Marvels - with Alan Kistler, Keith Lehtinen, and Case Aiken

For Trade School’s 50th episode, Case Aiken, Alan Kistler, and Keith Lehtinen revisit Marvels, the Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross masterpiece that asks what the Marvel Universe looks like to the people on the ground. By filtering iconic moments through photojournalist Phil Sheldon, Marvels turns continuity into lived history and spectacle into something emotional, terrifying, and beautiful. It’s one of the best arguments ever made for why superhero comics matter.

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Edited by Case Aiken

Scored by Bret Eagleston

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⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Welcome and 50th Episode Intro

00:54 Introducing Marvels

01:55 Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross

04:43 Alex Ross’s Legacy

05:08 Case’s History with Marvels

08:24 Keith’s History with Marvels

09:57 Alan’s History with Marvels

15:29 Comics Looking Back at Comics

18:55 The ’90s and Reassessing Heroes

25:34 The Human Torch Prologue

27:17 The 1940s Issue

33:28 Fear of the Marvels

39:02 The Marvels Become Heroes

43:43 Phil, Doris, and the Sub-Mariner

44:23 The Tidal Wave

47:19 Phil Loses His Eye

48:24 The Marvels Go to War

49:02 The Mutant Issue

55:24 The X-Men and Anti-Mutant Fear

58:38 Alicia Masters’ Gala

01:00:11 Maggie the Mutant Girl

01:01:27 The Fantastic Four Wedding and the Sentinels

01:06:21 The Sentinel Riot

01:09:40 The Galactus Issue

01:12:22 Phil Steps Back

01:17:08 Galactus and the Fantastic Four

01:22:45 People Doubt the Marvels

01:25:01 Gwen Stacy

01:28:38 Keith on Gwen Stacy

01:32:57 Gwen and the Green Goblin

01:35:02 The Snap

01:37:26 Phil Retires

01:39:25 The Marvels Epilogue

01:45:07 Phil’s Family and Perspective

01:47:27 Final Thoughts on Marvels

01:50:01 Recommendation

01:52:02 Keith’s Plugs

01:52:58 Alan’s Plugs

01:54:39 Case’s Plugs

01:55:51 50th Episode Wrap-Up

01:56:34 Long Live the Legion Promo

Transcription

00:00
Case Aiken
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it. Hey, everyone, I'm Case Aiken, and this is a weird episode of Trade School because this is the 50th episode of Trade School. And so rather than doing just me rambling about a book that I think is really important, I wanted to open this up to a. A host of people to talk about a bigger work. And so I brought on my regular collaborator, Keith Lehtinen.

00:32
Keith Lehtinen
Hello, everybody.

00:34
Case Aiken
Because I wanted to make sure that his voice was included in this conversation. And because the work that we're talking about deals especially with comic book history and is a nostalgic work for me, there's probably no better guess that fits those two bullets when talking about stuff for me than my friend Alan Kistler.

00:51
Alan Kistler
Hello, Earth people,.

00:54
Case Aiken
Because today we are going to talk about Marvel's.

00:58
Keith Lehtinen
Yes, Very excited.

00:59
Alan Kistler
Huge, huge when it came out.

01:01
Case Aiken
Yeah. And so I thought that would be a really good 50th episode because it scratches a whole lot of itches in terms of what is going for it, especially in the format that it was printed in and successive printings and so forth. We can talk about. Alan, I know you want to talk about the epilogue, and we'll give some time for that one. The version of the Trade that I was looking was the, I think, original version of it, the one that has the Giant man cover on it that I got in the. In the 90s. And that is the one that I was going off of. I did try to look online at the Marvel app, but the Marvel app was being extremely stubborn and would not let me load past, like, a certain point in the first issue.

01:47
Case Aiken
So I was like, oh, well, I guess I'm definitely doing the actual premise of the series and using the actual trade paperback.

01:55
Alan Kistler
Just like you've read enough.

01:56
Case Aiken
Yes. The Internet, sometimes. Anyway, so I wanted to talk about this book, and I thought that this would be a good roundtable discussion to have about it. And so we might as well just start with talking about the structure of the book. Or rather, let's talk about the creative team for it. It's Kurt Busick Busaic.

02:23
Alan Kistler
Is how I've heard it.

02:24
Case Aiken
Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to allow for the fact that I could be just way off on this one. And I'm sorry, because lovely guy enjoys writing so much. Like, want to talk about a lot of his writing on here, but I'M definitely going to butcher his name every single time. And I'm sorry. There's a lot of comic book writers that are in that category and I'm sorry. But just lovely storytelling. And then we have Alex Ross, of course. And this is the big coming out party, the quinceanera for Alex Ross in terms of comic books. He had done, I think, a few things beforehand, like covers especially.

03:05
Alan Kistler
Yeah, yeah. He did a Spectre cover that I always think about with the Superman holding the spear of destiny against the specter.

03:14
Case Aiken
Nice. Yeah, so he had done stuff, but this was his big. Holy shit, guys. Like, look at what this guy can do for a whole series of things. Like it was this, it was the one, two punch of this. And then Kingdom Come being for the big two and really just doing like these like crazy works. But this is the first of those, that one, two punch. And it is certainly a just different way of telling stories for the history of comics. There's this reverence to the history of like, comics that come across here by Ross's like extremely like hyper realistic style that he put.

03:52
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

03:52
Case Aiken
Like, you know, combined with the fact that the whole story is about a photojournalist. Like, it comes across as like, as these like still lifes of the actual moments of like superheroes in the re. In reality, like in motion. And it's such an interesting work that, like I said, was just the big coming out party for Ross as a comic book creator and would go on to be, you know, a huge creative going forward. You know, like an Alex Ross cover became a thing that people like, really cared about.

04:26
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

04:26
Case Aiken
You know, like, and Ross to this day is an important artist, especially for covers. But like, just, you know, to, to have Alex Ross be involved in a project is still like a stamp of approval of like, how authentic your party, your like, program is.

04:43
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. I mean, if you go to San Diego Comic Con, there's usually a booth that's just Alex Ross. It's like a art studio just for his art. Like, I don't see anyone else that really has that. And you know, he's just iconic that way. And I'll just say, personally, I am delighted you picked the Marvels instead of Kingdom Come. Because you're such a D.C. boy, I just assumed you picked Kingdom Come. But as a Marvel boy myself, I love talking about this book, so.

05:08
Case Aiken
Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that. And maybe then the next thing that we should talk about is our personal relationship with the Books. Because I was into it. I can't remember exactly when I bought it was before I got to high school. It was like one of those books that I like came to high school with. And I was excited to show off to people being like, this is what comic books are like. Because I was like very. Because I was like, very like, man, comic books are cooler than you think, man. That was my ethos coming in. Which is why we bonded, Alan. Because like I was running around like looking for someone else who had the same ethos. And you were already there.

05:51
Alan Kistler
And yeah, I was already being overtly a nerd.

05:53
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

05:54
Alan Kistler
And so it was easy to like catch down. Like, oh, you clearly like nerd things. Let's talk nerd. Like we shall.

06:00
Case Aiken
We shall nerd.

06:01
Alan Kistler
Yes, nerd.

06:01
Case Aiken
Nerd.

06:02
Alan Kistler
So you gather at lunch tables and speak very, in very like dramatic, like sped up voices about people in their underwear fighting avatars of insecurities across city skylines. And it's wonderful.

06:16
Case Aiken
And occasionally someone would say dharmak and Jalad at Tanagra.

06:19
Alan Kistler
Yeah. And we're like, that's a different discussion, man.

06:26
Case Aiken
But, but yeah. So I came into high school with this as like one of my like, go to books as a reference point of like, oh, look how cool comics can be. And I want to say that it was Kingdom Come was my introduction to Ross. Like, I was like aware of Marvels, but I didn't pick up the issues of Marvels, whereas Kingdom Come. I bought the individual issues, like Marvels, I bought the trade paperback. And so that I think is like Kingdom Come was like me actually getting the stuff as it was coming out, observing from wizard magazine that it was going to be a big thing and checking it out there versus Marvel's. I picked up the trade, but I was so fascinated by Marvel's.

07:12
Case Aiken
I think that the writing for it, you know, we're going to talk a billion times on this show about Astro City. It was recently done by our friend Logan Crowley, talking about the Tarnished angel story arc, which is amazing. Astro City is fantastic. And you know, represents like the, this duo here as a creative duo continuing to do it, to do it to do these kinds of stories. And like, this is where it starts. Like, this is where we get this like extremely interesting, like introspective superheroism from a writing perspective. And then it's conveyed through this extremely evocative art style that like I said, feels like we're getting snapshots of reality. And that Has. I've always enjoyed. I love that aspect of this duo's creative works that they've done since then. And it is a work that I like reference back to a lot.

08:11
Case Aiken
Like, the copy that I have right here is extremely beat up. I have loaned this out to a billion people because it's just a work that has meant a lot to me. So on that note, Keith, what is your association with the book?

08:24
Keith Lehtinen
I was nibbling around the Marvel comic universe. I was. I've said this in the past. I was very heavily involved in the original one of X Factor and New Mutants, I X Men in general, Power Pack, Mighty Thor. But I didn't engage with the world as a whole for a very long time. I went a long time without ever reading an Iron man or a Captain America comic book. You know what I mean? I did some West Coast Avengers because I'm from the west coast and I thought that was cool. Marvel's was the first time I really, like, saw the world, you know what I mean, as a world.

08:58
Keith Lehtinen
And I started to piece things together and really, like, as someone who I always use the term that Patton Oswalt uses, loves a realm that I can lose myself into and the depth of it, that was the first time that Marvel seemed like a realm, and it became the realm for me. It became the fandom that I can fall into and know everything about and learn everything about. And Marvel's was the gateway to that. There is a specific moment in Marvel's, which we're going to talk about when we get into it, that is kind of formative for me as far as my Marvel fandom. Like, one specific panel that I distinctly remember. Like, yeah, that kind of forms one of my biggest opinions in Marvel, which we'll talk about and isn't hard to know if you know anything about me.

09:43
Keith Lehtinen
But yeah, so, yeah, just incredibly important to me.

09:48
Case Aiken
All right. Yeah. That's awesome. This is why you're a fantastic guest to have on for this episode. And Alan, what is your association with the book?

09:57
Alan Kistler
I mean, I'd already been reading comics for a few years, and one of my. As I've mentioned on your podcast a couple times, one of my gateways into comics was Golden Age artist Jack Burnley, who was a friend of my grandparents and who I got to meet and correspond with for a little bit. And so through him, I got to understand the different ages of comic books in terms of, like, the Golden Age versus the Silver Age. He wasn't as familiar with modern age. That was fine. That's what I was reading because of that. I really dug in comic books that sense of world building in terms of history. That felt to me like the Hobbit. That felt to me like Lord of the Rings. That felt to me like dragonlance.

10:34
Alan Kistler
That they are in a world where they might be the heroes, but long ago, there were other heroes. And yet longer ago, there were other heroes whose battles had ripple effects today. And the year before this series came out, Roy Thomas, writer Roy Thomas returned to the invaders, which is for anyone who doesn't know, the retroactively inserted World War II era superhero team of the Marvel heroes with the original Human Torch and Submariner and Captain America, along with a few others. And I had gobbled that up in 1993. I thought that was so much fun because now it's like, oh, I'm seeing a younger Captain America. I'm seeing a Human Torch who's android, which I liked robots. So automatically that's cooler than a teenager. He's android. He's more of a Frankenstein monster.

11:24
Keith Lehtinen
Cool.

11:24
Alan Kistler
You got Submariner.

11:26
Case Aiken
Love everything about him except that he's called the Human Torch. That's the only part that I'm like,.

11:31
Alan Kistler
The artificial Torch didn't have the same quite ring to it, the synthetic Torch. Like, yeah, branding's always been an issue with some characters, but, yeah. So I dug these characters. And it also introduced me to some other Golden Age characters I hadn't been aware of, like the Blazing Skull, who I still have an affection for. So then Marvel is coming out. And the two key factors to me was, one, the beautiful artwork that you saw advertised, and then two, that you were seeing Marvel as a legacy. You weren't just following one character or group of characters. But the advertisement was you were going through the ages of Marvel. And so that seemed really wild to me. And it was also. You touched on this a little bit. Like, the approach to it was pretty different for Marvel.

