What If Marvel was Real?

In this episode:

Mike and Ed continue their discussions on what the original Avengers are doing in their post-Avengers lives. For instance, Thor now seems to be working for the American military in Vietnam. Was he drafted? Or did he consider deserting to move back to Asgard? Will super-powered individuals become the next weapon of war? Will heroes sell their services to the highest bidding country? Is there a way to stop the escalation, or is this just the new way of the world?

Behind the issue:

Stan had Thor appear in Vietnam, but never had him coordinating with the US military. Comic books in the 1940s were practically US-propaganda, and the heroes were expected to be fighting against Hitler. But in the 1960s, the writers mostly kept the heroes out of real-world conflicts. It wasn’t until the modern era that writers considered the possibility of heroes fighting in Vietnam.

In this issue:

Thor is spotted in Vietnam and shot by a hunter. The hunter then comes across an ancient temple and, through the machinations of Loki, the hunger takes over the Destroyer armour with his mind. The hunter pilots the Destroyer in a fight with Thor. Meanwhile on Asgard, Loki is imprisoned.

This episode takes place:

While people are still adjusting to “Cap’s Kooky Quartet” - and missing their “old” Avengers.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are wondering what Thor was doing in Southeast Asia.

Full transcript:

Edward: All right, Mike. Continuing our, where are they now? Series. We now know where Thor has been for the last couple of months.

Michael: Yeah. He's decided to take his retirement to Vietnam.

Edward: Vietnam, you'd think with his hair like that, he would've been a conscientious objector, but no Siri, don't stereotype Thor. He is right there with the military. Right in the thick of things.

Michael: All kidding aside, it's pretty wild that this man, or this being Thor, who's associated with, the American military and the military industrial complex has gone to Vietnam, clearly on behalf of the Americans, and intervened in international affairs. Clearly as an agent of America, or at least on America's interest. Yeah, for sure. Doesn't that make it a little more complicated over there? Is that what we wanna,

Edward: I think it makes it less complicated. ANCO was clear before that the Avengers were an American superhero organization that had American interest at heart. Their leader was Captain America. It's pretty clear that they were into America and hey, they were supported and run by, stark Corp, who are like basically a big American company. They're an American team now, Thor leaves the American team that he leaves the Avengers.

What does he do next? He doesn't go back up to Asgard. He goes and works for American interests in a non Avengers way.

Michael: It seems a little, isn't it? I don't know. I find it uncomfortable that we would entrust, international diplomacy to, well, it's costume adventures.

Edward: Well, it's not diplomacy. He's not negotiating peace treaties. He's swinging his hammer and like on a hitting North Vietcong.

Michael: But this. But there's consequences to that though. Like aren't you worried that that's gonna lead to say, other Superpowered beings that might be drafted in by the Vietcong to fight American soldiers overseas in,

Edward: do the Viet Cong have a superhero?

Michael: Not yet. Well, there you go. Not yet, but there you go. But you don't think the Chinese might have an interest in this. Have a say in it.

Edward: That's, that, that is true. We know the Chinese do have their own superheroes. Radioactive man. Radioactive man. So, you're saying it's an escalation of the conflict. And maybe this means China sends in radioactive man, but China is not like US is directly involved in that war. China is only indirectly involved, right? They have plausible deniability. If they send in radioactive man, there goes their plausible deniability.

Michael: Well first of all, there hasn't been a military briefing or any kind of official report in that Thor is going there on the direction or in service of the United States. So, I think the United States is trying to do this if they're doing it under some kind of plausible deniability scenario, and China could do the same thing, like we don't control radioactive man.

He's just a guy who believes in our values and that's why he is fighting. He's just showing up and fighting. Showing up and fighting, and that's why he is fighting the Americans in Vietnam.

Edward: But there's no Chinese soldiers in the vie, they're supplying them with weapons and stuff, but they're not supplying them with people I don't think. Here's the question. That's an ex escalation though. Here's, here's the question. Was Thor just drafted? Maybe he was just part of the draft.

Michael: I don't know. Well, he might have been, but that

Edward: his number came up and he off he went.

Michael: He, had to go.

Edward: He had to go. He had no choice.

Michael: He was gonna fly away to Asgard. But No, but I'm still thinking about deescalation,

Edward: other deserters run to. Canada, but not Thor. He heads to a whole intervention, flies to another, another realm, a mystical realm. Yeah. But he knew he wanted to come back to America. So he knew that if he abandoned us, we weren't gonna let him back in.

Michael: So if I look at it and you look at it, the Vietnamese will probably look at it and the Chinese look at it that America has sent a superpowered individual to fight a battle on their behalf.

Clearly that what has happened. So I would think that the natural response would be that the Vietnamese through some kind of connection have one of their own. And then now we have, are we having our superpowered heroes and villains or people fighting each other?

Not just fighting each other, but fighting regular powered humans? Well, I think so. It's like if they think if they we're getting to a different era, I guess,

Edward: but I think, these people have powers and they're outta capabilities. It's almost like, if we had a really good tank, let's not use it because the other guys might bring in a big tank.

We have airplanes, let's not use airplanes cuz the other guys might have airplanes. We have an advantage over the Vietnamese right now because we have superheroes and they don't. Not using them, I think would be irresponsible. Americans would die if not for Thor. Thor is probably saving American lives right as we speak.

Michael: Yeah, but Ed, right now, America could use nuclear bombs in Vietnam, but they're not gonna, they're not, not,

Edward: we're not gonna use nuclear. But nuclear bombs have all sorts of like side effects that a lightning bolt from Thor, there's no radiation when he fires a lightning bolt and blows up a, nothing like a depot.

Michael: Lightning, basically Radiation?

Edward: No, it's, no, it's not radiation any more than the light is radiation.

Michael: Not basically, but I'm sure there is radiation that comes off of, there's certainly the light part of it and that part of the spectrum.

Edward: Yeah, but there's no radiation. It's not radioactive.

When you get hit by lightning, you're not gonna cause cancer when you get hit by lightning. Now you may die when you get hit by lightning, but it's not gonna cause future cancers.

Michael: But my point is that America could use nuclear weapons, but they don't because they don't, they know that that could lead to an escalation.

So isn't sending a superhero in kind of similar thing?

