Penny Men

The Penny Men return for Hour Two of their journey through the Marvel ’90s animated universe!

This time we finally get around to Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer and the Avengers, while somehow getting sidetracked by:

• Graggle Simpson
• Beverly Hillbillies continuity
• Men in Black
• Ren & Stimpy
• Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
• And pretty much anything else that can be tenuously connected to Marvel Comics!

We talk about:

• Why Spider-Man never seems to actually punch anybody
• Why Wolverine spends so much time waving his claws around without cutting anyone
• The ever-changing quality of ’90s animation
• And how Fantastic Four manages to turn 30 years of comic-book history into a surprisingly effective crash course on Dr. Doom, Galactus, the Inhumans and Johnny Storm’s ongoing romantic misfortunes!

Then things get cosmic with Silver Surfer, including:

• CGI Galactus
• Thanos being reduced to a cosmic whiny baby
• And whether the show actually belongs in the same universe at all!

We also tackle the Avengers, where Vision, Wonder Man, Ultron, Jocasta and Ant-Man combine to create what may be the most complicated family tree ever assembled by people who absolutely should have known better!

Plus:

• The Great Marvel Cartoon Technicality Debate
• 65-episode seasons
• Canadian voice actors
• Laser guns
• Crossover charts
• And the shocking revelation that Graggle Simpson may or may not have been real!

The Marvel ’90s universe keeps getting bigger! Unfortunately, so does our definition of what counts!

The Penny Men dive into the interconnected world of Marvel’s 1990s animated universe!

We’re talking X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man Unlimited, and apparently enough Captain America appearances to make you wonder why there was never a Captain America cartoon!

We discuss how all these shows connect, where the continuity gets weird, and why sometimes the best way to adapt 30 years of comics is to just take a bunch of different stories, shake them up, and hope nobody notices that Colossus is showing up about 20 years too late!

We also get into:

• The surprisingly complicated history of the X-Men cartoon
• Spider-Man’s various attempts to get around killing people
• Hydro-powered clones
• Alternate Venoms and Carnages
• And whether Spider-Man Unlimited even belongs in this universe anymore!

Plus:

• The Incredible Hulk
• She-Hulk stealing the show
• Rick Jones being everybody’s sidekick
• Doc Samson’s extremely questionable hair
• Evil Hulks
• Canadian voice actors
• And the important question of why Matt Frewer keeps getting hired to play guys with enormous heads!

And if you were wondering whether we somehow found a way to bring Star Trek into a discussion about ’90s Marvel cartoons: obviously we did!

It’s Marvel! It’s the ’90s! It’s all connected! Sort of!

135

The Fantasy Draft Lineup Podcast returns as Ben, Greg, and Tom tackle one of their most ambitious fantasy drafts yet: building the ultimate Magnificent Seven... using only video game characters!

Inspired by The Magnificent Seven, Seven Samurai, A Bug's Life, and every great "assemble the team" story ever told, the guys break down the classic character archetypes before drafting seven heroes from across gaming history! There's only one catch: each team can only use one character from each video game franchise!

Will Mario lead the charge? Does Pac-Man make the perfect second-in-command? Is Bubsy actually useful for once? Can Tingle be redeemed? And just how many Sonic clones from the 1990s can fit onto one team?

Along the way, the conversation spirals into exactly the places you'd expect

• Fantasy drafting the Magnificent Seven using only video game characters
• Breaking down the seven classic team archetypes
• Mario vs. Pac-Man vs. Sonic as team leaders
• Bomberman appreciation hour
• Street Fighter, Tekken, Dead or Alive, and fighting game representation
• The golden age of 90s mascot platformers
• Aero the Acrobat, Rocky Rodent, Mr. Nutz, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, and forgotten gaming mascots
• Mario side characters finally getting their chance to shine
• Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Crash Bandicoot, Zelda, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Mega Man, and dozens more
• Villains, old mentors, villagers, love interests, and bonus character picks
• Predicting each other's fantasy draft choices
• Constant detours into movie trivia, TV sitcoms, Pixar, Captain N, Shaw Brothers kung fu films, Bugs Life, Cheers, Batman, and absolutely everything else!

