Child as
a child and as an adult, are on that and
Valeria Richards as a child and as an adult in
the same issue. Okay, Flux Dennis Sykes, I don't know
who that is. He's just a guy. Says here that

(08:46):
the Fantastic Four asked for Dennis's help from stopping Ego
the Living Planet from destroying the galaxy. S is my nose?
Cool spider Man Peter Parker, Yeah, he was joined in
Amazing Spider Man number six fifty seven and FF number one.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
He's probably one of the most famous replacement.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Players and Miss thing Darla Deering Fantastic Four, Volume four,
number two. She was a former model who dated Johnny
Storm and put on a suit of armor that resemble
a thing. We'll get to her later.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yes, now, whoo, that's a long ten cent origin.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, that's like the twenty five cent origin.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Right, yeah, the Fantastic twenty four.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Now let's move into the meat cute Ashley Jason, how
much do you know about the Fantastic Four? I want
to hear two things in this. I want to know
where did you first encounter the Fantastic Four? And how
much about the Fantastic Four do you know? Because I
want to do a little at the beginning's podcast, I
want to see what you know, and then at the end,
I want to see how much you learned or what

(09:47):
was the most interesting learn at the.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Bearer, Okay, I first met the Fantastic Four when I
was a tiny child because they replayed the Herbie cartoon
on TV Army right after they replayed the Animated Incredible
Hulk Show in Canada. Bruce Banner, no doc. Bruce Banner pelted,
Oh yeah, I fucking love that showed.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Richards turned his friends into mutates.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's more or less. Yes, I didn't like it, I
remember that, but I remember watching it anyway, because you know,
you're six and we didn't have Netflix or whatever. I
think the first book I read, the Man was like
Civil War.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
What I know about the Fantastic Four can be summed
up as I know who's on it and Tumbleweeds roll by,
and I read a lot of Future Founding. I think
the Future Foundation is a much more interesting idea than
the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Future Foundation is basically the Fantasic Four.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
But it has cute alien children whose heads are in jars.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Who were introduced than issues of the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Sh So I know the names of the people on
the Fantastic floor And.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Okay, where did you first meet the Fantastic Four?

Speaker 2 (11:09):
I feel like you're Jerk now well, Ashley, well Jason.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Out there in the lands of America, there are these
stores called Walmart's ah, and these mystical stores used to
sell comic books. They used to have comic racks in
the toy department, like spinner racks. No it wasn't spinner rack,
but they'd have like a rack up against the shelves
and usually a double and they'd have comics in They're

(11:33):
just piles and piles of comicos in there in one
of these racks in.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
A Walmart, in a mythical Walmart.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
I once walked in and I saw a Fantastic four
cover and it was shiny, it was holographic, and it
had Doctor Doom on the cover and it was Fantastic
four number four hundred, and it was confusing because like
there was a sexy, skimpy Susan Richards on the cover,
and there was the human torch, and then Doctor Doom

(12:02):
was on the cover and then the thing had a
helmet on his head.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Oh weird.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
And I read the issue and read Richards was somehow
dead and for some reason, like Susan drew a very
skimpy outfit. And I was like, oh, well, the cover's cool,
so I guess it's worth a lot. So I put
it in the back and board and thought, I was cool.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
That's adorable.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
And then I basically didn't read any of the Fantastic Four.
Intel Heroes Reborn. You love Heroes Reborn because Jim Lee
was drawn the Fantastic four yea, and it looked awesome
and I was hooked and it like I was very
much into starting the next generation. It was like Star Trek,
the next generation of superheroes. And since then I've gone
back and read a lot of the team's run and

(12:41):
now the Fantastic Four. Darede was my favorite solo Marvel hero.
The Fantastic Four is my favorite Marvel concept. Cool by far,
and hopefully this lesson teaches you why they should be yours.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
I'm ready as well. I want to know, because the
movie doesn't. I don't know if it's going to do that.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
All right, now, is dropping too the history one oh one?

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yes, the main meat of the lesson, all of the
most important things that you need to know about the
Fantastic Four, and it's poletha of members.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
All right, So let's start out in the comics creation
of the Fantastic Four, the fictional history. Now, there was
the publisher of Marvel Comics or Timely Comics, and he
was aware of a title that was being published by
d C Comics called The Justice League of America. Little title, yep,

(13:33):
little title that apparently sold amazing well, had very strong
sales because it was all the heroes in one title. Now,
he said to stan Lee and Stanley.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
A young whipper snapper of the era.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
And this is in nineteen sixty that Stanley said in
an interview once that his publisher, Martin Goodman, mentioned that
he had noticed one of the titles published by National Comics,
which is what DC Comics was called the time, seemed
to be selling better than the most. It was a
book called The Justice League of America, and I'm good
it was composed of a team of superheroes. If the

(14:06):
Justice League is selling, spoke, why don't we put out
a comic book that features a team of superheroes Excelsior.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Thank you for shopping by mister Lee.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Because of this, Lead came up with the idea called
the Fantastic Four co and he created a synopsis for
the first Fantastic Four story that he gave to a
penciler called Jack Kirby now Ashley, who is Jack Kirby.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Jack Herby's probably one of the most important comic book
artists of all time. You will know him from his
Marvel works with the Kirby Crackles in some of the
more magical characters.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
He changed the way people tell visual stories.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yes, and he was the basically the first artist on
almost all of the most everything original Marvel stories except
Spider Man. Yes, so he gave the synopsis through Jack Kirby,
who then drew the entire story. Kirby turned into his
pencil art pages to Stan Lee, who added dialogue in captions.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
And this hence birthing Marvel style.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
And this created a brand new style of making como
was called as the Marvel method, and it worked so
well for Lee and Kirby that the publisher demanded that
the Marvel method be used on all their titles, going.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Far because God forbid. Some other creative team works differently.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Now, Jack Kirby recalled some of the original events of
the Fantastic Four quite differently.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
As seems to happen in an old Bartonships.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
And in a nineteen ninety interview, Kirby challenged Lee's telling
of the tale, and he said, and I quote, I
would say that's an outright lie.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Wow m hm.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Now, Kirby claims that he came up with the idea
for the Fantastic Four in Marvel's bullpen, and that Lee
merely added the dialogue after the story had been penciled.
Kirby said that he also sought to establish more or
on numerous occasions that the visual elements of the strip
were all his conceptions, so that all their powers, all

(16:06):
their looks were his conceptions. And he readily pointed to
a team that rival comics publisher DC Comics had in
the nineteen fifties called the Challengers of the Unknown. Yet, now,
if you've ever seen the Challenges of the Unknown, they
are very Fantastic four.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Why they are?

Speaker 1 (16:22):
They definitely are, And Jack Kirby said, if you notice
this is a direct quote, Cool. Their uniforms are the
same as the Challengers of the Unknown. He's like, I
gave them the same skin tight uniform with a belt,
and the Challengers in the FM have minimum decoration because
I felt that they should both be adventurers.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Now. Comics historian Mark Evanier, who was a studio assistant
to Jack Kirby in the nineteen seventies, says that the
considered contemporaries of Lean Kirby in the time in the
nineteen sixties always considered the Fantastic Four to be created
by Stan and Jack together, and this comics historian says
that he feels that no further division of credit seems appropriate.

(17:06):
Interesting so very much A Lennon and McCartney.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
That they did it together, neither one did it separately.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
But and that's why creative freelance contracts are the way
they are now.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
But I will say that the Challengers of the Unknown
comparison is very interesting.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
It's very app.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yes, it's very app They are so like the Challenges
of the Unknown, it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
But which one is better known now?

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Well, obviously the Fantastic for but you know, there's actually
a really great run of the Challenges of the Unknown
drawn by Tim Sayle, written by Jeff Lob in the
early nineties. It is actually Jeff Lobe's first comic work.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Well, I should go read this. It's actually pretty good.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's pretty good. All right, enough of the Challenges in
the Know. Now it is time to hop into the
Fantastic Four's history. Cool now read. Richards was born in
Central City, California. I don't know why I made that

(18:05):
super dramatic, but I just did.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
All right, But Jason isn't Central City a DC city
in Kansas?

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, Reed is the son of Evelyn and Nathaniel Richards. Now,
Nathaniel is a scientific genius and also, as you'll find
out in the future, a time Traveler and a Shield agent.
But we'll get to that later.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
That seems to be a lot of popular retconning for
people's parents.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Shield agents. Yeah, well yeah, secret Shield agent. Peter Barker
even yeah, Peter Barker, Yeah, yeah, they're actually CIA agents. Ash,
I'm sorry, now read. Because of his father inherited a
similar level of intellect and interests in science.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Intelligence is only thirty three percent genetic.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Well, he got it all. Reid was considered a child
prodigy with a special aptitude in mathematics, physics and mchannis.
He's smart.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
He was building building the Sydney Opera House out of
them building blocks.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Well read. Richards enrolled in college by the time he
was fourteen. Cool, and he attended such precisious universities as MIT,
the California Institute of Technology, Harvard Columbia, and the fictional
Marvel Universe Empire State University, which Peter Parker would also attend,
all at the same time various other times. He James Franco, Yes,

(19:23):
except a lot smarter. He basically speeded through those. By
the age of twenty, he had several degrees of sciences
underneath his belt.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Now to go back to some of the publishing stuff.
Okaycuse I thought this was interesting. Now. The release of
The Fantastic Four, though will later be dropped number one
in November of nineteen sixty one, was an unexpected success,
and stan Lee was ready to lead comics before he
wrote this issue, but because he heard that story. But
because of the positive response, he decided to stay on,

(19:53):
and the title began to receive fan mail and Lee's
started printing the letters in a letter call him an
Issue three. Also the third issue, Lee created the slogan
the Greatest comic magazine in the World, and with the
following issue, he changed the slogan to the World's Greatest
Comic Magazine, which became a fixture on the issue covers
into the nineties and the two thousands. Yeah, and it's

(20:14):
still it's.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
You can still find issues.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Oh yeah, Yeah, Like it wasn't. I would say it
wasn't until like very recently that they dropped it.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Probably the all new Marvel now, Yeah, rebranding. Now.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Various times in the nineties they dropped it. But like
it depends on the writer, they'll bring it back, like
Mark Millar. Mark Miller brought it back when he did it.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
But he's a big He's he's kind of like Morrison,
Like he's a big history guy.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
All right. Now back to the fictional history of Read.
Richard's okay, now one team member in YEP. Now, it
was at State University, not Empire State University, that he
met his friend, Benjamin J. Grimm Ashley, Who's Benjamin J. Grimm.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
He's the thing, and he's from Yancey Street.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
YEP in New York. And he's Read Richard's best friend.
He's more of a jock, kind of dude.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
He's a dude, bro, but not in a bad way.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Read, during his college years at State University, began designing
a starship capable of traveling in hyperspace, and he shared
his plans with his new roommate Grim and Ben. Grim
jokingly volunteered to pilot the craft, and Read agreed that
if he ever built it, Ben would fly it.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Ben's like, Yo, I never flew nothing, but I'm gonna
fly You're plane.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I'm gonna play. I'm I'm gonna fly your space rocket
Read and reads like sounds good, bro, all right. Nineteen
year old Read Richard continue his education soon by attending
Columbia university. Wow, where he rented a room in a
boarding house owned by the aunt of a young girl
named Susan Storm.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
How young are we talking.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
We'll get to that. Okay, we'll get to the ages.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Okay, this is problematic.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
The ages are coming up. Okay, so we'll get to them.
There are They are a story point. They're not important now.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
So she's thirteen, he's nineteen. Okay, that's the difference. Okay,
that's when he first met her. She was thirteen, he's nineteen,
So six years.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, but when you're thirteen and nineteen, those six years
are massive. Com here to like twenty and twenty six.
No romantic miss happens. Okay, none of it happened. Okay,
it's just the first time that he met her.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
But it is to come.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's very much a Hermiony Harry Potter kind of thing.
What or not Hermione who was Ronzell's sister.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
I mean there's a year difference between.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
It's Ginny, okay, jinny, and it's that type of thing. Yeah,
just go with it.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Six years is it's all right?

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Okay, don't get hung up on this age thing. We'll
get to it, Okay. Okay, sorry, good lord, all right,
that's not the important thing about this lesson.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
All right, Look, I need something to identify with. Listen.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Two reads embarrassment, Sue Storm the girl, of course thirteen
Sue Storm Colon the girl. She got a crush on him,
and though Reid eventually moved on to another college, to
another degree, to another lady, yep, she continued to carry
a torch for Richards.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
No pun intended carry a torch ha ha.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Also, while at Columbia, he met a brilliant fellow student,
Victor Vaughan Doom, and then in Doom, Richards finally found
the first person who could ever match him intellectually. Now,
Doom regarded Richards as his ultimate rival and the only
person on earth who could ever stop his plans.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
I love classic Marvel comics like storytelling, because it's like, hey,
I know, this guy looks like a normal person, but
he's the fucking bad guy.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Now. Doom was determined to prove that he was better,
and Doom conducted reckless experiments which eventually led to him
scarring his face and blowing up his room and leading
him down the road that would make him become doctor Doom.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Now, that's all I'm going to tell you about Doctor
Doom's origins because I have no doubt that we will
do a Doctor Doom episode in the future, okay, And
there is way more history with Doctor Doom to go in,
like where he was before this moment, where he goes
after this moment, and even did you know Ashley that
Doctor Doom almost became the Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel

(24:15):
Universe instead of Doctor Strange. Nope, well there you go.
That's what to tell you. That that why you should
go to our social media which is a found at
Facebook dot what.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Facebook dot com, slash, Geekhistory lesson or geekhistory lesson dot com.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
And suggests that we do a Doctor Doom episode in
the future.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
I believe we do have some requests for that in
the queue, but ask more.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
We'll get ahead. We'll get to that. But that's all
I'm going to tell you about Doctor Doom basically, just
you need to know that he blew up his room
because he was reckless and it's gart okay, so you
need to know, and he blames Richard's of course. Now
we're going to hop ahead some yours, okay, and Reid
is now in his mid twenties. Now Reid used his
inheritance along with government funding, to finance his rocket research.

(24:54):
Remember he was working on a rocket that could travel
through It.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Was like nineteen yep.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Now Reid was determined to go to Mars and beyond. Okay,
and he based the Faithful Project in Central City. Now
Susan Storm now a young adult, she's now in her
early twenties.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
She's now over eighteen.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
She soon fanned herself. She moved into the area and
within a short time she let Reid use her family's
lucrative savings and involving in charitable foundations to provide money
for his rocket when his funding ran out.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
So she was a sugar mama.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yes yes. Also, Read's old college roommate Ben Grimm was
now a successful test pilot and an astronaut, and Reid
had had had indeed given him the chance to pilot
the rocket. Well that's lucky yep. Now again, Reid is
in his late twenties. Sure okay. So however, soon the

(25:54):
government threatened to cut funding and cancel the Projectol and Reid, Ben, Sue,
and Sue's younger brother, Johnny, who's a big scamp agreed
to sneak aboard the starship and take it up immediately.
They knew that if they could prove the rocket could work,
the government wouldn't cut their fundy right.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
And they'd be fine.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yep. But they hadn't tested all the safety measures. But
Reid was like, I've done the calculations. It'll all be good.
And Ben was initially skeptical of the unknown effects of radiation,
while Reid told him the shielding would hold. It's always radiation, yep,
and it's famous. That's was Reid's famous last words. So

(26:35):
soon they launched their ship, their ship passed through the
Van Allen Belt and they found their cockpit bombarded and
with nearly lethal doses of cosmic radiation and cosmic rays.
Now the Van Allen Belt for all of you out there,
they're gonna get a little bit of science lesson in your.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Geeks of actual science.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
It's the Van Allen Belt is actually the radiation belt
that is energetic charge particles that are held in place
with a magnetized planet. So basically it is all the
radiation that comprises earth magnetic field. Oh that's cool, yes,
and actually it's a real deal, and cosmic radiation is
a real thing. It's a real thing. It's just not

(27:14):
as severe as Marvel likes you to believe.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
It's like, we get it on Earth right now.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, you actually are getting celted with cosmic radiation all
the time. Yeah. So the cosmic rays wrecked tap. Now
you gotta think about this in nineteen sixty one. This
is way before the moon landing. Sure, and this is
three or four years before the first man in space.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Yeah, so it sounds great to have cosmic rays be deadly.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
It's very timely, and it's very timely to have your
main character be all about building a rocket.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yeah, this is a space race.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yep. So the cosmic rays wrecked havoc on the starship's shielding,
and they were forced to immediately return to Earth. They
crash landed their ship, and they found that all their
bodies were changed dramatically. Reed's body was elastic and he
could reshape any portion of his body. It will Ashley,
what were the up crew member's power I know these ones.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Sue could become invisible, and I don't know if this
was at this time or later, but she can do
like shields and bubbles and later it comes later Johnny
caught on fire a lot, and Ben was basically a
rock monster yep, pretty much pretty much orange rock monster
because they only had so many colors in the sixties,

(28:24):
and at.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Reid suggestion, they decided to use their new abilities to
serve mankind as the Fantastic Four. Now he name them
m I'm not certain on that. I don't remember in
that issue.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Because I know sometimes and sometimes it's not a big deal,
but sometimes they sit around and plan a lot about
like what are we going to call ourselves? What adjectives
are we gonna use?

Speaker 3 (28:43):
I was just wondering.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
No, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
I don't remember. I don't remember. Probably he does name
himself mister Fantastic, so I'm assuming that that's he did
name him.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
I think that a little bit speaks to his ego.
He's like, yes, mister Fantastic.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well, here's the thing. This is sort of a retcon,
but it's a retcon that I like.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Okay, so you are in defense, it's totally cool to
call yourself mister Fanda.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yes, for this reason.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Later on, in the Mark Wade run for Fantastic Four,
which is a one of my favorite runs, Fantasic four
ever all the time In actually Mark Wade's very first issue,
the issue is all a bedtime story being told to
baby Valeria. Oh and this is before Valeria suddenly became
six out of no reason. Yeahs, when Valeria was actually
a baby, which she should be a baby. We'll get

(29:31):
to that. We'll talk about that later. Fantastic four has
a lot of age problems.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
That's so funny.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
All right, here we go. So he later told his
daughter a bedtime story and it was about like their
origin and everything like that. And the reason he suggested
to Valeria and only Valeria, and he told her to
keep it secret, was the reason why he gave them
such outlandish costumes and names as Mister Fantastic and the
Thing and a visible woman the Human Torch, was that
he knew that they would likely be hated and feared

(29:58):
because of their powers, and he felt that making their friends,
making his friends celebrities, was the least he could do
after basically telling them, oh, yeah, that cosmic shielding will.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Hold, yeah, basically ruining their lives.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Yeah, basically ruining their lives. And so his way of
making their lives semi normal was to try to make
them celebrities.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
So it's him trying to make amends.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
That's I can live with that.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, all right, now we're going to go into retcon history.
Here we go. Okay, Now, the history of the Fantastic
Four over the years has been changed to keep in current.
In the original comics, Richards and Ben Grimm were veterans
of World War two, right and read Richards actually served
behind enemy lines and occupied France. Wow, And the original

(30:47):
goal of his space mission was to get a manned
space flight to the Moon before the comedies were able to. Wow,
that's what actually Fantastic four number one is actually about. Now.
This was later changed to getting there before the Chinese communists. Yeah,
and to explore and also change to explore interstellar areas
of the Red Planet and beyond. And also in earlier

(31:09):
stories it was also said that Reid was to have
met Susan when he was twenty three and she was twelve.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Wow, that's a lot worse. But this has been retcon yeah,
to make it more reasonable. Six age difference, Yeah, a
six year age, six age difference. Ah. So but you
know what is not a six age difference?

Speaker 3 (31:30):
What is not a six age difference.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Well, it's all our great supporters over at patreon dot
com slash jawin jawi n real quick. I want to
say thank you to our supporters. I think Ashley wants
to say thank you to our thank you supporters, and
we really especially want to say thank you to anyone
that donates at the three dollars level, because at the
three dollar level, if you don't know, you donate there
and you get a doodle from me, and we want

(31:54):
to let you know that if you donate between now
and September first, you'll be entered into a drawing to
win two doodles on top of your normal doodle. So
no way, when you donate at three dollars, you're like, hey, Jason,
I want Herbie. Sure, I want Herbie the robot, And
I'm like great, But now if you do it between

(32:15):
now in September first, you'll be entered into a drawing
to get a doodle of the thing and a doodle
of the human torch, and we'll have pictures of them
on the geek history lesson social media's you can see.
But you're going to get three doodles for the price
of one. That's all that's right, so go donate at
patreon dot com slash John and three dollars gets you
a chance to win two extra doodles, and if you
don't win, you still get a doodle of your choice. Yeah,

(32:36):
so you still get things and everything works out. Thank
you to all our patrons, patreons, patrons who help keep
this podcast going.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yes, thank you, and thank you to everyone who is
deciding to donate right the second.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, all right, now on to the Fantastic Show, The
Fantastic Show now soon. With the help a fellow inventor,
Noah Baxter Read was able to purchase the Baxter Building,
No way, which is that forty second and Madison and
I told you earlier, which is a good neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
It's a really niceness like right on Mintown.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Yeah nice. Now. The first menace the Fantastic Four were
called upon to face was the mole Man and is
ever the little guy. Yeah. The molloids. The moloids are
his minions, yay, the best yep. His his cadre of
monsters and molloids and sub human races.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Ye for me.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Now. And he threw me off by laughing at cadre
such a great He lost me in my notes because
you were laughing at such.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
A great descriptor for like his his minions.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
Now, soon the Fantastic Four were thrown into a conflict
with the shape shifting Scrolls. Who are the Scrolls?

Speaker 2 (33:39):
The Scrolls are you may also know them. That's the Shutari.
That's what they call the Ultimate University, the MCU. Well
they kind of are.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
They're different but anyways, yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
But for all intensive purposes, they're a green race with
these weird looking Thano's chins and their shape shifters. Important
thing about them is their shape shifters. And they appear
in the series called.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Ye and that would be the first of many alien
menaces that we be during in their long career. Soon
they also met Naymor, the sub Mariner, who is the
first mutant then er of all jerks yep, the constant
love of Sue and the Prince of Atlantis. And then
very soon the group was next attacked by Reed's old

(34:17):
college friend Vivicky Victor von Doom, now calling himself what
Ashley Doctor Doom. Yes, and Doctor Doom kidnaps Sue in
order to force Reed and the others to use his
time platform to recover black Beard's treasure. Chest as it's
supposedly contained wait for it, a mystic gem that was

(34:41):
once owned by the wizard Merlin.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
I love old timey comics. Kidnap the girl, blackmail the
boyfriend for some stupid thing that sounds vaguely mythological.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Yeah, well no, no, it's kidnap. Sue to force Reid
to use a time machine, right to fight a pirate
who has a chess that contains a jewel from Merlin. Right,
it's got to go to King Arthur. It's very simple,
and of course they very simple, he says, And of
course they easily easily beat him. Now, very quickly, I'm

(35:13):
going to just summarize some of the fs early accomplishments
and then we'll go back to the adventures. Now. As
a team leader, mister Fantastic created a lot of devices
and vehicles for the team, such as his clothing made
of unstable molecules. Now unstable molecules is the uniform? Is
this material made by the Fantasy four basically means they

(35:35):
can they can light it on fire, can turn invisible,
they can stretch it and it won't break.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, which is important because almost none of them would
be able to wear nor more people clothes.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yep. And also it gives a very easy cause story
reason why you know, nobody's clothes burns off or stretches
off or anything, or why.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
We've suddenly decided to give them all a new look.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah. Now, Under Read Richard's guidance, the team went on
to become one of Earth's most celebrated band of heroes.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
And mighty as Heroes not quiet, and together.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
They would save the world countless times. Cool now, Read
quickly became one of the Earth's most intelligent men, and
his quest for knowledge led the Fantastic for on many
of their adventures. Now you may be wondering, they have
all these clothes, They have all these clothes, they have
all these devices, they have all these devices. They have
this cushy building.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
They've got this rat building.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, how do they afford it all?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
How do they afford it all? Jason?

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Well, you see, Reid Richards is a smart man and
an inventor, and he gets patents and royalties from these inventions.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Did he make the nutri bullet?

Speaker 1 (36:36):
I don't even know what that is.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
That is the blender that you own, the magic bullet?
Oh I thought that was the same thing.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
No, No, no, no, no, no, he did not make that.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Sorry in science things. And now back to some of
their adventures. Okay, so it is cool though that he
funds them on side. Now he funds them now. Sometimes
it doesn't work out, though, tell me about it. Despite
saving the world multiple times already, the Fantastic Four is
costly operations of all their adventures actually caused Reid to

(37:09):
file for bankruptcy. Wow, and have to liquidate some of
the Fantastic fource assets like.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Her So they were riding high for like a couple
of months and then just all the hell.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Like we got us on, Ben, we gotta sell all
your jorts yep, and all the herbies have to go.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
No, he was wearing speedos at this time. Ben was
wearing speedos. Oh yeah, I don't like that one bit
he's wearing. He wore speedos for several years.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Well, it's more than he's wearing in the movie.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Now. The Fantastic Four found salvation when they were given
an offer from sm Studios to star in a Fantastic
Four movie. Not a reality show, nope, a movie. This
is the sixties, okay. To their surprise, they soon found
out the company was run by nay More, the sub
mariner sm yep, who tricked the Fantastic Four into accepting

(38:01):
the film role as an attempt to eliminate the male
members in order to get at Sue his love.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Okay, this sounds like the plot of like a Muppets movie.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Just think about this. The Prince of Atlantis thought a
movie scheme would be the best way to get a love.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
It's not only like he wants a trick Sue into
loving him. He's gonna like destroy her life and those
of everyone she cares about, ye, in order to.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Get some to basically boner ye yeah, now reading the
others survived Naymor's traps and defeated him combat and uh
but even though, but nay More actually he's a man
of honor, he's a mutant of honor.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Really doesn't seem to be well.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
He followed through on the movie contract, and the Fantastic
Four actually was a commercial sex success and it netted
the group enough money to get them out of bankruptcy.
What So, in the Marvel universe there is a Fantastic
Four movies starring the Fantastic Four starring the Fantastic Four

(39:07):
that was like created by name war and it was
a number one hit.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
I'm going to imagine that it looks like the Roger
Corman movie.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
Sure, sure, sure, that's ridiculous, pretty ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
That's like for a book that it's you know, at
the outset is so focused on like science and exploration,
and these are deep themes for comic books.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
It's like, well, let's make a movie.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Wait, I think you know. I love stan Lee. He
has a lot of great ideas, but if you go
back and read a lot of the nineteen sixties Stanley stories,
there's some very nineteen sixties silliness, and that story is
prime example. I just thought it was so ridiculous that
Naymar would do a movie scheme.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Right that has nothing to do with water.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
All the villains, Like, that's the one that you're like
that you pick anyways, So let's go on soon. The
FF met Spider Man for the first time, and actually
the first issue of his own comic book, when he
broke into their building looking for a job.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
You can go and listen to our Peter Parker two
part episode to hear more about.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yes, and that started his long relationship with the team because.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
He thought they had money and he wanted to jump.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yep, and they were like, uh, we don't make much money.
And he's like, oh so, and it actually teenager Peter
Parker at the time too.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Also as an extra form of income, Reid licensed out
The Adventures of the Fantastic Four, two Marvel comics should
be adapted into comic books.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
I I kind of love when in Universe there's like
comic books of the adventures that you're reading.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
I kind of I know, it's like so cheesy.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Well, I always loved it, Like in the seventies when
Captain America drew the Captain America. Yeah books, I thought
that was neat.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Something about it that I really like.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
So soon Reid had worked on his original rocket and
kind of tweaked it, and he eventually got out to
where they could fly to the moon so the group
could explore the fabled blue area of the Moon.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Hey, but here's what I want to know.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Okay, how did he ever convince Johnny, Ben and Sue
to get back in do a rocket with him?

Speaker 1 (41:02):
I got it? Here you go, ready? Yeah, Hey, Sue,
Hi read so I fixed the rocket.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
I'm not ever getting back in a rocket.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
We can go to the moon. We can be the
first humans of the moon soon. No, it's double shielded
and there's a there's a lining of tinfoil in the outside.
No blocks all raise, They'll be fine. No, I'll take
it up in orbit, I'll do a couple of orbits.
I'll come back down. It'll all be fine. You hop

(41:35):
into the rocket and go to the moon. No, sue, Read,
I don't think you realize who bank rolls your entire
way of living. So you can either get in this
rocket or you don't eat tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Read, you're stunning a little bit like Hank Pim right now,
and I'm gonna need you to calm.

Speaker 5 (42:03):
Down, leg Hank of Pim. Do you want to eat
a piece of toast tomorrow? I pay for the toast.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Woman.

Speaker 6 (42:17):
If you want toast tomorrow, you're gonna get in the damn.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Rocket and we're gonna fly to the moon, you know,
because and you're gonna have the time of your life.
You're gonna love it on the moon. So get your
ass on that rocket. Because it's the sixties and you
want sandwiches. God, the thing, I'm gonna marry you.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
What. Yeah, that's right, Get on the rocket. That's exactly
what happens.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Is that a scary look into the nineteen sixties read
Richard's yeah, a little bit, okay, And what kind of
scary it wasn't his comedics of out.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Give it a little shouty.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Well, that's that's the way it'd be. That's the way
read Richards was in the sixties. He was shouty, was he?
He smoked a pipe too, He smoked a pipe a lot,
he did. He did. So they got in the rocket
and they went to the Blue area of the moon.
And once arriving on the Blue Area of the moon,
they found that it created that it contained ruins of
an ancient civilization, and it had a breathable atmosphere. Cool.
But soon they were attacked by a Russian scientist named

(43:24):
the Red Ghost and his super apes. Do you know
who they are?

Speaker 3 (43:27):
No, okay, I've never heard of any of this.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
The Red Ghost is one of the most ridiculous Fantastic
Four villains ever. It's basically he's a communist. He's an
old man. He has like, you know, the U shaped hair,
but but it has he has long hair goes past
his shoulders, and he has apes that are intelligent, can
talk and can control them. With his mind. Okay ye.

(43:51):
Basically the idea is that he went into space with
his apes and they they've all just like Fantasy of War.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Great.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, they were exposed to raised, they got superpowers, and
they sought to fight the Fantastic Four. And it was
during this conflict.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Against they were just waiting for them to come to
the moon basically.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Uh. And there during this conflict that the Fantastic Four
first met Utah the Watcher. Who is Utah the Watcher?

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Uh, the person on the moon who watches you?

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Not quite but do you know who the Watcher is?

Speaker 2 (44:26):
Not? Really the Watcher is?

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Another Watcher was recently killed and replaced by Bucky.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Bar spoilers No, Nick Furrey, I think correct.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
And Bucky's up there.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Bucky took. It's a long story, but Bucky Barnes did
not replace the Watcher. No, no, the White Nick Furiy did
this right. Basically, the Watcher is this species in the
Marvel universe that basically observes all events and it's supposed
to be the ultimate non interferer. They're supposed to just
like yes, and they're supposed to keep track of all
the histories basically at all with us so they Utah

(45:00):
the Watcher, and he's an alien that's charged with observing
and recording Earth's history. So he's his planet is Earth,
like watchers each have different planets, and the Watcher decreed
that the Fantastic Four and the Red Ghost would have
to fight to determine whose country was the greater. Of
course it's America versus the Commies, right, And of course
America drive and the Fantastic Four one, which allowed them

(45:21):
to return home while the Red Ghost and his monkeys
were left stranded on the moon.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Great.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Ye, So now there's there's communists monkeys on the.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Moon, and there's Commis on the moon.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yep, there's comedies on that moon. And that's the end
of episode one of the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
I feel like we did like a year of publication.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yes, just to let you know, we did not even
hit issue fifty of Fantastic Four.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
I really enjoyed.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
This though, Like the nonsense of their early publication is
so wonderful, Like it's so comic book matchic.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, is there anything you're really are you looking forward
to learning more next? So next week we'll be fantastic
for part two?

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Is there anything from what you've learned of their early adventures. Again,
we haven't even hit issue fifty yet.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, yeah, are you looking are you.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Anything you're looking forward to learning about?

Speaker 2 (46:17):
I am looking forward to learning about right now, mostly
how Read and Sue are going to progress, because that's
something that I know that happens, and I'm interested when it,
you know, because it's more of a publication thing than
anything else. But when it takes a more serious jurn. Okay,
you know, like how that flip happens?

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Right? Cool, Well, the long national nightmare of our country
is not over, because today we are going to be
talking about the brightest, the smartness, the most scientific family
in all of America.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Ooh, the Kardashians.

Speaker 5 (46:52):
Right, No, no, Now, we're talking about the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
This is Fantastic Four Part two. We are continuing our
lesson the best scientific family and the Marvel Universe because
your Fantastic History Lesson is now in session. Hello, and
welcome to Geek History Lesson. I'm Jason Reid richards Enman.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
I am Ashley Victoria Robinson, and welcome to your mind University.
Prepared to enter your mind University because you have stumbled
upon the podcast where we take one character construct or
first family from popular culture, and we tell you everything
that you need to know about them, because this is
the podcast where we're picking up from the last podcast.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Yes, and what was the last podcast?

Speaker 3 (47:31):
It was the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Yes, and this is Fantastic four Part two, because they
are such a foundational part of the Marvel universe.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
And it's important to state because if this is your
first episode, maybe go back to the last episode.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, you're going to be completely lost, because we're going
to start in media res. We are going to give
you a quick recap. We are in the middle of
the Fantastic fourst career. We're not even to issue fifty yet,
we're somewhere around thirty forty somewhere in there, and we
are going to start off, but actually we'll give a
very quick recap of everything that she learned in Fantastic

(48:03):
four Part one. Again, if you are starting this one fresh,
maybe want to back up good iTunes, go to Stitcher
listen to Fantastic four Part one. You're gonna be completely
lost otherwise.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah. So there's this guy named Read Richards, and he's
a really smart guy and he's got a whole bunch
of degrees, and he builds a rocket to take his
friend Ben, his girlfriend Sue, and her brother Johnny into space.
They go into space, they get bombarded with cosmic gradiation
because the shielding of an old they all got different
powers read stretches Ben as a rock, Johnny catches on fire,
and Sue is invisible and has these weird like circle
power things. And to make up for this horrible, horrible

(48:35):
event read makes them all famous, they go in a
bunch of crazy adventures. They live in the Baxter Building
and build more spaceships and Naymore tried to trick them
into selling him the rights to make them into a movie,
and he did. They did, They did so the right
they did, And so they are celebrities in the Marvel universe.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
All right, So we're gonna jump right back into part
two of our lesson about the Fantastic Four. Cool now soon.
The as guardian trickster god low.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Key oh I Love Loki, he attempted.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
To manipulate the Incredible Hulk listen on Loki Yep and
the creature's side get Rick Jones attempted to contact the
Fantastic Four for assistance, but Loki intercepted the message, ultimately
leading to the formation of a new group of heroes
calling themselves the Avengers.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Dun dun dun dun dun dum.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Now you want to know all about that, you can
go back and listen to our key history lesson on Loki.
You can also go to YouTube dot com slash jawin
and watch my video called the Origin of the Avengers,
which is kind of like drunk combook history, but it's
about Avengers number one and it's about that tale. Rick
Jones was trying to contact the Fantastic Four and Loki
manipulated radio waves. Cool yep, okay. So shortly after the

(49:39):
Avengers formation, Ironman sought the Fantastic Four's resource resources to
try to find the Hulk, but ultimately stop the Hulk
on their own. So the Avengers stopped Hulk on their own.
The Scrolls soon resumed their intentions to invade Earth shortly
after that adventure. Goddamn it Scrolls, and they created the
Super Scroll. Goddamn it Super scqure Ashley. Do you know

(50:00):
who the Super Scroll is?