12:20
Alan Kistler
It was more of a, dare I say it, a bit of a DC approach to how you look at certain superheroes. Because DC had been for a long time. This is a slightly fairytale world where genres mix in a way that we're not going to worry about too much. They just do. And you can have the Flash be a hero so great he inspires a museum in his hometown. And Superman is not just Superman. He has a crystal castle with robots and a gateway to purgatory. And, you know, Batman has a huge cave and is the greatest detective. And it had this mythical quality. Whereas Marvel was supposed to be the universe Outside your window, it's the ordinary crew.

13:04
Alan Kistler
And so even at a young age, like as this was coming out, I love this idea of, oh, we're seeing it not from Peter Parker's internal monologue or Captain America's insecurities as he's being Captain America. We're seeing. What does the person who just knows Captain America from newspapers think? What is the person who just sees the Fantastic Four as like a flare in the sky and then a flying bathtub cruises past you to go take care of an alien? What does that person think of? And that idea of approaching it in more of the mythical quality was very cool to me. And as you said, this is something that Kurt Busick kind of approaches through things like Astro City and all. Kurt Busick is one of those writers who's very interested on the guy on the street, the regular person.

13:55
Alan Kistler
What is their experience in the superhero world? But without going into that grim, dark realm that some writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller were more fascinated by, he's not saying, well, if you fight monsters constantly, you will go insane, and no one can be a hero without psychological damage. But he is saying, well, if Galactus shows up, you're going to have some people who doubt it even when they see the photos. You're gonna have some people who say it's a political stunt and you're gonna have a traffic jam. And for some people, that's the big story of the day. Not that the Fantastic Four fought something that could have eaten the planet, but I missed the Mets game because Times Square was closed off, and I was coming from downtown, and these guys in their weird jumpsuits had to do a thing again.

14:46
Alan Kistler
And it was a great, interesting perspective to put the Marvel characters in. And, yeah, I loved it. And I think it's a great series. And also that it didn't have to worry about the sliding timeline of when events actually take place. That they had the courage to make the 60s comic stories look like they take place in the 60s I thought was wild.

15:08
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, definitely. I like the way you put that. Is that why it feels more like a dc? Because it kind of clicked with me. Like, the DC POV is looking up. The Marvel POV is over the shoulder. Right. And so, like, yeah, that actually makes a lot more sense now. That really clicked with me. Yeah.

15:28
Alan Kistler
Yeah.

15:29
Case Aiken
It's interesting looking at this work. Like, I've argued that the 90s is an era where there's a lot of introspection about the history of comic books, that there's lots of creators who want to talk about the eras, like once they had become codified of like, oh, the Golden Age and this is the Silver Age and the Bronze Age of comics. And people wanted to like reference them and do books that were referential to them all. Like you see lots of parody books. Like we're prepping an episode of Men of Steel right now on Radioactive man from the Simpsons. And like his whole series is that each issue is like jumping around in like periods of time in referential to different eras of like Superman and like other major comic book character periods. And that's just like the 90s. Like the 90s.

16:17
Case Aiken
Loved that supreme was a book from that 90s. Like Astro City is a book from the 90s. Like the, like the, this is a book that loves to like talk about the history of comic books specifically. And, and like you said, it is brave enough to like set the stories in the 60s and in the 40s. And that's really cool. And I, I, I love that aspect of this book. But it is interesting to note that was a trend of the era. Now for me, my appreciation of the history of Marvel comics actually came from Marvel published these individual, it was a monthly book.

16:59
Case Aiken
Probably they did this at various points, but I got a hold of random issues that I don't remember the exact name for it, but it was some sort of history of the Marvel U or something like that kind of series that jumped around. But it was especially like really on point in terms of the timeline for like early Fantastic Four stuff for me. So it was like very early in me like starting to read like a lot of the early comics of the day before I got a hold of the essential books that they started publishing, the black and white collections that were, that they were putting out, which became like my real like real touchstone to like actually seeing a lot of the early 60s, like kind of books of the era.

17:45
Case Aiken
So long story short, like, there were a lot of sort of like takes on the history of comics that I was aware of. Both, both that were current era meta works of it. And Kurt Busick is a big fan of stuff like that. Look at like Avengers Forever for example. Like in terms of just being like, let's talk about the history of a cool series. But like, in a way that I love, like, I very much appreciate this all but that was just a style of the time. And then also this was an era where because reprinting had become a thing that people were doing, they had started reprinting books for the first time ever of a. Not the first time ever, but, like, lots of classic works were being reprinted. There was, like, access to a lot of works that.

18:34
Case Aiken
That was a really cool thing that they were doing all of a sudden in, like, bulk, in ways that we could, like, get access to. And this was riding that crest of, like, the, like, gosh darn it, nostalgia for these eras of comic book stuff is really fucking cool. And this was a wonderful vanguard of that. That cresting wave.

18:55
Keith Lehtinen
You also.

18:55
Alan Kistler
I think the 90s is just such an interesting time of the US reassessing its viewpoints on certain archetypes. And certainly in literature and fantasy and sci fi, you'd have. The Cold War ended and you'd gotten through this epidemic of aids. It was not done yet. It was still taking lives. But were starting to see a little bit of light on the horizon that people were now at least talking about it, now at least addressing it. You'd gone through certain things that Reaganomics had done, and you had this generation, both Generation X and the folks right before them and the folks who were coming up after them who are entering this world where several illusions had been done away. Watergate was now not seen as this anomaly, but as just a sign of things we should have realized earlier.

19:52
Alan Kistler
You had, oh, well, the Cold War has ended, and we still have a lot of the same problems. So maybe it wasn't that were fighting this, like, epic fight of good and evil, and once we got through it, things would better. Maybe we have other internal problems. And you had a reassessment of civil rights for so many marginalized groups who had been forced to take a few steps back during the 80s. And I think that effective storytelling of, like, yeah, let's sit down and, like, let's look at the whole, like, what is happening here? What are we reflecting on? What are we seeing? And, you know, Watchmen and stories like that, they were deconstructing things. It's, like, cool. We've seen a lot of deconstruction. And then we took it too far where we tried to deconstruct maybe too many heroes or the wrong heroes.

20:37
Alan Kistler
Like, they tried to give a more realistic take on Plastic man and say that the chemicals that mutated him also damaged his brain and that's why he's wacky, because you couldn't just have him be a nice, funny guy who's wacky. That would be unrealistic for a con. Like, it was so weird. We got past it in the 90s and we're like, okay, well, wait, we can deconstruct. But also, what are we constructing? What can we also add to this? What can we. Maybe it's not point to that thing and say, that's silly. It's like, okay, it's silly. And what did it also tell us? And what did it also teach us? And what do we want to keep from that?

21:09
Alan Kistler
And Marvel sort of hits on that same thing to me, where it's like, it is bringing a slightly realistic lens to certain things, like how a public will react to android at all, much less one that catches on fire and flies. How the public will react to a merman who sometimes helps you, and sometimes he attacks New York. But also, it doesn't go into. It doesn't take away the absurdity of comics. Like, there's no explanation of why some of these people have their names. There's no, like, that's a stupid name that every other Marvel film does when someone comes up with a new name. There's a hyperrealism in the figures, but also there's not a hyper realism in terms of, like, redesigning the costumes. Ant man wears, like, this brightly colored cloth, and we don't know how it detaches together.

22:01
Alan Kistler
We can't see any belt on him, but it's fine. It obviously works. Cause it's staying on his body. And, like, Galactus helmet works. That's fine. So it's a lovely. It speaks very 90s to me, where there was a seeking of that balance of we're questioning things. But also there is something worth it here. Like, there is something worth keeping from the cartoony and the silly.

22:28
Case Aiken
Yeah. This makes me think of the cosplay group that I was in for many years, that one of our big ethos, big team, right. Was we dressed ourselves as if were, like, coming off the panel. So, like. So when were like X Factor, were, like, very much X Factor. Like, issue one. Here's the COVID of X Factor. Like, there's no deviation from it. When. When were like, classic X Men, like, were like classic X Men with, like, the blue and gold jumpsuit kind of designs to us. So it was making the. The cloth like a part of.

23:10
Alan Kistler
Or.

23:11
Case Aiken
Or making the outfits as they were. As they were illustrated into, like, a representation in spandex and so forth. So that, like, it was a. A true scenario. And this is making that look real. And you kind of accept it because it's like, okay, well, it looks real. Like, yeah, like, sure, there's a little bit of absurdity. To it, but, like, it looks. It doesn't look like it's a fake outfit.

23:36
Alan Kistler
Yeah, yeah. Like, I wonder how it doesn't rip half the time when they're moving or if it's obstructing their vision. But also, like, I'd wonder that there's no, like, retooling of Hawkeye's mask so that it explains why an archer would wear that. So this is what he wore, and we're gonna make it look like a real leather hood on him and just not worry about, well, does the design make sense if an archer really wore this, he's not real life. He's in the Marvel world.

24:03
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. It's impractical, not illogical.

24:06
Alan Kistler
Yes.

24:06
Case Aiken
Yeah.

24:06
Keith Lehtinen
Right. Yeah.

24:08
Case Aiken
And you can get away with it because this is still art, regardless of, like, how photorealistic and, like, how many models that we're using for anything. Like, it's still art. As opposed to, like, in theory, with, like, an MCU movie or something where it is a costume that they're wearing. Like. Yeah, I say in theory because, like, Lord knows, like, post production can, like, cover up a lot of, like, costume issues. But it's.

24:32
Alan Kistler
Honestly, it sort of reminds me of the approach, like, of Paddington and Paddington 2 in Special Effects versus the Lion King, when they made live action. Like, Lion King was going for such a level of realism that it's hard to see any emotions in the animals. Paddington and Paddington 2 make a photorealistic bear, but allow the artistic license of. He can have human expressions, his eyes can widen in a way that humans do and bears maybe don't like. And it hits a beautiful balance where you can see the individual hair and fur on him. And it looks from a distance, like, photorealistic, but you never lose sight of, like. But it's Paddington, so relax. This is a cartoony world where we accept this and let's have fun.

25:18
Keith Lehtinen
And.

25:18
Alan Kistler
Yeah, that's Ross's approach to things. Like, and I love that. I love that he's not worried about, like, well, how do the boots tie up or something, you know? Like what? You know, shouldn't Superman's belts be more practical? Like, no, it's Superman. We all know who Superman is. We all know we're reading a comic book, right?

25:34
Case Aiken
So why don't we actually, like, get into the book itself? So it. The. The trade that I have opens with the prologue, which is this really interesting internal story told from the perspective of. Of Jim Hammond of the Human Torch. And it's. It's done in this very, like, Frankenstein kind of internal monologue, kind of presentation of the character. And so, like, we're seeing as he has these, like, glimmers of. Of intelligence, as he has, like, moments of being exposed to oxygen, which, like, literally ignites his body, but also ignites his intelligence. And we. We see him, you know, being, like, suspended in concrete and, like, being fed information and then exploding outwards and. And the horror that. That people experience around him as he gets free for the first time.

26:31
Keith Lehtinen
You know, I mean, they literally quote Mary Shelley at the beginning, so. Yeah, yeah.

26:36
Alan Kistler
And. And the lab is. Is loosely inspired from the Universal Studios Frankenstein lab.

26:45
Case Aiken
Yeah, so we get, like, the. I mean, this is, like, a fantastic introduction to Ross's art in the. The bonus features that they would do for this. We. We find out that this is a thing that he, like, taught himself to do by way of, like, looking at, like, photo negatives of people as a. As a way of illustrating, like, the. The. The effect of, like, light being emitted from within.

27:10
Keith Lehtinen
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

27:11
Alan Kistler
And it's a beautiful, simple inspiration to use for a Human Torch character.

27:17
Case Aiken
But then we get into the actual first issue, and that is. That's our 40s issue for the structure of this all. Like, most of it. Alan, do you know roughly off the top of your head, like, when gwen Stacy dies.

27:32
Alan Kistler
74.

27:33
Case Aiken
74. Okay, so we're talking, like, 60s to 74 is like the window. So roughly, like, five years each for the following three issues.