Edward: It's more than an escalation response. Yes. Yes. I think it's a big, we should not be using nuclear weapons. We don't want to go down that route. But a superhero is not a nuclear weapon. We use superheroes all the time. We use superheroes all the time for, we use superheroes when stilt man attacks New York City, we're not gonna drop a nuclear weapon on Stilt Man.

Michael: No, but the difference is that there's a difference between fighting crime in the city and then going to another nation. To affect foreign policy through, excessive force similar to a nuclear bomb sending, I think a superpower person's gonna do the, achieve the same result.

Edward: I feel that the Vietnam War is already at the excessive force stage. We're, we're not like, this is devastating. Let's have a, let's have a very stern conversation with them. Like there's people shooting at each other there there's war happening, there's helicopters and bombs and Tanks and so why shouldn't Thor be involved to, to help put an end to this thing

Michael: But this is a devastating next step. I mean the fact that you say it's irresponsible for them not to use Thor means, cuz you know, he's gonna be particularly effective. Much like individuals are bombed. Yeah, I think so. Why don't, so doesn't this lead to other nations around the world saying like, well better get some more superpowered individuals and then it gets into a bidding war. We've already talked about how the Avengers used to be a bunch of strangers who kind of got together very powerful and they've basically disbanded. And now it's like a bunch of former villains, you know, who are now with Captain America, which is pretty bizarre to say that they,

Edward: Maybe this makes even more sense now, right? If you have these people like. Quicksilver and the witch and the Hawkeye. And your choice is, hey, bring them onto the Avengers and make them part of our team. Or let them become free agents and join the Soviets. Maybe that makes the most sense that we brought them onto the team.

Michael: Maybe, but are we not getting to an era? Mercenaries, the superheros turning to mercenaries. What keeps them loyal to one particular ideology over another? I don't know, like is the American structure better than, the American democracy better than other forms of political philosophies in governments?

 You talk to every American I've ever spoken with, they'd say, no, it's the best. But other nations have different approaches to, policy, politics, and governments and structures and say, no.

Edward: We had this in World War ii, right? We were the most attractive there was a lot of scientists that said, oh, you know what? Let's help the US build the atomic bomb because we want them to have it not the other guys. And those, a lot of those scientists came from Germany, but they said, no. Mm-hmm We wanna work for America. Or they came from Soviet Russia with, no, we wanna work for America because we think that you guys. We are freedom loving and as problematic as the US has been over the years doing many, many things they probably shouldn't have.

The alternatives seem to be a lot worse and superhero superheros are lining up behind that. They're realizing that better to work for America than work for the other guys

Michael: for now. But what happens if , For instance, let's just pick our neighbor to the north, let's say in Canada. They just decide to say up the ante to get a superpowered individual that could lead to say, battling other nations. So they became more war monering because you know that America's, you know, might

Edward: Canada becomes the, the war Moner. Yes, the war moner. You can call me either their hockey sticks, you can call me captain. Boring. That's

Michael: not boring captain, but they go. But my point is that, is that any nation.

If they for the right price could get a superpowered individual who might think, you know, I like their philosophy too and we know that American might has led to American, financial benefits as well, right? I mean they, people don't just think America's great and that's why America does so well financially.

No, we're great because they make great movies. Make great movies and actually use their money and their might to influence world markets. And so who's to say that the long plan might be like, say, great Britain might just start building up their SUPERPOWERED individuals so that they can basically go and effect world affairs through the superheroes.

That that would then lead to increasing their financial, um, that's, that's

Edward: okay with that. Take America with that. They're not gonna take out Amer London is gay. This is not the American Revolution. America. If Britain, Britain, Britain is our ally, if Britain is more successful, now's good. That's good.

Michael: Thor just, Thor just got sent into Vietnam. I'm just saying that we're on the prey, I think of changing how, international affairs are structured and how disputes are resolved if we're getting into sending superheroes to other nations. To fight on a base, on an ideological basis against other nations

Edward: superheroes, adjust the next technology.

I feel like Mike, you'd be against using the airplane in World War I. You'd be like, no. If we use the airplane, maybe they'll use the airplane. Oh no. That'd be terrible. That'll be planes flying everywhere. That'll be the end of world order. No, as long as we make more airplanes than they do, we'll be fine.

And we're making more superheroes than everybody else in the world combined.

Michael: But I think one of the main things that came out, the difference between World War Well, sorry. World War I, what was a game changer was the machine gun, right? The mechanized instruments of slaughter and death and destruction.

Edward: Well, now you're just giving the machine gun a bad name.

Michael: I. Who would, right. But like, and it, and

Edward: it, it think of all the good the machine gun did, could like, but

Michael: it affected the world. It definitely affected the world and you might say, well, it's better. I don't know if it is, but it certainly changed it. I'm saying that we're the press p where we might be getting outta control because now wars are, so, the reason why we don't get into a war with the U S S R right now, is because it'll be so destructive. Because we've evolved our technology to the point that we could just destroy the world many times over.

Are we not just pivoting towards superheroes where we could destroy the world many times over through them? Frightened dead. I'm frightened.

Edward: All right. Well, I think it is what it is though, Mike. I feels, it feels like, just like we couldn't hold back the machine gun in World War I, I don't think we hold back superheroes anymore.

I feel like the cat's outta the bag or the Thor is out of the. Helicopter.

Michael: The hammers outta the clasp towards bells

Edward: the hammers outta the clasp. It's the new catchy phrase, and you heard it here first.

Michael: Kids. Kids these days and their sayings.

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss how the Goblin and the Crime Master may be the same person. Also, the Green Goblin is now clearly a villain. His early work attacking crime families seems to just have been so he can consolidate organized crime under his own leadership. Ed admits his earlier errors and Mike helps Ed understand that goblins are, historically, not known for their altruism. What does it say about Mr. Fantastic?

Behind the issue:

This is the first appearance of the Crime Master (he dies in the next issue, and unlike most dead villains is never resurrected - at least as of this writing in 2023). In the issue Stan leads the reader (and Spider-man) to believe that Fredrick Foswell (formerly the Big Man, now “reformed”) is secretly The Crime Master. When it turns out that Foswell was actually on the side of good and the Crime Master’s secret identity was someone who had never been mentioned before, Spider-man says something about how “sometimes it’s just a random guy”. In the future Stan will write another reverse and Foswell will go back to being a villain, but for now he is one of the heroes of the story.