Speaker 2 (50:02):
Beyond like he's the biggest, baddest scroll.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Not really, He's basically a scroll that was genetically manipulated.
You have all the powers of the Fantastic Four. So
he can fly, he can turn a visible, he can stretch,
he can have firepowers. They sort of do an homage
to it and Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
I've never seen that.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Well, we need to change that, okay. Soon read Richard's
and of course they defeated the super Scroll. Right, good guys.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah, and his comics and.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Sixties good guys, always winning. You know what I'm saying,
revetadad You're right, So never do that. Soon. That's the sixties.
Reid soon took to studying Egyptology because that's something you
do right totally, and he discovered ancient hylogriffic hieroglyphic man
I can't talk. In this lesson depicted an Egyptian pharaoh

(50:50):
named Rama Tut who apparently cured his blindness using a
rare radioactive herb. Now Reid thought that this would be
the cure to a Leasha Master's blindness. Now, Ashley, I
have not brought up a Leasha Masters yet because they
haven't connected to her that much. But who is Alesia Masters?

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Alicia Masters is Ben Grimm's Blind Artists sculpture girlfriend exactly.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Yes, she is a really I really like her. She's
a blind sculptress who fell in love with Ben Grimm. Yes,
now so read. Richards thought this would be the perfect
cure for Alicia. Great. So the Fantastic Four used the
time platform that they confiscated from Doctor Doom, and they
traveled back to the year twenty nine fifty four BC. Soon,

(51:34):
to their surprise, they learned that Rama Tut was a
time traveler himself, hailing from the thirtieth century. So very
quickly they beat him and they collected the herbs, but
when they traveled back forward in time, their herbs were
neutralized by the time travel process all because.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
It like time lapsed and they died and horrible things.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Or comic books or comic book.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
That first issue where Rama Tud first appears is worth
quite a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Fun fact, Rama Tut is actually a version of Kang Oh.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Really shut up, that's so cool. I really like King.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Who is King?

Speaker 2 (52:08):
King the Conqueror is basically an evil space trap, you know,
simeon space traveler in the future.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
He's an Avengers villain.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Yes, he's an Avengers villain, and he becomes ironless.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
He's the guy with the purple face. Yes, and the
green long ens. And he's also a mortise fun other fact.
Oh this is the best. I love fun facts, Rama Tut.
This version of Kan was also the man who ruled
over a young boy named in So very quickly gained

(52:38):
blue skin overthrew Rama Tut, forcing him to time travel
to the future, and called himself Apocalypse.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
And you know may or may not be appearing in
in a movie.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Yes, very soon. So And actually there is a comic
book mini series that I loved as a kid. I
don't know whether it still holds up, but it's called
The Rise of Apocalypse and it is the origin of
in So. And you see the fan Tastic four in
that book.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
Oh that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
So he first, like I think, he first comes into
the Pyramid and now, forgive me, I haven't read it
for several years, but I bought it and I loved it.
And he walks into the pyramid when he sees the
fan as of four being captured by Rama Time.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
It's like a mock up of that issue.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yes, it's very clol and they're wearing the Kirby uniforms.
So I kind of like, I like ret cons where
like other adventures are taking place at the same time
as other adventures.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
And they homage the classics.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
M M, yes, exactly cool. Now, soon after months of
adventures and under reads often harsh leadership because he was
kind of very harsh, he just like just kind of
do what I want to say because I'm science and
iana smart.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Well, yeah, he he does the thing that Hank Pim does.
Hank Pim does it more often, but it's like, look,
I'm I'm the smart guy the other team.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
The other members of the team began to feel that
it was time to elect a new leader. However, since
each member of the team voted for themselves, decisions soon
became to a sandstill typically YEP. And it was at
that time that Doctor Doom had returned and he empowered
word Bullbroken, Handsome, Harry Phillips and Yogi decor as his
Terrible Trio Yep, and Doom sent his minions out after

(54:10):
each of the members of the Fantasy Four individually, capturing
the whole group. Doom then attempted to trap the Fantastic
Four in a room that would transport them into space
once it came into contact with a passing solar wave.
So Doom was basically like, I'm going to transport you
back out into space and the solar wave that's coming
past Earth is going to kill you all, okay. Through

(54:30):
Reed's leadership, the four managed to escape the trap, leaving
Doom to suffer the fate that he intended first foe,
so they sent Doom up to hit the solar wave
and in them. After malf of the battle, the group
realized that, Yeah, this Reid guy probably should lead the
group when this is the one we should have him read.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Yeah, I think since that all worked out, he's a
pretty okay guy.

Speaker 5 (54:50):
Now.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
After many adventures, Reid finally mustered up the courage to
finally ask Sue to marry.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Him, a freaking finally.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
However, oh No, before he had the chance to do so,
Sue was kidnapped by the sub Marina you know movie
mogul and first mutant King of Atlantis.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Dude who's really into Sue yep.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
And the sub mariner of course, canapped her as another
attempt to win her heart, and Reid raced off alone
to rescue her from naymore, leaving Ben and Johnny behind.
But Ben and Johnny recruited the aid of doctor Strange
who is Doctor Strange.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Ashley steven Is Strange is the Sorcerer's Supreme of the
Marvel Universe. Yes, soon to be played by Bennet's Go Batch.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
So they got Doctor Strange to help track their friends,
and all three of them rescued Sue from the sub mariner,
and Sue soon said yes, and mister Fantastic and the
Invisible Woman were engaged to be married.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
I'm kind of surprised that Ben and Johnny don't burn
the backs of building to the ground every single time
they left alone, because they're they're so childlike. Yeah, like
maybe not anymore, you know, because like Ben definitely takes
on a parenting role with Franklin and Valeria. But I'm
surprised in the early adventures that their insurance just didn't
go through the roof, not to.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Franklin and Valaria yet, So spoilers, oh come. Soon after
Sue and Reid were engaged, the Fantastic Four decided that
they needed a lawyer, and they secured the services of
Nelson and Murdoch, whose co owner Matt Murdoch was secretly
the costume hero Daredevil, who Weaved also done a geek
history lesson.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
On to this one. His identity was still a secret.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
This is way back now. Soon the Fantasy Four learned
that doctor Doom survived his encounter with the Solo Hove,
and they did not know that he was actually the
ruler of the nation Latveria, which is a fake European
nation in Europe that Doom is from and whatever.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
Marvel has a lot of fakeness.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
They have like Slovenia, like an age of Ultron and
stuff like that. Well, soon the Fantastic Four received an
invitation to the Lotverian embassy in New York and they
showed up and there was Doom, and they were like,
what the what what? Doom tricked them into drinking a
drugged beverage, making them each see the worst in each other,
and the FF fought amongst themselves.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Soon though, Reed then turned the thing the same trick
on Doom by by making a device that would kill
the one with the least brain power. Okay, so soon
by doing this, Doom was convinced that he had finally
killed Reid. And actually Doom just left because he thought

(57:26):
he'd killed Reid want and he was like, hey, I
did it. Bye, And soon we come to the wedding.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Day don dun Dun dun don.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Now. Among the guests that were in the wedding invitation
list for Read and Sue's wedding and actually showed up
were the Avengers, the X Men, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury,
and his agentes of Shield Spider Man. But Doctor Doom
wanted to seek revenge for his previous defeat, and he
used the Emotion Changer to make veryious villains feel compelled

(58:01):
to attack the women. Okay, not the women, but the wedding.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Probably mostly the women, mostly the women.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
We're gonna be honest now.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
These criminals included Fantastic Four foes such as the puppet Master,
Red Ghost and his Super Eights who had who had
escaped from the.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Moon we talked about much in the Last time.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Moleman and his Moloids, yes, molloids, the Mad Thinker and
his Awesome Android, the super Scroll of his Awesome and
the Beatle a Tuma, the Mandarin, the Black Knight, the Unicorn,
the Melter, the Grey Gargirl, the Cobra, Mister Hyde, the Enchancess,
the Executioner, King the Conqueror, Electro Giant Man, the Human Top,
and a lot of members of Hydra.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Right, just all the little green hydra agents.

Speaker 7 (58:44):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Now, while the wedding attendees fought the army of supervillains,
Reid was visited by Utah the Watcher as the Watcher
of Humanity, who offered read any of his scientific devices
at his disposal as a wedding gift.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
Oh that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Chose a time displacer that returned all the villains to
where they came from with no memory of their battle.
The device also apparently affected Doctor Doom, as Reed and
Sue were able to finally be married without any further interruption.
A Also in the wedding, there were two guests and
two guests only that were refused entry into the wedding

(59:20):
by the agents of Shield. Can you guess who these
two are? They're Marvel universe characters.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
I don't know. Spider Man and Peter Bargham.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Spider Man got in there, Spider Man married Jane. Were
not a thing yet It was actually stan Lee and
Jack Kirby.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Those aren't Marvel characters.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Well, they're Marvel They actually exist in their universe multiple times. Now.
They were thrown out by Shield agents and not allowed
to attend the wedding of read Richards and Susan.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
That's really funny.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Yep. And they do an homage to this in the
Rise of the Silver Surf for a movie where Stanley
is like, I should be on that list. That's exactly
what they say in the comic books. I should be
on the list.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Great, it's probably the best thing in the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
It probably is. It is. Soon the Fantastic Four met
the in Humans.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Who were they Actually the humans are from a place
called Adalane, and they're kind of humans but kind of aliens,
and they have kind of arbitrary powers the way the
Mutants have.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
They're humans that were experimented on by the Cree and
because of this they gained superpowers.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
I knew they were like half human half aliens, but.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
They're a big royal family and they're kind of almost medieval,
but they're basically think of a kingdom or King Arthur's
Camelot with superpowers.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Yeah, but the super they don't have like themed superpowers,
because like with the Mutants, they're just like, well, this
person does this because it's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
It's all. Yeah. After that, after they met the Inhumans,
soon the Watcher showed up again, and the Watcher warned
the Fantastic Four of Galactus Giant Galactus. Giant Galactus now
Galactus is a powerful cosmic bean who wears purple and
blue and has a giant antennae on the side of

(01:00:59):
his head, and he looks cool as fuck.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
And the Silver Server flies around himself gives now.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
The group initially clashed with the Herald of Galactys, known
as the Silver Surfer before Galactus arrive on Earth, and
while the Fantastic Four attempted to stop Galactus from feeding
on the war on their world. Because Galactus eats planets,
he unleashed his lethal cyborgs upon them with time running out.
The Watcher then endowed Johnny with extra power to travel

(01:01:25):
through space to get to the worldship of Galactus, because
Glactys has a giant sphere that of course he rides
around in space, end because he's a giant, and because
inside the worldship was the only weapon that could defeat Galactus.
Interesting enough. At the same time, the Silver Surfer had
been convinced that humanity was worth not killing by Alicia

(01:01:47):
Masters who and soon the Silver Surfer joined the fight
against Galactus. However, Silver Surfer, of course, is no match
for the awesome purple and blueness that is Glas Okay,
Johnny was able to get to the world ship. He
was able to come back, and he had a weapon
called the Ultimate Nullafier, which was the one thing that

(01:02:09):
Galactus feared face with his imminent destruction. Galactus agreed to
spare Earth and left, but but not without banishing the
Silver Surfer to remain trapped on Earth. So he erected
an energy barrier around Earth that the Silver Surfer could
not escape.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
The Ultimate Nullifier is one of my favorite, like comic
bookie device names. Ever, it sounds so epic.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
And it is, and there's it's it's almost like the
Omega thirteen in the movie Galaxy Quest, where it's it's
been activated I think once in Future of Fantasy fours.
But like it's not quite exactly certain what it does,
but the idea is that it basically breaks the entire
universe at once, like the universe just stops existing. Yeah,

(01:02:54):
And it looks like a little kind of like a
little harp with a little curly piece on the end
of it. It's very tiny.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Yeah. So, with Galactus defeated, the Watcher and the Surfer
went on their own way while the Fantastic Four attempted
to return to a normal life, which doesn't exist for them,
of course, And just let you know, the Defeat of
Galactus is an issue fifty of the Fantastic Four, so
we are only we just now hit issue fifty, the

(01:03:22):
first at the issues, And now do you see how
much of a foundation, how much of a cornerstone, the
Fantastic Four are for the Marvel universe? And how stupid
it is that Marvel's canceling their title.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
Yeah, well it's been canceled.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Yes, it has been.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
It's being canceled.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
But do you also see we've only been there. We've
got plenty more Stanley Jack Kirby to go through. But
do you see like there have been some critics of
the Marvel Universe that have said that most Marvel writers
just basically repeat what stan and Lee did in the
first one hundred issues of Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Well, I've definitely heard that before. But it's also the
thing where there's only like seven individual storylines you can tell,
so it seems bound to happen, and hey, if they
did it right, why not you know, as long as
nobody's doing the movie storyline, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Now let's pop back into the lesson after this. Soon
after this, Johnny graduated high school. Yes he was a minor.
Yes he was in school during all these first adventures. Yep,
so yep, okay, just go with moving on, Just go
with it. And it also might explain that why some

(01:04:34):
writers still write Johnny like he's an over anxious teen yeah,
which is kind of ridiculous. Yes, yes, because he was
a he was a kid. And now onto the issue
that some consider to be the greatest issue of Fantastic
Four of all time, Fantastic Four number fifty one, a
story called This Man, This Monster.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Now, Peter David wrote a little book on how to
write comic books, and in that book he uses the
script of this issue as the guide for the perfect
comic book script.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Now i've read this story before. I don't know if
I would call it the greatest comic book of all time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
It's pretty damn good, and it's well ahead of its time,
like for a comic book that was written in the sixties,
it's pretty damn good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Let me just kind of sidebar. If you're looking at
a way to teach people how to structure comic book stories.
Do you think this is a good example?

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Yes, perfect, Yes, it is a great example. I would
almost say a lot of these original Kirby Lee stories
are great because so much happens and it's so crazy. Yes,
oh totally. Now here's the story.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Okay, that's really interested. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
The Thing, believing that Alisha has chosen the Silver Surfer
over him, becomes extremely depressed about his condition and thinks
that nobody will ever love him, so he secretly leaves
the group. He doesn't tell anybody, just walks up the building.
But he's like, I'm done. I'm done. Soon, he came
across a friendly face who was actually a scientist named

(01:06:07):
Ricardo Jones who manipulated Ben and kind of was like,
oh yeah, I understand you, buddy, blah blah blahh that guy. Yep. Soon,
Ricardo Jones stole Ben's powers with his machine and sought
to eliminate Read Richards in order to find fame and
scientific discovery. Now Ricardo stole Ben's powers, he looks like
the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
He goes to the.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Baxter building, okay, and there he fools Read and Sue
into thinking that he is the real thing, even though
the real Ben Grimm came to the building, trying to
tell them that there is an impostor in the building.
At the time, Reid was experimenting with a device that
could open a portal to subspace, which we would later
call the negative zone.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Where the fantasy of Or gets stuck a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
But soon Ricardo used this device as an attempt to
kill Richards by trying to trap him in that dimension. However,
moved by Reid's bravery because he did a thing, and
Reid tried to save the Earth and what it is
luck he does. Soon there was an accident with the

(01:07:13):
portal and Ricardo sacrificed his life so that Reid could
come back to Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Oh so he had a moment of heroism.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Yes, cool, And upon Ricardo's death, Ben reverted back to
his mutated form and eventually decided to rejoin the team.
So that is the pawline of that issue. And Ricardo basically,
you know, he pushes Red into the zone and you
know he's inspired by Reid's heroism even though whatever that,
he decides to sacrifice his life to let Reid come

(01:07:43):
back to Earth. And it's this interesting change. It's basically
twenty two pages of seeing a man go from a
villain to a hero, you know. And it's interesting that
the whole issue is a brand new character, like his
character never existed before. We didn't know anything about this character.
Care about this character, yeah, and I think this issue
does make you care about this character in twenty two
pages easily cool. So yeah, if you want some comic

(01:08:05):
book writing knowledge, go check out this issue. Apparently after that,
the FF met the Black Panther to Chala, who will
soon be up here in the Kingdom of the King
of Wakonda, and Doom tried to steal the powers of
the Silver Surfer because he was stuck on Earth right
and in the Negative Zone, they found Blasttar, warlord of
the Negative Zone.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Stop it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
And also they encountered a time displaced deadpool in one
of the future stories. Soon, Reid decided that the team
needed to go on vacation okay, and the group stumbled
upon a Cree sentry that was left on Earth millions
of years ago. Now, basically this is a big blue
robot that kills things. Yeah, they clashed and they were

(01:08:45):
forced to destroy the robot in battle. This got the
Cree Supreme Intelligence, which is basically a big head in
a jar. Imagine the face of Bo from Doctor Who
except really really smart. He's basically a big green head
in a jar that orders the Cree to do stuff,
and the Creer are the aliens and stuff like that.
They soon sent Ronan, the Accuser, the villain of Guardians

(01:09:06):
of the Galaxy.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
One of Jason's favorite characters.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
I like him a lot to try the Fantastic Four
for his crime, for their crimes against the Koree Empire
for destroying the Drunk. Now, eventually the Four proved to
be superior fighters and kind of reasoned with Ronan and
kind of tricked him off Earth, and so he fled
the Earth. And because of this, and because of the
way they kind of beat Ronan and out foxed him,

(01:09:31):
the Creed decided that we need to send a spy
to Earth because these Earth people are somebody that we
should keep an eye on. So they send Captain Marvel
to infiltrate it. Dude, Yes, the original Captain Marvel and
Ronan is actually the one who sends Captain Marvel on
his mission. So the Fantasy Four are directly responsible for

(01:09:55):
Captain Marvel infiltrating.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Earth and for his demise. Again.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
It all comes from the fantastic starting to realize that yeah,
soon all kinds of enemies started attacking them, and this
made Reid realize. In one of the battles, he was
able to deduce that Sue Storm was pregnant.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Okay, and because.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Of all the enemies and all the threats, Reid kind
of decided that, like, this is too much risk for
our unborn child, like going to other dimensions and being
like fought with.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
Blastar, the lord of the negative zone.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Yeah yea that he soon made the decision that him
and Sue should leave the team.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
While Read and Sue headed to train to cal headed
by train to California, Read you know where Read is from, Ben,
Johnny and Crystal of the Inhumans who Johnny was kind
of crushing on, were left to determine the fate of
the team. However, at that time, the Silver Surfer decided
that the Silver Surfer had decided to menace the world

(01:10:59):
in hopes of causing every nice nation to unite in
brotherhood to face a common foe. Okay, so the Silver
Serfer was kind of going around being like, yo, hey,
there's a bigger threat out there.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Boom boo, boom nail.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Heif you night freaking figured out, he.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Probably could have just told them.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Yeah, but that's not datics are retelling.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
It's comic books. It's comic books. Soon, the Watcher pulled
Read back to New York to help his teammates face
the Silver Surfer who who They soon become convinced that
his methods were a little misguided. As we just said. Sure,
Sue was soon taken to the hospital for her impending
earth her her impending birth, and doctor soon became aware

(01:11:37):
of a lethal complication. Now, Ashley, let me ask you this. Okay,
they went into space, they broke through the Van Allen Belt,
all kinds of radiation. Radiation caused one of their friends
to turn orange and rocky.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
That wouldn't have any complications the childbirth, would it. Mm? Yeah,
I agree. Psych However, Reid examined the medical charts of Sue,
and he had found out that the cosmic rays that
powered Sue were complicating her pregnancy and threatening to kill

(01:12:14):
both Sue and her unborn child. Re deduced that he
needed an element from the negative zone in order to
save Sue's life, and Johnny and Ben were like, come on,
read let's go. So they hopped into the negative zone
and there they were captured by the brutal the bug
like the very green with wings Annihilus. Ashley, do you

(01:12:39):
know who Annihilous.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Is beyond a villain guy? Not anybody looks like he's
kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
Like a green bug creature. And he's he's responsible for
the annihilation storyline that's very current that a lot of
the Guardians of Galaxy movie has come from. But he's yes,
and he's a very classic fantasic four villain. Learning that
Annihilis is cosmic control Rod. He basically has this raw
that has all his powers. Was the energy energy source
that Reid needed. The trio stole it and attempted to

(01:13:05):
flee the negative zone. However, a Nihilists caught them right
of course, and Reid compromised with the strange creature, siphoning
only the energy he needed and returning it to a
Nihilist in exchange for safe passage back to Earth. Returning
to the hospital, Reid uses energy. He saved Sue's life,
He saved his baby, and Sue gave birth to a

(01:13:27):
healthy baby boy named Franklin Benjamin Richards.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Ah Benjamin that's cute.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Yep, Franklin is the name of Johnny and Sue's father. Okay,
so that's that's what the name of Franklin. I didn't
and you should probably know where the name Benjamin comes
from because Benjamin j Gram And Yep, now we're gonna
I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Franklin. Just
let you know. Franklin is actually a mutant. Okay, he is.
He is a mutant. He does have the X gene,

(01:13:55):
just like the X Men, and he has incredible powers.
And it's interesting because he's a cosmically born mutant. Now
his power is manifested while he was still very young.
Most mutants in the Marvel of Universe don't get their powers.
Tell their Pebarty, but Franklin appears to have power that

(01:14:16):
can rival the Celestials, and the celestials are like these
god beings who are basically on parwi Galactus. He has
the power of a god and the body of a
small child. And will learn more about Franklin's powers and
all the godlyygook it's going to get up to. But
fun fact, Franklin Richards was born and Fantastic four Annual
number six in nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Wow, so for a seven year old, he's old.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
He's quite old.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
Be my parent now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
After Franklin's birth, Sue was unable to play an active
role in the team because she really wanted to raise
her newborn son, and Crystal petitioned to join the team
full time crystallian human and they.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
Did previous auxiliary member.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
And it was around this time that Jack Kirby and
Stanley walked away from the Fantastic Four. At the same
time they both left, Jack Herby stayed longer, okay, but
until very recently, Jack Kirby and san Lee held the
record for the longest consecutive run on a Marvel comic
book with a writer, by a writer and artists, and

(01:15:17):
that run was broken by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark
Bagley on Ultimate Spider Man very very recently. That is true.
I'm not exactly certain on the exact number of issues.
I believe that stan and Jack did like one hundred
and so, and I think Brian Michael Bendis and Mark
Bakeley did like one hundred and eleven. Now, I'm just
this is coming off the top of my head. Sure
I do not have this in my notes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Someone can go tell us on Facebook.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
Yep. Now we're into the seventies and a bunch of
stuff happened. But we're gonna start skipping ahead, okay, because
there are great runs in the Fantastic Four. There are
writers and artists that do great runs, and I feel
it's more important to talk about their runs than some
of the stuff that happens in.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
Between them, the one off, some of the lesser stories.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Exactly exactly, but we'll touch on a little bit of it. Cool.
So Sue Child Franklin started manifesting his strong powers, and
soon a Nihilus, the Bug Guy. The Bug Guy caught
these powers, and he decided that he needed to use
Franklin as a power source. Right yep. So Annihilis kidnapped them.
Of course, they got him back, and Reid felt that

(01:16:22):
he had no choice but to inhibit Franklin's mental activity
and take away his powers because he felt that just
all kinds of villains would just keep connecting every Franklin,
which is kind of what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Outraged by this, Sue left Mister Fantastic and took Franklin
with her. Good for her, and during Sue Storm's Hiatus,
the inhuman the Queen Medusa took her place. Now, eventually,
after a while, Sue Storm came back and you know,
she rejoined the team. And also during this time period,

(01:16:58):
Ben Grimm was first trans formed back into his human
self and he lost his powers during a battle with
the Hulk.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
Oh that's dangerous now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
He was replaced on the team by Luke Cage, and
he soon didn't let Luke Cage have all the fun
and he actually Ben Grim human. Ben Grim returned to
the team using an exoskeleton constructed by Reed that emulated
his old powers, which will come into play now. This
is the same armor that Darla missed. Thing where is

(01:17:26):
during Matter Fraction's f f front.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
Apparently the Fantastic Four throw anything away?

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
No, they just well, the backshop billing is pretty big
and the storage is great, so they just put everything
back in there. Ben was soon turned back into the
Rocky Thing during a battle with Galactus. Cool yep, And
that's pretty much all that you need to know about
the seventies and the first of many times that Reed
and Sue will split up and argue about Franklin.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
But they don't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
They never divorce, No, they separate a lot, but they
never divorce.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
So I'm calling that a Marvel trope right here and now.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
Sure, and now it's time talk about what many people
consider to be the second greatest run of FF of
all time maybe for me, the best run by writer
artist inker John Byrne Superman Guy, Yes, now John Byrne
later on after this run to basically revitalize Superman in

(01:18:20):
the Man of Steel. He also tried it with spider
Man and spider Man Chapter one didn't go over so well.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Well, we did a Wonderwoe run that's pretty well regarded.

Speaker 1 (01:18:26):
He did it well and Wonder one run again. The
nice Now the title was not selling well before John
byrn came on, and originally Burne was supposed to write
with Bill's sin Sinkevich. Sinkevich, Yes, we talked about M
four providing the art, but Sinkevich left the do Moonnight
and Burne ended up he probly made a wrong mistake
and Burne ended up being writer, artist and anchor and

(01:18:48):
Burn's run lasted from issue two thirty two to two
ninety three. He did sixty one issues.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
That's pretty badass that he did the lion's share of
the work by himself.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
He did all of it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
Well, he had a colorist.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
Yeah, so we had a color but yeah, it's amazing
that he wrote, drew and inked this run. And I
think that's why it's so highly regarded.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
Yeah. Yeah, well you probably had a bit of the
tour factor as well, because I mean John Byrne is
a great writer.

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
Now, one of Burne's early changes was making the Invisible
Girl into the Invisible one. Yes, and we'll get to
that storyline when she changed her name in a bit
cool but I like that. That was one of the
very early things in his run. Now, during this period,
it was kind of interesting because fans began to recognize

(01:19:32):
that she was quite powerful. This was one of the
first runs where Invisible Woman actually can like make objects.

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
With their forces.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
John Byrne basically turned Sue Storm around. Before this, she
was basically only Florence Henderson. Do you know who that is?

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
Florence Henderson is a really famous housekeeper.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
She is the mom of the Brady Bunch. I know
it was a Brady Bunch, Yeah, another one. So basically
that's what Sustorm was. And John Byrne basically made her
the character that I love. Yeah, the glue and the power,
and basically he made her the most powerful member of
the Fantasy four. Oh but then right very early in

(01:20:16):
John Burn's run, Secret Wars happened.

Speaker 3 (01:20:19):
We love Secret Wars.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Actually go to our.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Yeah yeah episode and listen to us to talk about
quickly explained Secret Wars.

Speaker 3 (01:20:27):
Secret Wars.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
So a bunch of the Marvel heroes and villains get
brought to this planet by a space guy called the
Beyonder and told that they have to fight, and so
they fight.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Mm hmm. That's really pretty much. It's just about it.
And we did a review about it. Because Marvel has
a storyline right now, I don't call it Secret Wars.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
Yep, they've used that title four times.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
Once a Secret War was over, Ben Grimm decided to
remain on the Beyonder planet for months, and the Thing
asked Sheetholk to take his place in the Fantastic Four. Now,
Invisible Woman was pregnant with a baby during the Secret Wars,
and this unborn daughter began to get off radiation and
complicate the pregnancy, just like Franklin.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
And we talked about this during that episode.

Speaker 1 (01:21:07):
Now, after the Secret Wars, there is an amazing issue.
I really like it. It's one of my favorite issues
of Burn's Run where Reid can't fix it, he can't
solve it, and they go to a radiation expert who
is doctor Octopus. Ah and that guy yes, And most
of the issue is read trying to get Octopus to

(01:21:28):
help him, and you know, because Octopus is crazy and
he's going back and forth between like, oh I can
help you, no you am I feeling riches b ah. Yeah,
And they spend a lot of time fighting and trying
to calm and eventually he calms Octavius down. He persuades
his scientist side to come help his wife and they
race back to the hospital and they get to the
hospital and it's a very sad last page where Reid

(01:21:52):
finds out that the baby girl has been born and
she was born stillborn, like thirty minutes ago.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
Oh that's really sad.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
So he was too late.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
That seems to me it reminds me of the Superman
when like paw Kent has a heart attack, Like Rita
is so smart, but he can't fix this one thing
that's the most important thing.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
He can't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
He can't.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
He can't save his kid. Yeah, he can't save his kid.
And I love that issue and it's very good. And
the issue the cover is like is read Richard's reaching
out and like you see the tentacles of Doctor Octopus
like coming at him. Yeah, but it's a very sad
and I would say like one of the most poignant
moments of The Fantastic Four. Now, after this, of course,
Sue was going to have some problems, right, you know,

(01:22:34):
she has some She has some very negative emotions, her
powers aren't working well, and the Fantasy four villain called
Psycho Man took advantage of this and amplified her negative emotions,
turning her into malice. So she was the Invisible Girl,
but with none of her restraint, and basically it was
the Visible Girl with a power boost that who's angry. Eventually,

(01:22:56):
Mister Fantastic helped her throw off Psycho Man's influence, but
she lost control again when the Fantasic Four confronted Psycho Man,
and she turned Psycho Man's own control box against him,
shorting out Psychoman's nervous system and very nearly killing him.
It was after this adventure that the Invisible Girl decided

(01:23:17):
that she could no longer be called the Invisible Girl
and must be called the invisible anymore. Yep, yep. And
I like that moment so much that I had to
tell you twice I don't like Malice so much. And
Malice has popped up again, and she kind of has
a costume that's a kind of like a bad sm
M party.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
So yeah, like bad guys sometimes do. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
And after that, John Byrne left the title and a
bunch of other writers. There's some other great there runs
of John Byrne, like the Trial of Galactus and other
things like that. Go read them for yourself. Sure, that's
what I would say.

Speaker 2 (01:23:52):
Sure, but this is the most important to the overall
history of the fantasy.

Speaker 1 (01:23:55):
Yes, yes, because as we said, we can't cover everything.
We only have an hour. This would go on forever.
This is gonna be a long episode anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Yeah, there was a minute where we thought we were
gonna have four episodes.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Yes, totally soon. Christoph Verernard showed up Ashley. Who is
Christoph Vernard?

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
I know this one. Christopher Ernard is the adopted son
and heir apparent to doctor Doom. Yes, correct, he's from Latveria.
He's kind of an asshole.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Well, Christoph Vernard. He sent the Baxter Building into space
and blew it up.

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
Kind of an asshole yep.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
So Reid had the perfect opportunity to rethink his approach
to their building, and the result was for Freedom's Plaza,
a hundred story building of advanced composites, contrete and glass,
designed to read Richard's specifications, and the top section was
built to show off the number four on each side.

Speaker 3 (01:24:45):
Right, because Avengers have an A on their building.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
Of the one hundred floors, the top fifty belonged to
the team and the bottom fifty belonged to the former
tenants of the Baxter Building and read. Realizing the obvious
inconvenience of a supervillain trying to destroy your home every
week off, the tenants increased space under their old terms
and included ninety nine year leases.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Wow. Shit, To be fair, the Baxter Building does explode
a lot, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
And he gets set in the space and all that. Yeah,
I would never live in the Baxter Building.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
Yes you would.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
I don't care what good location they're in.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
No, but you would want to live in the Baxter
Building just be able to say you'd lived in the box.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
Well, I'd live on the same floor as the team,
not unlike Floor three. Soon, Benjamin Grimm the Thing rejoined
the Fantastic Four, and she Hulk returned to the Avengers,
And when Reid and Sue decided to retire from the
Fantastic Four again to focus on raising their son, they
left Ben in charge.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
Well, between Ben and Johnny, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
Yep, now, Ben, he recruited Crystal, of the inhumans who
had been together with Quicksilver after her.

Speaker 3 (01:25:46):
Tristan Johnny, did they have a daughter at this point?

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
That's I'm not certain. I'm not certain about the inhuman
mutant rec production system yet.

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
That's okay, it's not part of the last y.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
Yeah, Luna is so non important and Miss Marvel Sharon
Ventura to replace in the Miss Marvel from us.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
Now, Ben was a fine team leader and he but
he soon started a romance with Sharon that deepened until
new cosmic radiation exposure further mutated them both, turning Sharon
into a she thing she looked exactly like Ben, and
Ben turned into an ever even stronger, more hideous spiky thing.

(01:26:25):
So he had like spikes. He kind of looked like
Doomsday except orange.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
Wow that's a horrifying image.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
Yep, it is now their romance still continued, even though
eventually Ben settled back into his classic thing form, and
after Reed and Sue came back, they rejoined the group
Ben and Sharon. They became strange because Sharon accept the

(01:26:50):
Doctor Doom's aid in regaining her human form, and Ben
was like, I don't want nothing to do with that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
Yeah, But John these old feelings for Crystal slowly returned,
and his love for Alisha enabled him to resist the temptation. Yes,
Johnny Storm became I romantically involved with Alisha Masters girlfriend
now Crystal eventually left the team and eventually Johnny Storm

(01:27:20):
married Alisha Masters. Really yep, really yep?

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):
Really?

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Oh just you wait, it gets better, and despite their
long relationship and marriage, soon Johnny learned that the Alicia
Masters that he married was not the true Alicia Masters,
but a scroll impostor named Elijah or Lyle. It's l
y j A.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
I always like to call.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Elijah. I don't know, Elijah. Let's go Elijah. She was
originally sent to infiltrate and destroy the Fantastic Four, but
Elijah fell in love with Johnny and eventually joined the
Fantastic Four. Gross yep, but after that read Richard's father, Nathaniel,
abducted the child Franklin into the future, and Nathaniel raised

(01:28:09):
Franklin in the future for years, training him to be
a warrior and to master his powers. And soon the
teenager Franklin journeyed back in time, arriving in the Fantastic
Force headquarters mirror moments after Nathaniel had adducted him as
a child. Now, this teenage Franklin called himself Silord, which
I think is so nineties, and he has pyonic powers.
And here's the thing, go look up a picture of Silord.

(01:28:32):
He has a blonde ponytail, and he has the little
the little helmet.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
See y l O R D H no P s I. Okay, dash,
I'm ell right now.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
Now he has like the Gambit head cow whe his
hair comes out in the top. And of course he
has a leather jacket, and he has vast psionic powers. Okay, Now,
after this, read and doctor Doom died.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Wait what Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:28:58):
Read Richard's Doc Doom Dead. They died. It was a
classic panel where doctor Doom is lying on the ground.
He was helping him with the adventure, and Reid helped
him up and when he grabbed his hands. They both
basically went cabluey like Doom blew himself up to blow
up Read.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
That's very petty of Doom.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
And they died. And this death and this grief caused
Sue to wear the skimpiest outfit she has ever worn.
And so this, of course, you.

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):
Know, that's the way people grieve. You just got to
put on a skimpy outfit.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
Well, I mean it's like where you put a four
over your boobs. Yeah, and she wore bikini bottoms. It's
literally the worst costume she's ever had. So but actually,
Read and Doom, we're not dead. They were actually spirited
away by the time warping Hyperstorm mad son of an
alternate future Frank Rynn Richard's Okay, Hyperstorm kept Doom a

(01:29:55):
captive and he trapped Reid in the Distant Paths for months,
during which time, you know, Read and Doom, we're both
considered to be dead. In Reed's absence, Sue took over
leadership with the Fantastic Four and served as the leader,
recruiting ant man Scott Lang as the team's news scientist.

Speaker 2 (01:30:12):
You can go and listen too, are lesson on Scot
Lang and we talk about this briefly.

Speaker 1 (01:30:16):
However, she refused to believe that Reid was truly dead,
and she rebuffed the romantic advances of Naymar Now also.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Like Reed's gone. I'm a sneaky in here real quick.

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
I'm a movie mogul. Yeah, I like that. Four of
your boom.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
Thanks. I'm in grieving right now. I'm in mourning.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
You know you hear my breath? Yeah, it's Atlantean underwater breath.

Speaker 2 (01:30:41):
Not into that. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
I once made a movie with you guys in it.
Your husband's dead. Let's bone what hmm? Bone?