Featured games & franchises include:

• Super Mario Bros.
• Pac-Man
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• The Legend of Zelda
• Street Fighter
• Tekken
• Dead or Alive
• Bomberman
• Kirby
• Donkey Kong Country
• Mega Man
• Ratchet & Clank
• Sly Cooper
• Jak & Daxter
• Crash Bandicoot
• Star Fox
• Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (well... Tingle, anyway)
• Bubsy
• Aero the Acrobat
• Rocky Rodent
• Mr. Nutz
• Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel
• Earthworm Jim
• Vectorman
• James Pond
• Spy Fox
• Croc
• ClayFighter
• And many, many more!

If you love:

• Video game history
• Retro gaming
• Fantasy drafts
• Team-building discussions
• Character archetypes
• Deep-cut gaming references
• Console mascot wars
• SNES and Genesis nostalgia
• Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation, and arcade classics
• Long-form geek conversations
• And completely unnecessary over-analysis...

...then this episode is for you!

Who would make your Magnificent Seven? Which video game heroes would defend the village? Let us know your lineup!

This week, the Penny Men saddle up for a special Fantasy Draft Lineup episode inspired by one of the greatest ensemble stories ever told!

Starting with Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and its legendary Western remake, The Magnificent Seven, the guys break down what makes the perfect seven-person team!

Greg walks through each member of the Magnificent Seven, exploring the unique role every hero fills—from the calm strategist and loyal second-in-command to the muscle, the sharpshooter, the reluctant veteran, and the eager rookie!

Along the way, the conversation branches into:

• Star Wars
• The Lord of the Rings
• Digimon
• Dungeons & Dragons
• John Ford westerns
• TV Tropes, and the surprising influence these classic films have had on pop culture for decades!

If you've ever wondered why so many great teams feel strangely familiar, this episode uncovers the timeless formula behind the "seven-man band" and challenges the hosts to build a Magnificent Seven of their own!

The Penny Men continue their Fantastic Four Rogues Gallery Roll Call and things immediately spiral out of control!

The boys discuss the Wizard and the Frightful Four, debate whether Paste-Pot Pete is the greatest supervillain name of all time, and somehow end up comparing Medusa to Godiva!

Along the way:

• Rama-Tut, Kang, Immortus, and Doctor Doom all become the same guy somehow
• Galactus arrives to eat the planet
• Silver Surfer discovers feelings
• And Alicia Masters accidentally saves humanity!

Elsewhere:

• The Red Ghost unleashes his communist super-apes
• The Watcher refuses to interfere while constantly interfering
• Psycho-Man weaponizes emotions
• Diablo throws evil chemistry capsules like a Hanna-Barbera villain
• And Dragon Man earns sympathy points as the world’s saddest artificial dragon!

The conversation then explodes into:

• Skrulls
• Kree
• Ronan the Accuser
• Captain Marvel lore
• Space cancer
• Roy Thomas continuity madness
• And the revelation that the Hate-Monger is literally Adolf Hitler!

Also:

• Zordon vs. MODOK
• Sauron vs. Dragon Man
• Animorphs connections nobody asked for
• Galactus herald rankings

And the important scientific question of whether planets need nutrients to be delicious!

The Penny Men blast off into the cosmic chaos of the Fantastic Four’s legendary rogues gallery!

Tom guides Ben and Gregory through the history of Marvel’s First Family, from cosmic rays and family dysfunction to Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the birth of the Marvel Universe itself!

Along the way they break down:

• Reed Richards’ galaxy-brain detachment
• Johnny Storm’s cartoon-level impulsiveness
• Sue Storm holding the entire team together
• And why Ben Grimm is somehow more unhinged than Wolverine!

Then it’s villain time:

• Doctor Doom’s tragic quest to rescue his mother from Hell
• His burned mask
• Robot armies
• Time platforms
• And absolute belief that he should rule the world “for everyone’s own good”!

The boys also dive into:

• Namor the Sub-Mariner
• Atlantis
• Monster whales with arms
• Silver Age weirdness
• Fantastic Four toy lines
• The 90s cartoon
• Tim Curry casting discussions
• And why the Thing really needed a second action figure just to fit inside the Fantasticar!