27:41
Alan Kistler
Yeah, that's about.

27:42
Case Aiken
Yeah, but this one's our 40s issue. Like, this is a young Phil. Like, this is a young, scrappy photographer who just wants to be there and see all these moments. And he happens to be lucky at these, like, first glimmers of the crazy Marvel's, like, kind of world that exists. And that's just. It's just used really effectively to showcase, like, how cool and how, like, just jarring this would have been from. From an illustrative perspective. Like, what. What it would be like for the world to suddenly have superpowered beings is really explored in this work, both in the writing and in the art.

28:23
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, definitely. It's so of the time. Like, it's. It's. You can hear the accents. You know what I mean? Like, as the people are just sitting there and talking and just like. Yeah, it just has such a great feel to it. And I personally, I love the fact that it is the Human Torch that we do start with, because of the three big ones we're talking about. In this, he's the one most people don't know about. So I like. I like kind of starting there. And. Yeah, no, I just. I love the vibe of this first issue, and I think this is why I really liked the book so much, is this first issue hooked me with, like, I didn't read those comics. You know what I mean?

29:03
Keith Lehtinen
Like, I've heard what happens, but now I get to watch it myself and watch it unfold. And again, Phil immediately is just a character I really, really like. So, yeah,.

29:17
Alan Kistler
It's. Again, what I really like here is that the approach to the person on the street perspective is not only about Phil's perspective, but it's about you as a reader. Busick is taking you on a tour of Marvel history, but he's being very selective about how much Marvel history he's throwing at you and even how much he's just gonna hint at. Like, he hints at Nick Fury with. There's a young Fury kid here whose left eye is cast in shadow to literally foreshadow what's gonna happen to him, that he's gonna be our eye patch wearing badass. And he shows us the production of the Human Torch and the reaction by media. And again, like you both were saying, like, this is a world where we're coming out of the Depression era. The New Deal has finally been giving us some space to breathe.

30:10
Alan Kistler
People are going back to work. Even in temporary work is like. It feels like work. Like, we're getting. The Hoovervilles are done. The Hoovervilles are no longer in Central Park. Like, people are not camping all over Central park anymore. Like, they're. It's. It's not fixed, but things are looking a little bit better. There's a war over in Europe. Oh. But we're not really involved in that right now. Like, we're. We're Americans. We're getting out of this. And then something else happens that says, like, oh, maybe you don't know everything, because look at what can be made now. Like, android that moves and thinks and speaks by itself can be made, and it controls an elemental force. Like, it's sheer coincidence that the first story of the first Marvel comic features the Human Torch. But it's so beautifully poetic of it, is that Promethean fire.

31:06
Alan Kistler
For the Marvel Universe in the 20th century, it is like this fire from the gods being wrestled and controlled by a human who maybe is not the right person for it and then unleashes it. And because that's another thing, like, they don't get into it too much in this story. But Phineas T. Horton is not doing this to really, like, celebrate humanity. Like, he wants to be famous. He's doing this, like, for the cash, which is why the Human Torch later leaves his ass and goes off to, like, do his own thing. But what I was saying also, like, he's holding back on history because there's.

31:41
Alan Kistler
If there are certain writers today, if they were doing a miniseries like this that would add so many things that even by 1994, when this book came out, had been established in retroactive continuity, they could have mentioned that one of Phineas T. Horton's mentors is Victor Timely, who is just Kang the Conqueror in one of his disguises, and that's why he's able to access advanced technology. They could have mentioned that a couple of the scientists who are looking at the Human Torch later indicated by certain comics to be Professor Zog, who created the Golden Age character Electro the Robot, and Joshua Williams, who, with his brother Joe created the robot Flexo, who's also a Golden Age character. They could have added all this stuff. They're not.

32:29
Alan Kistler
Because just as Phil is a regular person off the street being introduced to this world, Kurt Busick, really, I think, and Alex Ross wanted this to be something that, as you've done, as I've done, as a lot of people have done with this book, you could lend to anyone. You can lend to a sibling or a friend, and they don't need to feel like they had to do homework beforehand. This can be their introduction to the Marvel Universe. And I love that thing, and I love that we enter it through this Frankenstein monster who wasn't asked to be born like this or to be hated immediately. And that's also greatly symbolic of so many Marvel heroes. They're not as celebrated in the universe as the DC heroes are celebrated. Even the Avengers, they'll have fans.

33:13
Alan Kistler
And then they get asked, well, did he have to throw that car at the wrecker? Couldn't you have thrown something else? Couldn't he have done a research and had the fight over in the park instead of in the street here? Because then I got late to work.

33:28
Case Aiken
Yeah. And that becomes a theme for the entire series, like the nature of the Marvels and people having almost a disdain for them and treating them as this mundane aspect of their lives, this inconvenience and nuisance in their lives. And that starts off here. From the very beginning, we see them reacting negatively to what is, on paper, just an incredible achievement. The creation of the Android Human Torch is. Is a scientific breakthrough that we cannot even conceive of. Today, like, we can't imagine us successfully doing so in the short term. Like maybe in 15 years we're like scanning the human brain and running it as an executable file. Like, like. But we're not talking about doing anything like that today. And we have what we call AI, let alone in the fucking 90s, let alone in the fucking 40s.

34:28
Case Aiken
Like, The Android Human Torch is an amazing achievement and all it does is incite fear.

34:40
Keith Lehtinen
Well, the first thing he does is burst into flame.

34:43
Alan Kistler
Sorry, what are you saying?

34:44
Keith Lehtinen
I said the first thing he does is burst into flame. True.

34:47
Alan Kistler
Yeah.

34:48
Keith Lehtinen
That doesn't help.

34:49
Alan Kistler
Yeah, well, two people who look suspiciously like Clark Kent and Lois Lane watch from the crowd of journalists.

34:56
Case Aiken
Yeah, and then on the same page, someone who looks just like Billy Batson is like shouting out the newspaper, like telling the whole story. Love the cameos. We, we should shout out that the any Ross Project is going to have a billion cameos just because he loves sneaking those in.

35:15
Alan Kistler
So, so many cameos. And even just we're, whenever we do sort of montages of people reacting to events or the aftermaths of battles, we are seeing for the most part, if not all of it reactions to events that did happen in those early Marvel comic stories. We're just seeing it from a different perspective or from 10 minutes after the hero left. And that's such a great approach because again, if you get it. If you know. If you don't, no problem. You are enjoying a story of first the Human Torch and then the Submariner, who's the opposite side of the elemental force wheel of being. This creature coming from the water, he's not a newborn like the Torch, but at this point he's sort of the equivalent of being 20 years old.

36:06
Alan Kistler
And you know, he's of the water, but he's arguably more hot tempered than the Torch is, than the Android Torch is. And yeah, it's a great thing to think about. We knew historically those two stories were published in the same magazine. Those two heroes both debuted in Marvel Comics issue one in 1939. But to think about, the human population of New York in both stories is the same human population and reacting to both these creatures, both these beings suddenly appearing within the same few days of each other. Or like the Human Torch getting free of his prison and then days later, you know, no more. The submariner showing up like that is wild.

36:50
Alan Kistler
Like, what do you do if a figure of science and a figure of mythology with wings on his feet and ears, that today we look at Those as elfin ears, but 1930s, 1940s, those would be seen as demonic ears. Those would be seen as devil ears in the same way that Spock originally was called, like, a hobgoblin or a devil character by audiences watching Star Trek because they were associating him with that and not Legolas.

37:16
Case Aiken
Yeah, 100%. And we see Phil kind of wrap his head around the characters throughout this issue, and it's very much supposed to be what the average man or the slightly more enlightened person's sort of perspective on it, because Phil has the privilege of being able to, for a living, kind of chase the stories and be on hand to see more of the stories than. Than the average person would be. But he, like, puts together, like, his opinions of. Of these entities, and it, you know, at first, like, kind of drives him to have this sort of, like, fear of his. His own, like, impotency as a man. Like, you know, he's like.

38:04
Case Aiken
Like he has a significant other who, like, because he's freaked out about the existence of marvels and, like, doesn't believe that he measures up to them, doesn't want to move forward with the relationship, now it creates, like, some fun scenes that will sort of circle back to, like, specifically where he runs into her at the movies and she is on a date with Bill Lumpkin or Willie Lumpkin, the postman from the Fantastic Four,.

38:37
Alan Kistler
Who also dates Aunt May for a little bit in later years.

38:42
Case Aiken
He gets around, man.

38:44
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

38:44
Alan Kistler
Yeah. And then he has a granddaughter.

38:49
Case Aiken
Oh, my gosh. Is he eskimo brothers with Dr. Octopus?

38:52
Keith Lehtinen
Oh, my God.

38:54
Alan Kistler
This is not the subject I agreed to speak about on this podcast. I'm not here to shame Aunt May.

39:02
Case Aiken
That is a fascinating scenario to think about, but. But, I mean, we get. We get one thing that is a. An interesting element of the work where we have the. The real. Of, like, the propaganda reel of the Human Torch and the. And the submariner fighting Nazis or fighting the Japanese specifically. And all of a sudden, everyone's just like, fuck, yeah, these guys. Hooray. And we get to sort of see one of the. The recurring themes. And Phil sort of, like, thinks about this theme a lot, which is the fickle nature of people that, like, the villains of one moment all of a sudden can become the heroes of the next moment and then back again, just based on, like, whatever we're being kind of fed as propaganda.

39:48
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. And I think the. Really. I'm glad you brought up this scene, because this. Of this entire book, this is one of two things I love the most, which is the fact that he does, you know, have that kind of like, you know, oh, we flipped on them. Look, we're cheering for them now because they're fighting Nazis. But he also doesn't exclude himself from that. Like, he's. I was too busy cheering to notice. And I love that. Like, that. It wasn't like a look, I'm above everybody look. You know what I mean? Like, from a storytelling point of view, he's like, no, I was doing it too. And I respect that storytelling beat. I love that so much. I remember reading that for the first time and smiling because I just. I just loved that.

40:27
Keith Lehtinen
Like, that self awareness, I guess, is the way to put it.

40:30
Alan Kistler
So, yeah, and it's. It's a great shift from. There's a bit of maturity happening there because, like. Like, we touched on the. How is a man supposed to protect his family, his. His wife in a world where beings now can throw cars like footballs? It's. It's two things. One is that, like, unfortunately, limited idea of masculinity, of not only do you have to provide protection, but you have to be the best. Like, you can't have any threats out there, or you have to be, like, hyper vigilant against all threats, as if vampires are coming around the corner at any moment. But also it is looking at the marvels as forces of nature.

41:12
Alan Kistler
Even says at one point, when the Human Torch and Submariner are fighting and then have a truce, which happened In Marvel Comics 8, he's just like, you know, do you get angry at a storm or a tornado for the damage it does? He's looking at them as looking like humans, but they're not. They are these forces of nature. But then with this newsreel, it changes a little bit. They're powerful, but they're guys. And we're all on the same team. And the idea of, like, community now and looking at a team and not, like, something I have to do alone, it speaks to, I think, frankly, an idea of masculinity that a lot of us have to outgrow and adjust to.

41:55
Alan Kistler
And it also speaks very much to America as were getting closer to war and stopped being isolationists and started seeing, like, but we're part of a global community, and what threatens Europe will threaten us. So you got that really positive thing. I also though, like, what I love in this scene is that the shadow in Doc Savage are watching the same newsreel in the audience and seem a little bit shocked by it. All right before the applause starts. Happening. And it's a great little reference to that. The superheroes arriving in 1938 and 1939, starting off this new genre, were of the pulp heroes before them, like Doc Savage, like the Shadow were in their DNA, but they would surpass them.

42:44
Case Aiken
This issue does such a wonderful job of establishing thesis that the later story arcs will kind of do. It was on this reread that I was comparing it a lot to another Kurt Pusick work, which is Secret Identity, where it was a. I was thinking about the nature of a person who was very tired with everything by the end of it all. Like a person who lived a life, which I think is really well done, but also thinking about how that shares a structure where the first issue is sort of subject to a time jump before you get to the second, third, and fourth, being a little bit more consistent in sort of a period of a character's life. And some of that is just adolescence versus adulthood. And in this case, it's young adulthood moving into mature adulthood.