In this issue:

The Green Goblin meets up with the Crime-Master to see if he will join forces with him to take over the criminal underworld of New York City. But the Crime-Master declines. A crime cold war begins anew.

It turns out that the Crime-Master is actually Frederick Foswell, the allegedly reformed Big Man who has returned after his stint in prison to work as a newspaper reporter again for the Daily Bugle.

Anyway, Spider-Man gets caught up in the middle of this crime cold war, and the Goblin captures him. The Goblin takes an unconscious Spider-Man to a crime meeting that the Crime-Master had set up to announce that he was the leader of NYC’s criminals - but the Goblin has other plans.

This episode takes place:

Around the time of a crime cold war in New York City.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are wondering what Thor was doing in Southeast Asia - and also why costumed criminals are making a splashy play for power in New York.

Full transcript:

Edward: Uh, Mike, the green goblin, I stand corrected. Green Goblin is not a hero. He is not a good guy. He,

Michael: shocker Ed. Just a but the shocker,

Edward: so Mike, I admit when I'm wrong. I admit that even though he was doing a heroic thing, trying to take down crime families, he was not doing it for a good reason.

Michael: He wasn't altruistic.

He wasn't just like, you know what? I wanna, you know what I do? My spare time is just take down, and weaken crime families and just let them just see what happens afterwards. It turns out he was trying to take them over.

Edward: So, there's a difference whether it's the meaning behind the action that's important or the effect that's important. And if the effect was to eliminate crime, may, maybe he was, maybe he was a good guy even in spite of himself. Uh, okay. It's, it's a stretch.

Michael: That's a bit of a stretch, Eddie. Like, I mean, look, what I think is that, the last time we spoke about this, you were saying, Hey, it looks like the green goblin is a hero.

And you can't read too much into it, I guess. But if I was. Talking to you. I said, ed, going forward, I want you to refer to me as the ogre. You'd be like, you'd say Mike, like, what's going on with you? I'd say, I don't know. I just want you to, I want you to call me an ogre.

You know, believe me then there might be a problem and I might view myself negatively. And so if someone says, I'm the green goblin, you're basically saying, I am scary. I am someone to fear I'm not a hero.

Edward: En vain, probably vain or, no. Envious. Envious. Isn't it? Green with envy. Agree with envy, an envious,

Michael: there's no goblin, there no goblin in history. You're like, you know, like, I like that guy. I think, you know, I'd like to maybe hire him as a babysitter. It's a goblin. They eat children. This is what goblins are like. They have riddles and it's just, they're not good.

So they're negative.

Edward: Yeah, but we can't just, it's not just the name. Like what about Spider-Man? Spider-Man is a hero, but people don't like spiders. People are terrified of spiders.

Michael: And people don't really like Spider-Man, ed. We talked about this before about how Spider-Man isn't, we think it might be the mass, but it may very well be because he's naming himself after an insect that no one likes. Like it's just

Edward: call himself the honey beak, make honey for you.

Michael: Or maybe not do non insect related. I'm sure that you could have come up with a different costume and named himself like, I dunno, the hawk or something just jumped or whatever. Or something. But anyways, my point is that sometimes we don't really have to look that far past the name, because I think they're telling us what they think of themselves. Like we know that, say, captain America obviously thinks highly of himself and wants to in America project something. And America I bet be he cares America. America, he wants to be a representative of America. He is trying to project a positivity, right? Like Ironman is strong symbol. They're trying to act heroically, like Thor, whether Thor really is a God from Norse mythology. If he isn't and he's just a guy with crazy powers, he obviously thinks highly of himself and wants to project as a hero.

Those are things that are different than, say, the goblin who's telling us, this is who I am. You know, Thor says, I want you to think of me as this striking Norris hero. And the goblin is the opposite.

Edward: So what you're, what you're saying is we should start judging more books by their covers.

Michael: I think we gotta take it as a hint, I think it's fair to say that you look at even the Fantastic four The Thing clearly has some self-esteem issues and he does look like a rocky monster, whereas Mr. Fantastic has zero problem. He wants everyone to know how wonderful he is.

And again, he's probably, again, we've had the conversation similar to this. He probably isn't the nicest guy cuz he's, he's on the team with The Thing. He's obviously making, he's bragging about how going into space, And getting bombarded cosmic rays was awesome, Mr. Fantastic. It's amazing.

And then, and then his teammate's like, oh, I'm The Thing. It just tells us that Mr. Fantastic probably isn't that fantastic, really. But at least he thinks he is. And he's projecting as a hero.

Edward: So you're saying, so, so the go, the Goblin thinks he's a goblin.

Michael: He thinks he's a bad guy and then it turns out he was, and you heard it and you kind of twisted yourself into some, you know, some, some knots.

Edward: I'm a consequentialist Mike. At the end of the day, what happens is what matters. What happens is what matters. You got the best intentions in the world, like those communists, I'm sure they were trying to be all but love and sharing and trying to help everybody, and that the result was millions of people died Under Stalin, consequentialist, Mike, what matters is what happens, not what the intentions were.

And so the goblin had really bad intentions, but he stopped some crime.

Michael: I think he should read more books, ed?

Edward: I think so. I think so. Okay. Well, so anyway, so the situation we're at right now is that the goblin is clearly moved from, being good in a consequentialist ba basis, but being bad in intention basis, just being bad all around. He's like, they, they think they battle around. The goblin might actually be the crime master. They're the same person. If not the same person, they're definitely working together. They're trying to take out all the other criminal underworld, combine them into one, not just take them out, but just amalgamate them into one group all under the goblin and the crime master, or well, or if they're one in the same, so that's what's going on.

Clearly bad dudes. Clearly bad, but, if you're gonna use the names, a goblin isn't going to be the master of crime. The goblin is gonna be the little minion running around, but he's projecting out like master of crime now, the head of the underworld.

So he's moving past his name and maybe that's why he's changing it to the crime master.

Michael: Maybe, but it's not, again, that's not saying too, too, too, too far. I mean one name isn't supposed to explain someone's core identity. It's just that he's not good.

Edward: That's what you said point, I thought you said it all.

Not about the core identity.

Michael: No. You're saying, you're saying he's more of a minion because of his name, like No, no, he's, he's just a bad dude. I'm saying that when they tell you who they are, like say the brotherhood of evil mutants, they're probably the evil mutants. You know, if they say the Avengers, they're probably the, they're probably trying to, you know, avenge a lot.