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
No, I'm a mother I like.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
That, gross, I'm a movie mogul. I don't know you heard.
I made The Fantastic for a movie. I tricked you
to be in it. I don't know that didn't go anywhere.
All right, here we go. Also during this period, Franklin
founded the team the Fantastic Force. It was a spinoff
fantasy title, and he it was a new superhero team
to carry on his father's legacy. And it's so nineties

(01:31:15):
fantastic that it hurt. Seriously, go google some covers a
Fantastic Force. They're ridiculous. They're so bad, are they drawn?
By Rob Leifield. No, but they're probably drawn in his style.

Speaker 2 (01:31:30):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:31:31):
Soon though, Reid Richards came back to life, and adult
Franklin Richards disappeared from the tie line, and so did Silord.
So basically they kind of forgot that all happened, and
he was gone, and then Onslaught happened.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
You love Onslaught? Do I?

Speaker 1 (01:31:48):
Ashley is Onslaught?

Speaker 3 (01:31:50):
Onslought is Evil Professor X yep.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Basically, evil Professor X goes crazy and he looks at Now.
Franklin Richards was kidnapped by Onslaught, and the Fantastic Four
joined the Avengers and the X Men to battle Onslaught
in Central Park. Now, a crazed Hulk was able to
crack Onslaught's shell. However, they found out that Onslaught didn't
need a physical form anymore, and he was pure psionic energy.

(01:32:17):
Thor plunged into Onslaught trying to contain him, and eventually
the Fantastic Four, the majority of the Avengers, and even
Doctor Doom followed trying to contain the energy. They soon
found out that mutants couldn't do it, only heroes and things.
To their sacrifice, the X Men were finally able to
destroy Onslaught. However, the Fantastic Four, Doom and the Avengers

(01:32:37):
were dead boo. But they actually weren't dead. You see,
there is a mutant out there who has a connection
to the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (01:32:51):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:32:52):
Now obviously he's a mutant. He couldn't go in there, right,
but he does have amazing cosmic powers any little bit
of jeans he wears, and that's Franklin Richards. Franklin Richards
was able to create a pocket dimension.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
And keep everyone there for like a ye yep.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
And he kept them safe. But while back on Earth
six one six, the Thunderbolts moved into the Fantastic Four's
headquarters at four Freedom's Plaza. Now the Thunderbolts were actually
the masters of Evil? Who were who were evil?

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
And I love that run and it's Kurt music eventually
read by Hawkeye the supervillain Thunderbolts.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):
You can go listen to our Hawkeye episode something that's
not super villainic.

Speaker 1 (01:33:35):
Okay, it's going to support us on Patreon.

Speaker 3 (01:33:38):
No that is heroic.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
I would say, I said not super I was going
with it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Now, any person that donates right now at the three
dollars level between now and September. First, we entered into
a drawing to win two doodles on top of their
normal doodles, so you can get one of the thing
and one of the human torchs. I've already donated them. There,
I've already donated them. I've already draw drawn them. Four
lessons long, guys, we probably have another twenty minutes. I'm
just warning you. You can see them on our social

(01:34:05):
media and you get those and your own personal dudo.
Go to patreon dot com slash joh and three dollars
gets you a choice to win two extra doodles. And
you know what, if you don't win, you still get
a doodle of your choice. Every little bit helps. Thank
you so much to the patreons and patrons and all
the cool folk over there at patreon dot com slash
joh and that keep this show running, keep the lights
on and keep me going. When laur lessons go long

(01:34:28):
like this one will Hey that's cool. Yep, and soon.
While the heroes were in Franklin's Alternate Earth, Heroes Reborn happened. Ah,
now the heroes reborn? What is heroes were born?

Speaker 2 (01:34:41):
Actually, here's reborn is a run that you really like.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
No, No, I've never read. Hero Heroes Reborn is where
Marvel gave its four Avengers, that gave Avengers, Captain America,
Fantastic Four and iron Man to Jim Lee and Rob
Leifield and Jim Lee got Fantastic Four and iron Man
and Rob Liefeld got Captain America and Avengers and they
let them do it. And actually it was a resurgent
because all four of those titles were low selling at

(01:35:08):
that time. And having them do their image style art
and also like that, yeah, rejuvenated the titles. Basically, the
FF twelve issues were basic retreads of their first fifty issues.
Is basically, they met the Black Panther, they met Doctor Doom,
and it all led up to Colactus, but this time
it was drawn by Jim Lee and Brett Booth and
actually it has one of my favorite Fantastic Four costume designs. Ever,

(01:35:29):
this Fantastic Four run Heroes Reborn, while probably not holding
up that well today, is what made me love the
Fantastic Four cool because before then I just didn't like them.
And reading these twelve issues with the art maybe go
back and check out everything before and made read the
team going forward. Ah, so there you go. So soon

(01:35:50):
the Fantasy four returned to the normal universe out of
that pocket dimension so that Rob Lifield and Jim Lee
could play with them. Ye and the team came back
and they lived on the New New York Peer for
a while in Peer four, which is his warehouse that
Reid had because they're the supervillains, had blown up for
Freedom's Plaza, and then Sue, thanks to know a Baxter,
they rebuilt the Baxter Building and then a girl from

(01:36:12):
the future showed up, a girl who wore a Fantastic
Four uniform but the cloak of Doom, and she claimed
to be the daughter of Victor von Doom and Sue
Storm and her name was Valeria.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:36:27):
She was soon revealed to be the second unborn child
of Ree Richards and Sue Richards as I told you before,
who Sue had miscarried years before. Basically she had originally
been named Valerie Meghan Richards and under the guidance of Roma,
who is a spacey cosmic Ki being not important, Franklin

(01:36:50):
with Roma used his powers to save the child, taking
her from her native reality and sending her someplace else where.
She was raised in another dimension by visible Woman and
a heroic doctor Doom.

Speaker 2 (01:37:02):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
Now, after the FF went up against this cosmic menace
known as a Braxis who is basically like this guy
who has stars. He's kind of like the Greek Galactus. Okay,
he looks like us. He has blueskin and stars. This
was during the Carlos patakeover. Now, Valeria, during the Braxis thing,

(01:37:24):
was summoned by Roma and fulfilled her purpose by merging
her powers with Franklin, allowing them to reconstitute Galactus to
fight a Braxis.

Speaker 2 (01:37:34):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:37:35):
So a lot of cosmic wow. And in the restructuring
of reality by bringing Galactus back to fight a Braxis,
Valeria was regressed to a fetus and put back into
Sue's womb.

Speaker 2 (01:37:49):
That's gross.

Speaker 1 (01:37:51):
So Sue was now again pregnant, that's gross. And she
was very close to giving birth right she was.

Speaker 6 (01:37:57):
Like massively, but as had acurred the first two times
that Sue was pregnant, the cosmic rays that gave the
fantastic for their powers made Sue and Valeria almost die.

Speaker 2 (01:38:09):
Do you think like they'd have figured it out?

Speaker 1 (01:38:11):
I know, I think that the thing to figure out
is just stop having babies. Well, yeah, to stop. Mister
Fantastic can get fantastically fixed.

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):
He can't. Holy shit, I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
Believe he said that. You know, no, it's just so powel.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
Wow. Mister Fantastic during the birth, was caught up in
solving a world threatening crisis, and Johnny, wanting to save
his sister's life, turned to who he thought was the
second smartest man in the world. Who else but Victor
Van Doom. Yes, now, Doom used his intelligence and his

(01:38:52):
magical mystical capabilities to successfully deliver the baby, and as
the price for his help, Doom insisted that he allow
to be allowed that he be allowed sorry to name
the child. He named the girl Valeria, after a woman
he had loved in the past, and ironically, Doom in

(01:39:12):
a future storyline, would eventually murder this woman, so he
didn't love her that much now. Unknown to the Fantastic Four,
Doctor Doom also placed a spell on Valeria, making her
his familiar spirit, which he used as a weapon and
as to spy on the Fantastic Four in his Unthinkable
story arc, which was written by Mark Wade and drawn

(01:39:34):
by Mike waer Ringo. And now we are entering what
I consider to be the third greatest run in the
Fantastic Four by Mark Wade and Mike Ringo. Now, Doom
exploited his special bond with Young Valeria as his familiar,
using sorcery to mount one of the most ruthless and
terrifying attacks on the Fantastic Four. In the end, Doom

(01:39:56):
like sent Franklin to Hell, he tortured a bunch of people.
He basically attacked him only with magic because he figured that, like, oh,
the only reason Richards has ever been able to beat
me because he get out signs me, but he can't
out magic me.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
So I'm good at magic.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
So Doom made deals with demons and their stuff like that.
But eventually Doom was taken by his own demonic benefactors,
and not as he's being portant as he excuse me,
As he was being pulled into Hell, he disfigured Reed's
face as his final YEP as his final AHAA. Physically

(01:40:30):
and emotionally scarred, Reid led the Fantastic Four into Doom's
now leaderless lot Baria, where he worked obsessively to dismantle
Doom's regime, wow, destroying all his weapons, taking down basically
making all the people, trying to make the people a
lot very hate Doom, but of course they loved Doom.
And it was during that storyline that Ben Grimm was killed.

(01:40:53):
Ben grim was shot in the chest, their big old
chunk of rock was taken out and he was killed.
What devastated the remaining Fantastic Four returned to America, where
they're standing with the authorities, and the reputation with the
general public had taken a beating because they basically invaded
another country yep, and tried to shut it down. The
Fantastic Four broke up, Reid and Sue split up, and

(01:41:15):
Reed was actually forced to sign over most of his
patents to the government as part of his deal to
not go to prison. Wow. Eventually, Reed was certain that
he could resurrect Ben and he convinced Sue and Johnny
to join him on his quest, which eventually he rebuilt
the machine that doctor Doom had built that had blown
up in his face all those years back before, and
this machine took him to the gates of Heaven.

Speaker 2 (01:41:38):
Reed is really good at convincing people to go with him,
even though he's done horrible things to them, So he.

Speaker 1 (01:41:43):
Gets to heaven and there they meet God, and God
is not what you expect. God looks exactly like Jack
Kirby is an artist. So basically, Mark Wade and the
storyline made God Jack Kirby, which is kind of fitting.
I think that's very sweet and kind of interesting. And

(01:42:03):
this God allowed them to return with men and also
cured Reed's face. Cool, and that's basically where the end
of the Mark Wade, well, the Mark Wade and Mark
where Wingo Run goes a little bit further, but that's
that's the last important story you need. Cool, and soon
civil war happened. Yay, Actually what happened in Civil War?

Speaker 3 (01:42:24):
I know civil war?

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Civil War is where there's a this event happened and
the government is like, hey, you should register superheroes and
it should be like a job like real people, and
Tony Stark is like yeah, and Captain America's like fuck no,
And so everybody in the Marvel universe fights.

Speaker 1 (01:42:43):
And mister Fantastic actually supported the Superhuman Registration Act.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Yes he did, because him and the Pantas where their
identities have been out for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
So while Sue and Johnny did not and join the
Captain America's resistance. Yes, the thing announced that he thought
the whole registration thing was wrong, and he but he
was not going to fight the government, so he went
to France.

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
There's a Yes, there's a really beautiful panel in Civil
War of Ben holding Franklin and Valeria while Sue and
Reader fighting.

Speaker 1 (01:43:11):
Really.

Speaker 2 (01:43:12):
Yeah, it's always stuck with me as like my favorite
image from the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (01:43:15):
Interesting. Yeah, so of course Captain America.

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):
Loses, Yes, he does, and loses his life. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:43:21):
In the aftermafter of the war, Sue and Johnny were
granted amnesty, and Sue and Reid decided to leave the
team to work on their marriage, and while the recently
married Black Panther and Storm filled in for them. Yes,
and this is where they joined the team for a while.
And there are some more adventures, and soon we enter
what I consider to be the fourth greatest run in

(01:43:41):
the Fantastic Four, the Jonathan Hickman Run.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
Now, I've read most of this one.

Speaker 1 (01:43:47):
Now, the Jonathan Hickman Run is very complicated, and it's
hard to explain, and.

Speaker 3 (01:43:53):
It's very Jonathan Hickmany.

Speaker 1 (01:43:55):
Yes, and there's a lot of details that I'm going
to leave out. I'm gonna summarize it the best. I'm
going to summarize what I consider to be the most
iportant storyline, which is called three Yes Now. Basically, while
Reed and Sue were gone from the Baxter Building on
an important mission, a group known as the Cult of
the Negative Zone successfully made their way into the building
and reached the portal to the Negative Zone. Once inside,

(01:44:15):
the cult managed to unlease what seemed to be an
endless army of a Nihilis and sectoid soldiers. So basically,
imagine a whole bunch of tiny bugs that looked like
an ihowas coming at you.

Speaker 2 (01:44:24):
Gross.

Speaker 1 (01:44:27):
But at this time, see, they had figured out a
way to turn off Ben's thing form, so he was
human and like he could have it off for like
twenty four hours, and Johnny and the currently powerless Ben,
but the group pushed into the Negative Zone were the
only way to hold the army off from getting back
through the door, so they were on their side. Franklin

(01:44:48):
activated his powers ah pushed the bugs back into the
Negative Zone, but they found out that the only way
to get them to not come back through the hole
was to basically lock it from the inside and randomize
the code so that no one could get in and out.
Ben was prepared to make the sacrifice, but Johnny threw
him through the portal just as he regained his powers,
and the last image they saw of Johnny was him
being covered by the army, leading them to think he

(01:45:10):
was dead. He wasn't dead spoiler alert. He was only
dead for like six months, and actually read Richards was
dead for a lot longer than Johnny was. Like in
the nineties, when read rich was dead, he was gone
for like a year, almost two years. Johnny was gone
for six months. So they stopped being the Fantastic Four
and they founded the Future Foundation and they basically became

(01:45:31):
a school as a run called FF and Spider Man
Doom and Nathaniel Richards Reed's dad joined the team. Now,
Reed's dad was a time traveler and a former Shield
agent and a time lord of Galfroy yep, And soon
we learned that he was working with a future Franklin
and Valeria to save the world against the Mad Celestials.
And in a confrontation between the Future Foundation and the

(01:45:53):
Mad Celestials of Earth four to eight zero, Franklin is
described by one of these Celestials, young Franklin as a
mutant beyond Omega classification. Now what is I call a
mutant omega class What does that mean, Ashley?

Speaker 2 (01:46:08):
It means that they are like Jean Gray level powerful, dangerous.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
Yeah, there's magnetos also an omega. Yes, and so s
Plessor acts as omega.

Speaker 2 (01:46:16):
Yeah, it's They tend to be people with telekinetic and
telepathic abilities because for the most part that allows him
to play with concepts of time and space and reality.
Most people are alpha beta class.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
Totally and because of this, the Celestias are like, holy crap,
you're an omega mutant. They passed that, yep. They attack
Young Franklin, but Young Franklin is able to repel their attack. Soon,
the adult Franklin, who is working with Nathaniel Richards read
Richard's dad alongside with this future incarnation of his sister Valeria,
injures the fray and a final struggle against the mad

(01:46:49):
Celestials and older Franklin warps the three Celestials into an
inner sphere of a local gas giant, and he then
acquires an orb taking away his younger counterpart powers which
he stores in his chest, and the aged Franklin confronts
the Celestials and eventually, with both the Franklin's powers, destroys
all of them. In the aftermath, the adult Franklin shares

(01:47:13):
a brief moment with Galactus and the two discuss the
heat death of everything in the universe, and there is
a revelation that older Franklin reveals that he is a
mortal and that specifically that he will a billion years
from now be one of the only beings in the
universe alongside Galactus, to witness the birth of a new universe.

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):
And this kind of creates a weird bond between.

Speaker 1 (01:47:37):
Them, yes, which is kind of interesting because in other storylines,
especially the Alex Ross storyline Earth X, in that storyline,
Franklin Richards is Galactus, and a lot of storylines it
is kind of hinted that like Franklin Richards becomes glacdys or.
So it's kind of interesting that in this storyline that

(01:47:57):
it is revealed that that Franklin and Galactus will be friends.
So I think it's kind of the idea that like
Galactus is no longer a threat because they are now
they have a bond, So it's it's kind of interesting.
But the bigger revelation is that Franklin is essentially so
powerful that he's a mortal. Yeah, so imagine these cosmic grays, right,

(01:48:19):
great shit.

Speaker 7 (01:48:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:48:20):
Yeah. Then we get to the Mad Fraction run, which
is kind of basically forgettable because they just wander into
space and return. And then we get the James Robinson
run where he gave them ready uniforms and they fought
the heroes reborn characters, and then Marvel canceled the title,
and that's where we are with the Fantastic Four, except
that Read Richards is sort of fighting the Illuminati and

(01:48:40):
secret wars and it's kind of crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:48:42):
And if you read Silk, they're a big part of
the Silk storyline as well. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:48:46):
And that is the complete history as of now of
the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (01:48:52):
You tackled a whole lot of information, Holy shit, and
I think you did a really great job at condensing
the most important.

Speaker 1 (01:49:00):
It's a lot, it's a lot ely shit. It almost
it almost became four episodes. It came very close, and
then I went back and cut out a.

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Lot well, because I'm sure there's enough interesting stuff. And
when you're dealing with four characters who are all compelled,
like we're not dealing with a team of B list heroes.
So good job.

Speaker 1 (01:49:16):
Now let's go to to my recommended reading, and if
you've been listening to part one and part two, you
can kind of guess what that's going to be. My
first recommended reading is Fantastic Four by John Byrne Omnibus
Volume one that collects like the first forty issues of
John Burn's run. They did collect it in soft covers
called Fantastic Four Visionaries John Burn. I think those were

(01:49:39):
out of print. Yes, I'm pretty certain they're out of print,
but you can get the omnibus. It's a little bit expensive,
but it can get a lot. It's a lot. It's
it is one of the best runs of the Fantastic Four.
And even though it was read in the eighties, it's
a little aged, but most of it holds up. I
actually reread some of those issues before doing this, and like,
most of it holds up. That's why. Now another one

(01:50:02):
I would say is Fantastic four by Mark Wade and
where we can go Ultimate Collection Book one. Now, this
is like the first twelve issues of Mark Wade and
Mike Wareing Goes Run, and I think that Doom storyline
I talked about is this is in this collection. If
you are looking for the most reader friendly Fantastic four storyline.

Speaker 2 (01:50:21):
Don't need to know that much going, don't even know anything.

Speaker 1 (01:50:24):
This is the one Fantastic four by Mark Wade and
Mike We're ultimate collection. Go read there there, Go read
that one that's the most reader friendly. And if you
want to hop back to the original fifty issues, you
can find these soft covers called Essential FF.

Speaker 2 (01:50:37):
And volumes are being published right now and.

Speaker 1 (01:50:40):
In volume one and you just trek on through. Is
is the Lee Kirby like first fifteen twenty issues somewhere there? Yeah.
The Jonath Himans runs also great.

Speaker 2 (01:50:49):
That's what I was going to recommend, But if you
don't have a previous Gottleedge, you kind of need to
have your phone with you to hit up Wikipedia every
once in a while.

Speaker 1 (01:50:56):
Yes, and that's the only reason why it didn't make
it into my recommend read. I think all of these
you can read without knowing a lot of prior knowledge.
That John Byrne run, you're gonna need to look up
some stuff, but you can basically make it through. But
the Jonathan Hickman run, you've got to know everything, and
if you don't, you're screwed.

Speaker 2 (01:51:11):
It's tough.

Speaker 3 (01:51:12):
But the Birth of the Future foundation is so great.

Speaker 1 (01:51:14):
It is and it's a great story. I would say
read that as the fourth after you've read these other ones.

Speaker 2 (01:51:19):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:51:19):
But if you've never had Fantastic Four again and you
want to fall in love with them, I say, Fantastic four, Mark,
Mark Wade, and Mark Wauringo. And if you find that
that Jack Kirby and the Stanley Stanley stuff is too crazy,
go pick up the Trey Payerback of Heroes Reborn Fantastic
Four because that basically summarizes that first fifty issues in
twelve issues, and it has Jim Lee Art.

Speaker 2 (01:51:42):
What's not to like?

Speaker 1 (01:51:42):
So yeah, if you find that it's to go pick
up that and you'll get the same kind of stuff
from it.

Speaker 2 (01:51:47):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:51:47):
So let's move into our discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:51:50):
Let us move into our discussion now.

Speaker 1 (01:51:51):
Actually, at the beginning of part one, I asked you
if you thought you know how much you knew about
the FF. Yes, now almost not yep, Now you've learned
most of their history. There's still a bunch out there.
But what part of the Fantastic Four is history? Do
you now want to read or are you more interested
in since you've learned their entire history? What?

Speaker 2 (01:52:13):
What do you feel?

Speaker 1 (01:52:15):
What do you I got two questions for you. Okay,
what do you feel you learn the most about? And two?
What part of their history do you want to read now?

Speaker 2 (01:52:22):
I feel like the thing that I learned most about
was how desperate they are. Like there's a saying you
know that every family is psychotic, you just notice yours
the most because they're the ones you're stuck with. Yeah,
and I feel like that's really true of the Fantastic War.
Like I always think of the Fantastic Four as being
and reading see in particular is being like very solid,
very together. And it's interesting to see how often they've

(01:52:45):
split up, like fifteen times. Yeah, and a lot of
it is Read's fault, and I'm not. I don't mean
to characterize Reads like a bad person, because I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:52:51):
Think he is always Reads fault.

Speaker 2 (01:52:53):
I think he's he's always working for the greater good.
But it's interesting that like, and I love characters. I
love the idea of like romantic care characters who are
like not great at being together, but they love each
other so much that they're just gonna fucking keep trying
no matter what. And I thought that was that was
really interesting. I want to read the Mark Wade run
because you said that was a good places, and I

(01:53:13):
have a tough time sometimes with like eighties comics, So
even though I know that's a good run, I might
read the Mark Waite stuff first and then when I
need more and be like, I'm gonna try John Byrne
and see how that goes. Did I answer all your questions? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:53:27):
I think so, Like, well, I know you're not a
big fan of the Fantastic Four. I am a big
fan of the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 3 (01:53:33):
Like they'll never They'll just never be my number one
Marvel No, no, no.

Speaker 1 (01:53:36):
I know, But like are you? Were you surprised or
intrigued about how much of the Marvel universe comes from
the Fantasy I was surprised.

Speaker 2 (01:53:45):
I didn't realize that, like literally all of all of
the characters that come out of the sixties and seventies,
if they don't come directly from the Fantastic Four, they
cross over and they touched with them, and the Fantastic
be Four become an important part of their history. And
I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, it makes you
kind of wonder. It's just interesting that Marvel like sold
that property. And I get it's just a big name,

(01:54:06):
but that the studio that's that's taken it can't seem
to treat it with respect. Yeah. Yeah, And even if
even if you're a person like me and you don't have,
like I don't have the the the love and dedication
that Jason has for it, it just seems like such
a no brainer that, Okay, well I could I could
learn that, I could read it, I could bring someone

(01:54:28):
on who has that affection for And that's the part
that I find like the sort of an interesting disconnect
is that. And even the cartoons, like I feel like
the Fantastic War hasn't had a good representation outside of
comic books, and it seems like why why not?

Speaker 1 (01:54:39):
Except for there? To me, I feel their best representation
is actually in Avengers Earth's Mighty as Heroes. Now that's
the cartoon before Avengers Assemble, because I hate Avengers Assemble
that cartoon. Yeah, but Avengers Earths Mighty's Heroes.

Speaker 2 (01:54:52):
That's what that's on Netflix.

Speaker 1 (01:54:53):
It's all on Netflix. It's sort of drawn in a
Bruce Tims style. It's actually really great, and it kind
of like summarizes all lot of a great Avengers run
and mixes and matches them. Like the Captain Marvel that
shows up is actually the ultimate Captain Marvel. But yeah,
the Fantastic Four show up in that series and they're
great and actually, to let you know, the final episode
of that series is them fighting Glactus.

Speaker 3 (01:55:14):
Oh that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:55:15):
Yeah, so that I feel is their best representation. But
basically they had like two cartoons, yes, they had They
had a cartoon in the sixties. They had a cartoon
in the nineties, and they had a cartoon in the
two thousands that was very anime styled and they kind
of did it. It's ridiculous. It's so bad.

Speaker 3 (01:55:30):
I mean, And they're about to have their fourth movie.

Speaker 1 (01:55:33):
Yeah, after the Roger Corman won so which no, they've
had that. It's out now by the time, it's not
out by the time of this recording, but it's out now. Yeah,
So there you go. That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:55:44):
That's that's yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:45):
Now we're into the final part of our final Fantastic
Four lesson.

Speaker 2 (01:55:50):
The teaching tweet. The teaching tweet where you sum up
in one hundred and forty characters or less, how you
feel about the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (01:55:56):
Yes, sometimes Fantastic families aren't born, they're made with science.
Fantastic Four Forever is science all in caps. Yes, science
is a mic drop that everyone just heard. Yeah, that
was a mic drop. That's a Fantastic Four Forever is
a is a phrase that they say they've said a
couple times in the comic books. But that's that's what

(01:56:17):
it is. It's all about family. The Fantastic Four is
about family. Cool science and families. That's what it's about.

Speaker 2 (01:56:22):
Science. Family.

Speaker 1 (01:56:22):
So that's it. I hope you learned a lot. God,
this is a lot episode a lot. This will let
you know this actually isn't the final Fantastic Four episode
We're going to do. Next week, Ashley and I are
going to talk about our best Fantastic Four team ever.
So just like some of our previous episodes, best Avengers
team ever, best the X Men team ever, we've gone

(01:56:43):
ourselves some rules and stipulations, and we're going to create
what we think is the best Fantastic Four team ever.
And Ashley mentioned a couple of times that she had
not seen Fantastic Four Rise of the.

Speaker 2 (01:56:54):
Silver Sermony keep it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:56:55):
So no, I'm going to make her watch it and
we're going to have a review of it next week.
Maybe no, we are, she actually will watch it. I
will force her to sit through that movie, okay, and
we will watch it. So next week is going.

Speaker 2 (01:57:10):
To be doing this for you listeners.

Speaker 1 (01:57:11):
A very very fun episode. Did you think that the
last two parts of the Fantastic four fun episode? Fantastic?

Speaker 2 (01:57:19):
It was fantastic, completely, man ultimately fantastic As a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:57:22):
I don't want to tackle a big like I wanted
to be a while until we do like a Superman
or a Batman.

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
We'll do like a bat beyond, because holy cow, the
research that took oh man, like it was a long
This is the most research I've ever had to do.

Speaker 1 (01:57:38):
For a Gee Kisser lesson. Wow, And I think that's
apropos that.

Speaker 2 (01:57:42):
You know, we see the Peter Parker two parter as well.

Speaker 1 (01:57:44):
I did. We're seventy six episodes in. I'm glad that
this was our seventy fifth episode. Yeah, like two parter
that was the Fantastic four fourth and seventy seventy fifth
and seventy six. Oh shit, yeah, you're got your episode
now now listener. All right, listeners, something that we're not
sorry about and that would make you very happy is
if you go over to iTunes and Stitcher and please subscribe, download,
and please rate and review on Stitcher and iTunes the

(01:58:08):
podcast because that helps other listeners find our podcast just
like you. And you know what, I like reading the ratings,
so like, go over there and be like, God, I
like the Fantastic Four, but Jason was such a mushmouth.
He's a mushmouth about the Fantastic Four and it was nuts.
There were some times I messed up.

Speaker 2 (01:58:23):
It's so much.

Speaker 3 (01:58:24):
It literally happens to us every episode.

Speaker 2 (01:58:25):
Oh so much.

Speaker 1 (01:58:31):
He's the Herald of Galactus, the friend of the Fantastic Four,
and one tubular dude. He is norin Rad the Silver Surfer,
and his GIEK History Lesson is now in session. Hello
and welcome to Geek History Lesson. I am Jason, Radical
Man in Them.

Speaker 2 (01:58:49):
I am Ashley Victoria Robinson. Welcome to your mind University
because you have stumbled onto the podcast where we take
one character construct or super Indeed Trump popular culture and
you everything you need to know about them in about
an hour. I was not emotionally prepared for Jason's introduction.
So I'm very excited to see how the rest of
this lesson goes.

Speaker 1 (01:59:09):
Giggisher lesson fans, myn University fans. You know of my
love for the Fantastic Four. In fact, we did three
episodes four. I don't remember the numbers of those. Actually,
could you do quick google? And this has been one
that we have been waiting a long time to do,
Silver Server. I'm very excited. I love the Silver Server

(01:59:31):
and I'm so happy that so many listeners out there
have requested this episode. Here is everybody that requested that
we do a Silver Server episode. El Bird, oh isaiya
Quinn you who mother can't say the last part? Ron
Tamir at t Wild Discover, Victor Rabella, Matt Mitchell at

(01:59:54):
Beardman Comics, James Wilson at Mick Gar Studios, at Linux
fancom Marquis Belton and at Smoother Gamer. Actually do you
figure out what numbers? Did we do the Fantastic four quadrillat?

Speaker 3 (02:00:07):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (02:00:08):
So we did two lessons on the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 1 (02:00:12):
We did part one and part two.

Speaker 2 (02:00:13):
That was Geeki Hisstory lesson seventy five and seventy six,
taught by mister Inman. Geek History Lesson seventy seven was
our best Fantastic Four teams ever. Yeah, and then Geek
History Lesson two fifty was Doctor two Doctor, so he
is in the family. I will share a link to
all these episodes in case people haven't listened to that
or just want to revisit them.

Speaker 1 (02:00:33):
Yeah. So you've heard me talk about the Fantastic Four
before and we've never gone that deep into the Silver
Surfer as well. So this is where you're gonna get
all the good stuff. Now. We just want to remind
you that if you want more Geek History Lesson podcast,
go support the show at Patreon dot com slash jawan.
That's jawii in. There are three exclusive podcasts every month

(02:00:56):
over there, including Jason and Jeremy John about Just League,
which is our Justice League podcast. Plus you get sneak
peaks at our future comic books, and you get all
that more when you support Geek Casher Lesson over at
Patreon dot com slash jomin and thank you to the
super friends over there that already do. All right, let's
hop into that ten cent orajin.

Speaker 2 (02:01:17):
Yes, the ten Cent Origin is the first part of
the podcast where Professor Jason is going to teach you
all the basics that you need to know about Silver
Server in case you go to a dope Fantastic Four
themed cocktail Barty and someone's like, who's that noorin radguy.

Speaker 1 (02:01:32):
Well, he's too be there. The first appearance of the
Silver Surfer was in the Fantastic Four number forty eight
in March of nineteen sixty six. He was created by
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby the Legends of Comics. His
alter ego is noorin Rad and that is Rad with
two d's. His species is He's Zenlavian. His place of
origin is the planet zen Law. His team affiliations have

(02:01:55):
been the Heralds of Galactus not quite a team, the
United Thought, the Defend the Order, the Star Masters, the Gars,
the God Squad, the Annihilators, and his partnerships have been
with the Fantastic Four and the Avengers.

Speaker 2 (02:02:08):
I have a question, okay, sure is the are the
Star Masters? Are they like Starmasters?

Speaker 1 (02:02:16):
No, They're just people that fly around the space and
say they master the stars.

Speaker 3 (02:02:20):
Also the God Squad yep.

Speaker 1 (02:02:23):
Wow, yeah, man, that's it.

Speaker 2 (02:02:24):
That's my whole thought. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:02:25):
This is result where Norse mythology and Greek mythology are
very real.

Speaker 2 (02:02:29):
I mean that's you know what, you know what fair right? Fair?
All right?

Speaker 1 (02:02:34):
Now his powers are mainly the power cosmic. What is
the power cosmic? I'm so glad you asked, Well, the
power cosmic allows you to do an adaptive blast, power,
a controlled bone, growth, cosmic awareness, dimensional manipulation, empathy, and
jur usports and energy eventually comes down individuibili energy, save flight, force,
field gravity, who achealing, illusion, cast the immortal and like
vulnerabil levityly light pressure and londaviy phasing, ghost power and

(02:02:57):
pregno and staatee shitters, sivnability, size, manipulation, standing a super
super sit supers mean superstring, tell like he's a teller
living type, tiril tracking, and all kinds of other stuff that.

Speaker 2 (02:03:06):
When you are shaking the table two or maybe it's
an earthquake. Who knows this is California. So basically, whatever
the writers decide at the time.

Speaker 1 (02:03:18):
A La Scarlett Witch, I will answer that when we
talk about the power cosmic a little bit later than that.

Speaker 2 (02:03:25):
Oh boy, all right, let's get to this. Sounds like
a cult leader.

Speaker 1 (02:03:28):
I'm not gonna lie, Let's get to the meat.

Speaker 2 (02:03:29):
Cute Okay, to meet Cute is the second part of
the podcast, and a term that we still from romantic
comedy writing, where we told you were we first semantic
character and how cute it twas?

Speaker 1 (02:03:37):
Yes, Ashley, Uh, where did you first encounter the Silver Surfer?

Speaker 2 (02:03:40):
I'm very curious about this. I have no idea. You're
just always aware of him. I think so because I
literally never read Fantastic four.

Speaker 1 (02:03:48):
Until I met you. Oh boy, what a sad life.

Speaker 2 (02:03:52):
No, that's a lie.

Speaker 3 (02:03:55):
I had read that.

Speaker 2 (02:03:56):
I loved the Marvel now FF series. Wait a minute,
say that again, the Marvel now f F series. No, no, no,
the previous part.

Speaker 1 (02:04:04):
That's a lie.

Speaker 2 (02:04:05):
That's a lie.

Speaker 1 (02:04:07):
I knew it.

Speaker 2 (02:04:09):
I love the Marvel now f F series. So I
read the Jonathan Hickman FF because that introduced the future Foundation.
Great run. It is a really great run. Spider Man
joins the team, they got these slick white outfits. And
then I met you and read more fant House before.
But I don't know. I don't remember because I feel

(02:04:30):
like I've always known who the Silver Server was, and
I've always known that he's an f F character. But
I don't have a clear I don't have a great
story for this. I'm really I apologize he is.

Speaker 1 (02:04:40):
He is a very well known Marvel character, so it
doesn't surprise me if you were just kind of like
I kind of always knew who this Silver guy.

Speaker 2 (02:04:46):
I don't know if I heard him reface a cartoon,
if that was a comment here he had a cartoon. Yeah,
I don't think I've seen it, Okay, I don't know.
As long term listeners to the podcast know, my early
Marvel forays were ex book, so not exactly the home
of a Silver Surfer. But I'm sure you have a
much better story. Jason, tell us where you first met
the Silver Serf.

Speaker 1 (02:05:06):
Well, I obviously met the Silver Surfer the very first
time in Fantastic Four Heroes Reborn, which he appears in
the fourth issue of that drawn by Jim Lee, written
by Jim Lee and Brandon Choy, And that, of course
was when Jim Lee and Rob Lyefield tech over the
four main Marvel books Avengers, iron Man, they took the
Incredible Hulk, and the four books actually resuse me were

(02:05:28):
Fantasy Four, Iron Man, Avengers Captain America, but Hulk was
also part of those characters and Silver Surfer was in
the Fantastic Four book, and then that led me to
read the original Coming of Galactus, which is Silver Surfer's
first appearance.

Speaker 2 (02:05:40):
I have an important question. Okay, should episode four hundred
or five hundred finally be Heroes Report?

Speaker 1 (02:05:52):
I will tell listeners this because we have teased doing
Heroes Reborn. We are closing in on four hundred episodes.
We're closing in on five hundred episodes are on the
I am desperately in our push. I want to push
five hundred super Friends for the Patreon before our five
hundredth episode. I've said before that I think the only

(02:06:13):
way to do Heroes You're Born is to do it
as a two parter. Oh yeah, it's definitely multiple episodes,
and I think it's to do you do the Jim
Lee too, you do the Rob Liefeld too. And then
what I would love to be honest with you is
speaking into the universe.

Speaker 2 (02:06:29):
I know what you're gonna say.