Featuring:

• Herbie the Robot
• Blackbeard canonically being The Thing
• Fred Flintstone meeting a different Thing

And the eternal question: who is Marvel’s Batman anyway?

The Penny Men complete their descent into the armored madness of Iron Man’s rogues gallery with a journey through communist unicorns, mafia counts, microwave men, giant robots in loincloths, and dragons from space wearing pants!

Naturally, this somehow leads to discussions about:

• Bomber jackets
• Hawkeye’s fake movie family
• Galactus’ skirt situation
• And whether Stilt-Man could defeat Kite-Man in honorable combat!

Featuring:

• Count Nefaria stealing powers like he’s building a custom character
• Madame Masque waging soap opera warfare against Tony Stark
• The tragedy of the Unicorn
• MODOK’s most disgusting ability
• Armor Wars/Stark Wars confusion
• And the revelation that Fin Fang Foom may secretly be the greatest Marvel name of all time!

Also:

• Stan Lee stops by repeatedly to remember absolutely nothing
• Jar Jar breaks into the apartment again
• Norm reveals the funniest thing about Iron Man
• And the gang ranks Iron Man’s villains against Spider-Man, Batman, Flash, Hulk, and the rest of comicdom’s finest weirdos!

Upper-mid-tier rogues gallery! Elite-tier nonsense!

This week's Rogues' Gallery Roll Call crashes into the armored world of Iron Man, and the Penny Men immediately derail into catchphrases, Smurf psychology, Rankin-Bass discourse, and the eternal mystery of why Tony Stark ever needed a nose!

Ben, Gregory, and Tom dig through the tangled continuity of 90s Marvel cartoons, debate whether the Spider-Man Unlimited future counts as “the future,” and somehow connect MODOK to a floating science war against communism!

Along the way:

• The tragic emotional life of Pepper Potts
• The rise of War Machine
• Why the Mandarin is basically “Chinese Doctor Doom”
• And a surprisingly detailed breakdown of how the original Smurfette comic handled bullying, gaslighting, and makeover culture!

Also discussed:

• The Silmarillion
• Swamp Thing
• The Clone Saga
• Briefcase armor toys
• Force Works
• Blackest Night
• And the realization that every Marvel hero eventually becomes a guy introspectively brooding about his situation!

A Penny Man saved is a Penny Man earned...probably!

In the second hour of Rogues Gallery Roll Call, the Penny Men descend even deeper into the X-Men villain ecosystem—where powers are less “cool super abilities” and more “how annoying would this be in a fight if you actually had to animate it properly”!

We return to the Mystique-era Brotherhood of Evil Mutants:

• Re-evaluating Pyro’s extremely conditional fire management job
• Avalanche’s controversial “I guess I cause earthquakes?” combat philosophy
• Blob’s unsettling status as either an immovable man or a walking physics problem depending on which comic you read last
• And Destiny is remembered, briefly, emotionally, and then immediately dismissed again, as is tradition!

From there, the episode fractures into a full mutant taxonomy seminar:

• Why writers love laser beams but hate earthquakes
• How “absolute defense” powers like Eunice the Untouchable break storytelling math
• And why certain villains feel less like characters and more like walking encounter design!

Then things spiral—intentionally—into Mojo’s dystopian TV universe, where reality is just content, suffering is ratings-driven, and X-Men are basically unionized reality show contestants trapped in a cosmic Vince McMahon experiment!

Naturally, this leads to:

• The Brood (space horror bugs that politely interrupt your main plot)
• Apocalypse (evolutionary ideology with a gym membership),
• And Mr. Sinister (doing science crimes because it’s Tuesday)!

The conversation then folds time in on itself with Age of Apocalypse, where one teenager’s psychic breakdown accidentally deletes Professor X and reorganizes reality into competing mutant philosophies:

• Magneto’s rebels
• Sinister’s experiments
• And Apocalypse’s “survival is a group project” curriculum!

By the end, the Penny Men are no longer ranking villains so much as stress-testing the entire concept of superhero storytelling under the weight of too many teleporters, too many psychic teenagers, and at least one man who is literally just television!

It’s X-Men lore, but filtered through three guys trying to decide if earthquake powers are narratively lazy or just spiritually offensive!