Edward: What are they fantastic for? Think they're wonderful. What are the Avengers Avening, are they Avening? Anything in particular? Just in general?

Michael: Well, it's a positive message.

Thank you for staying with us as we missed another week last week. Edward is traveling with his family this summer, making recording difficult. We still have a half dozen episodes recorded and we will trickle them out over the summer months, but there may be a few weeks this summer without an episode. But we have some fun ones coming! This one made me laugh while I was editing it… Enjoy!

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss Daredevil’s recent loss to Stilt-Man. Does Daredevil even have any super powers? If not, is he just a crazy man who swings from building to building with a grapple hook? And what’s up with Stilt-Man? Did he choose his own name? Why doesn’t he have extendable arms as well? Is this all a joke? And if so, how did the “joke” defeat Daredevil?

Behind the issue:

This is the first appearance of Stilt-Man, who goes on to try out names like “Stilty” and “Daddy Long Legs”. By the end of the issue, Stilt-Man is defeated and shrunk into nothingness. That does not stop him, though, as he comes back to be active in the Marvel Universe through to the present day (he is killed by the Punisher at one point, but his clone continues to use his stilts for villainy).

In this issue:

A new villain appears on the scene - Stilt-Man - and he starts his career of villainy by robbing a helicopter mid-flight. Seems complicated for a heist, but there you have it. In any event, Daredevil tries to take Stilt-Man down after the heist, but does not succeed. Back in his civilian guise as Matt Murdock, Daredevil takes on a new client, Wilbur Day, who hires Matt to sue his boss Mr. Kaxton, who has stolen his patent. As the case goes on, Stilt Man continues his crime spree. It is eventually revealed that Wilbur is Stilt-Man. He goes on the run from Daredevil, and eventually, he is hoisted on his own petard when he accidentally turns his shrinking ray on himself, shrinking him to apparent nothingness.

This episode takes place:

After the short reign of Stilt-Man comes to an end.

Assumed before the next episode:

People did not really think much about Stilt-Man.

Full transcript:

Edward: Mike Daredevil is not dead, but he has been pretty badly injured, and I think this is what you get when you have someone who's just a vigilante with no real powers trying to take on super villains.

Michael: Well, wait a minute. I don't know if he's spoken about this before, but is he a normal guy?

Just in a funny costume, like he seems fine. He define seems similar.

Edward: Well, define normal. You say normal to what does normal mean?

Michael: Okay, so Spider-Man isn't normal, right? We know Spider-Man. Spiderman isn't normal. Climb balls and he's swinging from building to building. But what do we know about Daredevil? He fights on rooftops and kind of swings down from rooftops. Like, I could not,

Edward: but he swings on a grappling hook. You could swing at a grappling hook.

Michael: No, there's, there's a, there's a zero chance, even in the best shape of my life, would I use a grappling hook to swing from one building to another without a net?

Edward: I'm not saying is something, I'm not saying it's a smart thing to do, but I'm saying you could do it. I think if push came to shove, I have faith in you, Mike. I think you could swing from a building to building. It's in a rope. You could, all you have to is hold onto the rope. Just hold onto the rope.

Michael: Ed, have you ever gone to a cottage on a lake in the summer we're gonna a swimming hole and there's a rope? Yeah. And the rope it's tied to a branch overhanging in the water Sure. And the rope. And you grab the rope and you swing out. Yeah.

That is still scary. Cause if you don't let go in time and you go back to shore and you let go, then you land on the rocks. Yeah. That's bad. As opposed to the water. So would I swing like that without the water? No,

Edward: well, I'm not saying you would do it because you, cuz you have more sense than Daredevil does. Are you saying Daredevil's superpower is he's unafraid

Michael: The man with no fear. I mean, he is. Pretty fearless, I suppose. But my point isn't that, that's what you would say is his superpower, is my take is that he, I think he has, he must have a superpower. He can't just be a regular guy in great shape who's like, no, cuz like, it seems like swinging from building to building isn't necessary to do what he's doing either.

It's like, you know what I mean? It seems like, it seems like almost like an add-on, like gratus gratuitous s**t. Gratuitous. Yeah. Like, and it would be exhausting, think about Ed. I don't know the last time you tried to do a pull up or a chin up, but imagine that and

Edward: I can do pullups and chin-ups.

I can do that.

Michael: Okay. They're hard cause you're lifting your full body weight up. Now imagine you're doing that a few times through the evening and then you fight. Super villain. I mean, it does seem that's,

Edward: I'm saying he's making poor choices with his life.

Michael: Okay. Okay. So either he's making poor choices and he has no fear, or he's got some kind of superpower. So anyways, you and I were talking about that, but you mentioned Daredevil and

Edward: yeah. And then you went off on how superpowered he is and I don't know if he actually is, I think Thank you. He, he clearly has exceptional abilities, right? Whether those are super abilities or not, it feels like he's in the Captain America style. Then Captain America some sort of super soldier. Yeah. But, but he's not, he can't breathe fire. He can't fly, he can't stick to walls. And I think Daredevil's in the same class, he's Clearly very athletic. But man, is he athletic take on super villains. What's just happened is he was very soundly defeated by, basically a guy in battle armor with really long legs.

Michael: You know what? They're calling him, ed,

Edward: they're calling him the stilt man. The villain, the stil man.

Stil man.

Michael: It's just, it, it's just, it's just ridiculous. I don't mind, I love, and you and I, obviously we have, we have a show about this. I do love how humanity is evolving in these new things we're seeing, but, Doesn't it seem like we're scraping the bottle of the barrel for the influences, where you're naming yourself and your whole persona, your super villain persona is based on, in this case, stilts.

Edward: Well, did he name himself stilt matter or did the media name him Stilt Man? Well, I don't know, but they, but that's what he has. He wasn't having a press, he wasn't having a press release. He was just going out and robbing things and the poor guy got labeled as a stilt guy. Well, okay, but we got it. It should have . Called him, I don't know. Armor Battle man.

Michael: It'd be better, but he's clearly got some kind of body armor. That's fine. Yeah. And bullets, power bullets off him. Right.

Edward: And he can got that he stole from a helicopter. He used his well, his stilts to extend upward and then, stole from a helicopter that the helicopter thought they were safe.