43:34
Case Aiken
Your 40s versus your 50s looks a lot different from your 20s, but it's just interesting to note the comparisons between different works by. By the same author.

43:43
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

43:43
Case Aiken
Anyway, so Phil gets back with his. His lady friend Doris, and this sort of sets up one of themes, which is that he's, like, running away from his relationship with her to go, like, be face to face with, like, Marvel's stuff, such as going to a big fight between the Human Torch and the Submariner, which includes this massive tidal wave that, like, envelops, like, part of Manhattan. And it is one of the jaw dropping shots of the book. The shot of the wave just coming in and like I said, just enveloping Manhattan. It starts, I believe, with the Brooklyn Bridge and just works its way. It's a great shot.

44:23
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. And that's the other moment in this book I wanted to make sure to point out. That one's obvious, but it's just so great. And an underrated aspect of it is the fact the Human Torch is in the shot as well. Across the top, ever so tiny and looking so helpless against such a large wave. Like, I really like that composition.

44:42
Alan Kistler
So again, like, the. In the Golden Age, like, continuity was still sort of being toyed with as a new concept. So it wasn't unusual for stories to happen for Superman to openly war against the police. And then by two issues later, you forgot about that because other things had happened. And, you know, that was a previous story. We're now on with this. And this was a story that happened in Human Torch issue 5, which technically it's now called issue 5B because due to printing errors, there are two issue 5s of the original Human Torch comic book series. But in issue 5B, Submariner gets upset that a battle between Russian and Axis ships and then some British ships ruins another of the underwater communities that represent his people.

45:33
Alan Kistler
And he's thinking, like, well, you know, I gotta stop this war before, like, it continues before America gets involved too. Like. And it's then indicated he's put under first. It's indicated he's manipulated, but then he refers to it specifically as a spell. And the same character does seem to do mind control elsewhere. So you gotta give it to him. But, like, he's sort of mentally warped into saying, like, well, the only way to stop war is if I take over. And so he starts warring against anyone who's at sea with their battleships, and that inevitably comes to New York. And finally, during his battle with the Human Torch, he gets his mind shaken up, and it's like, okay, sorry, that was my bad. I'm sorry. The spell's broken. Let's be friends. Let's get that lady who, like, warped me. We'll stop her.

46:20
Alan Kistler
And then the next issue, they're pals again, along with other characters who showed up in that story, like Patriot and the Angel. But here we're really looking at what is the reaction of a population that finally got used to the submariner as a hero, as one of our guys. And then he's attacking New York. He's attacking New York with a tidal wave. Like, what is. Right. What a traumatic experience that is just like, hey, guys, the Secretary of Defense just, like, threw a missile at New Jersey. What? What are you talking about? Like, it's. It's just. It really taps into that wildness of, like, no. If these stories happened in this fictional universe, then there. There has to be some consequence that we didn't maybe explore in the 1940s, because that's not how we approach the character.

47:06
Alan Kistler
But now in the 90s, we will approach it like, yeah, that's nuts. And. And it also starts this theme of every time Phil gets a little too close to the Marvel world, he will suffer in some way because this is where he loses his eye.

47:19
Case Aiken
Yeah. And then we jump forward, and he's recovering from it. This affirms his relationship with Doris. We also get more of the guy who is supposed to be J. Jonah Jameson, but apparently they weren't allowed to confirm that it was J. Jonah Jameson in the issue.

47:35
Keith Lehtinen
But it's so clearly him.

47:36
Alan Kistler
Because you don't want to get into, how old is J. Jonah Jameson supposed to be? Especially if Spidey's comics are in a sliding timeline. But. But I also like that he didn't just make it a different character or cement down like, oh, well, this is just J. Jonah Jameson's Uncle Bradley Jameson or something like that. No, we're just not going to name him. You're going to know who he is.

47:55
Case Aiken
But anyway, so Phil eventually takes a. Takes the gig that he'd been, like, sort of circling around throughout the majority of this issue, which is to be a war correspondent and to go off and get footage. And we get a really good shot. I don't know how he gets the camera angle up there. The really good shot of all the Marvels descending on a Nazi camp. I love it. It's a great shot. It's a wonderful end of the issue.

48:22
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, definitely.

48:24
Case Aiken
But it just. And it just shows off, like, the amazing artwork that Ross is doing for all these characters. There's so many characters involved in this descent, and it's just the celebration of the classic Marvel characters of the 40s.

48:38
Alan Kistler
Yeah, yeah. With teenage Bucky gleefully commanding a machine gun or like a Tommy gun.

48:48
Case Aiken
Yeah. And then in the trade that I have, we get a commentary by Kurt Busick, which is a fun sort of breakdown in terms of a lot of the thought process that goes into creating the book.

48:59
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, that's where I have the Kurt Busick one, too.

49:02
Case Aiken
Yeah. So anyway, moving on to issue two of this. We are talking now about the jump into the 60s. So we have the lovely. The opening art of. Of angel holding this mutant child and flying away while. While there's just like, picketers, like, just holding up signs and throwing. Throwing bricks and stuff at them. Just. Just an incredible, like, civil rights shot that we've got going on there.

49:31
Keith Lehtinen
It's one of the most iconic, the hatred mutants face images in comics. Like, it's. It's incredible. Like, it's. It's just so good that even this. This mutant, the one that a lot of people would consider to beautiful, you know what I mean, who is a rich white man, is still getting rocks thrown at him as he tries to save a child. You know what I mean? Like, it really kind of sets the perspective of, like. Like, really the role that mutants play and the story we're gonna tell, like, as far as covers that tell stories in that issue, Great cover.

50:06
Alan Kistler
I mean, also just in terms of, you know, 1960s America, that should be the Least threatening mutant, you see.

50:15
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, exactly.

50:16
Alan Kistler
He's quite literally angelic in appearance.

50:19
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. Like the opposite of what you said about Namor, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

50:23
Alan Kistler
Yeah, exactly. If Nemor is. Or Namor is seen as a demon or demonic or something that resembles Pan and other pagan myth characters like Warren Worthington III as the high flying avenging angel should be such a welcome figure. And so it's just like, oh, but a mutant and protecting mutants, like, nah, get a brick.

50:47
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, this. This is a very heavy issue in general. So.

50:53
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, I would argue every issue from this point on is. Is a heavy issue. The first issue is probably the least heavy just in that it's like the scrappy 40s underdog spirit. And from this point on it's like, all right, civil rights and then we're gonna do the end of the world and then we're gonna do like the saddest murder you could imagine.

51:15
Keith Lehtinen
Don't get me started.

51:16
Case Aiken
Yeah, so. So this is the big time jump. So we're jumping from the 40s to the 60s. And Phil is actually like pretty exciting at the moment. This is not like, this is like a little bit past like the reintroduction of the Marvels. So, like the Fantastic Four are established. Like, the Avengers are like a thing. Captain America is. Makes a leap over Phil and he gets a good shot of him, like in the first scene of the actual, like him walking outside of the office. And we get lots of good shots of Phil getting cool coverage of classic Avengers stories. The big one being this iconic shot of him getting this low angle shot of Giant man stepping over him, which becomes the COVID for the initial trade paperback. And regardless, is in universe the important shot for him.

52:19
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, just awesome. It's drawn perfectly. It makes you. When you see it, you're like, that's the shot. And then the story then tells you that's the shot. Like, I love that it's.

52:30
Alan Kistler
Again, it's not a. In so many Marvel comics, especially at the time. Like, it's not really the perspective you expect because you're alongside the heroes in their stories and you're in their heads while Spider Man's having these Hamlet like, monologues in his head and Daredevil's like, plotting things out. You can literally see his echolocation. And here it's like, no, what is it like for someone who looks up and Hank Pym is 35ft tall as Giant man and just carefully, it's like, it's power, but it's also scary because like, okay, he's walking on streets. Like, what if he doesn't look at every bystander and car beneath his feet and stuff? So it's. Yeah, it's a great image and in.

53:17
Keith Lehtinen
A meta sense, I love that it was Hank Pym, you know what I mean? It wasn't Captain America that was on the COVID of the book. It wasn't Iron man, it wasn't the big ones. It's Giant man. You know what I mean? You're right.

53:29
Alan Kistler
Yeah, he's a B list, arguably at this time when the comic was coming out, a C list character who was just a character that Marvel repeatedly wasn't sure what to do with and Roy Thomas wasn't sure what to do with when he was writing Avengers. So he was Ant man, then Giant man, then Goliath, then Yellowjacket, but also like for a while just Hank Pym, super scientist and like all this jazz and it seemed like Doc Pym.

53:57
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

53:58
Alan Kistler
And then for a while the Wasp many years later. And it was just like. I remember there was a joke in New warriors where they were walking through Avengers Mansion and seeing all the photographs of different team lineups and someone is saying, wow, there have been a lot of Avengers over the years. And Speedball goes, yeah, but you can only count Hank Pym once. And one of the other kids goes, I don't get it. And he's just, nevermind. It's like such a poor guy that he's been batted around back and forth. But even here in the world of Marvels that Busyk and Ross are giving us, even he is quite literally a giant. Like, he is larger than life in every respect.

54:38
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, exactly.

54:40
Case Aiken
But, but so the story picks up with Phil now trying to like, move on from just taking pictures of the Marvels and he wants to do a book like that. That becomes like one of the through lines from this point on, he wants to do a book telling the story. He wants to use his photos and like, and ideally give some of his own written word and move into a space where he's writing in addition to being a photographer, but he wants to do a book. And so he's really excited about this and there's some traction here. So he's all excited about it. But while things are going well in terms of his life, he steps outside and we get a nice little Easter egg of the WASPS fashion line that is going on that they talk about.

55:24
Case Aiken
But it is the start of these like mutant riot scenes where it's like, oh, My God. They saw the X Men and they describe a scene where clearly the X Men were just like trying to stop a guy from falling. Like you can imagine, like the Kirby. Like I don't know the exact issue that this is referencing, but I can picture it for the way that like, Kirby used to like, do the X Men, like doing power scenes. Like it doesn't matter. He like successful. Like they like tried to stop a dude from falling and now they're going to be lynched because they are like being interpreted as having attacked this guy.

55:56
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. Which is great because the guy goes into these crazy descriptions of everything these superpowered people did to him and then throws. He's still alive. But no, we're gonna show them what it's like. Like, okay, like if they really wanted him dead, he'd be dead, man.

56:10
Case Aiken
Right?

56:10
Keith Lehtinen
Like. Yeah.

56:11
Case Aiken
And we get Phil actually like throwing a brick.

56:16
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. Well, we gotta talk about this shot, this group shot of the X Men, which is.

56:20
Case Aiken
Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah.

56:23
Keith Lehtinen
And just the glowing effect on Cyclops's visor almost dead center of the shot. Perfect. Casting it in this darkness, you know,.

56:32
Case Aiken
Like the reflection on the pupils of Angel's eyes.

56:36
Keith Lehtinen
Yes. Just everything about this tells you everything you need to know about this story. It's just such an evocative image. And I love it. I love it so much. Like, even the old school Iceman, like the Snowman, Iceman, like, I just love this so much. As an ex X Men fanatic, I love this issue because it, this is a really good issue. If someone's never read X Men to tell them what the X Men are about, even though it doesn't really feature them the entire time. So.

57:03
Case Aiken
Yeah, and so we see the tensions rise and people are like, you X Men. And, and meanwhile Cyclops is like, they're, don't, don't, don't fight back against these guys. It's. They're. They're not worth it. But because it happens after Phil throws the brick and hits Iceman, he interprets this as being like, oh my God, are they saying that like they're going to like step on our remains? Like, you know, he like imagines like the worst case scenario for what like the X Men mean by they're not worth it. And this like lingers in his head because. Because all he can do is imagine the terror of the mutants recognizing him.

57:46
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. And not the idea that they know if they fuck up once society has an excuse to kill them. All like he doesn't see it from their perspective, only his own. So. Yeah, right. Yep.