Speaker 1 (02:06:30):
I would love to get mister Rob Bleifeld onto this show. Yeah,
to talk to him about Heroes Reborn. Because Observations Geek
history lesson Cross because he has a podcast for observations
I would love I would love to do that. I
would love to actually get somebody else, but like to
talk to Rob LIFFELD would be great. So I mean, yeah,
if four hundred, episode four hundred might be a little

(02:06:50):
too soon, but.

Speaker 2 (02:06:51):
Sure, if this is something that people are interested in,
let's go hashtag GHL reborn. Uh sure, and then we
could we can. I just feel like, if we're going
to do it, it should be a big celebratory thee. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:07:05):
And if people are listening to this as well, feel
free to tweet at mister rob Leifield and say, hey,
you should go on gee kisser lesson and be like
it's a great podcast. Tell yeah, we'd love to have him.

Speaker 2 (02:07:16):
Yeah, we talked, We mentioned him often. He's good.

Speaker 1 (02:07:18):
Yeah, there we go whatever whatever. I will say this,
whatever you think about mister Rob Leifield, because I know
some people really enjoy him, some people really don't. We
really enjoy him.

Speaker 2 (02:07:29):
Here. That man changed comics and you cannot deny that. Also,
his Bucky Barnes upgrade new introductor reimagining is adorable.

Speaker 1 (02:07:41):
You mean Ricky Barnes. Yeah, I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (02:07:43):
She's so cute. Well you she stopped talking about heros
are born and talking about the Silver Serf.

Speaker 3 (02:07:47):
Let's talk about the Silver Server.

Speaker 1 (02:07:49):
Okay, we're going to talk a little bit about the
production history in our history one on one we love Now.
The Silver Surfer debuted as an unplanned addition to Fantastic
four number forty eight in March in nineteen sixty six.

Speaker 2 (02:08:03):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:08:04):
Now, the comics writer and he was also the editor
of his own title, stan Lee and his co potter
Jack Kirby had by then developed a technique known as
the Marvel Method. Now, Ashley, we are very aware of
what the Marvel method is, but I don't know if
our listeners are. Let's go ahead and explain it. Can
you explain the Marvel method act?

Speaker 2 (02:08:23):
So DLDR. Most comic book writers work in a style
known as full script, which is what Jason and I do.
If you're a patroon, you've peaked at some of our
scripts before, were page one, panel one. You give a
full description of what you would like to see there
for your artist. It's sort of the more is more
is more method, and then the script and so on

(02:08:44):
and so forth. The Marvel method is a lot looser,
and it is a type of thing that you can
do when you have a close working relationship and understanding
with your artist, like obviously Lean Kirby did.

Speaker 3 (02:08:57):
And it's more like, so give me like one page
of a fight scene.

Speaker 1 (02:09:04):
Make sure you're going way too in the weeds on.

Speaker 2 (02:09:05):
This, make sure there's an insert where Spider Man is swinging.
It is a much looser way. You allow the artists
a lot more freedom. You script later. Full script is
you script first and then the art is in service
of the script, rather than the other way around. Basically,
I'm sorry, I wanted to give it complete. Yeah, I
was comprehensive vernet. I was going to explain exactly how
they did it. So, oh, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 (02:09:25):
So basically what would happen is Lee and Kirby would
discuss ideas, and then stan Lee, because he was also
writing like six other Marvel titles at the time, would
only give Jack Kirby sometimes a two page synopsis of
the entire issue.

Speaker 2 (02:09:42):
And look, a modern issue is twenty to twenty two pages.
This was back in the day where we were at
like twenty eight thirty six. Yeah, like a lot longer.

Speaker 1 (02:09:51):
And Lee would sometimes have individual scenes have plot details,
and then Kirby would draw all of the book, making
his own little things, and then Lee would add the
dialogue and captions. Now, when Kirby turned in the pencil
art for this issue Fantasic four number forty eight, he
included a new character that him and Stan had not discussed,
as Lee recalled in nineteen ninety five, and I quote,

(02:10:13):
there in the middle of the story we had so
carefully worked out was some nut on some sort of
fine stuff board. He later expanded on this, recalling, I thought, Jack,
you've gone too far Excelsior now, mister Kirby felt. Jack Kirby,
of course, felt that the character of Galactus's prodigious power
would employ a emissary a slash herald if you will,

(02:10:38):
an advanced scout of sorts to search for suitable planets
to satiate his endless hunger. Kirby was tired of characters
that required a spacecraft for a transport, and outer space.

Speaker 3 (02:10:49):
With Fantastic four no good.

Speaker 1 (02:10:52):
Basically, this was Jack Kirby in the first season of
Star Trek the original series, being like Enterprise, ha, it's funny.

Speaker 2 (02:10:59):
The Silver Server is fun to me because he is
the most sixties idea. H I do it on a surfboard.
But he also feels like the most sixties idea in
the sense of the expanding like spirituality and that sort
of interest in the psychedelic as well. Well.

Speaker 1 (02:11:16):
You he's the Venn diagram of when he was created
exact a lot of way Silver Surfer is very surfer
sixties in that culture. In fact, you think about it,
like the James Bond theme in the sixties is a
surfer theme. It's like Veria that inspired the Star Trek.
The original series theme song has bongos in it. Because
of the sixties television.

Speaker 2 (02:11:32):
Now, surfer music is some of the most iconic music.

Speaker 1 (02:11:35):
So Jack Kirby came up this idea of the Silver
Surfer who would employ a telepathic controlled surfboard to repel
him at astronomical speeds throughout the universe. Great Stanley originally
disliked the character, but actually came to lovenorin Rad and
actually noorn Rad Silver Surfer. Stanley is sever of the
several times it's one of his favorite characters.

Speaker 2 (02:11:54):
Oh that's sweet, all right.

Speaker 1 (02:11:55):
Now let's talk about Silver Surfers origin. Let's noorn Rad
with des lived on the peaceful planet of zen Law,
which is actually in the Deneb system of the Milky
Way galaxy. Sure, the Zenlabyans effectively eliminated plagues, all kinds
of poverty, hunger, disease, crime, war, and as a result
for their advancement and scientific discovery, they got a utopian society.

(02:12:19):
They're basically the Federation in Space cool Now. Nora often
dreamed of a society that had more substance.

Speaker 2 (02:12:25):
He believed that there were.

Speaker 1 (02:12:26):
No goals left to have when you know, on zen Law,
because it's like, eh, why are we doing and everything
everything's conquered. What's the point. There's no strife, And he's
actually filled with discontent.

Speaker 2 (02:12:37):
Be you know what, I miss baby, I miss strife.

Speaker 1 (02:12:39):
Oh man, I miss hunger.

Speaker 2 (02:12:40):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:12:41):
So he would go to the museum and watch holograms
of zen Law's past that focused around their space travel
and their wars. Because also at this time, the Zenlabyans
were like, we're so utopian that like the best journey
is within, not outward, So why go to see other planets?

Speaker 2 (02:12:58):
Oh? I'm going to respectfully with him a man, I agree.

Speaker 1 (02:13:01):
So this often troubled his girlfriend shah Lah Ball at
the time, and she Ball with one l and she
believed that they had all they could ever need, and
that should be all they need. One day, their peaceful
existence was threatened by the presence of Galuctius, the devour
of world Ashley very short. Who is Glactus because I'm

(02:13:24):
going to fully explain. Listen, Well, bad guy who eats planets.
That's pretty much it. One of the Marvel comics most
important villain, one of.

Speaker 2 (02:13:31):
The If you want a direct line between Jack Kirby's
brain beginning to design the Fourth World and his Marvel work,
Galactus is it. Practice is so Fourth Worldly.

Speaker 1 (02:13:42):
It would be remiss to not explain Galactus's full origin
because the Silver Surfer is actually, as you'll learn later,
tied to it. How you have to listen to the
rest of episode. So here and figuratively here is Galactus's origin. Okay,
Galactus is actually an explorer named Galen Great. He is

(02:14:05):
Galen of the planet Ta Ta with two a's really yep, okay,
and taw existed in the universe before Our Big Bang.

Speaker 2 (02:14:17):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (02:14:17):
So he is from the universe before our universe. He
is the only known survivor of that previous universe. When God,
when the unknown cosmic catalysm that eventually kills off every
universe happened. Galen and other survivors left Taw on a
spacecraft and they were engulfed in the Big Crunch of

(02:14:40):
their universe. Galen was the only one to survive. Actually,
and he actually bonded during the Big Crunch with the
sentience of the universe. What is that?

Speaker 2 (02:14:49):
Not quite explained?

Speaker 1 (02:14:50):
Maybe God? Yeah, he changes and ges states inside his
space spacecraft for a billions of years into it an
egg that was caused by the Big Crunch and through
the debris of the current universe and the Big Bang,
and he emerges as Galactus. Now, when he comes out
of this pod, he realizes, like food, I don't like

(02:15:13):
food anymore. But what I do like are planets. Give
me those juicy rings.

Speaker 2 (02:15:21):
I'm imagining his billions of years long gestation period as
being a lot like when Bender was God and then.

Speaker 1 (02:15:27):
Docks the god yep Uh. And the very first planet
that he consumed was the nearby planet of Archaopia.

Speaker 2 (02:15:36):
Mispronounced so many there, you're not mispronouncing them. There is
no pronunciation for them.

Speaker 1 (02:15:41):
So that is Glactus great. He's the only survivor from
the previous universe that was cosmically transformed into this like
godlike being.

Speaker 2 (02:15:47):
Tweet us at GHL podcast if you want to Galactus episode, Oh,
we could do one.

Speaker 1 (02:15:50):
There is a lot of Galactas stuff. A lot of
it is is just like He's like, m planet as villains,
and then read Richards is like no, and He's like, oh,
should Galactus sound like that?

Speaker 2 (02:16:03):
She sound like a soul?

Speaker 7 (02:16:05):
Hey?

Speaker 2 (02:16:06):
He kind of sounds like a yr.

Speaker 7 (02:16:07):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (02:16:09):
Okay, Now we're.

Speaker 2 (02:16:10):
Gonna go back to zen Law, great home of nooron
Rad and Schallibah. There you go.

Speaker 1 (02:16:15):
Now, the Council of Scientists on zen Law let Norn
use a spaceship to approach Galactus and plead on behalf
of their planet. Seeing the home yep see, basically seeing
the hopeless situation of his home, plant, norm Ran volunteered
servitude to the devour of Worlds in order to spare
zen Law from obliteration. Galactus accepted. Galactus gave nooron Rad

(02:16:38):
a fraction of the power cosmic and shaped by the
fantasies of nooron Rat entertained as a child, Galactus transformed
noorm Rad into a completely silver being, giving him a
surfboard and thenceforth he was known as the Silver Surfer.
His first job he is the first herald of Galactus
and also his main task is to find planets to

(02:16:59):
which could give the energy to satisfy Galactus's hunger.

Speaker 3 (02:17:03):
I'm glad that you.

Speaker 2 (02:17:04):
Brought up the transformation because I was wondering if all
zen Lavians were silver solbans look human? Okay, perfect, Yeah,
so this is a unique state of being unto him.

Speaker 1 (02:17:16):
Now we need to explain the power cosmic.

Speaker 2 (02:17:18):
Remember by let's do it, yes, cosmic COSMICI nonse.

Speaker 1 (02:17:22):
Should we give a a sound effect of the power cosmic?

Speaker 6 (02:17:25):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (02:17:25):
Yeah, I think it should be like your act bigger
spotlight sound effect.

Speaker 1 (02:17:29):
Yeah, that's a different one. Anyways, So the Silver Surfer
one set and I quote. To wield the power cosmic
is to be in touch with every other living thing
at once. It is to recognize that we aren't alone
in the universe dot dot dot. We alone are the universe.

(02:17:52):
We are the cosmos coming to know itself, to love itself,
dot dot dot. And when you wins that, for even
the briefest the moments you will see do do duh.
There is nothing more beautiful. Basically, it's a.

Speaker 2 (02:18:12):
Magic Wand I have a question, and I don't mean
this to sound disrespectful and judgy, but it's going to
how many drugs do we think John Kuby was on
a lot?

Speaker 4 (02:18:21):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:18:21):
Man, all of them? Because and there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 2 (02:18:25):
Like I said, I'm not coming at this from a
judgmental perspective, but I'm like listening to that. It's kind
of cool, but it also sounds very much like a
man in the sixties.

Speaker 1 (02:18:34):
It's a vast source of limitless godly cosmic energy and power,
primarily wielded by the godlike cosmic entity galactys rate. It
gives you cosmic awareness, right, It gives you an increased
form of intellect and knowing almost everything. It is a
deadly edged sword because filtering out useless information from the
near infinite knowledge would be difficult. But it has given

(02:18:57):
precognitive powers of coming danger, you know, the ability to
ascertain weakness and objects and all those powers. I said
in the beginning, So.

Speaker 3 (02:19:06):
Is Galactus hiring?

Speaker 2 (02:19:08):
Because that sounds pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (02:19:09):
Well, I was going to ask you, Ashley, does this
make the silver server too powerful?

Speaker 2 (02:19:15):
Well, that's I suppose that's the crux of the character,
which I know is something that's also lobbed at one
of your aull time favorite characters, Superman. That's correct, the
query of being the smartest person in the room, or
of near infinite knowledge, or of like near infinite lived experience. Right,
It's like the question with a doctor. Yeah, it is

(02:19:36):
always an interesting thing to grapple with because it is,
as you said, a double edged sword is a blessing,
it acurse. This does make him arguably one of the
most powerful characters in the universe. Maybe not in brute strength,
but I think the power cosmic might made up make
you know, can he hit the Hulk? Probably well.

Speaker 1 (02:19:53):
By the way, I will tell you that Superman has
fought the Silver Server in Superman and the Fantastic Four one.
There was of course a tie because they but but
the Silver Surfer thoughts was equal. Superman Kit kit.

Speaker 2 (02:20:09):
Can he transmute the kind of metal that he is?
Can he become cryptonite?

Speaker 1 (02:20:12):
I have questions? No Ah, that's fine, but he possibly
could create kryptonite if he knew what it was, which.

Speaker 2 (02:20:19):
He might not because he's not from That's interesting. What
a great piece of trivia that you just pulled out
of your head. Now, are you too smart for us
right now?

Speaker 1 (02:20:28):
Huh? Now, norn Rad, he's now the Silver Surfer. Great,
And over time it became more difficult to find planets
without life on them, because Silver Surfer was like, well,
I'm just gonna lead Galactus to plant to planets that
don't have life, and that'll like always spare the situation.
But it became more and more difficult because space is
vast and YadA, YadA, YadA. So, knowing that noorn Rad

(02:20:50):
would resist leading Glactis to any planet with life on it,
Galactus deliberately altered Norn's mind to repress his morality, and
this allowed noorn Rad to become robotic and efficiently and
quickly carry out the grim task of finding suitable panel
planet excuse me for Galactus to feed.

Speaker 2 (02:21:10):
On also appearing on panels yep.

Speaker 1 (02:21:12):
And this leads the Silver Surfer. And this is how
the Silver Surfer is when he brings Galactus to Earth
in the classic Coming to Galactus storyline. And this is where,
in turn, where Galactus is confronted by Earth's mightiest heroes,
not the Avengers, the Fantastic Four actually agree.

Speaker 2 (02:21:29):
With us same thing.

Speaker 1 (02:21:30):
Who are they?

Speaker 2 (02:21:32):
They are a group of associates of Reed Richard's Cursed
to know him.

Speaker 1 (02:21:38):
Yes, and as we mentioned episode seventy five and seventy
six of The Geekerzos and podcasts all about the Fantastic
foll Yeah now, Ben Graham's girlfriend the Blind Sculptors Alicia Masters,
managed to reach norn Rad's more human side, ultimately awakening
the conscious that Galactus managed to suppress for many years.
The Surfer turned on his master, much to galactus Supper,

(02:22:00):
and the Surfer was easily dispatched by Glactus, but read
Richards ultimately managed to repel Glacis with the Ultimate Nullafier,
basically bluffing that read Richard said, I'll destroy the whole
damn universe if you try to eat Earth.

Speaker 2 (02:22:12):
Which, based on read Richard's track record, I believe him.

Speaker 1 (02:22:16):
Well, that's what the Ultimate Alifier does.

Speaker 7 (02:22:18):
I know.

Speaker 1 (02:22:18):
And to be honest with you, that that bluff actually worked.
Glactus back down.

Speaker 2 (02:22:22):
The Ultimate Nullafier the mother of the Mother Body, and
that is.

Speaker 1 (02:22:25):
The first and in Marvel Comics history, that is the
first time the Galactys backed down from a planet.

Speaker 2 (02:22:32):
So you did mention that the Ultimate Nolofier basically destroys
the planets. It destroys the universe, It destroys all of reality.
What does it look like? Just people aren't familiar.

Speaker 1 (02:22:41):
You should share an image of it. Well, it's really
cool because it's also you'll talk about Jack Kirby on drugs.
Oh yeah, it sort of looks like a gray harp
with a little prong on it.

Speaker 2 (02:22:50):
I think that's a good description. Yeah, I will share
a picture of it, so in case anyone's not familiar.

Speaker 1 (02:22:55):
I don't like a police badge, except great a police
badge with a weird like antennae out of the side
of it. So, in reprisal for Silver Surfer's rebellious actions,
Galactus created an energy barrier around the Earth that would
prevent the Silver Surfer from ever leaving the planet. Oh
an atmosphere, saying, no longer will he venture into space
and be witnessed to the universe's far reaching wonders. His
heart's desire since he was a small child was robbed

(02:23:17):
from him. Now, one of the most powerful beings in
all the cosmos is now trapped on Earth, and Earth's
governments are just going to let him chill and take
Vaca's right.

Speaker 2 (02:23:28):
I mean, maybe in the six one six.

Speaker 1 (02:23:31):
Entire countries actually reacted aggressively to the Silver Surfer.

Speaker 2 (02:23:35):
Wait, can I get us some wo which ones? I
don't know? I'm not orgogized to.

Speaker 1 (02:23:39):
As he simply flew overhead because he was just the Hey,
he was just the partner of the Destroyer of Worlds.
They fired weapons of Master's structure at him, and it
actually seemed that the Silver Surfer would lead a life
full of fear and rejection on Earth no matter what.
Occasionally he tried to help certaindividuals on Earth and become
a hero. This too resulted in mistrust and everybody hating him.

Speaker 2 (02:23:59):
No kid.

Speaker 1 (02:24:00):
For a brief time, basically, the Silver Server was the
most hated person on Earth, more than the mutants.

Speaker 2 (02:24:04):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:24:05):
So one of his first his worst experiences actually came
from trying to assist Doctor Doom, who tricked the Silver
Server and stole his cosmic powers. But eventually Norn got
the powers back, and after this he had a hard
time trusting any humans, including the Fantastic Four, because he
was always worried that anybody was going to steal his powers.

Speaker 2 (02:24:25):
Yeah, but also why would he trust the Fantastic Four?
They got him stuck on Earth? Well, they helped him,
but still yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:24:30):
Eventually Silver Server became a hero on Earth and began
to rescover his own very human feelings, thanks in part
to a blind sculptress, as I said, Alicia Masters, and
he fought among many of Earth's heroes and joined the
superhero group the Defenders.

Speaker 2 (02:24:55):
Oh it's still ringing, and I picked up Hello Hello,
d oh, Hello dude.

Speaker 1 (02:25:04):
Yes, it is I Doctor Strange conjure of a dark magic.

Speaker 2 (02:25:09):
Yes, my power cosmic alerted me to your present.

Speaker 1 (02:25:14):
I have a bit of a superher superhero shindig team happening.
There's a very rad party, my man, because we are
in the sixties.

Speaker 2 (02:25:22):
Are you spell rad? R d.

Speaker 1 (02:25:26):
Interesting? I know I just blew your mind, silver Daddy,
but I need your help. I'm making a team of
rad cats to sort of put the fist to the
man if you know what I mean. And it's gonna
be a happening, seen, man, dude.

Speaker 2 (02:25:44):
I will totally join your be in.

Speaker 1 (02:25:47):
All right, It's gonna be you me, naymore, the sub
Mariner and the Incredible Hulk.

Speaker 2 (02:25:53):
Sound good? Yeah man?

Speaker 1 (02:25:56):
All right, see you at the the bonfire tomorrow at
the my backyard draft draft burning party. It's at the bonfire.

Speaker 4 (02:26:08):
Yeah, dude, I'll fly right over on my surfboard that
has a name that I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (02:26:13):
This sweet If you could picktu some bruise in the
way over, that'd be great too. It's some Bruceki right
by Bright click.

Speaker 1 (02:26:19):
So doctor Strange nay more, the Hulk and Silver Surfer
formed a team. Sounds crazy, right, My surfboard's name is
to me, I just remember quite possibly the worst team
of all talk about four people that should not be
in our team.

Speaker 2 (02:26:35):
This is like the Island of Misfit Toys of the
super it feels like and this may have been what happened,
given the state of Marvel at the time. I just
felt like stan Lee was like, Uh, this guy, this guy,
and this guy got nothing going on.

Speaker 1 (02:26:49):
Okay, great now. The Silver Surfer lived on Earth for
several years and years later after this many Earth time
for oh Noah ran, with the help of Read Richard's
He's Sick, sucessfully escaped Reed Richards was able to take
down the energy barrier that glacked as it put up there.

Speaker 2 (02:27:06):
And that's why we don't have an atmosphere, kid, And
that is what and that was.

Speaker 1 (02:27:10):
The uh there was a hole over Rush. There's a
whole neo zone.

Speaker 6 (02:27:13):
No.

Speaker 1 (02:27:14):
No Silver Surfers first action, Richards. Silver Surfers first action
was to go home to his home planet, zen Law,
and when he arrived, he found the paradise of Zenlaw
destroyed and the residents. The survivors claimed it to be
the Silver Surfer's fault. Galactus had returned to the planet
and consumed the energies of zen Law after the Surfer

(02:27:35):
betrayed him on.

Speaker 2 (02:27:36):
Earth, took a big old bite out of it. And when.

Speaker 1 (02:27:40):
Excuse me, Sinestro Silver Surfer. Wow, great, hey, they're all
space characters. It's an ass. I apologize. When the Silver
Surfer tried to find Shalla Ball, he learned that she
was kidnapped by Mefisto, which is basically the Marvel Comics
version of the Devil. Sometimes he makes deals with Spider Man.
Yes now. In order to save shall he had to

(02:28:01):
return back to Earth because apparently the Double can only
exist on.

Speaker 2 (02:28:03):
Earth and only when he has a human construction.

Speaker 1 (02:28:06):
Which led to Mefisto trapping him on Earth again with
another energy barrier.

Speaker 2 (02:28:10):
Well, the atmosphere is back. Yay, it's the seventies.

Speaker 1 (02:28:13):
And this also would not be the last time that
Mefisto had attempted to use Shalla Ball against Silver Surfer.
It's a repeating motif. This is the only time we're
going to talk about it because mefist though, then next
tries to get Silver Server to attack Shield, the organization
run by Nick Fury and.

Speaker 2 (02:28:28):
If they'll beget Homeland.

Speaker 1 (02:28:30):
But eventually here comes Old Reed Richard's bluffers of Galactus's
and he and he unlocks the new barrier, allowing Silver
Serfer to escape the atmosphere again, allowing Schallibal to escape Earth,
where she eventually becomes the Empress of the News and
Law Planet. That's cool, and she tells Norman pretty okay yep,
And she tells Norn to go away and to never

(02:28:54):
bother her again. Oh no, She's like, you have caused
every problem we've had more Planet, I know, I never
want to see you again.

Speaker 2 (02:29:01):
I thought it was going to be much more like
the Emerald City Guard, who's like, go away and come
back tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (02:29:07):
Now, after these initial adventures, you're going to basically notice
that a lot of the stories are the Silver Surfer
in space, maybe he meets a new Herald of Galactus
maybe he becomes he teams up with Galactus again.

Speaker 2 (02:29:22):
Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he gets trapped on Earth. Repeat, repeat, repeat,
he gets caught in a classic Silver Age loop.

Speaker 1 (02:29:29):
He does, he does a lot of. It is like Galactus,
I'm gonna work for you. No I'm not Galactus. Oh no,
I'm trapped on Earth. No I'm not trapped on Earth.
Oh no, I'm trapped on Earth again. It is it's like,
oh Challa, bah, I hate you norn Rad Oh Shalla, bah,
I hate you normOn.

Speaker 2 (02:29:44):
Happens to all, even the greatest of characters, where.

Speaker 1 (02:29:49):
A Silver Age repeat loop is a great we should
remember that.

Speaker 2 (02:29:52):
Yeah, the Fantasic four are like, oh, we're gonna fight
some other science bad guy.

Speaker 3 (02:29:55):
Oh we won, Hey, doctor, do we.

Speaker 1 (02:29:57):
Still want Or it's like we talk about with all
the Batman Silver Age villains where it's like I'm robbing
a bank. Now I'm in prison.

Speaker 2 (02:30:02):
I'm robbing a bank.

Speaker 3 (02:30:04):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:30:05):
So Ashley, before I go into more of these stories,
I want to ask you, should the Silver Surfer have
always stayed with Galactus? Was it a mistake to free
the Silver Serfer? Because as you're going to learn, I'm
going to tell you about a couple of stories in
the future where he's free, but then there's a couple
other stories where he rejoins with Galactus. Spoilers, I mean

(02:30:28):
for twenty minutes from now.

Speaker 2 (02:30:30):
Yeah, you're asking me to make a judgment having never
read any of these.

Speaker 1 (02:30:35):
I'm just curious from knowing the origin of the character.

Speaker 2 (02:30:39):
You know, I kind of think he should have stayed
with Galactus and only broken for like standalone issues or
arcs later on, when when we were much more arc
driven in our nerves storytelling. Huh, Because I do think,
I do again abide by the church of Grant Morrison,
that there is something in the original initial state of

(02:31:01):
the character to be mind. Now, I do know that
the modern Silver Surfer series has almost nothing. It's a
doctor who type story to talk about it, yep, And
I know that that is considered to be one of
the greatest Silver Surfer stories. So ask me again in
about thirty minutes, and maybe my answer will be different.

(02:31:22):
But if I were to approach Silver Surfer, I would
definitely want it to frame it through his relationship with Galactus.

Speaker 1 (02:31:28):
Right cool, Thank you? Well, it fits into what we're
gonna talk about next, because Eventually, the Silver Surfer made
peace with Galactus when he saved his current herald Frankie
Ray aka Nova, basically a gold babe with fire hair.

Speaker 2 (02:31:41):
That's who she is. A gold babe with fire who
I would like.

Speaker 1 (02:31:45):
That on my doub staff. So he saves her life
and Glactus and them get peace.

Speaker 2 (02:31:50):
Great.

Speaker 1 (02:31:51):
Then Silver Sifer met his next threat and one of
his worst enemies, Thanos Ashley, who is Thanos.

Speaker 2 (02:31:57):
Thanos looks like a California raisin and Homer Simpson had
a baby. And he's a big evil guy with a
floating chair.

Speaker 1 (02:32:05):
Yeah, he's the He's one of the stars of you.

Speaker 2 (02:32:07):
May know him such franchises as the Marble Cinematicator. We
may know him from the highest grossing movie of all time. Yeah,
so it's is both cool and a little frustrating.

Speaker 1 (02:32:17):
Now, Thanos was resurrected to kill half of the universe,
and he proved to be a very powerful bean And
he faked his death for a while so that the
Surfer would not meddle in his affairs while he sought
out the Infinity Gems.

Speaker 2 (02:32:29):
He was like, don't tell anyone on a copy of
Dark Side.

Speaker 1 (02:32:31):
Now, as we talked about The Infinity Gems are these
very powerful imaginary wishstones that glue to a glove. That
Thanos glues to a glove and he just makes wishes
and snaps you things. Yeah, basically yeah, and then Zotter
steals it from him and he loses. That's right, we're
getting to that. Stop jumping ahead of me.

Speaker 2 (02:32:46):
I thought that lesson, I go. We did talk.

Speaker 1 (02:32:49):
Yeah, I just give me a little God, I was
giving a little bit of Ultimate nullifier gough.

Speaker 2 (02:32:53):
I'm sorry. I'm trying to make up for the amount
of interruptions, so I'm looking to interrupt to you even
more before the end of this episode.

Speaker 1 (02:32:59):
Oh you are oh dear lord. Huh talk about an
Infinity Gauntlet. Okay, So Silver Server met up with Thanos
when he had the Infinity Gallant because he's always late,
and he stole the Panos stole the Surfer's soul and
kept it in the Soul Gem. He the Silver Server,
meets Adam Warlock in the soul world, and with his help,

(02:33:20):
he's able to free himself. Na Ashley, who is busily
laughing off light.

Speaker 2 (02:33:24):
The djoko he's always late was so good.

Speaker 1 (02:33:28):
I'm sorry, Ashley, can you tell our listeners.

Speaker 2 (02:33:33):
Who is Adam Warlock? I don't know most of this answer, Okay,
Adam morelod. He is a guy who was born out
of an egg that's that bad and is really powerful
and is also part of helping Nebula rip off her
daddy's wishing glove.

Speaker 1 (02:33:52):
Okay, it's a lot to unpack there.

Speaker 2 (02:33:55):
Like I said, I don't know that much about the character.
And every time we talk about doing a last time
week A yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:34:01):
Well I went here.

Speaker 2 (02:34:02):
It is sure sure.

Speaker 1 (02:34:03):
He is a synthetic being created by human scientist named
the Enclave, and he.

Speaker 2 (02:34:08):
Was born out of an egg.

Speaker 1 (02:34:08):
Though right they were to become he was to become
their ideal template for a new race of humans who
had ruled the Earth. However, their creation called him, rebelled
and turned against them and went on to become Adam
Orle And yes, he was born out of an.

Speaker 2 (02:34:20):
Egg, and he's called Adam because he's the first man.

Speaker 1 (02:34:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:34:24):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (02:34:24):
When Thanos now in possession of the affinity Gaunlet, he
thought himself a god and to please Death, he instantly
wiped out half of all the universe. Love Death and
the Surfer traveled to Earth. The game The Help of
any hero he could find, and he was able to
gather the help of a good old friend.

Speaker 2 (02:34:40):
John Bronco.

Speaker 1 (02:34:46):
Hello, Laureny, did doctor Strange here? I get sense through
the dark magics that.

Speaker 2 (02:34:54):
You were in trouble.

Speaker 4 (02:34:56):
Yeah, bruh, Like I only trust one dude. I trust
him too, who's kind of hot and.

Speaker 2 (02:35:02):
Has great temples and it's not read Richard. So I
thought I would answer your call. I knew it was you.

Speaker 1 (02:35:07):
I could feel it with the Lord and your words
cut me deep. I said you were kind of hot
in a good way. I'm a dark wizard. I like cuts.

Speaker 2 (02:35:15):
Okay, why are you calling me?

Speaker 1 (02:35:21):
I can sense you had trouble. There's someone out there
name of Thanos, and you've come to Earth to gain
any help. You can let me call the Avengers. No,
we don't need the Avengers. We have the Defenders. Cool bro,
And I don't mean that you know the bad The
bad Defender's team with the guy with the glowy fist
in the construction worker, the lawyer, and the the alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (02:35:41):
Like the lawyer room. We like the Norn.

Speaker 1 (02:35:45):
I'm sensing with the band of citter Rock that we
are getting in the Wiiz.

Speaker 2 (02:35:51):
So this Bronc is coming. I should be. This is
going to be a long podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:35:57):
Listeners right now are looking at their hawks and they're
sensing that this episode is off the rails by.

Speaker 2 (02:36:05):
So what else can you sense about the purple guy?
You're gonna help me with the Defenders? Do I need
to know anything else?

Speaker 1 (02:36:11):
He likes to wear fantancy gold hat. I do know that.

Speaker 2 (02:36:14):
Yeah, it's a cool hat. Anything. Hut?

Speaker 1 (02:36:18):
What what I'm getting a message from clear my future life.

Speaker 2 (02:36:21):
I have to go, nor One. I have to go.
I did inviine me to your wedding. We'll see it's
just a shitty counter Reeve's impressions.

Speaker 1 (02:36:29):
So he went back to Thanos. Yep, and the Surfer
actually had a special part in Adam Warlock's plans against
Thanos and the Infinity Glet. While Thanos was distracted by
Earth's heroes, especially Doctor Strange and the Gathered cosmic deities,
the Surfer was able to take the Infinity Gatlet away
from Thanos, and when the time came, he was noticed

(02:36:50):
and failed. He failed to capture the gems from Danos. However,
the Galllet, as astually said earlier, is taken by Nebula
and the heroes need Thanos's help to get it from her.
The Surfer will not accept this. He attacks Thanos. Doctor
Strange makes a dimension for them to fight in and
finally get their crap over. Like Thanos and Surf, Silver Server,
you're gonna put this to seth Thanos and Silver Sofa,

(02:37:12):
you are going to this dimension. I have had enough
of y'all fighting. You will stay in that dimension and
tell you like each other. And then I want a
houghty hand chick and we're gonna eat dinner.

Speaker 2 (02:37:22):
I have to make sure that we hadn't don a
Gayhe list on an Adam Morelock.

Speaker 1 (02:37:24):
I'm very certain we had not.

Speaker 2 (02:37:26):
We have not.

Speaker 1 (02:37:27):
So they battle medieval style with limited powers and basically
faced woo do do do do? And the Surfer emerges
victorious but refuses to kill Thanos. And when the Silver
Surfer turns his back, Thanos attacks him and the Surfer yields,
and eventually the heroes get the control of the gaunlet
and it went to Adam Warlock.

Speaker 2 (02:37:46):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (02:37:47):
Now, during this Infinity Gallet, the Surfer faces many trials
and tests, and in the realm of perception, when he
was trapped inside the Solestone. The Surfer is able to
destroy the demons of guilt and doubt that he's harbored
his entire lifetime. He was able to finally forgive himself
for destroying all those planets, and he was able to

(02:38:09):
get past all of this insane guilt. And this was
the guilt that the Silver Surfer never knew because the
Galactas changed his mind yep, and suppressed you know, and
eventually this is this is the moment where he gets
over it. He finally like is like, Okay, I know
I did a lot of bad. I know I have
a a lot of red in my ledger if you
go by a black widow. But I can move on.

Speaker 2 (02:38:30):
This actually reminds me of John Stewart kind of has
the soccer a couple of times where he's to let
go of what happened with Zanchi. This is like kind
of giving me that great John Stewart. Yes, not John Stewart,
the newscaster.

Speaker 1 (02:38:42):
I mean he he's a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (02:38:45):
Answer that's giving me sort of that same feeling right
where he is unburning himself from this sort of guilt
that he's been carrying at a costume level.

Speaker 1 (02:38:53):
So after all these events, Silver Surfer returned to his
zen law because it's the only place he ever felt comfortable,
and he was going to go and try to talk
to Shallah Ball, but he finds a surprise when he
finds out that his half brother, Fennenrad.

Speaker 2 (02:39:08):
Boy has secret half brother has fallen in.

Speaker 1 (02:39:11):
Love with Shalla Ball, and he soon realizes that his
great cosmic powers only brought him sorrow. And he meets
with Galactys and says, remove the power cosmic from me,
make me normal again, and Galactus refuses, saying that any
being imbued with power cosmic is important to the universe.

Speaker 2 (02:39:30):
Wow, not what I was expecting, you know, Galactys. Hey baby,
Hi Galactus, what's up?

Speaker 1 (02:39:42):
Those asteroids are looking pretty tasty.

Speaker 2 (02:39:45):
Sure, go for it, Ston eat them on with a
little princess.

Speaker 1 (02:39:50):
This is some weird ass asmr uh, we call it
different things on to my home.

Speaker 2 (02:39:59):
Yeah, you know, fair Are you hiring right now?

Speaker 1 (02:40:05):
Galactus's positions off field? I really want the twenty twenty
was a difficulty for Galactus.

Speaker 2 (02:40:12):
Not enough planets to sustain him. I mean he gave
us Pluto back and.

Speaker 1 (02:40:16):
So I hain't no planet with a pandemic and I'm
knowing you that that's fair. You know, you know it
makes a stomach upset.