They're like, nobody can get us up here because there's no such thing as a flying villain. Oh, wait a minute. Or a stilt villain that just came up and sell.

Michael: It's just, that's the defining. Feature of it is that whatever you wanna, like stilts is what they are. He has these extendable stilts and it just seems so stupid. It's just, I don't know, for all that technology, first of all, it's impressive. It's an impressive engineering feat to say if a helicopter is 500, a thousand feet in the air, To basically be able to extend your stilts up a thousand feet and not fall over.

Edward: And then, and then, yeah, balance.

Look at the balance on that guy.

Michael: It's incredible. It's incredible technology. It's just that

Edward: I would argue he probably more impressive than a grappling hook.

Michael: I would give you that, but The Thing is, but why would you do that? Why would you spend all that engineering, why would you direct your energy towards that engineering feed where he could have created something else?

Except, unless he's just going for the sort of the whimsy of, I'm a guy that has stills. I'm like really tall.

Edward: He built like these hydraulic extension things that are, I think are really if you built this hydraulic extension technology and you decided you wanted to go and use it for crime?

 What type of battle suit would you maybe I'd have extending arms too. I'd have like extension arms to go.

Michael: The arms are way more practical. Yeah, but the think with the power you'd have. Bam.

Edward: But they can do the same thing with his legs. He just kick people with like his big extension. Legs and kicks are more dangerous than arms.

Michael: He's not, he's extending the stilt so that he can perfectly time getting in front of a helicopter and hoping the helicopter doesn't just turn around or just,

Edward: if it does, he can, can chase after climb. They go fast. He can run, his steps per minute could be very low and he could still achieve very high velocity.

Michael: We haven't seen any film of this, and I'd like to because that would be interesting. But anyways, the point I'm making though is I hate it. I hate the idea that we've gotten to the point in this marvelous age of heroes and villains and super scientists and aliens and gods, and it's like, you know what? We've kind of run our course. Let's have. A stilt based hero or villain? Villain. Villain. Like a psychic ladder. Ladder boy. Like any, you know, like tall guy.

Edward: I think you can be cynical on his name, but clearly Daredevil has a better name than stilt man, but like this guy defeated Daredevil. And so whatever superpowers you think Daredevil has, apparently they were not powerful enough to defeat this poor villain that you're mocking.

Michael: Oh no, I agree with you on that. Even though I think the daredevil must have some powers, powers are not, he's probably exhausted by the time he flipped around and grappled through the city to then fight the stilt guy.

Edward: But he has to grapple up the stilt man. You can't even get to him with those grappling hook that grapple is doing a lot of lifting,

Michael: silly. Whether you're defeated daredevil or not. I just find it so silly. And I, maybe I'm okay. Don't take this the wrong way, but I feel like you and I put a lot of energy into our show talking about these amazing people, good and bad, and then along comes still, it kind of just undercuts everything we're talking about where that's what it is.

It just seems so silly.

Edward: He's not undercutting anything. He's way up high in the sky. Everything is below him.

Michael: I just like to take his legs out cuz it just bothers me.

Edward: Take his legs out.

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss the Avengers’ public search for a fifth member: the Hulk. What are they thinking? Is strength the only requirement for membership? How bad is “rampaging” before you decide not to let someone on the team? Should someone take Captain America’s license away?

Behind the issue:

Stan Lee is leaning into the idea that the team is under-powered after losing the original Avengers. The team feels the same way until they discover that when they work together as a team they can defeat powerful villains — maybe they don’t need the Hulk after all?

In this issue:

The new Avengers meet for the first time. Rick Jones - teenage sidekick with no discernible powers or abilities - is jealous that the three new members - Scarlet Witch, who can warp reality; Quicksilver, who can run at the speed of thought; and Hawkeye, who has an uncanny martial abilities - are members and he is not. Anyways, Captain AAmerica announces to the fledgling team that their first mission is to find the Hulk to see if he will join their team. They then go to train, and a giant robot sent by the Mole Man breaks in and attacks them while informing them that they can find the Hulk in the desert. It’s a trap, obviously, but the Avengers still set out for the desert and battle the Mole Man’s Minotaur underground. Meanwhile, the Hulk chases down his foe, the Leader. The issue ends with the Avengers realizing that they are quite formidable on their own and do not really need the Hulk.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are still wondering what the deal is with this odd team of Avengers.

This episode takes place:

While the public considers whether the Hulk would be a good addition to the Avengers or not.

Full transcript:

Edward: All right, Mike, we know who the fifth member of the Avengers is or not. Is, is going to be, is going to be

Michael: wild man. It's actually crazy. It's actually crazy. How do we get here?

Edward: You thought given the fact that The Thing is leaving the fantastic f. For, they'd bring him in. Mm-hmm. As the big strong man. And they said, no, no, no. That's not crazy enough, Mike. That's not crazy enough. We're no, we're gonna go back to our roots and find the most powerful man in the world and bring him onto the Avengers cuz the Avengers are not the second best mark. They're not the second strongest person in the world. They're going for the strongest.

Michael: Yeah so they're out there trying to find the Hulk because the Hulk is the strongest one there is. And it's like, hold on a second. He's caused a lot of damage. He's fought you guys.

Edward: Of course, of course. He's caused damage. He's the strongest man in the world. How can the strongest person in the world not cause damage?

Michael: He, he, He's a, well, I dunno if he's a man, he's a monster.

Edward: They're, they're calling, they're, they're calling him a man. They're calling him, man.

Michael: Okay. And I shouldn't be, so I don't want to be negative towards him. I don't wanna use pejorative terms.

Edward: You're like monstrous. Is that a word?

Michael: But he has acted monstrously, you know what I mean? Like, so he, he has,

Edward: he's a person who acts like a monster. He's not a monster himself.

Michael: Well, yeah, sure. That's right. And he's out there causing terror and mayhem and. Battling the Avengers.

Edward: Fair enough. And so then, not just Avengers, he's fought the Avengers, he's fought the fantastic F, he's f the Avengers more. I think he's fought the Avengers more than he's been on the Avengers in terms of like Right. Which side he's been on. He's been anti Avenger more times than he's been Avenger.