57:59
Case Aiken
And so we sort of check in with Phil and his family. He's got two daughters now that they're. And they're very cute. Supposedly at this point in the story they're feeding a dog of some kind or something, Some sort of stray animal that they've encountered. Yeah, we get some cool like dark room scenes. We get Phil being constantly a photographer on the scene. So like he's observing around him and he's getting cool shots. He gets sent to a gala for Alicia Masters, which is really fun where we get to see all kinds of mutants and so forth and walking around in the background while the Fantastic Four and whatnot are the main characters of the scenes.

58:38
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, I love Tony hitting on Alicia Masters just shamelessly.

58:44
Case Aiken
Yep. That's supposed to be Arthur at the bottom, right?

58:50
Keith Lehtinen
Thank you. I was going to say that's Bea Arthur. It has to be. Although we made that mistake during Trans.

59:01
Case Aiken
Metropolitan, so potentially I, I feel it like with Alex Ross like that. That's way more likely. Yeah, a straight up, like.

59:09
Alan Kistler
Oh yeah, no, I used to be.

59:11
Case Aiken
A picture of Bea Arthur.

59:12
Alan Kistler
I was a really big.

59:13
Case Aiken
I was watching the Golden Girls while I was doing the scene and it just like made sense.

59:17
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

59:19
Case Aiken
Anyway, so we, we get more of Phil's like life juxtaposed with like the announcement of Reed Richards and Sue Storm getting engaged of the Fantastic Four. But like they're the big publicity characters. So like Phil Ghost like events for them. And we get this like whole montage of like stuff that goes on of like different like big moments in Marvel comics juxtaposed with the various work related stuff. Like him talking to J. Jonah Jameson for example, reminding us that he is a part of the, this scene of the newspaper scene that they are presenting as being the contemporary world of 60s Marvel Comics. Like we see like Captain America and his kooky quartet being like rolled out for example. And, and then when he comes back home one night, there is like a mob of people being like, there's a mutant.

01:00:11
Case Aiken
And he's like, huh, I better go home and check on my family. And they're like, hey, you know that mutant? It's in her basement. It's a little girl. Don't please don't hurt her. And he's like.

01:00:21
Keith Lehtinen
And she's so. The first shot of her is so sympathetic.

01:00:25
Case Aiken
I know, I know.

01:00:27
Alan Kistler
It just breaks her heart.

01:00:28
Keith Lehtinen
Anyone who's ever had a kid or a niece or known a child that was a girl has to have sympathy for this kid. Like, I love it. There's one of my things with Marvel is child mutants who don't have control over their life. That really gets to me. There's an amazing issue of X Men about a mutant who's transforming uncontrollably. And Zorn has to stop him. And you find out he was just trying to get medicine for his mother. And it's still the most heartbreaking comic I've ever read. I can't read it again. So this kind of flashes me back to that. It's just like, she's just a little girl who doesn't look like that by choice. It's crazy. Yep.

01:01:11
Case Aiken
And they pull every heartstring they can. They invoke Auschwitz. Like, yeah,.

01:01:18
Keith Lehtinen
It's. It's crazy. And like, oh, God, I can't. I can't read this. It's going to make me cry. Like, so. Yeah.

01:01:27
Case Aiken
Yeah. And I like the. The scenario that Phil, like, has no, like, way of, like, easily getting information. Like, he doesn't know who to reach out to. He can't call anyone because it's like, oh, have you. Do you want to report a mutant? And it's just like, no, I don't. No, no, never mind. Like, the whole situation is just impossible for him. And then we get, like, the big crux of this issue, which is that it is the juxtaposition of the Fantastic Four wedding, like, the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm with then the. The coming of the Sentinels. And there's this whole diatribe in the, like, in the, like, annotated section of this, where it's just like, when did this happen? Well, it could have only happened mid issue here. It had to happen on the same fucking day.

01:02:11
Case Aiken
And I find that amazing. Like, that is the crux of this issue. And it is a thing that they only figured out because they did deep research into the book.

01:02:22
Alan Kistler
It's such a brilliant dichotomy between the two. A day of joyous unity and community building and family building is also the day when someone decided, we've built murder machines because we're that afraid of you. We've built Robot Gestapo to stop you. You just in case. Not for something you're doing, but for something we think you might do.

01:02:47
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. And just it's. You mentioned, like, it could only happen one day. That was one thing that I really admired once I started learning more about Marvel, is how much they were like, let's have a timeline. Where was this person at this time? Then they can't be in that book. So Marvel did a really good job of that. And as someone who's like, really obsessive about stuff like that, I loved it. And this was my first. Again, I talked about this as my first experience with the wider Marvel universe. Reading that, I was like, oh, they give a shit. This is going to be fun. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, but that economy is chilling is the word I would use.

01:03:27
Alan Kistler
It's also again, just that wonderful thing that sometimes happens when you look at publication dates or when certain stories came out of like, oh, this just works beautifully as if it's planned and it wasn't. It's just beautiful act of timing. But then we can take advantage of that and weave it together to make a sense of a world. And again, the Fantastic Four is this symbol of unity and family and community here, extending even to Alicia Masters Art Gallery. And by contrast, the X Men are trying to be a family, but are part of a group of people who aren't allowed to be a community because they all keep getting hunted down, they all keep getting separated. And we've seen all these other heroes presented. Even when Namor is seen as possibly menacing, he has these beautiful, heroic, epic, godly shots.

01:04:18
Alan Kistler
And the X Men in that panel were talking about earlier are seen in red district light against cornered. They could be wild animals that attack us any moment. And the playing with light, then when the sentinels show up in the sky. I mean, the sentinel showing up in the sky acting as like robot police just flying through the air is haunting and so beautiful. And I've always wanted to see it brought to life in live action in one of the movies.

01:04:44
Case Aiken
Yeah, yeah. That's the thing that we haven't like really like conveyed about these works in general, which is the how this for especially when it first came out because the artwork was like the closest that we could get to like things being live action in movies.

01:04:58
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, just insane.

01:05:01
Alan Kistler
You bring up an excellent point. We should complain about the current generation of kids and how easy they have it because we didn't have superhero movies coming out every few years. We didn't have Disney with 10 shows and bringing in random characters. 15 Year old me could not have been told that one day a general audience would also care about Wanda and the Vision. What we had was the Christopher Reeve movies in live action. We had Michael Keaton's Batman in live action. We had the Superboy series in Live action. And that was it. So like this was, I thought for like. I didn't expect a movie in 2000. I expected maybe movie in 2010 would be the first time I saw X Men live action like these.

01:05:46
Alan Kistler
So the idea of being able to see photorealistic sentinels and a photorealistic spider man crawling up a wall. Huge.

01:05:54
Case Aiken
Yeah. And on that note, this Alex Ross used people as models for characters. And one of those models was he used Patrick Stewart as the model for his Professor X who is captured by the Sentinels in the scene that we're talking about. And art would imitate life, and life would imitate art. Six years later we would get Patrick Stewart playing Professor X, which is just delightful synergy.

01:06:20
Keith Lehtinen
Definitely. Yeah.

01:06:21
Case Aiken
But so the Sentinels betraying everyone, which is just like, of course it's nothing to do with the mutants themselves. The Sentinels betraying everyone is what triggers a giant riot of everyone like going nuts about. About mutants. And so Phil goes out into the night and films like shots of this riot and like sees just how like, gross everything becomes. Especially when like the sentinels show up and act as like choppers with like floodlights, like coming off of them. And that kind of breaks up the riot. And Phil like heads back home and while he does, he steps on a newspaper where it's like, oh, yeah, the wedding was the same fucking day.

01:07:01
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, this was a very. Maybe because we just filmed that show, but this is a very transmet scene. Like him being like, I'm documenting this so we can see how, you know, like the dirty of us. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I was like, that's inspired Jerusalem shit. Now they think about it. So, yeah, obviously in a very different.

01:07:22
Alan Kistler
Tone, but yeah, but it is like the Sentinels sort of symbolize for him, like, oh, this is the inevitable outcome if this attitude continues. If the attitude of the mob riot, the mob mentality, the condemn them not for what they've done, but for what I fear they might do. If this happens and then this happens, this is the outcome.

01:07:43
Keith Lehtinen
Yep.

01:07:44
Case Aiken
Yeah, yeah. And then we get like just the saddest ending to this issue, which is that like, the girl left their house like in the middle of this like giant anti mutant riot and they don't know what's going to happen to her. And then Phil has to write his story about the wedding. Like, he has to like suck it up and write like, dial back. He's like, yeah. Even though like this little girl that I Was, like, taking care of, like, is now potentially dead. And also, like, I just witnessed, like, the darkest, grossest, like, aspect of humanity. I have to remember just, like, how nice things were this afternoon when. When I was taking photos of this. Of this wedding that I was at.

01:08:26
Keith Lehtinen
I will say, because it's the saddest thing that's ever happened in this. If. Because she doesn't come back the rest of the series, I'll tell. Say it now. She does come back in Marvel's eye of the camera, she's okay. Because for a long time, I did not forgive Kurt Busick for that, because I was like, how dare you? That little girl's dead, you son of a bitch. So I was really happy when Marvel's eye of the camera came out and it confirmed that she did escape. So, yeah.

01:08:56
Alan Kistler
Although she recently appeared in animated episode where she was once again imprisoned. And I just thought, this girl can't get a break.

01:09:03
Keith Lehtinen
Really?

01:09:04
Case Aiken
Oh, no. Oh, no.

01:09:05
Keith Lehtinen
Right.

01:09:06
Alan Kistler
She does seem to get out of there, but it's like, again, can we just not keep imprisoning this young child?

01:09:13
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

01:09:13
Case Aiken
Yeah. So then we get commentary by Alex Ross, who talks a lot about how influential Jack Kirby ends up being, even though Jack Kirby wasn't, like, a big part of his initial art style. And I think this is borne out from, like, stuff that Ross has done over the years, like, in terms of his career, he has a lot of love for Jack Kirby kind of art, and I think that he really fell in love with Kirby while doing this book.

01:09:39
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

01:09:40
Case Aiken
And I think this aside is really descriptive of that. So then this picks up a little bit later, and we are dealing with the Marvels being now kind of in retrograde, I guess, would be the way to describe it. It's like, okay, now the heights of how beautiful the wedding of Sue Storm and Mr. Fantastic, that's over. Like, we're now, like, he's working with Ben Erik and is trying to figure out more information about SHIELD and all this stuff is going on now. And it's like, oh, okay, people are starting to be fed up with the Marvels.

01:10:26
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. But also take them for granted, which feeds into the conflict of this one. There's a luxury of being fed up with them, but also knowing that they're going to save the day in the end. You know what I mean? Like, and so that. Yeah, that leads into the conflict which we're going to talk about with the Fantastic Four. So. Right. I'll say this issue is probably my least favorite. Not that I dislike it. It's the one that I think hits me the least. Maybe the Silver Surfer saves it for me because I love Silver Surfer, but I'm just not a huge Fantastic Four fan. I don't know.

01:11:00
Alan Kistler
Get out. No, I mean, I put the Fantastic Four in the category that I put certain other characters where it's like, there's. The symbolism of them is so wonderful to me, and the premise of the story is so wonderful to me. And the good stories are truly special. But I would say, like, 80% of the stories are not the great stories. 80% Of the stories are okay or interchangeable with any other heroes.

01:11:31
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, I think they're very dependent on their creative team. I love the Ryan north book. It's fantastic. And I liked the new movie. I really enjoyed it. But. Yeah, just not a fan of just in general. I'm not going to latch onto a Fantastic Four story just because. So.

01:11:47
Alan Kistler
Weirdly when. Weirdly, when they did the audio play adaptation of Marvel's this Is the Issue they focused on pretty much exclusively. And the retelling of it didn't really work for me. But I just thought it was so odd that they focused on the Galactus Affair and Ben Urich and Phil Sheldon covering it and trying to find out if it even was real because there was a conspiracy theory that Reed Richards had faked it. And it was such an odd path to an adaptation, to my mind.

01:12:21
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

01:12:22
Alan Kistler
But, yeah, I. I sort of agree with you. I appreciate a lot of this issue, but there are things about it I was surprised we didn't go to. I really thought Phil Sheldon, as a person who's observing the world professionally, would have a conversation with the Silver Surfer, who is an alien who has a unique ability to observe us from afar as a society, as a species, and also betrays his Master Galactus and saves Earth because of what he observes in humanity. Both the potential and the love and the art, with Alicia Masters perfectly suited as his guide. And I thought, surely that's gonna be the endnote, and it's really not. And I like what it touches on, but there was something missing thematically here for me.