Speaker 2 (02:40:23):
It makes me upset that the Silver Server comes from
a planet where they cured disease and couldn't pass it
along to us.

Speaker 1 (02:40:30):
Fair, all right. Next, Now, after several other adventures of
various you know, cosmic ecsmic inness, including a fight with Cable.

Speaker 3 (02:40:39):
Oh we love Cable here on the podcast, we enter.

Speaker 1 (02:40:41):
A planet Hulk.

Speaker 2 (02:40:43):
Wow, I remembers we were jumping that much. We are
jumping that much planet A Hulk is dope.

Speaker 1 (02:40:47):
Now. The Surfer was controlled for fighting in the Red
Kings Arena on Sakar against the Hulk, who had been
sent out in space by the Illuminati, and the Hulk
recognizing the Surfer his old defender's teammate.

Speaker 3 (02:40:58):
Oh good, good, good, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (02:41:01):
Yep destroyed the obedience Dick. Excuse me, not Dick.

Speaker 2 (02:41:07):
Dick Grayson is like yo fallen lines.

Speaker 1 (02:41:10):
Oh boy, I meant to say disc. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:41:15):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:41:16):
The Hulk destroyed the obedience disc that controlled the Silver Surfer,
and the Silver Server was free and used his power
cosmic to destroy the other alien Gladier's obedience discs that
allowed their team to escape.

Speaker 2 (02:41:26):
Yeah, this is a big climactic moments in Planet Hall.

Speaker 1 (02:41:29):
And when Noorn offered the Hulk taken back to Earth,
the Hulk declined because he wanted to deliberate the car
from the Red King's tyranny.

Speaker 2 (02:41:35):
Yeah, and he also got a girlfriend there.

Speaker 1 (02:41:38):
He did me in the Hulk not Yeah, yes.

Speaker 2 (02:41:41):
Noran Rad doesn't have any girlfriends.

Speaker 1 (02:41:43):
Uh, he has several. Actually, he has no girlfriend. Happening, dude,
He's a happening dude. Is he a man bo uh kina,
He's a space bow.

Speaker 2 (02:41:52):
Space bow.

Speaker 1 (02:41:53):
Now we're going to talk about Annihilation. Oh, your favorite
at least the Silver Surfers parts of Annihilations.

Speaker 2 (02:41:59):
Okay, that's fine, the cosmic e cosmic Evanta of Marble,
that's not fair.

Speaker 1 (02:42:02):
Now, during the events of Annihilation, the Silver Surfer became
aware of the invasion of his universe after the destruction
of Zandar. He was able to save a bunch of
various peoples and that we're all trying to capture Galactus's
heralds for their new leader's Annihilis. Annihilis, of course, is
this kind of green bat creature from the Negative Zone.
He's a fantasy poor villain. Yep, and he basically annihilation

(02:42:24):
is Basically Annihilus lives in the negative zone. He figured
it a way out. He has an army full of
bug creatures and he's coming for our dimension.

Speaker 2 (02:42:31):
Yeah, it's like what if locus plague from space?

Speaker 1 (02:42:34):
Basically yeah, and they called it the Annihilation Wave. Now
great names, by the way, naming convention. Now. Galactus asked
the Silver Surfer to stand with him as his full
herald once more. The Silver Surfer accepted, and Galactus made
him even more powerful and augmented several of his abilities.

Speaker 2 (02:42:50):
Did he get more muscles on his muscles?

Speaker 1 (02:42:52):
Yes, he did, and he became more reflective. The Annihilation
Wave arrived. Shout out to that colorist and the pieces
of this various augmentation, and they took both Galactus and
the Silver Surfer prisoner. The Silver Surfer was held in
a stasis fherewell, the power cosmic was drained from him
and Galactus, and this power cosmic draining technology had been

(02:43:15):
given to Annihilus by Thaous remember him.

Speaker 2 (02:43:18):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (02:43:18):
Eventually, Drags, the Destroyer of the Guardians of the Galaxy,
was able to free the Silver Surfer, and the Silver
Surfer stayed as Galactus's herald with another herald, Stardust, and
actually a trust was re earned between Galactus and the
Silver Surfer as the two seeked a purpose for Galactus
besides Galactys being the destroyer of world.

Speaker 2 (02:43:40):
Besides him being hungry, yes.

Speaker 1 (02:43:42):
And realizing that his duty would always be to Galactus's herald,
the Silver Surfer is forced to choose between you know,
these emotions of freedom and continuing to serve this cosmic
consciousness that is Galactus. Now, after some time, the Silver
Surfer takes Galactus to Soul our Sun, and feeds him
and rejuvenates him, actually removing one billion years out of

(02:44:05):
our son's lifespan thanks a lot Silver Surfer.

Speaker 2 (02:44:09):
It is called Soul. I forget that sometimes it is
called Soul.

Speaker 1 (02:44:13):
Now the Server, a Surfer, and Galactus realize that an
object of Immen's power, the seed of a new as
Guardian world tree, has appeared in the universe. It appears
that this world seed that will grow into a world tree,
might have enough power to sate Galactus's hunger for all
the time, and this is very intriguing to Glactus and

(02:44:33):
the Silver Server. However, they as Guardians, want to keep
the seed to make a new World Tree, of course,
and the Surfer helps Galactus try to get the seed.
The Silver Server fights Store several times. There's no clear winner.
Thorisa's day a lot and Galactys beats Odin Wow, yep,
almost eats his other eye. But then the Surfer seems

(02:44:54):
to have a change of heart and actually ask Galactus
that we'll find another way, and they go somewhere else. Wow,
world eaters, I've just heard the sound of ghl intern
cat Brago, who is somewhere in the studio.

Speaker 2 (02:45:08):
He's directly behind me. Oh okay, yeah, I'm just stuck
on the idea of what would the second world tree
be called? This is the first one is called I.

Speaker 1 (02:45:17):
Don't know that size the process what youid yourself too?

Speaker 2 (02:45:22):
Electric booglo?

Speaker 1 (02:45:24):
Okay. Eventually, during this because during this period, this is
when Asgard was on Earth.

Speaker 2 (02:45:32):
Oh yeah, it wasn't it in Oklahoma?

Speaker 1 (02:45:34):
It was in Broxton, Oklahoma.

Speaker 2 (02:45:35):
Which yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:45:36):
Now, a human preacher from Brox then Jesse Custer Yep,
asks Glactys to stop literally this is hey, can you
stop this? And the devour does not listen. Eventually a
deal is struck. The preacher becomes Prater the new Herald
of Galactus.

Speaker 2 (02:45:56):
Oh, I see they've been reading Jupiter Jet and Jupiter
Jet and the Forgotten Radio.

Speaker 1 (02:45:59):
Yes, the Surfer in Return, this was actually published pre
Jupiter Jet. I know the Surfer and Return will stay
on Earth and guard the new Seed which Loki hid
inside the Old World Tree. They all I remember this.
We all agree that Galactus may come and consume the
seed after the as Guardians eventually die out, which will
be hundreds of millions of years in the future. And
this being like Galactus yep, and the Surfer's job is

(02:46:21):
to watch over it till then. Galactus then changes Noran's powers,
tethering him to the seed so that his powers will
wane the further he goes away from the seed. He
also gives Silver Surfer an ability that will matter a
lot in a future storyline. The Silver Surfer finally gets
the ability to turn back into his Zen lobbyan form

(02:46:43):
looking human quote unquote human, even though he's in lobbying
the first time since he became the Silver Surfer, simply
by wishing it. And when he does this, he gains
back full control of his emotions, his consciousness.

Speaker 2 (02:46:56):
Ela interesting. Yes, so he becomes I fully realized he
would not just in a huge and now he's a
fully royalized human in both forms. Now that's cool. Yeah,
I like that.

Speaker 1 (02:47:04):
Yes, it's really cool. Now how does the seed tie
into Silver Surfer travel in space? Don't worry, it's forgotten
basically after the story.

Speaker 2 (02:47:12):
Yes, because we never get another world tree.

Speaker 1 (02:47:14):
Yeah, and the Surfer eventually left his vigil. He eventually
parted ways again again with Glactus, and this leads us
to a storyline called The Girl on the Board. And
this is a storyline. This is a run of Silver
Serfer comic books that I consider to be the greatest
run on Silver Surfer ever, written by the amazing Dan Slott.
I'm not going to give you everything in the storyline,

(02:47:36):
but we are going to talk about it a lot
because I want you to feel the emotion of the ending,
and because I think if you hear it, you might
read it.

Speaker 2 (02:47:46):
If you describe it, they will read it. Yes, trying
to do a field of dreams. Yeah, I know that
his lady friend has a lovely ladybook dress.

Speaker 1 (02:47:55):
That is correct, and that it becomes very important later on. Really,
thank you for bringing it up.

Speaker 2 (02:48:01):
I gotta love that all Red design team.

Speaker 1 (02:48:04):
You should share a picture of Dawn is her name,
like the Dawn of Don's dress, the Ladybug dress, so
that everybody will know. This will matter later on when
I finish the story. And yes, Dawn like the Dawn
is also I think on purpose because dance Lot's a
very good writer. Yes, so co sign silver surfers out

(02:48:25):
in the universe. One day He's like, oh, hang ten
Man Cosmic, Yeah, whoa we made him?

Speaker 2 (02:48:30):
Keanu Reeves love it.

Speaker 1 (02:48:31):
Yeahs I think would actually make a great silver surfer.

Speaker 2 (02:48:34):
I agree, And there's always those rumors that he's going
to be in the MC. The Silver Server was approached
by the Incredulous Z, who chose him to be the
impericons Champion to fight the Never Queen. What does that mean? Matter?

Speaker 3 (02:48:47):
Those are words for sure for the surfer.

Speaker 1 (02:48:49):
To comply with this request, Zed kidnapped the person who
was supposed to be the most important one in the
universe for Silver Server, determined by a machine which will
looked into the surfer's So the Incredible that.

Speaker 2 (02:49:02):
Is puter decided who his most important person was.

Speaker 1 (02:49:04):
And that person was and that person turned out to
be Don Greenwood, a young woman who lived in Maine,
who the Silver Surfer has never met before.

Speaker 2 (02:49:15):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (02:49:16):
So, after defeating the Never Queen, the Surfer invited Dawn
after this adventure, this lady that he had never met
until this adventure to travel the units were with him
since he she had never left her hometown before, and
he liked her general demeanor and thought she was really cool. So,
after lending Dawn co control of his surfboard, to which

(02:49:37):
she then named to me all in one word, which
is basically the phrase is making fun of the phrase
of the classic stan Lee Surfer free.

Speaker 2 (02:49:45):
To me my board or to me my board, whoa
exactly like that.

Speaker 1 (02:49:52):
Eventually, over a series of several adventures, these two begin
to develop a relationship, and Noren spends more and more
time outside of his sol over form to be with
her to look human and eventually down confesses her true
feelings to Norin. While visiting Don's family on Earth, the
Silver Server vended off a zen lobbying invasion led none

(02:50:12):
other by Empress Shalla Ball, who become the successor of
the Mantle called the Keeper of the Great Truth, and
using a powerful reality warping device called the Illuminatrix, the
invading aliens attempted to replace all of our's culture with
Zen laws. Norn stopped the Zen lobbyings and reverse the
damage caused by this device, though at the cost of

(02:50:36):
all traces of zenlobbying culture in the universe, and his
status is one of those people being erased. Silver Server
goes from being the savior of Zen law to basically
wiping it from existence.

Speaker 2 (02:50:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:50:52):
Before returning to space, Norn reunited Dawn with her strange mother,
Libby Wyndham, though the union did more harm the good,
and Norman was able to find her through the power cosmic.
But you find out that Don's mother had actually abandoned
her family and didn't want Don, and so it wasn't
a happy reunion. That is sad, yes, and that is
going to be a powerful metaphor because Down is very

(02:51:15):
much about her father, very much about her sister. That's
the reason why she never left home. She cares about
her family deeply. And even though the surfer and them
go on many adventures, they constantly keep returning to Maine.
And there will be one point where I'll seem like
Dawn abandoned her family, not the case, not on purpose.

Speaker 2 (02:51:31):
That's interesting. So I've always kind of thought that the
Silver Surfer seemed sad he is, so this is interesting
to me that that instinct was correct.

Speaker 1 (02:51:39):
We'll buckle up. So there are more adventures that, of
course I'm not going into. Don and Noran returned to
Earth briefly for a time to meet Don's newborn niece, Regina,
and when they arrived, they learned that Don's father, reg
had died of heart issues while they were in space.
Oh no, and Don felt the need to say goodbye

(02:51:59):
to her and asked Norn to travel back in time
so that she could see her father one last time. Now, Norn,
after a bunch of like no, no, no, no, man,
we can't do you can't Rufus told us to not
go on the phone. Yeah, okay. Norn eventually decided to
do this because he loved her, and they time travel
and they overshoot completely. They bungle this bad and they

(02:52:25):
end up in the time before our big bang. Oh wow,
in the previous.

Speaker 2 (02:52:32):
One, baby Glactys. Now they have baby Galen.

Speaker 1 (02:52:36):
There is absolutely no way to return home because they're
trapped in a different universe. There are different rules for time,
they're different rs of physics, Norn's powers kind of basically
don't work, and they accidentally run into Galen of talk
baby Galacdys, baby Galactys. Remember all that Glactys infro. This

(02:52:57):
isn't the previous so they're stuck on in this previous universe,
and so together Norn and Don explore this other universe
for decades. They get married and Don hsus human yep,
and Norn uses his power cosmic to age with her,

(02:53:18):
and as Don reaches her golden years, she and Norn
eventually settle on Ta Galen's home planet and to make
up for their inability to continue exploring because Don couldn't
do it, she wasn't up to it anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:53:31):
Is what happened is both to us.

Speaker 1 (02:53:33):
Norn spends the rest of Don's days sharing his adventures,
every single one of his adventures from her from his
time before he met her, and on her deathbed, he
finishes with the story of how they first met Ah
and Don dies in the previous universe. Now norn Rad
is immortal, yeah, because he got that power cosmic, so

(02:53:55):
he had some more time coming. And then that previous
universe decided to end, and Noran was like, I'm going
to hatch a ride in galen spaceship because I know
exactly where he's going, I know exactly who he's going
to become. So that's how I'm going to survive. And
he took Don's buried remains, he converted them into energy,
and he took it with him because he wanted to

(02:54:17):
bury her back in Maine. Aw So he goes to
Galen's incubator, the only thing that can survive. As we
always know, he does survive. And with this, the Silver
Surfer is able to survive the death of the previous
universe and to emerge into his natural universe. And at
the start of creation, the Surfer fired Don's bolt of

(02:54:38):
energy into the start of creation dawn uh huh, and
it became the very first light in the universe.

Speaker 2 (02:54:47):
I was gonna say, if he made certain energy, he's
got to make.

Speaker 1 (02:54:49):
Her a star let. There be light and it forever
echoes throughout time. And in this moment, Noran realizes that
this energy that was from the previous universe is changed
when it comes into the new universe, and it becomes
the energy signature of the power cosmic, taking on the
form of red with black dots.

Speaker 2 (02:55:11):
So she's been with him all along.

Speaker 1 (02:55:14):
The Kirby crackle is down Greenwood. That's cool, and that
is the reason why her that is why her dress
is Yeah. The Surfer proceeded to spend the eons alone
waiting for this universe to catch up to his normal time.
He had many conversations with the cosmic entity Eternity, and eventually,

(02:55:35):
when he got to the time that the Silver Surfer
would come to existence, Norn disguised himselves so the Wooden
cross Path was his previous version and took on the
name of nor Dashville, and he shifted out a phase
with existence every once in a while. Eventually, Norville got
a little bored and he traveled to Earth and became

(02:55:56):
a regular visitor of the Greenwood in Dawn childhood home
and bed and Breakfast that she ran with her father
and sister. He actually went there several times as Norville Rapaport,
and he was able to watch Don grow up, and
he spent more and more time with her on each
visit until time eventually caught up to the creation and

(02:56:17):
he saw that Down got zapped away to their very
first adventure, when the Silver Surfer was threatened with the
ransom of the most important person in his entire existence,
of course, being silver Surfer. And at that moment, that
is where the Silver Surfer went back to his family
when current time caught up, and told the family the
story of her death. And that is the overarching mechanism

(02:56:42):
of the Dan Slot storyline. There are so many more
adventures in there. It's literally, I think twenty eight issues.
It's amazing. I didn't also tell you every single detail.
I wanted to get you the emotional hook because I
knew I sound like it's gonna wreck me, it will
wreck you. I also wanted to to get you enough
to hook if I thought, I thought, if you knew
the hook, you'd read the story. This is the Dance

(02:57:05):
Slot story, without a doubt. It's the greatest Silver Surfer
story of all time.

Speaker 2 (02:57:10):
Yep. Excellent. And then comes last.

Speaker 1 (02:57:13):
Year's Silver Surfer Black, where the Silver Surfer turns black,
the color black not actually you know, you guys say,
since it's you know, but it's pretty current and it's
tight into all the stuff's going on right now, so
I actually don't really want to talk about it. I
want to leave that one for you and say.

Speaker 2 (02:57:25):
Though for recasting the Silver Surfer, I think you cast
a black actor, it would be really good. Why not?

Speaker 1 (02:57:30):
And that is it for the geekisher Lesson on Silver Surfer.
That was wild, Yes, in a.

Speaker 2 (02:57:37):
Way that I was not prepared for, both in terms
of the story itself and the emotionality. Good job. All right,
let's going to recommend reading where Prosser Jason is going
to recommend it by just stuff that you can read.
I beat. We can guess what one of them is
going to be if you were as intrigued as I
was by the Silver Surfer.

Speaker 1 (02:57:51):
Lesson Number one, of course, is Silver Surfer Volume one,
New Dawn. This is the first volume of the dance slot.
Run read it and just know you know where this
is going. If you've listened to this podcast, it is
well worth the read. It's look, I'm going to say this,
it's it's very compared to Doctor Who. I think it's

(02:58:12):
a high compliment. I will also say that like that
you know the Doctor is going to regenerate to me,
it doesn't matter that you know that Dawn is going
to die, Yeah, because her journey is fantastic and I
would say definitely read it. There also is a giant
omnibus that's out of pat It is too expensive and

(02:58:34):
very hard to find. This is a soft cover, Go
buy it. Number two is Silver Surfer Parable. This is
the Silver Surfer storyline written by stan Lee and the
French artist Jean Gerrad aka Mobius. I didn't talk anything
about this, but basically it's about a star falling to
Earth and the Silver Surfer wrecking with God. And how

(02:58:57):
does God work in a Silver Surfer storyline when he
knows Galactus?

Speaker 2 (02:59:01):
Well, that's that, you know. That also ties back to
what you said though in the beginning when I said
the Goths squad yep, and you're like, well, all the
other gods exist, so yep.

Speaker 1 (02:59:09):
And then we come to Silver Surfer the Epic collection,
and that is about the Infinity Gauntlet, and it's really
really great.

Speaker 2 (02:59:19):
Yes, I do believe we have recommended that in the
past as well for some of our Cosmic Key story
one hundred hundred percent. And now we're going to go
into the.

Speaker 1 (02:59:33):
Today. I make no demands, no threats, but one day
I shall voice demands and walls shall obey them. Listen
to the rule of lot of Varia. The Glorious Doctor
doom As your geek history lesson is now in session.

(03:00:06):
Hello and welcome to Geek History Lesson. I am Jason
doom Inmates, I.

Speaker 3 (03:00:14):
Am Ashley Victoria Robinson.

Speaker 2 (03:00:15):
Welcome to your mind University because you have stumbled onto
the podcast where we take one character contract or evil
villain from popular culture and teach you everything you need
to know about them in about an hour, and we're
doing that this week. But this week we're doing a
very special episode. That's right because well it is our

(03:00:35):
two hundred and fiftieth episode. We're halfway to five hundred. Wow,
this is a pretty crazy. Again, we were the fifty
year of this podcast, two hundred fifty episodes.

Speaker 1 (03:00:46):
That is a thing.

Speaker 2 (03:00:46):
I mean, we're ancient in podcast years and podcast years,
we are, but we always like to do on the
fiftieth episodes characters that are favorites of ours, Beginning with
our fiftieth episode where Jason taught us.

Speaker 1 (03:00:58):
About it was likely, and then I don't remember what
the one fifty episode was aha, I believe it was
Jason todd As or was that two hundred? I have
no idea.

Speaker 2 (03:01:07):
We're nailient. One of them was Less Coast Avengers. I
think that was one hundred. We don't have to name
all we do fun one. Let's let's move on.

Speaker 1 (03:01:16):
This is not the podcast, is not the episode of
history of what episode has we done? This is an
episode about Doctor Doo, the villain of the Marvel Universe,
the villain of Fantastic four. Ashley, Why did we pick
him for our two hundred and fiftieth episode. There's nothing
timeing in Doctor Doom. We think the Fantastic Four are
coming in the Marblestinematic universe, but we have no guarantees.

Speaker 2 (03:01:38):
Now, we picked doctor Doom because he is our single
most requested lesson in the history of geek history lesson
that is true, and he's a character who Jason is
very passionate about.

Speaker 1 (03:01:50):
We talked about a lot a lot of times. We
talked about doing a doctor Doom episode.

Speaker 2 (03:01:54):
And we did an extensive Fantastic four series of episodes,
and so now we're here to flipped to the other side.

Speaker 1 (03:02:02):
Doom. He is here.

Speaker 2 (03:02:04):
That's right, this is my Doom voice. It's very good.

Speaker 1 (03:02:08):
He's very metallic. But he's also not American.

Speaker 2 (03:02:12):
No true, very true. I am romani.

Speaker 1 (03:02:17):
Yes, yes, that's true. This episode was suggested by Owen
Hobbes Lee Jones one two two, three, Epic Face Master,
Alexander Ebert, Dominic Tan, Roger Murphy, Christopher McKee, l Bird Zero,
Nick Joseph, Bob Flores, Roman Sallas, Benjamin Kesselman, Jason Jetsak,

(03:02:39):
Daryl Jason Hurd, Victor Rebella, Matthew Carum, Johnny Lee, Matt Mitchell,
At gu Doug At Casey Batman zero three, four At Keefer,
Underscore XL and at super Gerbil.

Speaker 2 (03:02:53):
And I'm sure there are more people we didn't put
on this list. I'm sure people ask us in real life.

Speaker 1 (03:02:58):
Those are the ones we can find. Those are the
ones that we recorded. So let's move into the ten
cent origin of Doctor Doom. This is a two hundred
and fifty time we've done this.

Speaker 2 (03:03:06):
It's true. We'll see if we can describe it accurately.
This is the first part of the podcast where Professor
Jason is going to teach you all of the creators,
power sets and important things you're going to need to
know in case you go to a formerly Fox themed
party and someone says.

Speaker 1 (03:03:20):
Hey, what's up with the fantastic for Yes now, of course,
the funnest thing about this is that you know, I'm
surprise you didn't go the cocktail party that is in Laveria.
Oh well, next time, take you two. So the publisher
is Marvel Comics. The first appearance is the Fantastic Four
number five in July of nineteen sixty two, created by

(03:03:44):
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, now his alter ego. His
full actual name is Victor Vaughan Doom. His team affiliations,
of course are the Sorcerer's Supreme, the Cabal, the Intelligentsia,
the Future Foundation, the Astonishing Avengers, the Avengers, the Lethal Legion.

(03:04:05):
His noble aliases are rebum Ali and the Infamous Iron Man,
and his abilities are he has a genius level intellect technopathy,
He has energy absorption and projection, mind transference with demonic
summarine and dark mysticism and sorcery. He has armor that
had grants him superhuman strength, gamlet lasers, force blast flight,
and force field generation. And also he can build various

(03:04:28):
high tech weapons and gadgets.

Speaker 2 (03:04:31):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (03:04:32):
Yeah, it's a lot of stuff there, and almost none
of it makes sense together. Oh, we'll get that. Be
warned as well. This is Doctor James is one of
my favorite characters. We probably will go longer than a
normal episode of Kihitchlass and so buckle.

Speaker 3 (03:04:45):
Up, my friend junaow where we're going a bit longer,
we'll see.

Speaker 1 (03:04:48):
But before we and now we're going to move into
history one O one.

Speaker 2 (03:04:51):
The main meat.

Speaker 1 (03:04:53):
We're not doing meat cutes. Oh I forgot we're going, Yes,
we should do meet you. My bad. That's okay, My apologies, Ashley.
Let's go to the meat cute of Doctor Doom. Ashley,
how did you meet Doctor Doom?

Speaker 2 (03:05:04):
I don't know. I'm sorry, that's okay. Formatting is tough sometimes,
I don't know. I don't know because I knew about
the Fantastic Four from and I think we've talked about
this in the past. The Burger King action figures. What,
oh yeah, they made in the Night. Yeah, I had
an invisible woman who if you put her in warm
water when invisible and my they're really crummy. Mine got

(03:05:26):
stuck so she was kind of half phasing, which is
cool now but was not cool when I was a
tiny child. And I know we had the Doctor Doom
action figure, so I assume that's where I first met
Doctor Dum.

Speaker 1 (03:05:37):
That's really cool. What did do you remember what any
of the other figures did?

Speaker 2 (03:05:41):
Reid had arms? That if you pushed in his back,
I think they extended. I honestly don't think Ben did anything.
I think he was just huge. And maybe Johnny glowed
in the dark because there's no way he lit up
because none of those cheap emial type toys light up.

Speaker 1 (03:06:02):
I wish, I wish he lit on fire. I wish
that was like the Happy Meal toylet like just he
was a lighter. He's a straight up cigarette lighter.

Speaker 2 (03:06:10):
Someday I'll buy that Seestarm action figure off eBay for
three dollars.

Speaker 1 (03:06:13):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (03:06:14):
So that's where I first met doctor Doom. But I
mean not with like any of the dynamic interesting things
that you're gonna tell us about him.

Speaker 3 (03:06:22):
I thought he was a robot for a really long time.

Speaker 2 (03:06:24):
Oh, he looks like a rost sometimes he is a robot.
That's also true. Jason, tell me about Wizard Magazine. No, oh,
breaking the mold. I'm not gonna tell you about Wizard Magazine.
Not everything I do is lead to Biggsichele.

Speaker 3 (03:06:38):
Well, then tell me where you first met Victor von do.

Speaker 1 (03:06:42):
I met Victor von Doom in a Marvel event called
Heroes Reborn. Now Heroes were Born, of course, is the
event where Jim Lee and Rob Leifield were licensed the
Fantastic Four, The Avengers, The Hulk, iron Man, and it
was Avengers, Captain America, iron Man, and Fan four. Those
were the four titles and they got to take them

(03:07:02):
over for twelve issues. And before that. I didn't really
read the Fantastic Four of the Avengers because I thought
they were silly, but I thought the artwork was so good.
I did see a preview in Wizard Magazine and in
Fantastic four number three, volume two, drawn by Jim Lee,
written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi. I believe you're
introduced to doctor Doom, and it was my first introduction

(03:07:22):
into the character. Now he's also an issue four. There's
all the covers for the Heroes Were Born series are amazing,
and I believe the cover of four is like it's
Doom extending his hand towards the reader and the Fantasic
four are in between his fingers.

Speaker 2 (03:07:36):
Okay, I will look for that shirt.

Speaker 1 (03:07:38):
It's very cool. I believe it's the covered of Fantastic
four volume two, number four, great or five. It's one
of those two, but you recognize it. It's an amazing
Jim Lee drawing the fantasic four is so good, and
that was my introduction to Doom, because Doom later shows
up and he's involved in almost every issue of the series,
and then also in Heroes Reborn he becomes the enemy
of the end of the Iron Man Run, he shows

(03:07:59):
up there too, and he was so I was so
enraptured by this guy because when they introduced him here
is are Born, he was more mysterio. They didn't drop
the thing of like, oh, we went to college together
until late late into the run, and.

Speaker 2 (03:08:10):
Having had no previous experience with the team, that was
a bombshell.

Speaker 1 (03:08:13):
For you exactly. So he was just sort of this
like weird king who really hated them and dressed like
Iron Man, And I was like, who's this guy?

Speaker 2 (03:08:20):
That's so funny because you could also vaguely use it
as a description for Magneto for a little while when
he's off in like Genosha and Wunda God and stuff
like that.

Speaker 1 (03:08:27):
Yeah, it's not like it's not until like issue four,
So he's introduced in three of that series, and that's
how issue four they revealed the origin. But it's not
like till like way into the origin or way into
the issue. Excuse me. So that was my first introduction
to Dr Doom.

Speaker 3 (03:08:40):
Very interesting, all right.

Speaker 1 (03:08:41):
So now let's move into the istory one on one, Yes.

Speaker 2 (03:08:43):
Which is the main meat of the lesson that Professor
Jason is thrilled by, where he's going to teach us
everything we need to know about.

Speaker 1 (03:08:48):
Dr Doom the Fantastic Core. Little do they dream? They
are not but pawns in the hands of Doctor Doom.
This is the first thing that Doctor Doom ever says
in comic books ever ever.

Speaker 2 (03:09:02):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (03:09:03):
So but before we go into his comic books, we
had to jump into the publication history first. Yes, Let's
Doom was conceived by stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Of course,
with the Fantastic Four title performing very well, Lee and
Kirby were trying to dream up a soul stirring, super
sensational new villain, as they called it. Looking for a name,
Stanley lashed onto Doctor Doom, which he thought was just

(03:09:25):
very simple, and due to the rush to publish the
issue that he was going to debut in, they were
not able to give the character a full origin story
until Fantastic four Annual number two, two years after his debut.
He gets like a little tiny origin. We'll talk about
that briefly.

Speaker 2 (03:09:39):
Which is funny because it's sort of in the tradition
of a doctor Moriarty type foe in Sherlock, where we
never hear about him until the story he shows up in.

Speaker 1 (03:09:46):
Yes, now, Jack Kirby modeled Doom after Death the Grim
Reaper with his armor standing in for the character skeleton.
And now we're going to go to the fictional history.
Let's now. Victor was the child of Romani travelers in Latvaria,
which is a fictional small European country. Victor's mother, Cynthia,
was killed soon after she called upon the demon Mefisto

(03:10:08):
for power. Ashley, do you know who Mefisto is? One
of the Marvel Comics universe devils. He's basically the devil
in Marvel Comics, so they don't have to call anybody Satan. Yeah. So,
but he's basically the devil, But yes, there are others.
He's kind of the main one. He's the one that
took away Spider Man's marriage.

Speaker 2 (03:10:23):
That's right, Yes, screw you, Mefisto. I liked married Peter Parker.

Speaker 1 (03:10:27):
Now, Victor's mother Cynthia left Victor with his father asking
him to protect him from Mefisto. And Victor's father, Werner,
was a doctor who was called upon King Vladimir of
Latoveria to treat his wife. Despite his father's attempts to
care for King Vladimir's wife, the noble woman died and
Werner von dum fled with young Victor von Doom on

(03:10:50):
a cold winter's night, trying to avoid being murdered by
this king. Victor survived the cold, but unfortunately his father
did not, and when Victor woke up in the morning,
they were in this they were actually outside. They were
in a place Victor's father's body had frozen dead around him,
and Victor, as a child, was unable to break free.

(03:11:12):
Oh that's awful, yes, So Victor was eventually left with
his father's best friend, Boris, and Victor later discovered his
mother's mystical books and artifacts, and with them he was
able to teach himself sorcery. He made several unsuccessful attempts
to free his mother's soul from Mefisto, but also mysticism

(03:11:33):
was not the only way that Victor was trying to
free his mother. He was also trying to use science
and he quickly excelled in science. And the one thing
you learn about Victor von Doom is if he puts
his mind to it, he excels at it, no matter
what it is.

Speaker 3 (03:11:46):
It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (03:11:47):
He's a real crux of some big early themes in Marvel,
the magic and science and how they intertwine.

Speaker 1 (03:11:52):
And we're gonna talk about a lot of the magic
and science and magic and science and stuff like that.
This is very important to do him because of Doom
come off as a science character, but he's actually steeped
in mysticism.

Speaker 2 (03:12:03):
Can't wait.

Speaker 1 (03:12:04):
So Victor developed several inventions and have eventually got the
eye of and gained a scholarship to Empire State University
in New York. While attending the school, Victor met Reid Richards,
who would later become his enemy Mister Fantastic, and Benjamin J. Grimm,
who would later become the thing in school. Red and
Doom were considered to be equals and scholarly rivals, and

(03:12:27):
it was understood in many circles that it was uncertain
of who was the smarter one. That will come into
play later. Okay, one day Victor designed an invention to
rescue his mother, which would become his greatest downfall. Richards
attempted to warn Victor of the error in his calculations
with the machine. However, Von Doom's arrogance refused to let

(03:12:48):
him listen to read who he saw as his you
know lesser, and the machine then exploded, scarring his face
and led to his expulsion from Empire University. Disgrace and bitter,
Doom traveled the world. Eventually, he came upon a small
Tibetan village of monks who assisted him and created a
futuristic suit of armor eagle excuse me, eager not eagle.

(03:13:12):
To wear the suit, Doom placed the still hot steel
still hot steel faceplight to his face, making him even
more scarred than before. Now Ashley, I'm gonna ask you
a question here, Okay. Normally, in most Doom's origins, it
is said that his face is horrifically scarred by the

(03:13:34):
accident that he blows up in the university that read
warned of him. But John Byrne, legendary Fantastic Four writer
and artist, said during his Fantastic Before run he showed
that Doom's face only had a minor scar from the
Empire State accident. And he believed himself to be super ugly.

(03:13:55):
Now it is this incident of the monks giving him
the face plight that was still too hot that he
just put to complete the armor that is said to
make his face look like pizza. However, Jack Kirby, the
character's co creator, believe that the audience should never ever
ever see Doom's face. So I have a question to

(03:14:17):
ask you. Where do you come down on the Doom argument?
Should his face be scarred from the Empire state accident
from the monks? Should we never see Doom's face? Where
do you come down on this?

Speaker 3 (03:14:29):
I kind of like the idea that we never see.

Speaker 1 (03:14:32):
It, but he just refers that it's horribly st Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:14:34):
There. It's kind of like when you see the Phantom
of the Opera's face because whatever you're imagining is so
much worse than whatever it is. The Flash does that
with Bavatar, where like we hear that it's very all
in it, and then we see him disfigured and it
looks dumb. So I can definitely And this is funny

(03:14:56):
because this goes to our discussion and Shaam about like
who is more proprietarily important to a character? Who can
craft more of it. Just to my taste, I like
the idea of never seeing his human face because that
also and that puts up another barrier of like, he
is a bad guy and so he doesn't even present
as what we recognize as human. I think that's interesting
from a narrative perspective. I think if we are going

(03:15:18):
to see his face, I like the idea that he
burns himself because to me, that shows just how arrogant
Victor von Doom is.

Speaker 1 (03:15:25):
In the John Byrne Run it was a tiny scar
on his chin. You did see it, sure, and it was.

Speaker 2 (03:15:30):
Very very and I can understand why you would be
self conscious about that, particularly on your face.

Speaker 1 (03:15:34):
Yeah, kind of from the corner of his mouth to
the very end of his chin, which.

Speaker 2 (03:15:38):
Not that probably not that much geography. It'd be covered.
You grow a nice beard and cover it up if
you heard it. But I like the I like the
idea that he literally could not wait to power up
and wound up being punished for that. I think that
punishment for an act of hubris is also very interesting
just on an archetypical level.

Speaker 1 (03:15:56):
So cool.

Speaker 2 (03:15:57):
I guess I have two answers instead of one.

Speaker 1 (03:15:59):
That's fine as naming himself Doctor Doom. Victor returned to
Latveria and killed Baron Vladimir, the man who chased his
father away and imprisoned his son Rudolpho, and gained control
over Latveria. Rodolpho would escape and lead a rebellion and
become a thorn and Doom side for years until his death,

(03:16:19):
and Rodolpho's younger brother, Zorba, would also take over where
his brother had left off. However, Doom, using his intellect
and his inventions, was never threatened by these two brothers
and soon made Latveria one of the most thriving nations
in Eastern Europe. In fact, it became a paradise compared

(03:16:40):
to other nations which at the time had been suffering
under USSR control.