Michael: So, I should say, gee whiz, you know, I'd like to get married. I'm gonna marry my, the worst girlfriend I've ever had because, you know, Because she's been my girlfriend in the past and she was a great girlfriend for like a week and then a terrible girlfriend for like a month. And so,

Edward: yeah. But Mike is this girlfriend the strongest girlfriend in the world.

Michael: Well, okay, how about this? The most attractive, my most attractive girlfriend in the world. That's all I'm going for if I'm super superficial. There you go. And so that's kind of what it is, right? They're picking one serious trait. So yes, the Hulk is the strongest one there is, but he is the best teammate?

 Like, yes, this woman. Is the most attractive woman I've ever dated. But is she the best girlfriend? And it's like, I don't know. I don't care. She's like the hottest, so I'm gonna go marry her.

Edward: You presumably, you only have one girlfriend at a time. The Avengers have five at a time, so they need different pieces. They have Captain America who's probably the best teammate in the world and they have I dunno, the quick silver Quicksilver was the fastest in the world and the. The witch who's the most magical in the world. And so now they don't need another great teammate. They need someone who's just they have no one who's strong. They need someone who's strong.

Michael: And I think my analogy holds, it's like you're my friend and you're one of the smarter friends I have and I've got other friends.

Edward: Somebody say the smartest in the world would you say that,

Michael: you know, I'm not gonna say, but you might. And, uh, and then you get, and then, and it's like, gee, on outta my friend network, I don't have the hottest one. So I'm the hottest one. The hottest, craziest person, coming into my life. Which is, what the adventures are doing. So, No, I think it's weird. I think it's wrong. And also,

Edward: are you saying the Avengers don't have the best judgment in the world?

Michael: Yeah, I am. And then on top of that, on top of that, it's hard not to notice that the Avengers are recruiting people who, a year ago we considered to be villains.

Right?

Edward: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. A month ago, no, two months ago.

Michael: You're right. Sorry. Time flies. So we have quick Silver Scarlet Witch who used to be in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. That's terrorists. They're, they're terrorists. They're terrorists. Terrorists. Terrorists.

The Commonwealth War Hawkeye Hawkeye, who was like, oh, no. Criminal?

Edward: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was also a super spot. He was working with the Russians and the Soviets.

Michael: That's, that's right. And then they're like, you know what? Okay, we've covered, we've covered those areas. Let's get a guy who rampages.

Edward: We have, we have no vandals. We need a vandal. Vandal, the terrorist, we have the communist. We need just someone who's pure, pure anarchy.

Michael: Like is Captain America a right? Is he making the decisions right now? It's like he's a little older. I guess he's been around since World War ii. Do we just step in and say like, you know, you step in and take away your parents' driver's license. You gotta say cap. You know, if you're the one driving this bus, we gotta, we got some questions, we got some concerns here.

Edward: What's what's amazing to me, it's not just that they want the Hulk, it's that they haven't spoken to the Hulk. It's not like they just gotta put it out there. It feels like, it feels like, yeah, exactly.

If you want the Hulk, let's get the Hulk in the room and ask and be like, Hey, listen, it's like selecting a vice president. You don't go and say, Hey, I'm looking for you like, uh, uh, Mr. Uh, vice president. Um, do you, uh, are you, uh, are you out there? I'm just gonna put an ad in the newspaper and maybe you'll. Come to me. No, you take them aside one by one and be like, Hey, if we were to ask you, would you join? And oh, by the way, if we were to ask you to join, would you stop rampaging? Would you stop destroying cities? Because that's kind of a requirement for the organization. But right now they've reduced all their ability to negotiate.

The whole comes along. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna join. You want me to join? I'll join. But here's my requirements. I get to destroy five buildings every week. Take it or leave it, then what do you do? And then what do you do?

Michael: And I might get into fist way with you, you know, so just, just like it or lump it, but it's happening and it's like, well, okay, maybe we shouldn't like it.

Edward: Maybe putting ads and newspapers across the country was not the right choice.

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss life after being an Avenger. What are the responsibilities? What are the privileges? Do they get top secret briefings? Are they like ex-Presidents? Or like ex-FBI? Who pays for the damage they cause when Giant-Man decides to grow to 35-feet in the middle of the city and starts knocking down buildings? These are unprecedented times, but someone has to figure this out quickly!

Behind the comic:

This is the first adventure of Giant-Man and the Wasp post-Avengers. The story continues into the next issue, but at that point they “retire” and the title converts to dual stories of Namor and the Hulk. It turns out Giant-Man just wasn’t that popular. It didn’t help that Tales to Astonish had consistently been one of the weaker titles for the previous few years. Something needed to change. Also in this issue, the Human Top, who was originally introduced as a “normal human” who just happened to be able to spin quickly, has now developed the ability to fly…

In this issue:

Giant-Man and the Wasp are practicing just outside the city. A plane intentionally flies into Giant-Man, and the pilot, the Human Top, considers killing him but does not have time before Giant-Man wakes up. The Top splits, and Giant-Man returns home. Giant-Man practices his growing ability in downtown Manhattan. The Human Top then returns and battles Giant-Man and the Wasp, and Giant-Man is enraged when the Top leaves with a captured Wasp.

In the Hulk story, the Hulk saves Major Talbot from dying during the Leader’s attack. Then, when the Hulk has turned back into Bruce Banner, General Ross places him under arrest for treason. The leader sends his humanoid minions to the base where Banner is being held, and while they attack Banner, he turns back into the Hulk and battles them but is knocked out as they steal an invention of Banner’s for the Leader’s use.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are fed up with Giant-Man leaning on their buildings, carelessly causing damage.

This episode takes place:

After Giant-Man has leaned on one too many buildings.

Full transcript:

Edward: Mike, what do you do when you retire from the Avengers? What's next? What's next on your plate?

Michael: I don't know. It's hard to go higher in the superhero community, but it's also harder to get a better job in even the military or that kind of like super diplomacy community

Edward: and super diplomats.

Michael: Well, that's what they are, right? Like they're like, I don't know, like Warrior Kings in a way. Right?

Edward: Thank you for your service, giant man. I'd not like you to be the diplomat in charge of Poland. Over there with the wasp. You can help us deal with geopolitical situations in the Eastern Republics.

Michael: But that's what they've been doing though. They've been acting as

Edward: the last time giant man went into the Eastern Europe, he was crashing through the Berlin wall. It's not diplomatic, it's not known for diplomacy.