01:13:16
Case Aiken
Me H. That's interesting just because, like. Because it's in such contrast with, like, the actual, like, thesis of the issue. Like, the. The nature of it is, like, ultimately, like, Phil, they have like, all this, like, doomsday stuff throughout it, like, caused by different Marvel's events. Like, there. There's all this water that rushes in while they're at the zoo. They find out that it's related to like, yet another Atlantis fight. Because they're Atlantis just keeps on invading because, like, that was a big threat.

01:13:45
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

01:13:46
Case Aiken
And we. We see stuff of. Of Spider man supposedly attacking J. Jonah Jameson and all this stuff going on. But the big thing, of course, is the coming of Galactus. Yeah. And the ultimate arc of it is Phil deciding to stop covering it. And so, like, we still get like a juxtaposition of, like, images of. Of major stuff that happens in the Galactus arc. And they're gorgeous. Like, like this is just a tour de force of Alex Ross showing off, like, what he can do with, like, these, like, big Jack Kirby kind of images. Like, what. What can he do with it all? And the. The story is Phil being like, I just want to be with my family if this is the end.

01:14:34
Alan Kistler
Yeah.

01:14:35
Keith Lehtinen
I will say the Phil story of this book. Book is great. I think it's more the. The Marvel's side of it that I look with. But this might be Phil's best issue as a character. Specifically when we get to it at the end, he has a moment that I love. But. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you trailed off there.

01:15:00
Alan Kistler
I. It's. It's not a detriment to the story, but I, I would have been if. If. And they didn't have enough pages for this is purely, like, fan preference, not a dig against the story. It would have been fun to me to have Peter Parker show up and to Phil's mind because I know he shows up later and they have a little brief interaction. That is funny. But how Peter Parker's covering the story or other stories and that to Phil's mind, that could give him perspective. Because from the outside, Peter looks like a guy who is weirdly unreliable at times, but also so dedicated to his work. Cause every time there's even a rumor that there's a supervillain downtown, Peter's gone and will come back with 30 photos, 10 of which are out of focus for some reason.

01:15:49
Alan Kistler
But there are gonna be all these photos there. So he clearly seems doggedly pursuing this thing that Phil has now been in for decades and is having a bit more of that perspective of is the story always the most important thing. Not realizing, of course, why Peter's actually rushing into action.

01:16:07
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

01:16:08
Alan Kistler
I do think it's a beautiful character moment for Phil. And it's also something that I feel like at times Kurt Busick is writing about. And I'm not the only one to say this, obviously, so it's not original, but is writing about the role of Being a writer in this comic book world and re. Exploring it constantly through new stories, looking at the wonder, looking at the horrors, and then at times having to step back and like, oh, well, you know, I want to keep my fan love. I want to keep my appreciation, and I don't want to lose sight of the ball, like, where.

01:16:41
Alan Kistler
Because of the nature of comic books and the nature of serialized publishing, like, it can be very easy to get burnout, because especially these days, like, sometimes you have to put out two or three books at once to make ends meet or something, but you don't want to lose sight of the family you're trying to provide for or the people that you are wanting to spend time with.

01:17:06
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, yeah.

01:17:08
Case Aiken
And. And that is like, a recurring thing throughout this whole book, particularly the. The three issues where he actually has a family beyond. Just like wooing Doris in. In the first issue. But, yeah, focusing on the Galactus thing for a moment. I have this headcanon that the first source that they looked at, not saying that the only source they looked at, but the first source they looked at when working on the Fantastic Four movie was Marvel's. Like, the way that Galactus is played with such prominence and specifically the moment where the Torch. He's gone inside. They lost. They lost. Feels like the kind of moment that is exactly what they played up in that movie. And, you know, it's just, like, funny that, like, 30 years earlier, they're doing it here.

01:17:57
Alan Kistler
Yeah, I could. I could believe that. I mean, Matt Shankman, who was the director on that, and actually, like, he and I worked at the Geffen Playhouse during one, like, overlapping period. He was a comic book fan. He is a comic book fan. So I wouldn't surprise me at all that he's got Marvels on. On a bookshelf and consulted it before jumping into this whole thing, before jumping into the filmmaking of that movie.

01:18:26
Case Aiken
Yeah, just. Just the thing that I want to call out, it's amidst, like, all of these, like, beautiful shots, which, you know, certainly are good shots to look at in terms of, like, how you would, like, do a movie version of. Of the Galacta story. So, like, I. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to use this as a primary source. It just is interesting that it feels like such a primary source.

01:18:52
Alan Kistler
Yeah, well, especially because the Fantastic Four movie that they've done recently with First Steps was a period piece, and Marvel's is exactly that. Like, these. The world we're seeing around them is true to the time that they were published. In.

01:19:10
Case Aiken
Yeah. I love the sojourn of Phil out from Manhattan to the suburbs to, like, to get to his family. I love the different, like, takes that we're seeing while it's being juxtaposed with shots of, like, this huge encounter with. With Galactus. And, you know, we just get to see just gorgeous Alex Ross art of. Of this whole incident, but we see different people's take on. On how to deal with Galactus. You know, we get like, one older guy being like, just get. Get Captain America, get the soldier. And like, we see other people, like, just getting drunk. You know, like, it's a lot of different takes and he. He makes his way back home to his family. Meanwhile, just, again, more and more gorgeous shots of the. Of. Of Alex Ross taking on Jack Kirby artwork.

01:20:03
Alan Kistler
It.

01:20:04
Case Aiken
It's a tour de force.

01:20:06
Alan Kistler
It.

01:20:06
Case Aiken
It almost feels like they're luxuriating in this whole, like, little moment in a way that feels like, irresponsible considering how much story they're trying to cover in the scope of Marvel's as a series. But at the same time, they make it really have the weight that I don't think a lot of people really process. The Galactus incident feels like the end of the world appropriate.

01:20:39
Alan Kistler
Yeah, you're right about giving it the appropriate weight because, I mean, it's one of the things where especially even if you're in middle school, when Marvel's comes out, by then, if you've been reading comic books for at least three or four years or watched the more recent Fantastic Four cartoon, like, Galactus is someone you know about. And so you can take it for granted. Like, right, the Planet Eater, big bad guy, but still, like. Like, you've got this limitation on him. Like, you've got him contained in a box as a comic book fan or a cartoon fan. Whereas here it's reminding you not to forget the premise of, like, this is a space God. This is a God created by forces of science unknown to you, and it's coming, and it really doesn't care that you're here. And they really.

01:21:27
Alan Kistler
With the scope of things, some of it, I agree, is a little indulgent, but with the scope of things. They're really showing this case for the frightening aspect of, like, please don't forget Galactus is a space God. And there should be no reason to believe that Fantastic Four can beat this. And on top of that, it is a marker of a change in comics because you had superheroes who fought other dimensional beings and aliens before this story, but this was sort of the first story to get into sort of this almost cosmic horror level of the story here is not, can we defeat Galactus and then put him on a ship and send him away? Like, we can only convince him to chill out or avoid him or delay this. Like we. There is no real talk about beating Galactus.

01:22:23
Alan Kistler
That's not on the table. Whereas it was when Superman fought Brainiac or Phantom Zone villains, or when the challengers of the Unknown and Fantastic Four fought various other space menaces or strange menaces like they were still. There was a physical limitation there. And Galactus truly stands on another plane.

01:22:45
Case Aiken
Yeah. And the encounter with him all and whatnot is taken with this gravity. And then the fact that the population kind of turns their back on the memory of the experience is really interesting. Like, we get the whole like, Bugle calls it a hoax and we see people like having different doubts or like different like questions about the incident. And Phil is grossed out by that whole interaction. Like this sort of sets up like the, the big arc of the last half of the book, which is that he wants to believe in the Marvels. And when people don't, that really bothers him. Like, we get an interaction with Peter Parker. We just kind of references where Peter Parker goes in and sells pictures to Jameson about how bad Spidey looks in them.

01:23:42
Case Aiken
And Phil is like, like I said, like, kind of grossed out about this whole situation. He, he like goes out to like, he's out with his family and then there's like an incident that like causes him to like run out. And as he's heading out, he like hears more people like kind of bad mouthing the Marvels. And it's just like.

01:24:03
Keith Lehtinen
The moment I was talking about. Yeah.

01:24:05
Case Aiken
Like, what are we doing here? Like, these are the people who just saved our lives.

01:24:11
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, Specifically, this is another instance and I'm really glad they didn't just drop it from the previous issue where mutants are dropped. And I think that's part of what just sets him off, you know what I mean? Like, and I, again, I like that development from the previous story wasn't just, okay, well, it's 10 years later and it's not coming up again. Like, I really appreciate that came back up. So. Yeah.

01:24:31
Case Aiken
Yeah. So then we get commentary by John Romita Senior talking about just how blown away he was by the creative team before we get into this all. And then we get into, well, the final chapter. And we start with the issue arc, which is this gorgeous reflective shot of Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin in Spider Man's eyes.

01:25:01
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, just getting my Gwen out.

01:25:04
Case Aiken
Getting your Gwen out. So I was thinking about this. The book is a success. The Marvel's book that Phil puts together is a success for him. People like it. And I was thinking about this. It's a coffee table book. It's a photo journalism guide to superpower beings. But it's a coffee table book. I've got a coffee table book behind me that's on like phones and it's just like pretty pictures of phones and like paragraph blurbs. Like that's what, that's what Marvel's is like. It's like pretty pictures of like superpowered beings in like cool moments. And then like, damn, dude, can you believe I got this amazing shot? Like, would be like the paragraph that like follows like ne. Like next to all those things, you know, paraphrase for modern audiences. But, but it's a hit. And so Phil is doing pretty well.

01:26:04
Case Aiken
And we get some like shots of how the Avengers are doing and we get to see a much more like 70s style Avengers with like Captain Marvell there as they're fighting the Kree Skrull war. And we just like kind of cut around a little bit. Phil now has an assistant and jokes about being old. And we get more like stories of things going on while people don't appreciate the Marvels. So Reed Richards saves the day from Galactus again, but at the same time he's getting evicted from the Baxter Building. And like they're running a story about that. Meanwhile, Phil gets this idea of like, hey, so there, there's all this going on about Spider man being involved in the death of Captain Stacy, but I don't believe that. What if I cleared Spider Man's name?

01:26:59
Case Aiken
What if that's the sequel book clearing Captain Stacy's death from Spider Man's name and he becomes obsessed with this idea. So we meet Luke Cage, the hero for hire, which is like a fun scene. I, I like where it's just like, do you have to take pictures of my face? Because you know, he's a wanted criminal at this point in the story. So I, I like those elements that they sort of like drop in just to like texture the thing. But like Phil goes off and interviews all these people and what I enjoy is like when he talks to the cops, they're like, yeah, we don't think it's Spider Man.

01:27:33
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, yeah, I like that because the cops are like, we're not Stupid. Yeah.

01:27:39
Case Aiken
Like, forensics came back. They said that it was probably something, like, cylindrical and metallic that knocked over the. The chimney. Which of those do you think that describes?

01:27:48
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah,.

01:27:52
Case Aiken
But we get more of these, like, big, crazy, cosmic events while Phil is interviewing people to find out more information about it all. And it's like, going back and forth with him, like, trying to be a more successful journalist just in general. So, like, we get. We get this, like, back and forth with him. He's supposed to be at Shea Stadium for the. The fight between Thundra and the Thing, which is just like, you know, big, classic Marvel event. And he sends his assistant instead so that he can go and interview Dr. Octopus, because he's obsessed with this whole, like, we're going to clear Spider Man's name situation. And then he meets Gwen Stacy.

01:28:38
Keith Lehtinen
This is the time for me to reveal what I. So at the very beginning, I said there were two big things. First one was the X Men. For me, anyone who knows me at all knows I love Gwen Stacy. I love her. She's the only character I put above Supergirl and Batgirl. As far as my fandom. I love her so much. This book. Book is when I fell in love with Gwen Stacy. My first reading. This is when I fell in love with Gwen Stacy. So this shaped my comic book fandom in a way that I didn't really notice until I really thought about it. I'm like, no, because. And I will say it. We're jumping ahead a tiny couple pages, but this shot.