Speaker 7 (03:16:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:16:45):
Yeah, and as a result of we're not that really
far away from World War two at that point, no,
so you have a lot of countries trying to rebuild.
So making Latveria this paradise or the Shangri La is
a very interesting choice.

Speaker 1 (03:16:56):
And it needs to be noted that the people of
Latveria love of Doctor Doom, which which.

Speaker 2 (03:17:02):
Comes into playing a lot of Fantastic Four stories.

Speaker 1 (03:17:04):
They love they adore him so many many many years later,
Doom would confront the Fantastic Four in issue five of
their very first series. Here's exactly what happened in that issue. Okay, now,
the issue starts were Doctor Doom flies his helicopter over
the Backster Building. What's the Backster Building, Ashley.

Speaker 2 (03:17:24):
It's the giant skyscraper in New York City where the
Fantastic Four lives and works.

Speaker 1 (03:17:28):
It's agreed, Yes, I agree that that is right. He
drops a giant net over the Backster Building, exclaiming that
no one can escape it. You didn't do it in
the voice, no one could escape my net.

Speaker 2 (03:17:41):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (03:17:41):
Now the image is fully in my brain.

Speaker 1 (03:17:43):
For a genius a net over a giant skyscrapers. It's
not very smart, but you know. Okay. Then he pulls
out a megaphone and yells at them it's Doctor Reid
recognizes the voice and tells a very short version of
Doom's origin. Doctor Doom then yells to send Sue Storm
out to him so that she can be his hostage

(03:18:05):
while the men do what he says, and he opens
a section of the net for Sue to walk out of,
and then begins a weird sequence where they communicate back
and forth using flare guns for yes answer. So basically
it goes like, dude, they're playing twenty questions. So Doom
is saying like, you will send out the woman and
they go shoot your flair gud oh yes, and they

(03:18:29):
go shooture flare gub twice. You know, it's ridiculous because again,
for a super genius, why couldn't he build some sort
of communicator. This isn't that far ahead of Star Trek.
So anyways, have a phone in the helicopter, right, Yeah,
he's a super genius. You can have a phone in

(03:18:49):
the helicutter. We have phones. This time, Doom captures them
all takes them back to lot Varia in his castle.
He pets his giant tiger beside his throne room and
tells them about his plant. He has built a tin
travel device and he wants the Fantastic four of the
Men to go back into the past to obtain the
treasure of black Beard. Oh boy, so he sends them

(03:19:09):
back in time Benjamin Grimm. The thing dresses like a
pirate with a beard and an eye patch, and nobody
notices that he's a giant orange monster. They get the gems,
but Reed refuses to bring them back to the present,
filling the treasure chest with chains. Suddenly they're brought back
to the present by Doom, and Doom reveals that the
gems are the property of Merlin and that he will

(03:19:32):
use their mystic properties. However, when Doom finds out that
he's been hoodwinked, Thing begins a fight with him, smashes
Doctor Doom. He falls into a million pieces, and we
reveal that he's a robot that's been talking to him
the entire time. And this is the first doombot in
all a combook history. Ashley, do you know what a
doombot is?

Speaker 2 (03:19:52):
There are robots that work for doctor Doom that I
think usually look like him.

Speaker 1 (03:19:57):
They look and sound exactly like him, although there are
other there are other doombots.

Speaker 2 (03:20:00):
Yes, I think this is a very interesting story because
up until it was a doombot, it's not a good story.

Speaker 3 (03:20:06):
No, no, but the doombot twist is like, oh, more
clever than I thought.

Speaker 1 (03:20:11):
So Eventually doctor Doom reveals himself that he was never
there the entire time, and Sue escapes Doctor Doom because
he forgets about her, and she turns invisible and walks
out of the room that he's holding her.

Speaker 2 (03:20:22):
Typical man, Am I right?

Speaker 1 (03:20:24):
She frees the team. Johnny's so bad that he burns
Doctor Doom's castle to the ground.

Speaker 2 (03:20:31):
I am not joking.

Speaker 1 (03:20:34):
That's their plan, burn his castle down.

Speaker 3 (03:20:36):
Castles are made of rock.

Speaker 1 (03:20:37):
Also, they're in a foreign country.

Speaker 3 (03:20:39):
Yeah, well, that becomes a.

Speaker 2 (03:20:41):
Later theme of Fantastic four stories of them starting inter
national incidents.

Speaker 1 (03:20:45):
Doom leaves on a jet pack, saying, bah, burn my
fortress to the ground so that none will ever learn
my mini secrets. And that's the first adventure of Doom,
and then Jupiter Jet flies out of this kind punches
him in the head, telling oh, okay, thoughts mixed mad

(03:21:09):
like six out of ten. It's fine. It's not great
surprise they brought doctor Duke back.

Speaker 2 (03:21:19):
But here we are.

Speaker 1 (03:21:20):
What do you think as the Doom expert, it's kind
of goofy. The thing I want to actually talk about
is that I was actually surprised. I'd forgotten about I
have read every issue of Fantastic Four. I'd forgotten about
this issue until I recently reread it for this podcast.
I'd forgotten that the magic and mysticism was tied to
him from his very first story, because I thought that

(03:21:42):
was a later invention.

Speaker 2 (03:21:44):
Yeah, there are some really interesting pieces here and aspects
of this character, but so many of the characters' nemeses
created in the Silver and the Golden Age are discarded. Yes,
so it's interesting to me that Doom was one of
the ones that stuck around. And if people listen to
our Pantherther episode and our Luke Cage episode, like, he
becomes really important in the larger skill money honey as well. Yeah,

(03:22:06):
Luke Cage punches him in the face. We'll share that
panel again.

Speaker 1 (03:22:08):
Like two. Ye, So Ashley, what do you think about
I want to ask you? So he is a metal
clad villain. These stories are scientific in nature. Do you
like that Doom is also a character of science and magic?

Speaker 2 (03:22:24):
He's both?

Speaker 1 (03:22:24):
He really is, and that's something that a lot of
people forget about Doom because reads only a character of science.
But Doom is a character of both. Do you like
that he's a both worlds? Do you wish he was
only technology or only magic?

Speaker 2 (03:22:35):
I guess it depends on whether or not you think
that superpowers are magic or a representation of how we
understand let's say for the targement yet, because that's more
if you do think that superpowers are effectively magic, it's
more interesting because he's a more direct foil to the
Fantastic Four. I like that we have these characters for

(03:22:57):
the time, which it's difficult to speak about obviously because
this was half a lifetime ago. I'm for the time.
These were like cutting edge, forward thinking, advanced characters with
strong social justice points of view, things like that. And
by making Doctor Doom an evil wizard dressed like a Knight, yeah,

(03:23:19):
or just like a robot is interesting. Well let's go
with Knight. Okay, sure, for the sake of this, right,
because he's very big rowback to a different type of
storytelling you have. It's literally science fiction versus fantasy.

Speaker 1 (03:23:31):
A castle, uh huh.

Speaker 2 (03:23:33):
But I think by letting him play with the world
of science, I think it's smart because then you can
do the robot comparison and you can't have him compete
with Reid intellectually. But if he's opened to mysticism, then
maybe he can always have the upper hand on Read
because he's open to a more esoteric train of thought. Yeah,
I know, I think it's cool.

Speaker 1 (03:23:50):
Cool, Well, I'm glad because we're going to talk a
lot of lot, lot, lot lot more about the mysticism.
But before we move on, we have to make sure
the Mine University students have snacks in the lounge by thinking.
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Speaker 2 (03:24:50):
I did that.

Speaker 1 (03:24:51):
I got a bunch of vitamins. Tell me reduce my
stress because I worry about doctor Doom all night and
his giant nets and his helicopter and his megaphone. I
still hear him in my dreams. So make sure to
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(03:25:34):
of because they're making sure that we keep the carrots
and the teachers lounge. I love it. So now about
two Doctor Doom. Oh boy. Now we're gonna go through
a series of tales where Doom basically tries all kinds
of plans against the Fantasy Ford to kill them. Okay, first,
he duped nay More and Do teaming up with him

(03:25:54):
to destroy the team. During the team up, he was
shrunk to sub atomic size and ended up in the
world of Subatomica, where He quickly took control of the
world using his scientific knowledge and began plaguing the Fantastic
Four with shrink grays great uh. He was, though defeated
by the Fantastic Four with the aid of ant Man

(03:26:14):
Oh Good. Once again, Doom traveled to America to take
his revenge of the Fantastic Four, who at the time
had incidentally lost their powers, and despite the Fantastic Four
having no powers, Doom was again defeated, this time with
the aid of Daredevil. And I talked about that in
our Daredevil geekiss you laston episode You should go talk
about that soon, though, came one of the greatest characters

(03:26:38):
ever created in all of comic books, The Silver Surfer Ashley.
Who is he?

Speaker 2 (03:26:44):
He is a silver alien whose name I used to know?
Who something Gnar and Rad There you go, Nora, I
miss no one, rad ashe he is the Harbinger of Galactus.

Speaker 1 (03:26:55):
I am the Hobingerer.

Speaker 2 (03:26:56):
He's a Galactus's I don't know Aaron.

Speaker 1 (03:27:00):
Hey, that hurts. I talk like this because I'm emotionless.
I am the Silver Surfer.

Speaker 2 (03:27:08):
Uh huh. So Reserve also highly recommend it.

Speaker 1 (03:27:10):
I like to surf the waves of space. Also he's
why do I have a surfboard? Actually, well, I was
actually going to talk about that.

Speaker 2 (03:27:17):
He's such a direct answer to California's surf culture, which
would have been very popular around this time, except they
made him because of Kirby, a little too weird and
a little too spacey to be a beach boy.

Speaker 1 (03:27:31):
I am very spacy, but I do love the good vibrations.

Speaker 2 (03:27:36):
Do you also love Doctor Who Pray your dance Loot series?
I do.

Speaker 1 (03:27:40):
My board is called do you know what my board
is called?

Speaker 7 (03:27:42):
No?

Speaker 2 (03:27:43):
Is it sentient?

Speaker 1 (03:27:43):
No? It is it is alive. No, my board is
called Toomey because a lot of times in the classic
Jack Kirby I would say to me my board and
my companion, I mean friend, said to me, is the
name of my board? You know? Yet I am emotionless you.

Speaker 2 (03:28:05):
I would really love it if we could get Victor
in here for you guys to have a conversation. He's
waiting out on the lobby. This has been a great
job interview, but I think I might hire both of you.

Speaker 1 (03:28:13):
Oh, dear God, I would love to meet you. Victor.

Speaker 2 (03:28:17):
Open the door, okay, hey, Victor, can you come in
here really quick?

Speaker 1 (03:28:23):
Doom shall do nothing, So.

Speaker 2 (03:28:26):
Victor, since you're gonna stay outside and do nothing. You
gave a really great interview for this tenth position, But
Norn brings a kind of calm that you don't have.

Speaker 3 (03:28:37):
How do you feel about working together?

Speaker 1 (03:28:40):
Doom needs no one. Doom shall operate the three old
punch better than idy man you have ever met?

Speaker 2 (03:28:52):
Noran?

Speaker 3 (03:28:53):
Are you a man?

Speaker 1 (03:28:55):
I am an androgynous span of space and die?

Speaker 3 (03:28:58):
I really do you like sexuality entirely?

Speaker 1 (03:29:00):
No? I was married and had a children, had a child.
I do not know your earth terms.

Speaker 2 (03:29:05):
Are you male or female? Or are you in VII?

Speaker 1 (03:29:07):
I am male? Okay, but I do not like to
gender myself once I imbued the power cosmic.

Speaker 2 (03:29:14):
Se Now, norahen, I'm gonna be honest. I'm leaning towards
hiring you for this temposition here at the Myne University.

Speaker 1 (03:29:20):
One second, I can feel your aura. It feels stressful.

Speaker 2 (03:29:24):
That's probably true.

Speaker 1 (03:29:26):
You should calm yourself. Come to me. Let's ride the
waves of space, leave this earth behind.

Speaker 2 (03:29:34):
This is how do you chi history? Lesson ends in
episode two fifty.

Speaker 1 (03:29:38):
All of time and space Uranus to Alpha Setari. They
can all feel the touch of Surfer.

Speaker 2 (03:29:48):
Where are you touching them?

Speaker 1 (03:29:50):
Where are you? Definitely earth Lang, which is strange to me.
I do not understand its inkrutuses. I can't even pronounce
your words.

Speaker 2 (03:29:57):
I see that. Yes, hey Victor, Yeah, you're fired.

Speaker 1 (03:30:03):
Doom does not need jaw tep.

Speaker 2 (03:30:05):
Take your net, take your helicopter. Shout go get a
job at comic Pop. You can handle you.

Speaker 1 (03:30:14):
Wrath of Doom. Doom shall knock over your water cooler
for this insolence.

Speaker 2 (03:30:22):
You can request the Silver Surfer episode with the return
of your Jason's nord Rad at geek History lesson dot com,
I Doom became more aggressive, did real Well, you inserted
some of the Kirby Lee bas and I feel like
that really carried your character to me.

Speaker 1 (03:30:37):
That's the way Doom's gonna go. Yeah, I think that's
the way the voice is going to go.

Speaker 2 (03:30:40):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:30:41):
I did not intend that nooron Rad to make an
appearance into the I really liked your nord Rad.

Speaker 2 (03:30:47):
Also, because podcasting famously a visual medium, your whole face
got real zen as you did that voice, and you
you are doing some other characterizations for Doom. So this
is a real treat for me and no one else,
all right, tell me more about Doom.

Speaker 1 (03:31:03):
Well, you know, I will say this, I went very
zen with Silver Surfer because I think that's the way
he is. I think he's very emotionalless, and he's alien,
and you know, and he is kind of like the
Doctor a.

Speaker 2 (03:31:14):
Little well in a lack of emotion is a really
great shorthand for being alien. You know, it'll spock from
the same same idea.

Speaker 1 (03:31:22):
The reason I bring up the Silver Surfer is because,
of course Galactus came to Earth, and the Silver Surfer
helped the Fantastic Four, and because of this, Galactus punished
the Fantastic Four and locked him inside Earth's atmosphere. He
could not leave Earth's atmosphere, which is what began the
first Silver Server solo series. Doom was able to steal
the Silver Surface power cosmic and became one of the

(03:31:43):
most powerful beings on Earth, but again his plan was
stopped by the Fantastic Four when they managed to trick
him into flying outside of Earth's boundaries. Therefore meaning that
the Galactus placed boundaries to stop the Silver Surfer leaving
stole Doom's power and gave it back to so oh nice.
But then Doom started fighting other heroes In the Marvel universe,

(03:32:04):
Doctor Doom and Ironman travel back in time to Camelot,
where Tony Stark the worded Doctor Doom's attempt to solicit
the advice of Morgan le Fay, and Doom swore deadly
vengeance for that interference, but he had to delay that
interference or excuse me that vengeance in the interest of
working with Tony to return back to present day. Yes,
and then came the first Secret Wars Ashley, what is

(03:32:28):
that event?

Speaker 2 (03:32:29):
So there were a bunch of toys. Marvel had to
convince people to buy these toys. So the Beyonder kidnapped
a very strange array of Marvel heroes of villains basically
all of them, stuck them on a world battle World
made him Yeah, I wanted to say war World. I
knew that was wrong.

Speaker 1 (03:32:45):
That's in DC yep.

Speaker 2 (03:32:46):
Made them fight, Wasp kissed Magneto, everyone came out Okay, Yes,
Spider I got that.

Speaker 1 (03:32:52):
Cool black suit. And Ashley is correct on that. Basically
the whole event is the powerful and mysterious Beyond Their
kidnapped several heroes and villains to Alto, but he kidna
have several heroes and villains from the Earth to have
them fight with the promise of giving the winners their
heart's desire. Doom quickly became the leader of the villains,
and after their defeat, escaping his holding Sale, he constructed

(03:33:14):
a device out of the other Marvel villain, the Claw,
to drain the power of Galactus, who was also there.
Using his stolen power, Doom was able to attack his
true target, the Beyonder. Doom lost the battle, but as
the Beyonder came closer to to sect and study Doom
and like, oh, why did this guy attack me? He
managed to activate a device in his chest plate that

(03:33:37):
drained the Beyonder and allowed Doom to become uber powerful
with the Beyonder's powers. Too powerful so fact that Doom
was consumed by this power lest he destroy the universe,
and suddenly he was going to just destroy everything in existence.
The Beyonder was able to survive this attack. He took
possession of Claw's body and use Clause guile to trick
Doom into losing control of his stolen paw, reclaiming it

(03:34:01):
and then defeating them, and then the Beyonder vanished with
Doom and Claw.

Speaker 2 (03:34:04):
In tow Also, if you want to hear more about
Secret Wars, we did a whole review of it one
hundred thousand years ago.

Speaker 1 (03:34:10):
We did, we did. Eventually Doom got back to Earth
and his face was temporarily healed when he had those
Cosem powers, but then it went back to pizza face,
and eventually Doom got back to the mission that he
was essentially about when he first started becoming Doctor Doom,
and that is marrying Storm. Nope, that is freeing his
mother's soul. Actually, the whole Sioux Storm love thing between

(03:34:31):
Doom and Sue is more of a modern invention than
a pass that. I have a weird feeling about it
because they kind of Stanley and Jack Kurby sort of
made the Sue love thing a nay more exclusive thing.
It wasn't until I'd say, post John Byrne that that
started popping up everywhere.

Speaker 2 (03:34:48):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (03:34:49):
So sorry to derail yourself entirely.

Speaker 1 (03:34:52):
So doctor Strange won this contest, Doctor Strange, Doctor Strange.
Oh yes, doctor Strange. Well you got a hold on
a second. Doctor Strange won a contest that was held
by the aged Ginghis Yes, Doctor Strange the winner here

(03:35:13):
of the Aged Kings. Oh, yes, I have.

Speaker 7 (03:35:17):
Spent many years and now I have five gold stars,
podcasting famously visual medium.

Speaker 1 (03:35:27):
I'm taking a drink of my widow's drink. What is it?

Speaker 3 (03:35:30):
What is your Winno's drink?

Speaker 1 (03:35:31):
It is a can of a minute made lemonade that
is only made for windows. Bringing.

Speaker 2 (03:35:40):
Bring, Bring, Bring, Bring.

Speaker 1 (03:35:42):
I'm calling Clear bringing, Hi, Stevie Clear.

Speaker 2 (03:35:48):
How did your contest eating ego?

Speaker 6 (03:35:51):
I won?

Speaker 1 (03:35:55):
Yes, I am enjoying the winner's can of Minute made lemonade.
Not a sponsor.

Speaker 2 (03:36:01):
So do you win, like the ability to be the
host of Marvel All Access or something like that?

Speaker 3 (03:36:05):
What is this contest for?

Speaker 1 (03:36:06):
I don't even know what that is. I have no
earthly idea. If you're referred to some weird YouTube show,
I don't know what is YouTube. I mean, this is
the dark dimension. So YouTube has been king here for
a long time. Clear. I must tell you that there
was at one point where I was so worried about.

Speaker 2 (03:36:25):
The dark magic h huh taking me home.

Speaker 1 (03:36:29):
But I kept in mind the five gold Stars. I
kept in mind the winners can of minute made lemonade,
and I won. However, I did not win everything I
wanted to win. Claire, what else does you want to win, Stevie. Yeah,
doctor Doom has taken over this phone call. Who the hell?

(03:36:49):
I have to take this guy to Hell, basically, that's
what I want.

Speaker 3 (03:36:52):
You can just send him to me in Dada.

Speaker 2 (03:36:53):
We can to take care of it.

Speaker 1 (03:36:56):
Not the doctor Mension. That's a different place from Hell.
I have to bring over Victor here to Hell. Hey, Vicky,
Doom shall not respond Hi, doo.

Speaker 2 (03:37:10):
Mey do you know? Do me? Your name's rhyme.

Speaker 1 (03:37:15):
Doom should not speak to a lesser bean, Steve, your
friends are rude. He's kind of a buzzkill.

Speaker 2 (03:37:23):
I think.

Speaker 1 (03:37:24):
I mean, he has a lovely cape, but I do
not like his attitude. I have to take him to Hell.
I won't clear. I'm not going to be home for
dinner because.

Speaker 2 (03:37:33):
See I was going to throw real party.

Speaker 1 (03:37:34):
Wonder now I know I have to take him straight
to Hell. That I won this contest, and the scheme
of this contest is that I have to I'm obligated
to answer the request of the runner up, and Doom
was the runner up, Stevie.

Speaker 2 (03:37:47):
That's first of all, that's ridiculous. No, put Stevie back.

Speaker 1 (03:37:50):
Do me do me?

Speaker 2 (03:37:52):
Do do do? Do me?

Speaker 1 (03:37:54):
Is second place.

Speaker 3 (03:37:55):
Do me put Steve Rienie back on.

Speaker 1 (03:37:58):
Me?

Speaker 2 (03:37:58):
All right here, Stevie, Yes, I won't be mad, all right,
as long yes as you leave. Do me in Hell.

Speaker 1 (03:38:07):
I'll try, but I can't promise me. I'm obligated to,
you know, do the contest. And you know, I don't know.
I've been delaying him because I want to finish my
can of minute made lemonade. Luckily he understands that. What.
I don't know why?

Speaker 2 (03:38:24):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (03:38:24):
Also, do you know what he got to drink for
a second place? No, they gave him a gallon of
a wine bunch.

Speaker 2 (03:38:31):
I'm gonna have no tea.

Speaker 1 (03:38:34):
I'm glad I won first place, me too, baby. Okay,
Well I have to go to Hell. I have no
idea how long it's going to take, but I'm going there.

Speaker 2 (03:38:43):
Okay, send me a postcard.

Speaker 1 (03:38:45):
All right? Who do you want to what do you want?
The postcard of the health the mound of the desecrated corpses.

Speaker 2 (03:38:54):
And you have to take this. You have to take
a selfie with Al. He's a friend Al Simmons.

Speaker 1 (03:39:02):
Oh, yeah, he's in spawn Tower.

Speaker 2 (03:39:04):
Yeah, you've got to have a selfie with him. He's great.
I can do that.

Speaker 1 (03:39:07):
I can do that. What about what about Cassidy from Preacher?
He's there too, right, Oh.

Speaker 2 (03:39:13):
Yeah, he's like that real sexy vampire type. He might
help you get rid of Doomie if you don't want
to have to bring him back with you.

Speaker 7 (03:39:21):
Is not a.

Speaker 2 (03:39:22):
Hangeround doo me. Are you friend of vampires?

Speaker 1 (03:39:26):
I am a vampire.

Speaker 2 (03:39:30):
A robot.

Speaker 1 (03:39:31):
I'm glad the impala is.

Speaker 3 (03:39:34):
Put what are your robots on?

Speaker 2 (03:39:36):
Bah?

Speaker 1 (03:39:37):
I am a robot?

Speaker 3 (03:39:38):
Are you friends with Herbie?

Speaker 1 (03:39:41):
Herbie is of inferior technology.

Speaker 2 (03:39:43):
I've never met Herbie, but he's super cute and Stevie
and I really wanted me to Herbie?

Speaker 3 (03:39:48):
So could you hit us up?

Speaker 1 (03:39:52):
Does not influence influence us?

Speaker 2 (03:39:54):
All right?

Speaker 1 (03:39:54):
Do me?

Speaker 2 (03:39:55):
Body? Please put that guy?

Speaker 1 (03:39:59):
He's just a I'm very tired of, and I have
to spend possibly eternity with him because you know time,
there's a matter in hell.

Speaker 2 (03:40:07):
Steve ran a matter in how No, we're getting married.
We've been working on this for I think three years now,
a very long engagement. We're holding out for episode three.
I kind of think everyone's tired of this joke. I
think we should probably hang up here. I was gonna say,
kind of would hang on, do you want to call? Text?
And I know I don't.

Speaker 1 (03:40:28):
I really don't want to call five of the characters.
I really don't.

Speaker 3 (03:40:34):
I have to go take the robot.

Speaker 2 (03:40:35):
Leave do me.

Speaker 1 (03:40:36):
It's gonna be got I have to take the robot
and they both call. I'm gonna take another sip of
this minute.

Speaker 2 (03:40:41):
May Okay?

Speaker 3 (03:40:43):
Do you want to say bye to Daddy before.

Speaker 2 (03:40:44):
I let you go? Alright, love you.

Speaker 1 (03:40:50):
We want to apologize to the listeners. I did not
intend doctor Strange to come into this episode either. Oh
dear God, you called Clia.

Speaker 2 (03:40:58):
You open.

Speaker 1 (03:40:59):
That's right, the Doom. The Doom voice is kindly changing.
It's changing as the course of this episode goes.

Speaker 2 (03:41:05):
Yeah, if anyone wants to see the wedding of Stevie
and Nutt, Yeah, God, we'll do it for Chris. Stick
around for the holiday episode. Yeah, please recommend it.

Speaker 1 (03:41:13):
So Strange one the contest, Sure, and if you win
the contest, you're obliged to answer the request of the
runner up.

Speaker 7 (03:41:20):
That's not a good contest, that's a BS contest. So
Doom's request was take me to hell. Take me to Hell.
I'm going to free my mother. Help me free my mother.
He's like, have you seen drag me to Hell?

Speaker 2 (03:41:32):
We're doing that.

Speaker 1 (03:41:33):
So to free his mother, it required Doom to incur
her undying hatred, and he did that first by volunteering
Strange to take his place to Mefisto and Cynthia von
Doom was so disgusted at her son that she became
too pure to remain in Hell and departed for heaven.

Speaker 2 (03:41:49):
That's actually kind of nice.

Speaker 1 (03:41:51):
The story's written by Roger Stern. By the way, last
doctor Strange wondered if Doom had been aware of this
outcome the entire time, or if he'd actually tried to
Strange in Hell, but Doom simply knews that his mother's
hatred was a price that he was willing to pray
for her pay for her freedom from Hell. And then
came Onschlought.

Speaker 2 (03:42:11):
What's that, Ashley, that's where Charles Xavier is a giant
metal guy and Jason really likes it. Yep. So when
Franklin Richards, who's that? That is suean Ried's son and
he's the most powerful person in the universe.

Speaker 1 (03:42:23):
One of the most powerful. Yes, he was kidnapped by Onslaught,
which was the sort of mix of amalgamation of the
Hatred of Magneto in Charles Xavier's mind. Doom saw this
as an opportunity to steal the powers of Onslaught, but
he joined the Fantastic for the Avengers and the X
Men to battle Onslaught in Central Park, and enraged, Hulk
was able to crack open onslaught shell. However, Onslaught remained

(03:42:46):
as pure psionic energy for plunged an Onslaught trying to
contain him and the Fantastic Four. The majority of the Avengers,
the hulkless Banner, and even Hulk, who was grabbed by Ironman,
followed inside and thinks that are sacrifice. The X Men
was finally a to destroy Onslought because he had become
physical again. Doom, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and Banner
were believed dead, but instead they were saved by Franklin

(03:43:09):
Little Pockets, who created a pocket dimension called counter Earth
to help keep them safe, and after several months away,
the missing heroes returned from counter Earth and a massive
ship breaching the dimensional barriers. Now, this is the explanation
in the story for the hero's reborn storyline that we
talked about it in Jason's meeting exactly now, doom attepted
to take over the ship in mid flight, leading to

(03:43:30):
a battle with Thor, which left both men adrift in
dimensional space for a time. Doom's travels because of this
took him back to counter Earth, and he took over
the world because he's the only hero left and moved
it from the Pocketing Universe to his original universe with
magic and technology, putting it in the same orbit as Earth,
only on the opposite side of the universe, creating a
counter Earth. Eventually, he was overthrown, the planet was disappeared,

(03:43:54):
and he was thrown back to his proper Earth, and
Doom wasn't seen for a bit, almost for issues in
commic book time.

Speaker 3 (03:44:02):
Holy smokes, that's a long time.

Speaker 1 (03:44:05):
So astulely that's what I want to talk about. Yeah,
Doom is at a major, major villain at this point.
This is like ninety seven ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (03:44:13):
I mean, forget about just a Fantastic four villain, like
he is a pillar of the Marvel.

Speaker 1 (03:44:16):
Universe, and he basically was not in comic books for
two years.

Speaker 2 (03:44:20):
You know, DC could take some notes and do that
to the joke. Let's talk about good or bad. I
think ultimately good. You would know better than I. You've
read more Fantastic four than I.

Speaker 1 (03:44:32):
I'll tell you this, Okay, So after Heroes were Born,
Fantasy four was relaunched with a third volume. Doom doesn't
show up until I think, like issue forty five or
forty four of that volume.

Speaker 2 (03:44:46):
Sometimes I do think, particularly when villains get too overwrought,
too broad, and they keep having to up themselves in
these really wild and despicable ways, I do think it's
good for them to have a little so bad, to
go into the toy box, have a little sleep, and
then come back later because there's a reason that that
character is resident, is interesting, there's a reason we're doing

(03:45:09):
Doom for a two hundred and fiftieth episode celebration. I think,
ultimately it turned out to be a good thing. The
character was brought back, he's in current comics continuity. Clearly
no one got hurt by it. But I do think
there are some other characters who could probably enjoy that
same treatment. Do you agree or disagree?

Speaker 1 (03:45:27):
I agree. I think more comic book villains, especially major
comic book villains, should be treated like this. You they
should go away because when they come back, they impact,
because when Doom comes back, it is big. But the
sad thing is is that now that he comes back,
he basically doesn't leave the Marvel Universe for the next
fifteen years.

Speaker 2 (03:45:46):
Well, yeah, so we'll give in contemporary comics.

Speaker 1 (03:45:49):
You're gonna like the story that he comes back in, okay.
Susan Richards, the amazing Invisible Woman, the greatest character in
the Marvel Universe, and Cordy to be. She experiences problems
during her second pregnancy because Reed is away. Johnny contacts
the only person on Earth that is as smart as

(03:46:10):
Reid Richard's for help, doctor Doom, and he correctly guesses
that Doom will be unable to pass up a chance
to save Sue, where Reed has not been able to
figure it out. So Doom agrees, and he not only
saves Sue's daughter, but also cures Johnny of a recent
problem with his powers, where Johnny was unable to flame

(03:46:33):
off without technological support because he had been overcharged with
energy from the negative ZM. He actually channeled Johnny's excess
energy into Sue to keep her alive during the pregnancy.
After the birth of Reid Richard's and Susan Storm's daughter,
Doom's only condition for his aid was to be allowed
to name the baby, calling her Valeria, after his long

(03:46:57):
lost love. Now here's why he named her Valeria. During
his youth, Victor fell in love with a woman named Valeria,
and she eventually declined his advances over the years. Doom,
after the Valeria's birth, made a pact with a couple
of demons named the Hazarath Three, which involved sacrificing his

(03:47:19):
original of Valeria in order to gain more power. This
grants Doom magical powers on a level that he would
have been impossible to have gained on his own if
he had spent several hundred years studying sorcery. So he
formed Valeria's skin into his new armor and his Doom's
first new costume or whatever. With this new power, Doom

(03:47:42):
attacks the Fantastic Four. He traps Franklin in hell Am,
mobilizes Doctor Strange, then neutralizes the ff Powers and does
this all by using Valeria. Kind of like what are
those creatures that hover around magical creatures like teakl to familiars.
Valeria is Doom's familiar. He can see through her eyes,

(03:48:05):
he can control her, he can make her do whatever
she wants yeah, because the act of naming her bonded
Valeria to Doom forever.

Speaker 2 (03:48:13):
That is a classic that was folklore for a long time.
That is a very classic mystical trope. The power of
it's like knowing a dragon's name.

Speaker 1 (03:48:21):
So he tortures the other three members of the Fantastic
Four while taunting Read that, Hey, I'm going to leave
you in this magical library, and the solution to beat
me is in here. You just have to figure it out,
because the only way you're going to beat me is
by using magic. And Red don't have super speed, so
you can't read like bart Allen exactly. And he compares
it to giving a dog a road map and concludes

(03:48:42):
that it will be impossible for Read to master sufficient
magic skill on a threat to be a threat to him. However,
Reed is able to read and find the correct spells,
and because of us, he's able to release Doctor Strange
astral Form from Doom's traps, allowing Strange to give Read
a sufficient craft course in magic for Reed to be
able to free the rest of the team. He does

(03:49:02):
this by building a machine that sort of focuses magic
by Read using a spell where Read insults himself, so
Read is able to beat Doom by going I'm stupid,
I'm a failure, I'm a bad father, and use it
and propels the magic out. This allows them to trick
Doom into angering his demonic benefactors, the hazar At three,

(03:49:23):
prompting the demons to pull Doom into Hell, which, if
you know Victor's story, would be one of the worst
plays he would ever want to go. Now. Actually, this
is one of the best Doctor Doom stories ever. Why
because it's written by Mark Wade and drawn by Mark
Wringo during their Fantastic four run. And it also begins

(03:49:44):
my biggest frustration with Doctor Doom. Oh interesting, I think hot.
Take that Doctor Doom's costume. Oh green cloak, big belt,
buckle and a skirt sucks. I hate it? Yes do
Now this story redesigned his costume. Mike w Ringo gave
him a different costume. Yeah, it's not as good as

(03:50:04):
I thought it's but I liked a little bit of change.
What do you think, Ashley, what do you think of
Doctor Dube's costume? He still has the same costume that
he's had since nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 2 (03:50:14):
It doesn't bother me.

Speaker 1 (03:50:15):
Big belt, buckle and a skirt.

Speaker 2 (03:50:16):
Doesn't bother me. It makes him look vaguely Eastern European royalty,
which is sort of exactly what he is. I think
there's a better design out there, But it doesn't bother
me that he's walking around in a tunic with no
pants on, you know, not especially.

Speaker 3 (03:50:30):
He's a knight in shining armor.

Speaker 2 (03:50:32):
He's like a knight with his you know, it should
be his coat of arms, but I guess he doesn't
have one over it, so I don't mind it particular.

Speaker 1 (03:50:41):
I think it should be. I think it should be redesigned.
I I like the idea of make him look like
a knight, give him pants. Yeah, something he needs, something
like the giant bell buckle will get out.

Speaker 2 (03:50:50):
Yet I'm honestly surprised that he hasn't had to redesign.
That is stuck in a meaningful way, because you know,
God knows Batman has so.

Speaker 1 (03:50:58):
When meol near the Hammer of Thor fell to Earth
after all the death of the as Guardians, it passed
through time and space, momentarily breaching the gateway to Hell
and providing Doom with an escape route. When he grabbed
hold of it because he recognized it Upon his return
to Earth, Doom regained control of Lavaria, using its military
to locate Meal near and attempted to seize its power

(03:51:20):
for himself, believing the Hammer had chosen him to be
the Wilder by freeing him from Hell, but soon he
discovered he couldn't lift it. After his initial capture and
release for various war crimes, Doom revealed that he had
actually been taught everything he ever knew about ruling a
country in magic by a master who would soon be
returning to Earth. His master, he said, was far more

(03:51:42):
powerful and evil than himself, and then his master returned.
He was known as the Marquis of Death, and he
was displeased with what Doom had been doing in the
two decades since they parted. He expected doctor Doom to
be a vicious ruler of Earth, and not just the
ruler of a small country that was constantly feed by
heroes such as the Fantastic Four. After mentally torturing and

(03:52:04):
toying with him, this Marquis of Death beat Doom and
banished him to prehistoric times to die. The Marquis revealed
his new apprentice, and with the new apprentice, the Marquis
of Death began to torment the Fantastic Four as punishment.
The Fintas Four were able to defeat Doom's master, only
to find out with the help of the new apprentice

(03:52:27):
of the Marquis of Death, that this new apprentice was
doctor Doom himself. Apparently, after being banished in the past,
he spent millions of years growing in power and studying sorcery,
planning to plan a deceptive move against his master. Now
weakened by his defeat of the hands of the Fantastic Four,
Doom killed the Marquis of Death, who was finally pleased

(03:52:51):
by everything that his student has accomplished. When he was.