Michael: No, but his actions, whether they're clumsy or not, were actually affecting international relations. So that's what I mean, like the general sense of whatever they are.

Edward: Yeah. So causing diplomatic relations is not the same as being a diplomat, just cuz they both have the word diplo in them.

Michael: No, no, no. I'm not saying that they're, I'm not saying that that's the job. It's just that what have the Avengers been? They've saved the world. They've battled villains. They have taken upon their self to go to other countries, to act in America's interests.

And then at times we've found that they've acted secretively to the same extent, further in the interest and theory of America. So I don't know what you want to call them, but they're not regular. And so you're, they're not regular. And, and your question at the start was like, well, what do you like, what do you do when you retire?

Well, it's not unprecedented, but it's unusual. And so it's a good question.

Edward: And so what's unusual, you're saying retiring as a superhero is unusual or retiring as an avenger is unusual. What's unusual?

Michael: Retired from the Avengers is unusual because, well, yes, it's Avenger.

Edward: Avengers have only been around for a couple years. No one has retired until now. But now we've had, now we have three retirements, sorry, four retirements, 1, 2, 3, 4, all at the same time.

Michael: Yeah. And my point is that it's unusual. We have an experience where someone with that much power who's had such a fascinating role and influence on world affairs, is now no longer in that position?

 I think there's a qualitative difference between being on the Avengers and being the go-to team for. Pretty much any big problem to be on their own. Are they still on the payroll or at least getting the status and the influence they had on Avengers?

Edward: I wouldn't think so. If you're not, you can't be like, not on the Avengers, but still getting all the Avenger privileges.

Michael: That's right. So that's what I mean. Somebody that tied in to International affairs in such a highly visible way and such an influential position, I would think that they don't just retire and, then our intelligence organizations are like, that's cool.

I guess you just. Have all this knowledge and this know-how, and you just go off and do what you want. So I'd imagine that there's something that must tie them closer. Oh, I see what you're saying. It's like maintain them and to be still being sort of a post adventure, but still in the family. You know what I mean?

Edward: Got it. You're a post, you're not in ave anymore, but now you're a post a event. It's like a presidents. When presidents retire, they still have the secret service. Follow them around everywhere. They still get paid. Right., if you're an ex-president, you still get a salary.

Michael: I think so. Or some kind of pension, I don't think they'd wait till like they're, you know, like most of 'em seem to be quite old when they're president, when they retire. I don't think they, they have to wait long before they get the stipend. Right. Which makes a lot of sense as well, cuz you don't want them to Go out and say, I've been the president of the United States for eight years and now I'm interviewing for this job at General Electric.

Or I might go, I think I'd like to go work in Hungary. You know what I mean? I don't think that they're gonna be like, what's next for me? As if it's just like anybody in the world. They're just not. And so I think get to pay them enough to keep them on the bench in a way, and still get to know-how and the benefit of the expertise and still have them available to contact them.

I would think.

Edward: Okay, there's an ex-presidents club. You think there's gonna be an ex Avengers club where they all get together and come back together and talk about, I dunno, I guess the new Avengers can ask the old Avengers for advice the presidents do that sometimes. Yeah.

Michael: I think so. I mean, I'd like to think so because the alternative would be that the Avengers, so somebody who's been so tied into our security and the intelligence organizations, but also our military and our political affairs is just suddenly like, huh. Well, I gotta make a living not an Avenger anymore.

Edward: Maybe I'll go rob Banks,

Michael: right? Or maybe I will go maybe work for, another country. I mean, like they could, and it's unusual, like the adventures started as this voluntary group, but very quickly became integral to our security intelligence organizations, et cetera.

but I bet that there are those types of organizations and associations already. I bet they just attach that type of structure over to the Avengers to make sense.

Edward: Paul, you're saying there's other structures like the Avengers out there?

Michael: You used presidents ex-president, as an example.

I think there has to be some kind of process they can follow to say, time.

Edward: But the difference is the presidents, like that's part of the constitution, like that's built into the fabric of our country and there are rules and regulations that go back. Hundreds of years. The Avengers are a couple years old.

We don't even know exactly how the Avengers are affiliated with their government, how they're affiliated with Stark Corp. They're all part of this military industrial complex, and I don't think we understand what's going on. It's definitely not the way we understand what happens with the president.

Michael: Well Ed, I'm not saying I'm cool with it. I find it to be the most weird you know, and people that listen to our show know this. I've always found it to be the weirdest thing that the military, the government, our intelligence organizations are like, I don't know, better get the adventures involved. I've always found it to be strange, but whether it's strange or not, they're tied in and they have this connection and they have this. Powered authority in our society. So just to have them float off and possibly just what, decide that they want to, take what they know and not do anything with it, or,

Edward: yes. You're basically say we should bribe them so that they don't do that. We should have tax dollars go towards paying giant man and Thor and Iron Man in the wasp and tell them, Hey, here's a hundred grand. Uh, please don't work for the Russians.

Michael: I think, I wouldn't use the word bribe, but I think it's incentivized, I suppose, but's be honest, let's be honest. You, I've had shows where, where your solution is like, I guess we gotta kill them. Or lobotomized them. I'm like, no, I'm just following your well trod path on this one. Like probably need to pay them is the better alternative than like, Like, where I know you want to go on these things where it's like, too dangerous of your life. See you later.

Edward: You know, I'm gonna tell your wife about the things you've been doing, unless you give me an incentive to not do that

Michael: well yeah. It's, like, protection, money protection.

Edward: I'm not gonna, uh, bust into your shop, but, you know, I need some incentive to make sure that it stands up. Okay.

Michael: But Ed, you wouldn't characterize it as bribing that you say, Let's say Kennedy, who's a young president, let's say. He hadn't been assassinated and he continued on, and he retired after, let's say he served two terms. He would've been in his early fifties, you wouldn't have considered bribery to pay him a pretty healthy pension.

Edward: No, you're, right. It's not bribery to have to pay someone to do their job.

Michael: It's a role.

Edward: It's an incentive pay. It's an incentive. So that you go and do The Thing that we we're paying you to do. I think bribe, connotates something illegal, right? Or something underhanded. What's what's going on here though, is, it kind of is underhanded, because it's not public, it's not well-known.