01:29:14
Keith Lehtinen
I fell in love with Gwen Stacy when I read that, when I saw that shot for the first time of her noticing the rain. And, yeah, from then on, I was smitten. She's my girl. So, yeah.

01:29:24
Case Aiken
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because Gwen Stacy is. Is cool. Like, she, like, she is supposed to be a person that you can't help but love, you know, in contrast to the fact that she was the one that, like, Stan Lee didn't enjoy writing as much as mj. But it. You know, this is supposed to be like, this is the. This is the best girl.

01:29:46
Keith Lehtinen
And she is.

01:29:47
Case Aiken
And Phil is, like, invigorated by, like, being around her and, like, experiencing her and is like, yeah, no, I'm really into this whole idea of doing a book, doing a column, and doing all the stuff I want to do. Everything. Because I. I've met a girl, and I feel young again.

01:30:02
Alan Kistler
He.

01:30:02
Case Aiken
He's smitten with her. Even though he. He wouldn't admit to it. Like, he. He still Loves his wife, but like he definitely had.

01:30:09
Alan Kistler
Well, it's smitten with what she represents and youthful energy and such and like, yeah, I don't see any personally any romance from fill in it, but it's the romantic that she's representing in the same way. Like, like I worked for a few years in video game marketing now and so many of my co workers, like whether they were gamers who were trying to learn video production or they were full on capture directors, footage capture directors, like a lot of them were in their 20s, sometimes in their early 20s. And so there's this like about 20 year gap between me and some of them. And I was overjoyed sometimes just being in their energy and just like the fire and the passion that sometimes I needed to get back in touch with was there.

01:30:53
Alan Kistler
And you think like the kids are all right or even more than that, like the kids know what they're talking about and like they can help us get back to where we're supposed to be. So like I, as I get older, I found myself understanding Phil a little bit more and more.

01:31:07
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, she reignited that passion he had for the Marvels and like the weight that has been dragging him down. She helped alleviate that if briefly, which we'll get to.

01:31:20
Alan Kistler
Which again is sort of a commentary, isn't it, on the comic book fan. If you've been reading comic books through the 60s while you were in college, or if you've been reading them first in the 30s and 40s and then the 60s by the 70s, which is where we are now, we're in the early 70s, there can be that, been there, done that, because it's too familiar, because you are secure in that knowledge of. They're gonna beat Starro the Conqueror. They're gonna beat Kang the Conqueror. They're gonna save the world from Galactus. Even if Galactus is huge and all godly powerful, Captain America will prove his innocence. Despite what a Skrull or the Red Skull or Baron Zemo did. Spider man will evade the police, even if they don't like it. We are secure in that knowledge.

01:32:04
Alan Kistler
And he's looking for a way to get interested again. And this is the 70s where in real life, in the world we all inhabit. You had for the first time a generation of new artists and writers who had themselves grown up on comic books. You hadn't really had that before where people had been kids when Superman was in the funny papers and such and they wanted the characters to grow Up a little bit with them. Plus you had now the readership was changing in age where it was now. Instead of mainly middle school and high school kids who you expected to drop the comic after three to four years, there were people who were staying with it for longer and were now college age or past that.

01:32:47
Alan Kistler
And yeah, Phil's sort of on the other side of that shift that's happening from Silver Age to what we sort of call the Bronze Age.

01:32:57
Case Aiken
Yeah. And him being a passionate example of that generation is so invigorated by Gwen Stacy. Like, like Keith, you brought up, when the Atlantean invasion comes through, we should call out. They have a wonderful cameo of Night Owl and Silk Specter in one of the shots there. It's very clear. Supposed to be Archie is what they're calling out.

01:33:23
Alan Kistler
Or.

01:33:23
Case Aiken
It also kind of looks like a horseshoe crab.

01:33:27
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah.

01:33:28
Case Aiken
But yeah, so Gwen Stacy is, is just this breath of fresh air and like, it causes him to like, look with like this like nostalgic eyes at like Neymar where like Neymar is like flying by. And she's like, remembers him as a young man also. And Phil's like feeling all great about this and like there's like, like Gwyn doesn't think that Spider man killed her dad. And also, like, her dad thought highly of Spider man. And like, she's pretty sure she has journals of this. And so she's gonna give it to Phil and he's like, this is gonna be perfect for my book. Like, this is exactly what I need. And like, before she can give him any of this, the Green Goblin killed, well, kidnaps her and then ultimately kills her.

01:34:12
Case Aiken
But you know, we get this like ground level view of this like classic Spider man story. Like, you know, a guy like, with just like a telephoto lens, like chasing down like the Green Goblin, like racing away. And he's able to see from a distance, but he can't hear what's going on. So it's just this very different perspective on this, like, classic Spider man story. And we get the shot of Gwen falling and the webbing like catching her, and we get this like ambiguous snap. And like, is that the snap of like the camera or is that the snap of the neck and like, what is going on there?

01:34:48
Case Aiken
This shot, more than probably anything, has led people to the conclusion that Spider man is the reason that Gwen Stacy is dead in that moment, even though she probably would have died regardless because she was falling to her death.

01:35:02
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah. I thought there was a sound effect in the original, too.

01:35:05
Alan Kistler
There. There is. It was added last minute, but also, like, by the story's conclusion, you're hearing from the police and all the shock of the fall killed her. So that's not, you know, it's not a thing. I kind of wish that this sound effect wasn't in this version in Marvel's one, because it's funny. Like, what I'll accept as realistic or not to worry about in a comic book that has Green Goblin and Spider man in it and stuff like that. But I just thought, Phil can't hear that from where he is.

01:35:38
Case Aiken
Exactly.

01:35:39
Alan Kistler
Was one thing. But then the other thing is, for such a great moment, the comic book balloon sound effect there felt so off and so forced in a series that has largely just allowed painting and visuals to work on their own. Like, especially if you go back to the Galactus issue, there's no, like, sizzle sound effect happening when Galactus is turning on his machine. There's no, like, when they're being screwed by. By the robot from Galactus the robot Punisher during the fight. It's just visuals. We understand. We understand the motion and all that. And I thought that would have worked well for here. So I'm not a fan of the snap here, but, you know, whatever. It's a beautiful issue otherwise, as we see Phil react to the death of the Silver Age, as many people refer to this moment as. Yeah.

01:36:34
Keith Lehtinen
Yep. And the purest woman who's ever lived. No, but yeah, it's intense. I agree with you, though. He wouldn't have heard it. And I think also that would have been a better storytelling because we have a couple moments in this series where he's like, I wasn't right there. I don't know what happened. You know what I mean? And I think that would have re. Emphasized him having even his monologue or interior monologue right after that was like, I'm trying to tell myself she's just unconscious. So that leads to him not hearing the sound right.

01:37:09
Alan Kistler
Also, because his major reaction here is not. He's not jumping into the George Stacy wagon of he killed her. He's jumping into the he failed to save her, which is a different thing.

01:37:21
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, yeah. 100%.

01:37:26
Case Aiken
Yeah. Well, and then the issue, like, follows Phil being, like, extremely depressed about this whole situation. And, like, especially because, like, the news doesn't really care her about Gwen Stacy. Like, she. She's brought up in, like, some stories, but it's, like, several pages in, and it's really upsetting. To him. And ultimately this leads him to come to the conclusion that he's too inside the story. He. He can't focus on his work anymore because he. He's in it. Like, he's like, Gwen Stacy is a bystander that he cares about because he's like part of the story of telling what is going on with the Marvels out there. And so he decides to retire.

01:38:10
Case Aiken
And so he has this really heartfelt shot where he gets his assistant to take a picture of him with his wife, and they grab just a random boy who is a paperboy on a bike.

01:38:21
Keith Lehtinen
You boy. What day is it?

01:38:23
Case Aiken
Yeah, exactly.

01:38:25
Keith Lehtinen
It's very energy.

01:38:26
Alan Kistler
Yeah, it's Marvel Day, sir.

01:38:30
Case Aiken
Exactly. Because of course, this is Ghost Rider, the 90s Ghost Rider, which will all be three.

01:38:38
Keith Lehtinen
Yes. Yeah.

01:38:42
Case Aiken
Anyway, but yeah, so that's the fun of this. And then we get an afterwards by Scott McCloud, which is always great. Love me some Scott McCloud. Understanding comics. He's awesome.

01:38:54
Keith Lehtinen
Awesome.

01:38:55
Case Aiken
And, and jokes about how he has long histories with.

01:38:59
Alan Kistler
With Kurt Busek.

01:39:01
Case Aiken
And, you know, Nat, like, was supposed to be the one that got all the glory and. And Kurt would have all the money. And now Kurt's getting both the glory and the money. And. And that's Such is life. But, but. So that is Marvel's. Now, Alan, you wanted to talk a little bit about the epilogue, which is not part of this trade, but has been included in other trades. Right?

01:39:25
Alan Kistler
Yeah. It's just an interesting thing to me because as we brought up earlier, Eyes of the Camera, and that was sort of a sister series that was released later with a different art team. And it's pretty good. Like, there's. There's several things I can talk well about it, but it. It felt in some ways like I almost didn't want it to be with Phil Sheldon again because it goes through the 80s and into the 90s. I'm like, I don't know that I needed this. Like, we ended Marvel so well with the Gwen Stacy incident. The one thing I liked about it in particular.

01:39:58
Alan Kistler
I mean, there are several things I liked about it, but one thing I did like about it in particular was that the first issue of Eyes of the Camera was the arrival of Fantastic Four, which is something that I did think should have been covered in Marvel's. To show that shift from a post Marvel's world after World War II to then the rise of them again. But then years, years after that, about 25 years after the original Marvel's miniseries was published, we got an epilogue issue. Whereas I, as the camera, I was thinking, I don't know that we needed this, the epilogue issue of Marvels. I thought, oh, yes, this is lovely. And it's a very short. It truly is an epilogue. It's not even a full story. It's just philosopher taking his two kids out on Christmas to Rockefeller Center.

01:40:47
Alan Kistler
And it happens to be the same night that after the introduction of the all new, all different X Men, the X Men went to Rockefeller center, fought some Sentinels, and then wound up going into space. And when they came back a few days later, Jean Grey was Phoenix. So you're seeing a glimmer of the beginning of that story because he runs into the X Men at Rockefeller center, her. And he sees some of that battle. Nova shows up. It's just his. It's an interesting thing because in one hand it says, like, although he's chosen to step back and go onto a new path post the death of Gwen Stacy, you still live in this world. So there's always going to be reminders of what could be different if you had stuck in this, if you kept on pursuing things, if you.

01:41:34
Alan Kistler
If you'd chosen different focuses for your work. But then also, he's seeing his kids react to the battle, and he's seeing that wonder in them, even with the fact that they've grown up in a arguably darker world than he did when the Marvels arrived and he saw them in action for the first time in person. And he realized that they haven't seen the Marvels in person yet until this moment. They've only seen it through Dad's work and through television and stuff like that. And they turn to him and it's like, is this what. It's like, is this what it's always like? And he could tell them, like, sure. And also, there's terrible stuff, and I saw a girl die in all this.

01:42:14
Alan Kistler
And he could get very real with them and disillusion them about things, but instead it's just like, that's not the conversation for today. Today was they watched and they took photos. And Phil basically just says, it's a lot like this a lot of the time. And he also brings up, it's scary, it's exciting, it's thrilling all at once and just lets them have that moment and then finally takes his kids home and is like, yeah, let's go home. And then sort of laments, like, on a little comic note, like, your mom's gonna freak out when she finds out I let you just stand here and Watch the. And it's such a nicer epilogue, I think, because. Is it necessary?