Speaker 2 (03:52:54):
Faced Sith sort of dynamic.

Speaker 1 (03:52:56):
Now, when he was faced with mister Fantastic, He's the
most powerful art too, he's ever been. Doom actually declared
that all the rivals between him and Richards had long
been settled to his satisfaction, over one thousands of years.
You're saying that it was no longer an issue to him.

Speaker 2 (03:53:09):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (03:53:10):
That was the Brian Hitch and Mark Malar regular fs
run so very quickly. There was a war with Wakanda
and a storyline called Doomore where Doom found that his
brain power had been reduced and his intelligence was He
was not as super smart and scientist they as he
thought he had been. That's the storyline where Alliver brandyme
in the world is negated. It eventually comes back soon.

(03:53:33):
A future version of Franklin Richards had warned a young
Valeria Richards that there was an upcoming problem with the
multiverse and that all hope lies in Doom. The Fantasic
four had disbanded at this time after the seeming death
of the Human Torch, so it was of essence to
bring Doom into the fold. Valeria traveled to Lot Barrier
and asked for Doom's help, and then she soon noticed

(03:53:56):
that he was struggling to follow her words and she
figured out that he was brain damage. In exchange for
his help to save her father, she offered to find
a way to restore his intelligence, and with the help
of mister Fantastic, they use Christoff Doom's adopt the son
as a backup to restore Doom's intelligence. As part of
this bargain, doctor Doom joined the Future Foundation to assist

(03:54:20):
the Valeria in saving the world. This is the storyline
where Doom wore and all white Cloak, and eventually he
left the FF after a giant multiversal fight with thousands
and thousands of Reed Richards. Now, actually, I know you
like The Future Foundation a lot of Yeah, this is
the Jonathan Higgemann storyline. Why do you like the Future Foundation? Also?
Is Doom a good part of it?

Speaker 2 (03:54:39):
I like the Future Foundation probably because it provides me
with the same type of dynamic as the X Men
or the Teen Titans. It is basically really crazy science
school for really crazy science characters. I also like the
Moloids because they're super duper weird and super gross, but
they're really in interesting, palatable characters here. I think the

(03:55:02):
addition of Doom is really interesting because the Future Foundation
really turns around Franklin and Valeria, and her relationship with
Doom is something that's really fascinating. Like there are even
panels where she's holding his hand and they're getting ice cream. Again.

Speaker 1 (03:55:17):
She looks at Doom as her uncle.

Speaker 2 (03:55:18):
Yes, we just calls him Uncle Doom, which is weird
but also perfect for her parents' relationship with him. I
think he's a good addition. I'm glad he was not
a mainstay cast member of the entire series, but I
think this storyline is really cool.

Speaker 1 (03:55:34):
Yes. After his return, Latveria soon became the site of
an incursion, which is a collision between the Earth and
one of its alternate universe counterparts by a group of
beans named the map Makers. Over the following month's Victor
worked with a team of scientists who reverse engineer one
of the pieces that a map Maker that he had
gathered from the incursion site that took place in Laveria.

(03:55:55):
The Mad Thinker, another Fantastic Four villain, successfully managed to
map the entire map Makers network the multiverse essentially, and
Doom planned to use the villain Molecule Man, whose energy
frequency matched with a multiversal beacon, to oppose what the
hell these incursions were and the thing that he discovered
that there was the decay of the multiverse. The multiverse

(03:56:17):
was going to die. The Molecule Man took Doom elsewhere
into a blank void, from where they so subsequently traveled
backwards through the mists of time and the various planes
of reality. They traveled twenty five years into the past,
and they saw an alternate reality where they got to
witness the origin of Molecule Man. Basically, the Molecule Man

(03:56:38):
is a unique being in the Marvel Universe. He is
a singularity. He is a bomb created by the Beyonders.
Because there's not just one Beyonder. They are a raised
and they all wear disco suits and they love it.
So the Beyonders We're going to use Molecule Man to
detonate in every single universe across the multiverse at once,

(03:57:02):
killing the multiverse. If a molecule Man dies, his universe
dies with him, and if every molecule Man died at
the same time, every universe dies simultaneously. And this is
the Beyonder's eventual goal with the end of the universe
whenever they decided their experiment was done. The Molecule Man
of the six to one and six universe convinced Doom

(03:57:23):
that in order to thwart the plans of the Beyonders,
he had to embark on a mission across the multiverse
to kill molecule Mans on his own terms. Because even
if Doom's actions resulted in a similar result to the
beyonders plan the destruction of various realities, Doom's course of
action attempted to save all that he could from destruction,

(03:57:44):
as sending out the molecule Man earlier would actually diminish
the full charge of the explosions when the Beyonders eventually
set it off, so it might not kill the entire
multiverse and only might kill like part of it.

Speaker 2 (03:57:55):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (03:57:59):
Eight years after beginning his journey across the multiverse, when
Doom had killed thousands of Molecuman. Now, remember this is
also a Doom who just spent thousands of years working
the long way around.

Speaker 2 (03:58:10):
He old.

Speaker 1 (03:58:11):
He's very, very old at this point.

Speaker 2 (03:58:13):
Is he older than the Silver Server?

Speaker 1 (03:58:18):
The Silver Surfer is eternal and everlasting, Ashley, I just
would you like to come to the asteroid belts of
balin Us and the peaks up Nihilus.

Speaker 2 (03:58:35):
Let's go.

Speaker 1 (03:58:36):
We shall go between them. Our energy is flowing, exploding,
if you will, until we reach our story's climax. Cool.
My words are very confusing. This English does not spoke
well to me.

Speaker 2 (03:58:56):
You almost got that one.

Speaker 1 (03:58:58):
There were a lot of weird jokes in that one. Yep,
we shall not mention them.

Speaker 3 (03:59:02):
No, the jokes aren't funny if you have to explain them, Harley,
then you.

Speaker 1 (03:59:08):
Teach this lesson. That's so basically Dooms m killing mocking
me for eight years and he's one hundred thousand years
old was a result. At this point a cult actually
formed around the religious concept of Doune Good and they
called him Rebel a lie which is about that in

(03:59:29):
the intro, which also means the great destroyer. Well, actually
in the present day, a man that we know very
well personally. Oh yes, doctor Strays, good friend of the show. Well,
you see, I am back, welcome back. I am back
here with my good friend. I didn't know it was

(03:59:50):
I knew doom so well I didn't either. Well, you
see me and my friends, the Black Priests, all white guys. No, okay,
we are very similar to Black Sabbath. We'd like to
walk out, okay, and to kill people. That's Tuesday. But
we are big with the dark magic. At this time,

(04:00:12):
I was full of dark magic. I was an evil
set of a pitch.

Speaker 3 (04:00:14):
Okay, But you called yourselves the Black Order with.

Speaker 2 (04:00:17):
A Black Priest instead of the Dark Priests with a
Black Priest. Okay.

Speaker 1 (04:00:22):
We went to this cool happening spot called the Library
of Worlds.

Speaker 2 (04:00:26):
Uncle.

Speaker 1 (04:00:27):
We wanted to find this Ali. We'd only heard about him,
and we thought that he was causing the decay of
the multiverse. Hu and then we opened up the door.
Look there's old Doobie right there. Dr Doom walks out
and the.

Speaker 2 (04:00:42):
Prince Aly theme plays, Yes, Yes, thank you, thank you
very much.

Speaker 1 (04:00:49):
So Doctor Doom presented himself, and Doom informed Strange of
his ordins as rebel ali and revealed his ultimate plan
to defeat the Beyonders. In a last ditch attempt to
save the multiverse. Doom took Strange and the Molecule Man
to directly confront the Beyonders, and he was able to
destroy them and harness all of their power using his
universe as Molecule Man as a conduit. So basically, Molecule

(04:01:11):
Man is the power plant and Doom is the well, let's.

Speaker 2 (04:01:16):
Say, hot take he does exactly what he did to
save Sue with Johnny's powers to himself with Molecule Man.

Speaker 1 (04:01:22):
Molecule Man, I would say, like, is the water plant
and Doom is the host.

Speaker 2 (04:01:25):
He's the cipher.

Speaker 1 (04:01:25):
Exactly there you go. So that's cool. Doom's accomplishment actually
costs the death of thousands of universe, leaving only about versizers,
leaving only about twelve worlds leath, but not fifty two,
but his goal did work. The entire multiverse did not die.
So Doom used this godlike power of the beyonders to

(04:01:49):
salvage the remains of several realities and build a patchwork
planet named battle World Hey, which he ruled as god
under an iron fist, with the help of Stephen Strange,
who was the sheriff of battle World called Doomworld, and
thus started Secret Wars actually the third even though it's
the second Secret Wars. Yeah, this was by Jonathan Hickman.

(04:02:11):
We because their Secret Wars, their Secret War, the Secret
Wars two, and that is the Secret Wars again. Now,
this world's version of Sue's Storm fell in love with
Victor and they had two children, Franklin and Valeria. In
this world. Now, battle World proceeded for eight years. Doom
was his godlike being for eight years, and there were
certain heroes that were missing that you just did not see,

(04:02:32):
including a certain Read Richards. Yes, Doom and Strange manas
to twist the memories of their inhabitants to the point
where they could no longer remember what had existed before
battle World, and eventually he was confronted in this new
multiverse by Read Richards. Now when read Richards showed up,
the Molecule Man partially stripped Doom of his godlike power

(04:02:53):
to allow Reed to have a fair fight, and during
the furious confrontation, Doom accused Richards of believing that he
could have done better with Doom's power, and when Reid conceded, yeah,
I totally could have done better and I could have
saved more worlds, Doom actually agreed with them. Interesting on
the grounds of that, they both agreed to stop fighting,

(04:03:16):
and Molecule Man gave Doom's power to read, destroying Battle
World in the process, and with the power he received
from the Molecule Man and the help of his revived family,
who could now remember him, the Mister Fantastic began to
restore the multiverse, including Earth six one six, and after
accepting that Doom was going to eternally resent him, Reid

(04:03:38):
decided to alter Victor's memories so that he would believe
that he was dead and on the hopes that Victor
could become a better man if he no longer pursued
ultimate power and believed that his biggest rival was dead. So,
in addition to altering Victor's memories, when he returned him
to Earth six one six, Reid also cured him of
his scars, and Victor looked like he did back when

(04:04:00):
he was like twenty five.

Speaker 2 (04:04:02):
Yeah, young sexy doctor Doom is what everyone refer to
this ass yes now.

Speaker 1 (04:04:06):
While rethinking his life, Doom was ultimately struck with a
notion that it was a selfish act of ultimate power
and it wasn't his calling and maybe he could be
a good guy, and thus he set out to become
a force of good. This new perspective led Doom to
abdicate his throne to lab Farrea, leave Lotvaria behind, and
he eventually stole one of Tony Stark's Ironman armors in
an attempt to do good. And this all happened in

(04:04:28):
the infamous Iron Man title It's also Great. He also
helped Ben Grimm search the multiverse for reading Sue because
Ben would never give up hope that they were dead,
and he got a bad ass new costume. His infamous
Iron Man Doom costume is so cool. Pants he does
is a green cloak over some white Iron Man armor
that has short metal points. Like He's like, it's all

(04:04:50):
the short metal points. They're making an action figure out
very soon. I am definitely going to buy it, but
ultimately this did not last and during a battle with
the villain the Hood, Victor Rose is heroism finally by
saving Tony Stark from a deadly attack and his new
suit is destroyed and his face is horribly scarred again.
This leaves Doom to retreat back to Latvaria, where he

(04:05:11):
can now be seen in the current Fantastics four series
by Dan Slott and Aaron Cooter. And that is the
lesson of Doom.

Speaker 2 (04:05:19):
Holy smokes, time is a donut. He always has a
scarred face.

Speaker 1 (04:05:22):
That's right, all right. Now, before we move on, we
have to make sure that the myn university janitors have
a living wage by thinking. One of our sponsors, and
this one is Wis. Now, guys, I love wis because
for one hundred and forty million people use Wix for
the website. I'm one of them. I love it because
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(04:05:45):
I'm making to want new website with them. It's great.
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(04:06:06):
So if you need a new website, you can get
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up databases and content rich sites without coding. So go
check them out, tell them that we sent you because
it helps the Mind University and helps our janitors have
a living wage. And now we're going to go back

(04:06:29):
to recommended reading.

Speaker 2 (04:06:31):
And recommended reading is a part of the podcast where
if you enjoyed anything that Professor Jason talked about or
our many drop in guests, you can go to Geekhistory
lesson dot com Slash recommended Reading. Get these books on Amazon,
you pick them up, you get to read. Amazon kicks
a little bit back our way to help us pay
our janitors a living wage because we believe in that.
And uh yeah, learned about doctor Droom. Also, our full

(04:06:53):
catalog of recommended reading is up there. All the way
back to the beginning.

Speaker 1 (04:06:56):
All the way back to two hundred and fifty episodes.
The first book is is Fantastic Four Books of Doom
is written by Ed Brubaker. It collects issues one through six.
This is a retelling of his origin by Ed Brubaker.
It expands from the moment his mother dies all the
way to where he finally wins the throne on La Barrier.
It's so he never meets the Fantastic Four in this,

(04:07:17):
but read Richards and Ben Graham are in this. It's
really good. It's very compelling, and it makes a lot
of the sillier aspects of Doom's origin makes sense.

Speaker 2 (04:07:25):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (04:07:26):
The next one is Fantasic four by Mark Wade and
Mike Wringo, Ultimate Collection Book two. Now, the reason I'm
giving you book two is because book two is the
one that has unthinkable. That's the one where he becomes
the evil Magician and sends Franklin the hell and uses
Valaria as a familiar. It's really cool. And the last
one I'm gonna do is a series that should not
have worked, but totally worked, and that is Infamous Iron
Man Volume one, Infamous six Issues of Doom in the

(04:07:48):
best costume he's ever had being a hero. It's actually
really good. We did one episode, we did two episodes,
and you thought we were probably done with the Fantastic Four. Well,
let me tell you what, Sonny, we got two more
Oh no, no, no, what just one?

Speaker 3 (04:08:07):
Only one more episode?

Speaker 1 (04:08:09):
But if we do one more episode of this one,
we get four episodes and the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (04:08:13):
No, it's definitely just this one. I promise.

Speaker 1 (04:08:16):
This is it. This is it, so best Fantastic Four
team ever? Is the last Fantastic Four episode we'll do? Yes? Oh, well,
I guess your Geek History Lesson is now in session.
Then I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (04:08:30):
Hello, and welcome to Geek History Lesson. I'm Ashley Victoria Robinson, and.

Speaker 1 (04:08:34):
I'm Jason Unstable Molecules in Welcome to the Mind University, or,
as I am renaming it today, the Baxter Building because
this episode, as I was rudely told in the opening teaser,
this is the last episode of the Fantastic Four we're
gonna do. We're not gonna go for quatro, We're just
gonna do trace. Why can't the Baxterer Building be our

(04:08:54):
science building on campus? Sure, Wh're not Cool, you were
renaming the old school. Oh yeah, I just wonder that
we're all inside the backs are building inside the microverse.

Speaker 2 (04:09:04):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (04:09:04):
Yeah. So this episode we told you a little bit about.
I gave you a lot of lessons about the Fantastic Four.
Any lesson the building blocks, the foundation of the Marvel universe,
which they were, which you learned that they are. They
are the cement. So we thought, we've done other episodes.
We've done best X Men team ever, Best Avengers ever,
best Doctor who ever, or what we would do without

(04:09:27):
a So, so this is more of an episode like that.
There is the discussion and we will talk about the
best Fantastic Four team ever. And we gave ourselves some rules,
so we will be planning a Fantastic Four team. And
also at the very end of this episode, we're gonna
be giving you a review of a very timesial Yeah,
a very timely movie, two thousand and seven's Fantastic Four

(04:09:48):
Rise of the Silver Server. No, we thought it was
too good to go to the movie theaters and see
the new Fantastic Four because it's out, we can see it.

Speaker 2 (04:09:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:09:56):
No, we decided to dig deep. We went to the
local cool pawn shop, and but a blu ray copy
of Fantastic four Rise of the Silver Server, just so
we could do a review because the best but I
didn't have it, yes, and Target refused. Target was like,
we don't sell those anymore, and we were like, curse you, Target,
But we kind of understand. So let's drop into the

(04:10:19):
best Fantastic Four team ever. Now, actually, Jason, you just
got dropped a whole bunch of Fantastic for knowledge. Well,
now when we I.

Speaker 2 (04:10:27):
Feel a little I feel a little overwhelmed.

Speaker 1 (04:10:29):
Overwhelmed with the Fantastic four nests because.

Speaker 2 (04:10:31):
As mentioned, my Fantastic Four knowledge was shall we say limited?

Speaker 1 (04:10:34):
Yes? Yes? Now, were you excited to put together this team?

Speaker 3 (04:10:38):
I was because I set some rules.

Speaker 2 (04:10:40):
We set rules for the podcast, and I set some
rules for myself and I would read my team. So
I'm excited by the choices that I've made.

Speaker 1 (04:10:48):
You gave yourself rules on top of our rules I did. Yes, Okay,
I'm excited to hear this.

Speaker 2 (04:10:53):
Okay, you well, when you hear them, I'll be like, oh,
that's really obvious because I've heard Ashton talk before. If
you're new to this podcast, really excited.

Speaker 1 (04:11:00):
So, like our other episodes, which again we did Best
Avengers team, which you can go listen to, Best the
X Men team, which you can go listen to. Now
I'm assuming you picked your favorites. Okay, that's what you do.

Speaker 3 (04:11:11):
That's true a little bit. There's actually more than that.

Speaker 1 (04:11:13):
But all right, Well let's give the rules here real quick,
and we welcome all of our listeners to choose their
Fantastic four team on our Facebook which is Ashley.

Speaker 2 (04:11:23):
Facebook dot com, Slush geek History lesson, and also on
our tumbler which is Geekistory lesson dot com. Yes, so
we are looking for use our rules make a Fantastic
four team. We can't wait to hear it.

Speaker 7 (04:11:33):
Now.

Speaker 2 (04:11:33):
Super cool when people tell us their answers. Yeah, it's
it's neat and it's and sometimes people write dialogue and
that's the best.

Speaker 7 (04:11:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:11:39):
It's all about like thinking about these teams, these characters
in different ways, and I think it's a great thing.
So here are the rules for the Fantastic four.

Speaker 3 (04:11:48):
Lay down the rules.

Speaker 1 (04:11:49):
There could only be four members. I mean, it's it's
in the name of the team. It's kind of obvious.
It's exactly what we're doing. Only four members. Okay, now,
the four members have to fit into one of these roles.

Speaker 2 (04:12:02):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (04:12:02):
One the leader. Now, the leader is the only member
of this four that can be one of the classic
four Johnny Sue Red Ben, Yes, mister Fantastic, the Thinging,
Human Torch, and the Invisible Woman. That's the only one
of these four, the original Fantasy four that can be
on your team. Okay, so we're gonna go. We're going

(04:12:23):
outside the box here. Okay. Number two the co leader. Now,
the co leader can have been a previous member of
the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 3 (04:12:33):
Non auxiliary members.

Speaker 1 (04:12:34):
Yes, and as we learned in the previous weeks, there
have been plenty of many Blue Cage, Black Panthers, Spider Man, Storm,
all kinds of so they can't. This member that helps,
the co leader can have been on a previous Fantastic Four.
But they don't have to be, but they could be
if if we want, if you want Spider Man on
your Fantastic four, put Spider Man in your fantas a
Foh's what I'm saying. I didn't Number three the wild card.

(04:12:59):
Now this is like Ben Grimm. Now, if you're notice sing,
we're picking roles exactly. The co leading archetype the co leaders, sue. Now,
the wild card is like Ben, somebody who when he
gets angry, he'll just yo, it's clobbering time or she
and just destroy everything. So the wild card and number
four is a rookie. You need somebody who's needed Johnny. Yes,

(04:13:20):
you need a Johnny Storm. You need the youngest person
the team who's going to be reckless and not know
what they're doing. Hasn't been a superhero for very long.
So Ashley Jason, with those rules, stipulated, with those rules,
what is your best Fantastic four team ever? Now you
said you had rules for yourself, right, so should we
hear this?

Speaker 2 (04:13:37):
I sure I put this stipulation because, like I said,
Jason's a Fantastic four expert, not me. But when I
look at that Fantastic four, I go, gollie g there's
a lot of white dudes on that team. So you
went all black.

Speaker 3 (04:13:51):
I didn't go that far.

Speaker 2 (04:13:52):
But the classic of Fantastic four dynamic is three men
to one woman. So I did three women to one man.
I almost did that, and I made sure to cast
a non white person in my Fantastic four.

Speaker 1 (04:14:06):
Oh see, I have al whities racist I stayed. I
stayed through to Lean Kirbys. Okay, Okay, So who is
the leader of your fantastic.

Speaker 2 (04:14:17):
So my leader of my fantastic four is Sue Storm,
the Invisible Woman, the Invisible Woman because uh And one
of the reasons that I really like Sue Storm is
actually through getting to know Jason. I got to know
how much Jason loves and respects this character and why
he thinks she's so important, and that taught me a
lot about her.

Speaker 1 (04:14:36):
And Sue is I've said, I've said before on this podcast,
she's basically the mom of the Marvel universe, right.

Speaker 2 (04:14:41):
Yes, yeah, but that's the way that I came to
that conclusion. Cool, So I wanted to give you credit
for him.

Speaker 3 (04:14:46):
You made me love this female girl. Yeah, man, you're good.

Speaker 1 (04:14:51):
I have said in a video before that I think
she is quite possibly the greatest Marvel character of all time.

Speaker 2 (04:14:56):
Yes, So naturally she has to lead my team.

Speaker 1 (04:14:58):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (04:14:59):
Also because I'm going for some of the personality and
like emotional dynamics that we have from the original team.
So I need Sue in the leadership role to be
the glue to hold everybody together. She's of the four
that I've chosen. She's definitely the most experienced and she's
good to look at. So why not?

Speaker 1 (04:15:18):
No way? Did you go skimpy costumes?

Speaker 2 (04:15:20):
Sue? No? Okay, good. If I had my way on
the costumes, I would do the James Robinson red and
black ones.

Speaker 1 (04:15:26):
Oh you like the red?

Speaker 3 (04:15:27):
Red's my favorite color?

Speaker 2 (04:15:28):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (04:15:28):
Interesting?

Speaker 2 (04:15:28):
I know blue and white is like the classic blue
and black. Sure, but I'm I'm a sucker. I'm a
sucker for red.

Speaker 1 (04:15:35):
Interesting red. So she's got red? All right? Cool? Who
is Sue Storm's co leader?

Speaker 2 (04:15:41):
Here's my man? Okay, the only man on my team
is adult Franklin Richards. Adult Franklin Richards.

Speaker 1 (04:15:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:15:50):
Because FANDASA four, like you said, is all about family.

Speaker 1 (04:15:53):
Yeah, it's a family.

Speaker 2 (04:15:54):
And one of the big things about the original lineup
is that you have a brother and a sister. So, yes,
Franklin is her son, but as an adult, he's almost
her peer.

Speaker 1 (04:16:02):
Now, can I ask yes? As you learned in the
previous episode, there are several different versions of future Franklin.
Is it future Franklin from the Jonathan Hickman run Future
Franklin from the nineties, or is it a future Franklin
that you would make up specifically for your team, probably that.

Speaker 2 (04:16:18):
But the the one I've read the most is the
Hickman future Franklin.

Speaker 1 (04:16:23):
Mister bearded Franklin who has has the pet colactus.

Speaker 2 (04:16:26):
Yes, so it would probably be derivative of that if
people kind of want a reference to go with. So
we have the family dynamic with that, and he fills
the read role of your super smart scientist guy. Okay,
and you could still have the dynamic that like Sue
has with Johnny, where they'd be challenging each other, but
eventually he would give in to Sue because she's always right.

Speaker 1 (04:16:42):
So there'd be like a lot of mom's son.

Speaker 2 (04:16:45):
And he'd be like, but I'm probably older than you
right now, and she'd be like, I'm still your mom,
I'm still your mama. So yeah, So I picked adult
frank also because I really struggled with like, what what
man I wanted to put on the same and I
kept going back with what man loud at other four
games and I kept going back to the adult Franklins.
I thought that was so interesting because I love I

(04:17:05):
love the future foundation of Franklin's a big time.

Speaker 1 (04:17:07):
I kind of have a feeling I think I know
where this is going. Okay, maybe we'll see who is
your wild card. So my wild card it had to
be a strong person. Okay, you have to be well
what I was thinking.

Speaker 3 (04:17:22):
I needed someone who was muscly got it.

Speaker 2 (04:17:24):
And I was gonna say Lady Thor, but I said
Lady Thor for my Avengers, and I took another character that.

Speaker 1 (04:17:29):
Remember led my Avengers team. Yes she did, this is.

Speaker 2 (04:17:32):
True, but I didn't want to just copy my Avengers
tea because my anger, No, we have the one man,
because my Avengeress team was like my greatest hits of
the marvel. So I wanted a character who had never
been in the Fantastic War and I wanted a character
who I was pretty sure has never worked with a
Fantastic four interesting but was strong and was a lady Okay,

(04:17:55):
And I didn't want Lady Thor, but I was kind.

Speaker 1 (04:17:58):
Of on that we've heard about your hatred or Lady Thorn,
Lady Thor, but you're just told it was kind of
you kind of just repeated yourself.

Speaker 2 (04:18:04):
Really, I didn't want Lady Thor in this team.

Speaker 3 (04:18:06):
It's paramount, right, But so I was in that like
as guardian frame of.

Speaker 2 (04:18:09):
Mind, so I picked Lady Siff interest because Sif is
known as Sif the Stubborn is one of the names
that she goes by, like she's really hard headed, and
she's also known as Sif the Strong. Interesting because I
think that I'm not a huge fan of what they've
done with her in the movies, but I think like
the Journey in the Mystery book that.

Speaker 1 (04:18:27):
They've done on the movies, I mean basically nothing, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:18:31):
And they've cast her as like an eighty five pound woman.
But I really like in Journey in the Mystery, like
that run that was at the beginning of all New Marvel.
Now I went like, I don't know, twelve, is she's
or something like? I like her as a strong leading lady.

Speaker 1 (04:18:42):
Is that a good run?

Speaker 2 (04:18:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:18:44):
Cool?

Speaker 2 (04:18:45):
Yeah, I mean if you can, if you're in a
kid Loki, it's better cool. If you're not, it's pretty good, right.
But she's really great in it, and they get a
chance to do stuff whetherr that they can't do in
the movies because the movie is called Thorpe because it's
Marvel yep. So I picked her, and because that would
also bring some cosmic key cosme key stuff and the
Fantastic four. It's all about space and science and cosmic
key cosmic key stuff.

Speaker 3 (04:19:04):
So why I picked Lady Sip from my wild card?

Speaker 1 (04:19:06):
All right, now, I'm very intrigued you complete your four.
Who is your rookie?

Speaker 2 (04:19:17):
My rookie is a character who, at the time of
this recording will have less than ten books published.

Speaker 1 (04:19:26):
I'm guessing it's Miss Marvel with.

Speaker 3 (04:19:27):
Her and no, Miss Marvel's up to like sixteen or seventeen.

Speaker 1 (04:19:30):
Spider Gwen.

Speaker 2 (04:19:31):
It's not Spider Gwen because I don't like crossing universes. Okay,
but you're on the right trail with Spider Gud. I
pick Silk, silk and okay, so I always really like silk.
I do like silk, And that's also why I couldn't
pick Lady Thoripu. I was like, but that's two of
the people for my adventures team. And then it's just like, oh,
these are people actually.

Speaker 1 (04:19:47):
Likes the reason that I think, which is a common
theme with your team.

Speaker 2 (04:19:51):
Right, you're right, which means Jason team, because I always
kicked my team's asses, Like my my teams would be
like really have like really good conversations, and Jesus, you
would like demolish them instead. But Silk is Cindy Moon,
so she feels, my, I need a not white person.
I mean, Siff is technically not like a Caucasian human being,
but kill a white.

Speaker 1 (04:20:11):
Person god like alien. Yeah, yeah, she looks like a
white person.

Speaker 3 (04:20:15):
You know, I have I have someone of Asian descent,
which is great.

Speaker 2 (04:20:17):
And because Spider Man is one of I would say
the favorite uh f F fill ins and I kind
of wanted to go in that vein, but I didn't
want to go Peter Parker, so I went Silk.

Speaker 3 (04:20:27):
And because Cindy is in her runch, she.

Speaker 2 (04:20:30):
Actually kind of like dates Johnny, so she's of age
with him, so she would fill that brac.

Speaker 3 (04:20:35):
She would be the younger one.

Speaker 1 (04:20:36):
Yeah, she's the same age as Peter m and I
just like her and it's my team. So she's like,
what what kind of adventures would your team go on?
Do you have like a did you did you come
up with a basic storyline or any kind like what
do you think would be the style of their stories?

Speaker 2 (04:20:51):
I another reason that I wanted to focus on having
a lot of women around is because women, and this
is a for better ill, it can be a trap
that people fall into I hit my mic so into it.
Women do better with emotional beats, and so I would
want it to be some kind of story where and
it's been done in Fantastic for a lot, but I
think because of the family dynamic, it works well where

(04:21:11):
they have to go and save the family, and so
they bring these women together and they an adult Franklin.

Speaker 1 (04:21:16):
So read Johnny and Ben are lost somewhere.

Speaker 2 (04:21:18):
Yeah, probably in the negative zone or something or the
quandom birs, but I would want it to be there.
They're looking for Sue's family while they're building this surrogate
family at the same time. So that's kind of how
I would want it to focus.

Speaker 1 (04:21:32):
Cool. Yeah, do you would they do you think is
there a villain that you would love to see them
fight against?

Speaker 2 (04:21:38):
I would actually love to see them since I have
adult Franklin, I would love to have adult Valeria be
like kind of kind of evil she takes after Uncle Dom. Yeah,
that's what I would like to do. I'm really interested
in like Franklin and Valeria and and what happens to
them and what they're all about.

Speaker 3 (04:21:52):
So that's what I would like to do.

Speaker 2 (04:21:53):
And then again, you can have like Sue's her mom,
so Sue uses that connection to not defeat her.

Speaker 1 (04:21:59):
But and there was a lot of undertones in that.
In the Robinson run, where Valeria didn't want to hang
around with mom and dad, she stayed in Lavaria.

Speaker 2 (04:22:08):
And tried to commence Doomed to buy her ice cream.

Speaker 1 (04:22:10):
Basically, yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's.

Speaker 2 (04:22:12):
Kind of how I would want to go with it.
But I didn't spend too much time thinking about it
because I had to watch that movie.

Speaker 1 (04:22:17):
Ah, that's fine, that's fine.

Speaker 2 (04:22:19):
So tell me about your best ff team ever that
will destroy mine.

Speaker 1 (04:22:23):
Well, here's my thing. The Fantastic Four have to be
the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 2 (04:22:30):
What does that mean.

Speaker 1 (04:22:31):
Well, it has to be Ben, Johnny, Sue, and Reed.

Speaker 2 (04:22:35):
So have you renamed your team?

Speaker 1 (04:22:37):
No, but it has to be them. And if it's
not them. I struggle with this, like the Avengers like
for me, Like, remember I built this in that episode
which you can go listen to an iTunes this Ditcher.
I built this whole reason why because I didn't want
Captain America on my team. But I had to explain
because Captain America is so intrinsically part of the Avengers.

(04:22:57):
I had to do the same thing with the Fantastic Four.
I had to explain why isn't there three of them there?
And if there's not three of them there, who are
the three they would replace him?

Speaker 2 (04:23:07):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (04:23:08):
And I came upon a theme.

Speaker 2 (04:23:10):
Okay, is it, ladies, No, because that's kind of the thing.

Speaker 1 (04:23:14):
I still kept the three men one ladies, but not
on purpose. Okay, all right, So who is your leader?

Speaker 2 (04:23:21):
Leader?

Speaker 1 (04:23:22):
My leader is to me the only leader of the
Fantastic Four ever. I love Seusorm to death. The Fantastic
Four lives and dies with Reid Richards read Richards is
my team leader.

Speaker 2 (04:23:35):
He will.

Speaker 1 (04:23:35):
He is the reason the Fantastic Four were created. He
is the reason they went into space. Read Richards. I've
always felt that there's been a couple of times Reid
has left the team and stuff like that, and it's
never quite felt like the Fantastic Four to me, because
the Fantastic Four is so much read the Fantastic Three
or even though or yeah, or even when they thought

(04:23:56):
he was dead, and I sort of get it, but
like to me more so than Johnny, like when because
when Johnny died, they got rid of the Fantastic Four
and they did the Future Foundation, Yes, which to me
seemed quite weird because earlier in their continuity, Reid died
and was gone for like two years, Johnny was gone
for six months. Red was gone for two years, and

(04:24:17):
they didn't dissolve the Fantastic Four, whereas to me, I
think they would.

Speaker 2 (04:24:20):
Have, like just because he's so paramount, so tant amount
to what they are.

Speaker 1 (04:24:24):
Yes, the fantas and four exists to go on weird
adventures because of Reed.

Speaker 2 (04:24:28):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (04:24:29):
If they don't have Read, they're just three people with
powers chilling like I honestly think they would go join
the Avengers because all of them have been on the Avengers. True,
they would just hop into the Avengers because Red's the
Fantastic Four. So that's why Read is my team.

Speaker 2 (04:24:44):
Lear.

Speaker 1 (04:24:44):
You can't have a Fantasy four with that. Reid and
I would give Read.

Speaker 2 (04:24:46):
A beard, okay, and like a morning beard.

Speaker 1 (04:24:49):
No, he's had the beards in the comics before. I
give him a beard and Early in the Night have
great stripes in it to match his hair, Yes, all right,
in the chin of course. And he also in the
nineties Warld like a vest over his costume, and I
want that vest with pockets back.

Speaker 3 (04:25:03):
Okay's course pockets because the nineties.

Speaker 1 (04:25:05):
Right, Yeah, he's adventurer read and he's back.

Speaker 2 (04:25:07):
Okay, who is your co leader? My co leader, since
it's not Sue, is exactly who your co leader is. Oh,
shut up. Franklin Richards, also with the beard. But my frank,
my Franklin Richards, is the Jonathan Hickman. Frank Franklin Richards,
because I want a Franklin Richards with the ace of
his sleeve. I want a Franklin Richards who whose best

(04:25:30):
friend is his pet Galactus. And my Franklin Richards, who
when he grew up had a little robot that he
loved that he followed him around. That was a joke
of the nineteen sixties Fantastic four cartoon. But it's amazing
comics and I'm talking about Herbie. So to me, my
Franklin Richards takes Herbie tex. You've made the Fantastic five. No,
you always cheating at an extra teage umber every time. No, No,

(04:25:53):
he's like, I've actually made seven.

Speaker 1 (04:25:54):
No, Galactus is just there is the dog.

Speaker 3 (04:25:57):
No, No, I'm talking Herbie.

Speaker 1 (04:25:58):
Oh no, I'm let me finish my point. He programs
Herbie technology into Galactis. So Galactus is half Herbie. Now stop,
that's amazing. So yeah, it's it's it's so it's father
and son.

Speaker 2 (04:26:11):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (04:26:11):
Okay, that's that's my first two members.

Speaker 3 (04:26:13):
Okay, then who is your wild card?

Speaker 1 (04:26:16):
Uh? My wild card is a person with a deep
connection to the Fantastic Four, probably birthed at the same
moment as the Fantastic Four, as some people would say,
my wild card is Doom, but not doctor Doom. I'm
talking about Christophe Fernard. Oh, then the badass and I'm

(04:26:36):
gonna update He's gonna he basically wears Doom's costume, but
I'm gonna update Doom's costume, give him Doom's costume, and
and he's badass and he is. Yeah, he is my
wild card because he joins the team because Reid needs him.
But you can never trust what he's gonna do.