01:43:04
Alan Kistler
No, but it couples with the Danny Catch Touchstone and supports it rather than taking it into this other realm of, like, well, what did he think of the Punisher? And what did he think about Ghost rider once the 90s arrived? Which I just. I didn't think we needed Phil for that. So, Yeah, I think the epilogue is really a nice endnote. It's. Again, it was. And it has some gorgeous artwork. And I like, again, that. Just like were learning, oh, the Fantastic Four wedding happened on the same day as the Sentinels, it turns out. Like, hey, you didn't know it, but Nova was nearby when that Sentinel attack happened in Rockefeller Center. And, yeah, I think it's just a lovely little epilogue that did support the story. And that's not always something that happens when comics decide to do sequels or.

01:43:54
Alan Kistler
Or epilogues or in between chapters to stories they published 20 or 30 or even 40 years later. There's other stuff that's like, hey, remember this storyline from 20 years ago? Here are three other chapters behind it. Like, I don't need this. So Marvel's epilogue, I thought, was a really nice reunion without feeling like a cash grab or feeling like we're just saying extra things.

01:44:20
Case Aiken
Yeah. You're making me think of the Watchmen spin offs that came out that was.

01:44:23
Alan Kistler
Never happened. Yeah, those never happened. No, but seriously, exactly like that. Because, I mean, the TV show that HBO did felt like a sequel to me, whereas a lot of the Watchmen spin offs that happened felt like cover songs to me. Is it ruining the original story? No. It also just didn't give me anything that put a new perspective or gave me new energy for it or added terribly a lot to it. Because the story worked, the story was done.

01:44:55
Case Aiken
Yeah. No, that makes. I think the same way about that. And I'm glad to hear that with Marvel's that we're dealing with more effective kind of sequel stories that are done.

01:45:07
Alan Kistler
Yeah. Yeah. I got complicated feelings about Eyes of the Camera, but Marvel's epilogue dialogue. Great. Absolutely great. Just really lovely. And also, frankly, that was one thing that I would have liked more of if you had the page space for it was I did want to know more about Phil's family. Like, what does Doris think of some of these things? I mean, all this stuff is narrated by Phil, which is really lovely. And it made me think at times. Like, I mean, at first I was thinking, are we reading Marvel's. Are we reading Phil's book that he's making. We're clearly not. Because once we see Marvel's being signed for, as you said, it's just a coffee table book with like two or three senses underneath each photo. But maybe we're seeing glimmers or maybe this is a journal or something.

01:45:56
Alan Kistler
And once I was thinking about it like that, I was like, well, it would have been nice to have a couple conversations like this more with Doris. He has a little bit of it, especially when they have Maggie the Mutant girl. But yeah, like having the touchstone be not just Danny Catch, but his own kids and thinking because again, it goes back to that old, that aging comic book fan or that aging comic book writer who might decide the way this is happening now, the way it's evolving might not be for me, but man, it's cool to see my kids get excited, isn't it? And I don't have to tell them all of my disillusionments or all of my cynicism now or like how much of this might been there done that for me.

01:46:37
Alan Kistler
I can just watch them enjoy it and tell them, yeah, sometimes it is this cool.

01:46:47
Case Aiken
Yeah, like I said, it is. It's great to hear that Marvel's has that like kind of like strong spin off material and it's such a good work to like look back on. Like, I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to here to like talk about it because it's such a strong, just general comic. Like I said, this was a good comic. Just to hand off to people to be like, this is a primer for Marvel comics in general. Especially before the mcu. This was a great way to be. Like, if you want to know something about Marvel, here you go.

01:47:24
Alan Kistler
Yeah. Again, you don't need any homework for it.

01:47:26
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, I agree.

01:47:27
Case Aiken
So I'm really glad to look back on this one. I think this was an appropriate 50th episode of Trade School.

01:47:33
Keith Lehtinen
Yeah, I agree.

01:47:35
Case Aiken
Keith, thank you for being here for this conversation. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you wanted to make sure we hit in talking about Marvels?

01:47:45
Keith Lehtinen
I don't know if I'm assuming your version of it has the thing at the end where it shows how Alex Ross uses models and stuff like that?

01:47:53
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah.

01:47:53
Keith Lehtinen
Also very interesting read. I love that for the angel cover, he uses a Superman action figure, which I think is very funny. But yeah, no, other than that. The only thing I want to mention is something that is nowhere in my trade and I have no idea why Well, I know why, because I know how comics work. The letterers are John Groeschel and Richard Starking's are not in the credits anywhere in this book, which is crazy. Richard Starkings is still doing comics to this day and one of the premier letterers. So I had to give a shout out to those two.

01:48:29
Case Aiken
That's a great thing to reference there. It certainly is really easy to focus on just the writer and pencil in a lot of things in this scenario. Writer, pencil, slash, colorist, watercolors of Alex Ross.

01:48:45
Keith Lehtinen
And the editor is Marcus McLaren, in case anyone is curious.

01:48:50
Case Aiken
Alan, how about you? Anything that we haven't brought up that you wanted to make sure that we talked about Marvels?

01:48:54
Alan Kistler
You know, I think it's just, it's also just a great look at for readers today about the levels of love and growth you sometimes have to have with fiction. I mean, we touched about that a lot, but I mean, it's one of those things where I think it's worth revisiting this book right now because we are in a realm where, like Phil Sheldon, we're feeling a little bit of superhero fatigue for certain things. And so it's nice to have a book that reminds us.

01:49:22
Alan Kistler
But you can take a step back and you can look at whether people are enjoying it and maybe you want to step away or maybe you just need a break, or maybe you just need to be more selective about what you are participating in and revisiting or seeing anew or like, you know, maybe this particular franchise isn't enjoyable to you, but that character who you thought was in boring movies before might have a good one coming out, like, and just always keep yourself open to as Phil is doing. In the end, like, it's okay to say, like, yeah, this is more your thing, but there are still things for me to enjoy. There's still more things for me to explore. Just, just. It's okay to shift perspective a little bit.

01:50:01
Case Aiken
Yeah, yeah. So that was our conversation about Marvels. I think it's fair to say that we're all recommending it. Right? Like, that's.

01:50:11
Alan Kistler
Absolutely, absolutely.

01:50:13
Keith Lehtinen
It's foundational.

01:50:14
Case Aiken
I mean, yeah, it's a fantastic work. It is available in annotated forms on the Marvel app if you're just looking for it digitally. But the trades are great and have, like, have resources that are probably available on the app. I, you know, it's not, it's not all one to one. So like in terms of which version you're looking at it's going to be different interviews and so forth as the bonus material.

01:50:41
Alan Kistler
Oh, I will say one thing that I I love in Marvel's that I. I wish I saw more often just for. For sheer nerdery is in issue four when Spider man is crawling across a window and Phil Sheldon looks up at him. If you look closely, you can see both the slight bulge of the web shooter underneath his glove, but also the little web shooter nozzle peeking out of the costume underneath the palm of his hand. And the fact that you.

01:51:08
Case Aiken
I love that.

01:51:09
Alan Kistler
Yeah, yeah, you can actually see the web shooter nozzle there. I'm like, that's. It was just one of the things. Like it's so small. Is it necessary? Nah. But man, that additional detail of like. Yeah, that's cool. So yeah, I always love seeing that.

01:51:24
Case Aiken
Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Like, I mean, just we can't stop praising this book enough. Like the attention to detail on all fronts. Everyone is just like so invested in Marvel lore of all kinds in this book. And it's super worth checking out. Even if you think you understand the general gist of like the Marvel history from the 40s to the 60s, if you haven't actually read this, it's super worth it. I 100% say you should check it out. So on that note, thank you guys for being here. Keith, where can people find you and follow you?

01:52:02
Keith Lehtinen
Yes, the best place to find me is on bluesky. I have a couple different accounts. First of all, we have Issues Psky Social. That is for my comic book review show, which ideally comes out every week soon. So make sure to check it out on there. My other show is Jukebox Vertigo at Jukebox Vertigo. BSKY Social. This is my musical podcast show where we build a musical playlist every month based on randomized category and a spinning wheel. So make sure to follow me on there because that's just really getting going and I'm getting a lot of great feedback. So finally you can follow me at Keith has Issues Bsky Social. That's my personal account. Don't use it as much, but I want to. And then over on Instagram we have. We have issues Pod. That is for the we have issues 1.

01:52:46
Keith Lehtinen
I mostly use Instagram for just we have issues. And other than that, the best place to find me is our Discord, which I think Case is going to tell you about in a little bit. So I'll send it there.

01:52:55
Case Aiken
Well, yeah, I will talk about the Discord in a minute.

01:52:57
Keith Lehtinen
Yes.

01:52:58
Case Aiken
But before that I will. I will hand it off to Alan, where can people find you and.

01:53:03
Alan Kistler
Follow you on Instagram? You can find me at Chance Scarecrow. All one word, the word chance and then the word Scarecrow. I have fiction published recently in the anthology the Villains Club. The full title is the Villains, A Delightfully Devious anthology from Divine and Feminine Publishing. You can get that through Barnes and Noble. You can get that through Amazon. You can check the Divine Feminine Publishing website for if you have a local bookseller that you'd like to pick up a copy.

01:53:36
Case Aiken
Copy.

01:53:37
Alan Kistler
It's in Kindle, it's soft cover, it's hardcover. There'll be another anthology from that same publisher in the spring. And I have a fiction story in that one called Baking Bad. And that's all I'm gonna say about that story. And yeah, other than that, like, you know, I might be updating soon with some newer projects, but nothing I can talk about right now. But if you have enjoyed the things like the Heroes and Villains trailer for Lego Legacy the Dark Knight, I worked on that trailer and it was rather fun.

01:54:15
Case Aiken
Awesome. Yeah, no, people should check out your work. Just an awesome source of insight and everything that you've written, people should be checking out as part of all that jazz. They should also be.

01:54:32
Alan Kistler
Of course, I appreciate it. And, and you'll. You'll find me in the Villains anthology and other fiction work as Chance Kistler.

01:54:39
Case Aiken
All right. And so on that note, Keith mentioned the Discord. We should reference the Discord server. So this is of course part of the certain Point of View podcast network, the. That you can find a link to the Discord server for a certain POV by going to the certain POV website or in the show notes for this episode. It's a great server. It's a great place to contact all this of. Of us. We don't bite. It's a, it's a very friendly space and I, I think the vibe is really good. So that is a great place to reach out to all of us. And in addition to that, if you're not feeling the Discord thing, which I get it's like Slack, but for nerds.

01:55:13
Case Aiken
And like, even though the like, it's for nerds part is actually makes it kind of cool, like it's still like Slack and maybe you're not like feeling the Discord thing. If you're looking for me on other social media platforms, you can find me on most social media platforms at Kees Aiken, except for Instagram, where I'm holding on 4. Dear life to my aim Screen name from high school, which is Quetzalcoatl 5. Q U E T Z A L C o a T L 5. Because I was pretentious in high school. That's, that's just how it was, as evidenced by the fact that I like, carried around Marvels and was like, hey, everyone, check out Marvels. But, but yeah, that's a great place to check me out. Instagram, that is. Or all the social media platforms.

01:55:51
Alan Kistler
Yeah.

01:55:51
Case Aiken
So this has been our 50th episode of Trade School. Thank you guys for being here. We wanted to do something like the way that Fun and Games SideQuest does every 50 episodes, a big sort of roundtable discussion about a thing. And I'm very happy with the conversation we had about Marvel's and I feel like it was a good big ticket kind of 50th episode. So thank you guys for being here.

01:56:17
Keith Lehtinen
Thanks for having me, as always.

01:56:19
Case Aiken
All right, well, so on that note, y' all should check out Marvel's if you haven't already checked it out, and circle back for the next episode. Until then, happy reading. The Legion of Superheroes is back.

01:56:34
Alan Kistler
Some say that the book, the team and its history are too complicated.

01:56:37
Case Aiken
This Legion book is designed for new readers. But I guarantee that when the readers see this new Legion, they'll want to know more.

01:56:43
Alan Kistler
That's right. And if you want to know more about the Legion, its members, history and.

01:56:47
Keith Lehtinen
Stories, the Long Live the Legion podcast is for you.

01:56:51
Case Aiken
We talk about the interesting Legion topics that matter and even talk to some of the book's creators. So get in on the fun now.

01:56:57
Alan Kistler
And listen to the Long Live the.

01:56:59
Keith Lehtinen
Legion podcast wherever quality podcasts are served.

01:57:04
Case Aiken
Cpov Certainpov. Com.