Speaker 2 (04:26:53):
Yeah, yeah, totally, so cool.

Speaker 1 (04:26:56):
You see a theme here.

Speaker 2 (04:26:57):
They're all Fantastic Four characters. Really, they're all men.

Speaker 1 (04:27:01):
Not really? All right, let's say.

Speaker 2 (04:27:05):
Who is your who's your rookie?

Speaker 1 (04:27:09):
Now, my rookie is a character who has never been
on the Fantastic Four ever, but has a connection to
the team and I introduced Franklin Richards, all powerful Franklin Richards.
I've also introduced whtroduced Doom and Christophe, both characters that
are well versed with traveling the multiverse, well versed with

(04:27:30):
traveling through time. My rookie is Spider Girl Mayda Parker.

Speaker 3 (04:27:37):
There, and they're all children of their legacy characters.

Speaker 1 (04:27:40):
They're all this is the Sons and Daughters team, that's
the Fantastic Four, led by the Father read by the Father,
the originator of.

Speaker 2 (04:27:49):
The Fantastic for the pre Generator.

Speaker 1 (04:27:51):
Interesting, yes, so they're all they're all children to the
Ultimate Teacher is the way like, so.

Speaker 2 (04:27:57):
How old you have made a buh?

Speaker 1 (04:28:00):
Her normal age? Her normal age? But like I don't know,
Like I I see this as like I don't really
quite have a storyline for this. But in my opinion,
it would be that like Reed did something that caused Johnny,
Ben and Sue to be trapped, and he basically travels
through space and time space and time too. So he

(04:28:22):
grabs Franklin AND's like, help me out. And then somehow
like Christoph has some piece of technology that they can use,
and so Christoph's like, well, I got to come with
you too, and then through some traveling into the multiverse,
Mayday accidentally ends up with them the Parker lock. Yeah, yeah,
totally yeah, And it's and it's the four of them
with a pet Herbie Galactus trying to free the Fantastic

(04:28:42):
Four from the the the skin of the universe.

Speaker 3 (04:28:46):
In my brain, they're traveling in a tartis.

Speaker 1 (04:28:48):
Sure, they're traveling inside Galactus's eye.

Speaker 2 (04:28:51):
Oh gross.

Speaker 1 (04:28:52):
Yeah, like you see you zoom in on the on
his eye and they're all on the ledge there gross.
So that yeah, it's the it's the sons and daughters
team because like, if it's not the Fantastic Four, I
wanted that personal relationship and I wanted Originally my original
team was going to be Read and Franklin, Peter Parker
and may Day so his father's son.

Speaker 2 (04:29:13):
Father daughter interest but Peter.

Speaker 1 (04:29:14):
We made the rule that the only remember was the
co leader. So and Franklin Richards has been on the
Fantasy Four. Yes, And I wanted Franklin so more than
he wanted Peter, more than I wanted Peter.

Speaker 2 (04:29:25):
But Diard Peter Parker fans were shaking their fist up there. Yeah, yeah,
there audio devices.

Speaker 1 (04:29:29):
I think Christoph Bernard is a character that has so
much potential but has never lived up to it. Like
I've never read a Christoph story that I love, Like
I always thought about I always like, oh, they could
have done this with the character, they could have done
this in the character, and they never quite get there
with Christoph. And I think Christoph is such the son
of Doom, who's not the real son of Doom.

Speaker 3 (04:29:50):
Yeah, the adopted son.

Speaker 1 (04:29:52):
It is such a great storyline, and I think him
and Franklin would have, like such an interesting relationship. And
also like you could have so many moments where reads like, look,
this is how it is, like I don't care what
your dad told me you but your dad's a megelininniacal
crazy man. And then may Day as the rookie, may

(04:30:13):
Day is very self doubting. She is, Yeah, and read
of all the things, Reid is an amazing teacher. He is.
He taught the rest of his team how to use
their powers. Yeah, there's one moment from the movie that
we're going to talk about that I kind of I
think epitomizes Franklin read Richard's Yes. In the movie, there's
that stupid scene and rise of the service server where

(04:30:35):
the fairest well of London. It's going to fall over. Yes,
And Johnny accidentally touches mister Fantastic, and at the point
in this movie their powers are transferring, and mister Fantastic
gets his flame powers, he gets Johnny's flamepowers, and unlike Sue,
he doesn't fall to the ground and go crazy. He's
able to stabilize and figure out how.

Speaker 2 (04:30:53):
To use them. Yeah, he uses them to not cauterize,
but to we to weld.

Speaker 1 (04:30:58):
Yes. But I think that that is mister Fantastic. He
would know how to use the Yes. He studied them
enough that he knows that, And I think that he
would be able to ultimately give so much confidence today
to may Day and it would basically make may Day.

Speaker 2 (04:31:17):
That's so nice.

Speaker 1 (04:31:18):
In my run, in my run, Yeah, if I was
writing this, she would in the run called Spider Woman cool.
She would, she would, I would. I would give her
the same Invisible Girl in Visible Woman flip. Yeah, you
know is what I would do. But is in terms
of villains, I don't really have anything, but like they're
just traveling across the multiverse fighting celestials.

Speaker 2 (04:31:39):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (04:31:39):
This is the Powerhouse team, This is this is Reed
Richard's strike team that's actually made up of children, well adults,
children adults, yes, yeah, yeah cool?

Speaker 2 (04:31:49):
Yeah. So there you go.

Speaker 1 (04:31:51):
That's my best Fantastic four team. Yay, yay, yay, you're
all woman team, my lady team. Which team to think
we would win? I guess the other one? Now bear
in mind, and my team has a galactus. Your team
has a galactus too, But my team is a galactus
with Herbie technology.

Speaker 2 (04:32:06):
I think that as to your galactus's disadvantage, I think
that it's too my galactus advance. I don't know, I
think so. I think Silk could out maneuver. Okay, here's
why I think my team would win. Okay, because I
think Silk could out maneuver made a probably, Yeah, And
because I think that Reid would never hurt too. Oh,

(04:32:30):
and the Franklins would just be like, let's fucking play
with galactis.

Speaker 1 (04:32:34):
Who is your who is your wildcard? Oh that's a
close one.

Speaker 2 (04:32:38):
S If and Christoph would probably really like each other.
They would they'd be like real violent at each other,
and they'd be like.

Speaker 1 (04:32:43):
Do you want to kiss the wild The wild card
is whether is how powerful we think Christoph would be?

Speaker 2 (04:32:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:32:49):
Because Christoph Christoph could take out a lot of your.

Speaker 2 (04:32:52):
Depends on how old your Christoph is, I think, and
how confident he is well.

Speaker 1 (04:32:55):
I I would age Mike Christoph up. Mike Christoph would
be probably in his thirties, but he would be equal
to Franklin's age from the Jonathan Hagger, So mid thirty
is ish well.

Speaker 2 (04:33:08):
I if our Franklins didn't team up to take him
down because they didn't really like him, I.

Speaker 1 (04:33:12):
Actually think the Frankliness would sit out. I think both
of them will be like this is below us and
sit out.

Speaker 2 (04:33:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:33:18):
I think Read and Sue would I think, because my
Read would be like Sue and your Sue would be
like they go bone in the closet. So I do
think Silk takes out may Day barely, Yes, barely. It's
a scrap y because again may Day, that Parker luck
that that would like barely let her lose. And it

(04:33:40):
comes down to whether we think Christoph could take down Siff.

Speaker 3 (04:33:45):
And it's kind of it's kind of the Batman Superman thing.

Speaker 2 (04:33:49):
If if if Christoph can get the drop on Stiff,
which yeah, to be fair, he probably can, he can
take her out. But if she just WAPs him upside
the head really quick. He's done.

Speaker 1 (04:33:59):
I'll be honest with you. I'll actually give it to
your team. I think I think Christophe takes out Siff,
no problem. I think it's silk spider sense. Oh, interesting,
screws over Christoph because no matter how much planning he
can do, She's gonna be able to predict it. Yeah,
and so and so your silk barely gets your team
to win. Yes, Cindy Moon, it's interesting. Yeah, and as

(04:34:25):
and as and As Galactus and Herbie Galactus become best friends.

Speaker 2 (04:34:29):
Yeah, and they they float off into space holding hands. Yep,
with the Franklins in their eyeballs.

Speaker 1 (04:34:34):
Come with the Herbie Galactis.

Speaker 2 (04:34:36):
Oh, gang, your Herbie Galactis voice is very similar to
your Glumulus voice.

Speaker 1 (04:34:42):
No, no, no, no, We'll we'll get to that. That's
an inside Joe, that's inside baseball.

Speaker 2 (04:34:46):
Let's talk.

Speaker 1 (04:34:47):
But let's move on to the next section of this podcast.
What's the next section of this podcast about Ashley.

Speaker 2 (04:34:51):
It's about Fantastic four The Rise of the Silver Surfer,
which is a movie that I had never seen before.
And Jason was like, this is the Fantastic four movie
for you. You Sweetie.

Speaker 1 (04:35:03):
Did I say sweetie because I was doing a river
song impression? Did I say sweety because I was like,
You're gonna hate this.

Speaker 2 (04:35:10):
I think that the if I remember correctly at the time,
you were dressed like Humphrey Boguard.

Speaker 1 (04:35:13):
And I think that's why I came sweet Fantastic four
Rogers for you.

Speaker 3 (04:35:19):
And then the waiter, the waitress walked by, and you
smacked her on the rear.

Speaker 1 (04:35:22):
Of all the negative zones and all the places in
the multi voce she had to walk into.

Speaker 2 (04:35:26):
Mind, it was exactly like that, all right.

Speaker 1 (04:35:29):
Two thousand and sevens Fantastic four Rise the Silver Surfer
is directed by Tim's story Would you call it directed? Nope?
Ian Griffold or Griffold? How you say that? Goofle mister
Fantastic Cooper Smooth, Vince from the Shield, Michael Chickliss.

Speaker 2 (04:35:44):
As the Thing.

Speaker 3 (04:35:46):
Just man, I wish Boy Crowded had been in this movie,
just like a.

Speaker 1 (04:35:50):
Blank Eyes Alba as the Invisible Woman, and Captain America
as the Human tour Yeah, Chris Evans and the guy
from niktucka Doctor Doom and the and the.

Speaker 2 (04:36:02):
Guy from Pans Labyrinth voiced by the guy who was
Morpheus as the Silver.

Speaker 1 (04:36:06):
Surface a Perry White.

Speaker 2 (04:36:09):
Oh yeah, he's Perry White. He's a great Perry White.

Speaker 1 (04:36:11):
Now, give a quick synopsis to anybody out there who
has not seen Fantastic four, the masterpiece, that is, if
you can't tell already, we don't. We didn't like this film, and.

Speaker 2 (04:36:20):
I wouldn't call it a film.

Speaker 1 (04:36:25):
That's true enough. Give a quick synopsis. I want to
hear your synopsis A Fantastic four Rise the Silver Surfer.

Speaker 3 (04:36:31):
To be fair, I was on Twitter for a lot
of this movie.

Speaker 1 (04:36:34):
I still think you played. You paid plenty enough attention.

Speaker 2 (04:36:37):
So Read and sew are like, let's get married because
apparently they fucked that up before. And Johnny's like, let's
have product placement, and Ben's like, I'm gonna lift children
in the airport.

Speaker 1 (04:36:48):
You don't have to get this details that. That's literally
the first scene.

Speaker 2 (04:36:51):
There's like there's like an hour of that. And then
you see this like silver guy like surfing through space,
and then like shit gets frozen on Earth, and then
they capture the Silver Reserver with Nick Fury who's not
Nick Fury in the base where they filmed the x menzines,
and then uh, Jessica Alba pretends to act because everyone's

(04:37:12):
telling her she's really special. And then Victor von Doom's
face heels and he shows up, and then they throw
him in the water, and then Cloud tries to eat
Earth the end, and they get married in Japan, which
is actually the Japanese Gardens in Vancouver, Vancouver populated by
everyone who acted in mash yep.

Speaker 1 (04:37:32):
Is there anything you've felt we left out or that
is that a good enough for our listeners? Basically, the
let's just say this all right this?

Speaker 2 (04:37:40):
Oh yeah, and they're they're swapping powers. That's an important part.

Speaker 1 (04:37:43):
Yeah, there's a lot of swapping powers. Basically, it's sort
of the Silver Surfer Galactas storyline told in a really
bad way.

Speaker 2 (04:37:50):
Yeah, that's really what I'm trying to stress.

Speaker 1 (04:37:52):
You know what started in the Darkness did for Ratho Khan.
That's what Rises the Silver Surfer did to the original
the Coming of Galactus story.

Speaker 2 (04:37:58):
Oh yeah, I like sort it into darkness.

Speaker 1 (04:38:01):
I like starting in the darkness as well. But starting
in the Darkness is Wrath of Khan written by writing
you could never write basically. Sure, sure, so anyways, let's uh,
let's let's drop right.

Speaker 3 (04:38:13):
Into it because, uh, because our opinions aren't clear.

Speaker 2 (04:38:15):
So you you didn't like this movie. I didn't like
this movie.

Speaker 1 (04:38:18):
Would you you would not call this a Fantastic four
story a good Fantastic four story?

Speaker 2 (04:38:23):
No, okay? Would you know?

Speaker 1 (04:38:26):
There's good ideas in it?

Speaker 3 (04:38:27):
There are There are.

Speaker 2 (04:38:28):
Really good ideas, and there are some good moments. Although
that being said, it was really hard for me to
pick a scene that I actually enjoyed.

Speaker 1 (04:38:36):
So let's uh, let's get into this.

Speaker 2 (04:38:39):
Okay, okay, cool?

Speaker 1 (04:38:40):
So who do you think was the best actor and
Fantastic four Rise of the Silver Server.

Speaker 2 (04:38:47):
That's tough because I think there were some people who
played some good parts, But I like the movie's so
bad that I just want to be like no one.

Speaker 3 (04:38:58):
I'm gonna give it.

Speaker 1 (04:38:59):
Even in bad movies, they are good actors.

Speaker 3 (04:39:01):
I've seen two Sharknado movies.

Speaker 1 (04:39:04):
Even in bad movies, there are a good actors.

Speaker 2 (04:39:06):
I've seen the room many to.

Speaker 1 (04:39:09):
There are good actors. Even if it's the extra in
the background who just goes ah and runs, that's a
good acting.

Speaker 2 (04:39:14):
Sure. I'm gonna give it to Ian. I don't know
his last name, but he was Horatio Hornblower once.

Speaker 1 (04:39:20):
Yep, I don't.

Speaker 2 (04:39:22):
I always want to say I want to say, yeah,
something like that. Lancelot King, I don't know how to
say his last name. He would have been a great, mister, fantastic. Now,
like ten years later.

Speaker 1 (04:39:33):
He's in that new Immortal show where he's like an
immortal vampire detective guy. It's weird. What Yeah, I'm serious, serie.
He's like, I don't even know what that is. Well,
I'm not even gonna bother look up the names, and
I know we're gonna get like Twitter comments where people
are like, oh god, I love his podcast until he
just couldn't remember the name of that stupid CBS show.
He's a CBS show where he's like a detective and

(04:39:54):
he's like sort of a mortal, basically mortal. I think
it might be called Immortal. I could be wrong. I
don't care enough to look it up.

Speaker 2 (04:40:00):
That's cool.

Speaker 3 (04:40:01):
He the reason that I picked him.

Speaker 2 (04:40:03):
I think Michael Chickliss does a great job as as
the thing, but I have problems with the suit and
I think that I almost said Chris Pratt has done
like Chris Evens does a great job as Johnny, but
he's not doing anything. And the reason I want to
give it to Ian of the Questionable Last Name is
because he does a lot of really subtle things in
his performance, especially when he's doing science stuff and you

(04:40:24):
watch him be conflicted about lying to Sue. That I
think is just so much better than everything else going
on in that movie. It's like, oh, like watch, I
can just watch your face and you're doing good stuff
with your face. You're not just like staring at me
with blue contacts. So I would say that Ian something
something is the best actor in this movie. Nice, Yeah,

(04:40:44):
how do you think what?

Speaker 1 (04:40:45):
I want to say that, Like, as you were talking
about Michael Chickliss, here's the weird thing that I'm gonna say.
I actually think he was better in the first one
than Yeah, because when we just we just watched it
and see in the first one and you don't don't
And in the first one he actually has stuff to
do because it's that he's actually married in the first
one and when he becomes the thing, like his wife

(04:41:07):
like leaves him drama. Yeah, so he has to deal
with that, and the whole first movie is about like,
oh crap, I'm gonna be this rock creature forever, Whereas
in this movie he's nothing but comic relief and like
he says and and he just goes, oh crap, like
five times and it just gets old, It gets really old.
Whereas in the first movie he says a lot of stuff,
you know, and they're also just.

Speaker 2 (04:41:27):
Looking for excuses to get him out of the suit.

Speaker 1 (04:41:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well of course it's Michael Chicklas in
that suit like took forever, but it was his choice
to bake that suit. Yes, I think the best actor
by far, by no contest, is Chris Evans. Chris Evans
as the human Towards, I feel, is the greatest thing
about this movie, the only good thing you can say

(04:41:50):
about this movie. He is so Johnny Storm. It's perfect.
And that's why when he's first cat to Captain America,
I was like, you've got to be kidding me. There's
no way you can pull off Captain America. His his mannerisms,
his attitude, his everything is comic book Johnny Storm to
a t.

Speaker 2 (04:42:07):
I would just my argument against like what I didn't
pick him was because I think he is a great actor,
Like he's great in Captain America, he's great in puncture
or whatever.

Speaker 3 (04:42:16):
I don't know how much acting he's doing his Johnny Storm.

Speaker 1 (04:42:19):
Hey, it's still acting. You still have to act to
deliver those lines to get those comedic times. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:42:25):
Yeah, but he's great. He's really funny.

Speaker 1 (04:42:27):
He's great. He's he's one of the few, like like
I think Michael Chicklets could be good with a cgi thing.

Speaker 2 (04:42:34):
I could.

Speaker 1 (04:42:34):
I believe uh gruffald Ian whatever his name is, could
be great now as read Richard Yea. Chris Evans was
great then, yes he was. And he's the only member
of the Fantastic Four I believe that was great in
their part. Like just nailed it fair enough. And if
you were to remake it, I'd be like, well make

(04:42:55):
him there's a Johnny Storm.

Speaker 3 (04:42:57):
But he's captain American act Yeah I know, I know,
And then give it Chris.

Speaker 1 (04:43:00):
Pratt and they gave it to Michael B. Jordan and whatever.
That's why I think is the best actor. Who is
the worst actor in this movie? I think we're both
gonna have the same answer.

Speaker 2 (04:43:08):
Jessica Alba Alba why because if you replace her with
a plank of wood, it would have been more entertaining.
You just stick the blue contacts on.

Speaker 1 (04:43:17):
You think a two by four of Pine, I could
see that.

Speaker 2 (04:43:22):
Yeah, okay, so and you still have to be fucking
naked for no reason.

Speaker 1 (04:43:28):
Well, Pine's always naked, not Chris Pine.

Speaker 3 (04:43:31):
A piece of Pine have always been naked in both
Star Tak movies.

Speaker 1 (04:43:34):
Yeah, yes, yeah, yes, let's get ma get off topic.
We've already been, We've already gone on a Star Trek twice.

Speaker 2 (04:43:41):
Right, There's just like there's no word for how horrible
she is. And and Sue might not be super signedist
of the Marvel Universe level smart, but she's smart and
and she's Read's partner. She's not just like his late
Like that's important to me is that they appear as equal.

(04:44:02):
And she's like an insufferable bitch in so many scenes.

Speaker 1 (04:44:05):
Well, and also her line delivery is just so bad.

Speaker 2 (04:44:08):
She's vague, there's nothing going on behind those blue contacts.
It's like there's nothing.

Speaker 1 (04:44:12):
It's I'm saying this line because it's in the script.

Speaker 2 (04:44:15):
And then they marry Sue her because she's such an
important focus for the Silver Surfer, and they keep telling
you how important she is, but that's she never earns it.

Speaker 1 (04:44:23):
That's kind of earned from the comics.

Speaker 2 (04:44:25):
Sure, you can earn it in the comics because nobody's
not reading me, not reading the lines, like they give
a shit.

Speaker 3 (04:44:30):
Like she showed up for that because they paid her.

Speaker 1 (04:44:32):
Yeah, well, it's so weird because you can tell she.

Speaker 3 (04:44:35):
Was also, here's the same color as your skin, which
for example, she was.

Speaker 1 (04:44:40):
For me the stunt casting. Yeah, because at the time
when they first made the first movie, which I think
was two thousand and four, and you know, she was
she was a big deal. She was the hot chick.
She was the like stunning blonde chick. So whenever you
cast the Fantastic Four, when you were like, oh, I
wonder who plays Sue Storm, everybody was like Jessica alb
But because she's got blonde hair is the same thing

(04:45:00):
when like Brian Cranston was the lead to play Lex
Luther Cy just because he was bald in Breaking Bad.
But the thing about it is that she's never been
a good actress.

Speaker 2 (04:45:09):
No, she was in those like teenage dance movies where
like I have feelings like with Channing Tatum or whatever,
and like, I guess you're fine in that if all
you have to do is be like how could you
betray me? But if you're trying to play a character
with something like pretending to be depth. It doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (04:45:24):
Nope.

Speaker 3 (04:45:26):
So it took a lot of issue with her.

Speaker 1 (04:45:29):
What was the best scene in Fantastic for a Rise
of the Silver Surfer, Like when the credits rolled, No,
give a real answer to this, don't don't give don't
don't give a non answer.

Speaker 2 (04:45:42):
It's tough. I would say a scene that I really enjoyed,
despite the fact that Jessica Alva was in. It was
when she has snuck out of the like classroom that
they're being held up on the army base and she's
talking to this little and he's explaining he remembers who

(04:46:04):
he was and where he came from. And I think
that's a really powerful moment. And I think despite the
bounds of makeup on Doug Jones's face, it's played very
real and very close to the heart, but very alien
at the same time. Like that's one of the only
times actually felt something and I was like, oh, I
feel bad for you. So probably that scene where he's
explaining to her, like what's happened? You know, it's it's

(04:46:24):
an exposition dump, yep, but it's well done. Yeah, So yes,
that one.

Speaker 3 (04:46:29):
What's your favorite scene?

Speaker 1 (04:46:30):
I have two, okay, and mine both involved the Human
Torch and the Silver Surfer. Okay, the first one is
the chase through New York because the first teaser trailer
they ever showed for the movie was just the scene
of the fantastic the Silver Surfer coming through the Chrysler
building and Johnny chasing him, and then when the Silver
Serfer grabbed him and put him into orbit and dropped him,

(04:46:51):
they just went to black and it was like, right
is the Silver Surfer? And you were like and from
that teaser you powerful. You were just like, holy shit,
this movie looks awesome.

Speaker 2 (04:46:59):
They give you hope, even though it was the same
cast as the first movie.

Speaker 1 (04:47:02):
It did because I remember not liking that first movie
the first time I saw it, and I was but
seeing that trailer being like, well, because I remember when
I first saw it, I was kind of like, well,
I mean they kind of like, I'm okay with the cast,
Like if they just got them a good story, they
can maybe work it out here, and that teaser trailer
maybe be like, holy crap, maybe just putting the Silver

(04:47:23):
Surfer in there is the magic ingredient.

Speaker 2 (04:47:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:47:26):
I also like the ending where Silver Surfer is going
up to Galactys. Yeah, yeah, and Johnny's pushing him because
when he gets in there and all those elements are
there and there's Kirby crackle, it's the most Kirby looking
thing I think we've ever seen on screen even to date. Yes,
you know, so, I like both those scenes because the
Silver Surfer, to me, steals the movie totally. He's one

(04:47:46):
of the only CG things that looks good. He's one
of the best things in the entire movie is the
Silver Surfer. And it's like any scene with the Silver
Surfer like works and it's great, but like, man, everything
else just doesn't work, doesn't work. What's the worst scene
in the movie? There are many, but what's the worst.

Speaker 2 (04:48:04):
The one I'm going to pick is when they first
discover that they're trading powers m hm, because Johnny's there
and Sue's there and they smack hands and Johnny's invisible
and Sue's on fire and she's flying and whatever, and
then she turns the flames off and she's inexplicably naked because.

Speaker 1 (04:48:23):
She burned off for clothes.

Speaker 2 (04:48:24):
Yeah, and I get that, but it doesn't happen to Johnny.
And uh, because she's a lady and she's justica album.
We had a shore naked and then we have this
gratuitous like close up on all these photographers who are like, Oh,
I'm not gonna like help you or I'm not gonna
feel bad for you, but I'm gonna take a picture
of the naked lady on the street. And I just hated,
like it was so fakey, faky, and it bothered me

(04:48:45):
more than the Dodge product placement, which is.

Speaker 1 (04:48:48):
I still think the worst product placement, and it's in
a superhero movie.

Speaker 2 (04:48:51):
And then Johnny's like hemy and reads like, of course good.
The problem with this movie is it's not it's not
the cast, and we have problems with the cast, and
it's not script and there are problems with the script.
And it's not the effects, and there are problems with
the effects. It's that no one is treating this seriously.
It's a joke to everyone, and that's the problem with it,
so that even when one actor takes it seriously or

(04:49:13):
like one camera guy takes it, it's not enough to
make up for all the rest of the disrespect of
the property and the story being told and rant, what's
these favorites.

Speaker 1 (04:49:22):
Well, scene, my Ley's favorite scene I think exemprifies what
I actually think is the biggest problem in the movie.
What causes this movie I think to be horrible, and
that is Read Richard's dancing. It's ridiculous. And there is
literally a five minute scene that's just dancing. There's literally

(04:49:43):
a scene it's about Read Richard's dancing with some real
bad effects, yes, with some bad effects. That focus is
on he's dancing with these hot chicks, because the hot
chicks know who he is now the Fantastic Four, as
we learned in the last couple weeks, they yes, Read
Richards sort of did publicize them and do that stuff,
but he meant that to do because he felt bad

(04:50:05):
about causing their injuries and causing their you know whatever
is and he calls them injuries. So they're sort of celebrities.
But they're not the Kardashians. They're not Bruce Jenner, they're
not Caitlyn Jenner, they're not Hillary Duff and Miley Cyrus.
They're not those people. And that is not the focus

(04:50:27):
of what your Fantastic Four movie should be.

Speaker 2 (04:50:30):
M hmm.

Speaker 1 (04:50:31):
It should be about science fiction. It should be about
exploring new worlds. That's why this fantasy we're always tapped
into me because I've always felt it was Star Trek superheroes.
Focusing on the celebrities and being like, oh, this is
a comedy is the wrong way to take that material.

Speaker 2 (04:50:48):
Right, And that's what you have Johnny for so and
you can bring in comic relief that way, and you
can bring in frustration with the fact that he's trying
to like monetize what they are.

Speaker 3 (04:50:56):
But when that's the whole driving force, like.

Speaker 1 (04:51:00):
The comedy that comes from Fantastic four, and there is
a lot of comedy in a Fantastic four comic book.
The comedy comes from the family being dysfunctional. Yeah, not
from their situation. It comes from them because Reid is like,
I discover this new universe, let's all go team.

Speaker 2 (04:51:19):
They hop in.

Speaker 1 (04:51:19):
They go to the new universe reads just like I
didn't build a machine to get us back. Sue's like, ah,
damn it, read again, this is like the fifty fifth
dimension you've done this for.

Speaker 2 (04:51:30):
And then.

Speaker 1 (04:51:32):
Johnny's gonna be late for a date and yeah, and
then Ben talks about his sexual inadequacies. They start fighting,
and then eventually at the last minute, they all team
up together because the Horde, the Horde of bug Aliens,
comes after them, and at the last minute, they all
team up together. They give Read enough time to finish
the machine, and they go home. That's the Fantastic four story.

Speaker 3 (04:51:52):
Cool, simple, simple as that.

Speaker 2 (04:51:54):
Fox Yep.

Speaker 1 (04:51:55):
We ah, we have to work together to make things
go up.

Speaker 3 (04:51:59):
But maybe we find like yesterday, so we'll have to
get over it.

Speaker 1 (04:52:02):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (04:52:03):
Not not like it's human drama and they didn't treat
it like human.

Speaker 1 (04:52:06):
No, they treated it like like, oh man, we're being
featured on entertainment tonight and they're talking about me.

Speaker 2 (04:52:11):
Oh damn it, and I'm gonna explictedly have kitten heels
in my suit that's supposed to be standard.

Speaker 1 (04:52:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also the reagular thing. Like
the opening this movie is is them in an airport
and everybody having a big deal about in the airport
and then like a news report being like Read and
Sue have tried to be married five times, Like that's
the crux of the plot.

Speaker 2 (04:52:32):
But here's the thing that I don't get. You can
just like go to the courthouse and sign a sheet
of paper and you're married.

Speaker 1 (04:52:38):
But see you're missing the point. And see this movie.
They're celebrities, right, they have to be married in front
of thousands of fucking cameras because that's more important than
the saving the world that is happening in this movie.
Like biblical implications. They are happening in this movie, and
what are we concerned about, Oh, let's get them married.

Speaker 2 (04:52:59):
It's bad.

Speaker 1 (04:53:01):
And those are our thought. Fantastic four. Rise of the
Silver Serve. If you were to give this a score
from one to ten, ten being the best, one being
the worst, you cannot go negative. It's not that bad.

Speaker 2 (04:53:14):
Negative.

Speaker 1 (04:53:16):
What's the score you'd give it?

Speaker 2 (04:53:17):
Mmmmm? I'd give it like a three. Give aunt man
like a five if that helps people.

Speaker 3 (04:53:27):
Yeah, I give it a three.

Speaker 1 (04:53:28):
I was going to say, like two point five. Yeah, yeah,
it's pretty bad.

Speaker 3 (04:53:33):
Like I bet I would have enjoyed the Roger Corman
movie more.

Speaker 1 (04:53:37):
At least their costumes were comic book accurate.

Speaker 2 (04:53:39):
Right, I think that I would have derived more joy
from that shittiness than the shittiness of this movie that
we actually want.

Speaker 1 (04:53:47):
Well, the Roger Corman, actually the origin is is very
accurate to the comics.

Speaker 3 (04:53:50):
Have you seen it?

Speaker 1 (04:53:51):
I've seen pieces of it now. It's pretty bad. Yeah,
but I will tell everybody out there that if you
want us to review this Roger Cormann as a format,
it's all on all on YouTube. You want to go watch. Yeah, yeah,
I've watched pieces of it. It's pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (04:54:06):
I've seen the musical that they spoof it with on
Arrested Development. Oh yeah, yea.

Speaker 1 (04:54:13):
Cool. Any any final thoughts you want to say on
Our Adventures team or Avengers Fantasic four team.

Speaker 3 (04:54:18):
That was so long, I never remember my Avengers team.

Speaker 1 (04:54:20):
Or Fantastic four rise at the Silver Server.

Speaker 2 (04:54:24):
If somebody draws our Fantastic four teams beating up the
movie Fantastic four team, I will start a media circus
and try to marry them and then fail.

Speaker 1 (04:54:36):
That's a little much of a prize.

Speaker 2 (04:54:39):
I'm tying it back into the movie.

Speaker 1 (04:54:41):
Oh okay, got it?

Speaker 2 (04:54:42):
See it? Yeah they can.

Speaker 3 (04:54:44):
They can be a media darling for as long as
it lasts.

Speaker 1 (04:54:46):
You know what, Ashley, Nope. In high school, it was
jocks like you that ruled the world. But now jocks
like you come to me to rule, to rule the
world because I'm the guy who's got the hot girl
and the big building, and there's rock fella who will
never be able to have a normal life again. And
there's other fella who turns into flames and bones a

(04:55:09):
lot of chicks and probably has STDs. But you need
my help right now, buddy.

Speaker 2 (04:55:14):
Who's an anime club in high.

Speaker 1 (04:55:15):
School that we just reenacted to one of the worst
speeches from Tastaks four, He goes nerds.

Speaker 2 (04:55:22):
Yeah, I don't know what else to say, there's nothing
to say.

Speaker 1 (04:55:25):
Oh, it's just bad. Poor Doug Jones, Yep, I would
love I would actually love with Laurence Fishburne was the
voice of the Silver Surfer again though. Yeah, I'd be
down for that.

Speaker 2 (04:55:33):
Great and the Doug Jones gonna be the body that
was good.

Speaker 1 (04:55:37):
Yeah, all right, that's it for this episode of history.
Lesson for our best Fantastic four team ever and review
of Rise of the Silver Surfer FANTASTICO oh Man has
got a hemy. My YouTube channel does not have a
hemy and it will never have a Hemmy oh.

Speaker 3 (04:55:51):
Man doesn't have dodge rams seat covers.

Speaker 1 (04:55:53):
If you don't know what we're talking about, go google
dodge hemy joke from Fantastic four, Rises of the Silver Surfers.
I guarantee you it's on there. Yeah, it's so bad.

Speaker 2 (04:56:04):
Hemis are shit, but now you're gonna get angry.

Speaker 1 (04:56:07):
Tweet No, probably probably Dodge trucks are awesome, but it's
just ridiculous. Anyways, go to find us on Twitter. We
hope you enjoyed. This episode was a little bit different
and our fantastic Balsa is finally over. Next week we're
gonna be doing something a little bit different. Yeah, some
other things, some other characters from other places that aren't
fantastic for realated, Well, they have relations, but they're not

(04:56:27):
fantastic for members.

Speaker 2 (04:56:28):
True.

Speaker 1 (04:56:29):
So there you go. Go find us on iTunes. You
have crazy, filthy animals, and go wash rise to the
Silver Server for a fun date night movie.

Speaker 3 (04:56:36):
Sure, I'm Jason, I'm Ashley Victoria Robinson.

Speaker 1 (04:56:40):
And actually please close out this catastrophic palismic podcast.

Speaker 2 (04:56:46):
Klaus is now dismissed. Go home in your Hemis.

Speaker 8 (04:57:14):
Hello, I am Herbie goal Acts. How might help you?
Franklin Rinchards, I.

Speaker 2 (04:57:20):
Was looking for Bamax.

Speaker 8 (04:57:23):
Only herbiing Galactis Kenzar.

Speaker 3 (04:57:26):
Okay, can you sweep the Baxter building for me?

Speaker 2 (04:57:31):
I am the Science on five Planets?

Speaker 1 (04:57:33):
How well? Im sweep baby building.

Speaker 2 (04:57:41):
Just get some pim particles and shrinked.

Speaker 8 (04:57:47):
I am a god being of the fifth dimension and more,
I have pierced the bail of and overse Why are
you domestic?

Speaker 2 (04:57:57):
Ab Oh? My god, think of his little herbies in
that FF issue when they're like vacuuming the floor.

Speaker 1 (04:58:06):
Oh this is so insider choke.

Speaker 2 (04:58:07):
It hurts.

Speaker 1 (04:58:08):
All right, all right, you know what, you know what
we should do? No, we should go watch Fantastic Floor
Rise of the Silver Server. The commentary track. Who does
the commentary Tim's story? The director who sunk the battleship
of Fantastic four.

Speaker 3 (04:58:25):
It was just Chris Evans being like whatever they paid me?

Speaker 2 (04:58:29):
No, no, no, yeah, it's Chris Evans. It's Chris Evans.

Speaker 3 (04:58:32):
I signed to be Captain America.

Speaker 1 (04:58:34):
It's Chris Evans. After every one of his piece of
his dialogue, he's just kotching. It's nothing else. He says,
no words.

Speaker 2 (04:58:44):
I would watch that.

Speaker 1 (04:58:45):
He's just like Johnny Storms, like is that a hemmy?
And he's like cutching.

Speaker 3 (04:58:50):
Probably paid twice as much as say that line.

Speaker 2 (04:58:52):
He probably did.

Speaker 1 (04:58:56):
Oh the world is said. The world is sad because
I believed in this. I don't know where they're end.
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