 Is Stark Corp paying their post avenger salary? Is it the government? That's to me the, big question. And the other thing is that well at least giant man is still active. We haven't heard much from about Thor Iron Man, but, it's Giant man is out there. Experimenting and doing more stuff. Like the latest things on Giant Man is he can now grow to 35 feet tall. He's getting bigger and bigger, so his power levels are increasing. And he's doing it right in the city. He's damaging buildings, he's doing practices. He weighs tons with tons and tons of weight, and he's walking through the city causing damage.

And so in the past when that happened, the Avengers had some sort of fun that paid for that stuff. Is there a post Avengers payment fund now too?

Michael: That's part of the reason why I was thinking about this, there has to be some kind of structure in there. Not just about the idea that they have information that would be damaging, to our interests if they went somewhere else, for instance.

But also if giant man is practicing growing in the cities, and holding onto buildings so he doesn't fall down. He's causing damage. And in the past, it's still irresponsible them to do that. But at least there is some kind of recourse for the regular person or insurance companies. He get some kind of, kind of like, you know, fix, fix the masonry on this. You know, like

Edward: fix, it's like an irresponsibility reading. As an avenger you can have a 10 on irresponsibility, but now that you're post Avengers, let's bring that irresponsibility level down to a six or a seven.

Michael: And he hasn't, you know what I mean?

 Practicing growing around buildings when you wait tons and could knock one over if you just tripped, is not responsible.

Edward: And also grabbing, grabbing onto the edges of buildings and like having bricks fall off. It just seems a little dangerous.

Michael: It's super dangerous. So that's why I think that there must be something in the way, some process or some similar continuation of coverage.

Really. Like I know when lawyers retire, we have mandatory insurance and then when you retire you can have runoff insurance, which would cover you. So you might get a claim, there's only so long you can Sue your former lawyer there's limitation periods and then you'd wanna make sure you cover. So if you did get sued,

Edward: the insurance covers you, not for the time that you were a lawyer, but the insurance is covering you for right now. Like, for example, if you stopped your insurance today, And you got sued for something you did yesterday, the insurance wouldn't cover you.

Michael: No, so insurance covers terms, so as long as you have occurrence base and claims based policies, but the most common policy would be like if you get into a car accident, you have insurance policy with company A, and then you get sued two years later. B, you no longer are insured you by that company. You're run to another insurance company. It's the company that was on risk that would cover you. And so I'm saying for, Lawyers when they retire, they wanna make sure they've got insurance and coverage, to continue a bit longer.

 I see I'm diving into stuff. I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm far from retirement, but I just know that there is coverage up.

Edward: There's something, there, something, there's something's something there that's a giant man probably has some sort of insurance policy that's covering him post Avengers, some sort of runoff policy that lasts for some period of time.

Michael: Or you just have the Avengers have so much money at their disposal. They're either self-insured in a sense, or they just have money to pay. But whatever it is, I think that you don't have these retired Avengers running around causing damage and then not, and then what you're gonna Sue giant man, you're gonna find out where that guy, who he really is. Or do you still follow the process that is in place that we we're aware of where they could make a claim. Because of the damage that the Avengers caused, which I think is a way that's kept people kind of okay with them in general.

Edward: So if he has to have this coverage that keeps lasting, like we're kind of paying for giant man for the guess for the rest of his life or for some time period.

Does he have responsibility then too? This is like reserves in the military. I think we can call back up giant man if the Hulk was rampaging through the city and we're like, you know what? The Avengers are a little weak right now. We need some, uh, we need some more bench strength.

Can he be called in?

Michael: I don't know. I mean I would think so. I would think that's part of the deal. Like we said at the beginning, it's unusual and unprecedented about what they are in our society, but they are unusual. They are unprecedented is so, you and I are just trying to speculate about what should make sense.

And I think what makes sense is that if they're out there, Having information or abilities that could harm us if they were no longer on our side. I think that there's a built-in incentive to have them close to home, really. But also if they're out there doing activities, and they're more or less government agents, which they have been.

I think there should be some kind of recourse for regular people. Otherwise people would not be as keen about Giant man doing his calisthenics in the middle of the city.

Edward: Like you're sounding more and more like the Avengers are like the mafia. Once you're in, you can't get out. You think you're out and we pull you back in.

Michael: I'm not saying that they're not like that.

Apologizes for the delay on this episode. Edward has been traveling more than usual for business making it difficult to record. But we are back, and we should have a few more episodes recorded in time to be back on schedule next week. Stay tuned true believers!

In this episode:

Mike and Ed skip over the tornado that Dr. Doom used to terrorize the city, the capture of the Baxter Building, and the use of Reed Richards’ technology against himself, and jump right to the shocking news that the Thing, Ben Grimm, is leaving the Fantastic Four! Why is he leaving? Is it too hard to keep egos like this together for more than a few years? What is he going to do next? Is it a coincidence that the Avengers recently lost their four strongest members? And does this mean the Fantastic Four need to go into recruiting mode now too? The “Fantastic Three” does not have the same ring to it!

Behind the Issues

A lot happens in these issues: The after effects of the nuclear bomb in issue #38 cause the FF to lose their powers. Then Dr Doom attacks the team while they are helpless and they need to defeat their arch-nemesis without the benefit of powers. But all of that is secret. The FF manage to hide the fact their powers are missing while they get help from Daredevil. By the end of issue #40 they have their powers back, and Ben Grim is back to being the Thing. But in the course of the battle Ben felt un-appreciated and uses it as an excuse to leave the organization. This continuing storyline with every issue ending on a cliffhanger is Stan’s new style and we are seeing it in almost every title now, but none as connected as the Fantastic Four.

In these issues:

Fantastic Four #39:

The Fantastic Four are rescued at sea, and they have lost their powers. Reed uses his technology to replace their powers, and they keep this information from the world. Meanwhile, Dr. Doom, who had been hypnotized by Reed previously, has this spell lifted by a local hypnotist. Doom, now in a rage at being tricked, heads back to New York City and battles the Fantastic Four, who have Daredevil on their side. They have a wild battle, with Daredevil doing a lot of the heavy lifting, leading into the next issue.

Fantastic Four #40:

Daredevil continues to pull the Fantastic Four’s bacon out of the fire. Meanwhile, the Four head to their headquarters, where Doom is holed up, with the local police sectioning off the city around the Four’s headquarters to allow these superpowered enemies do battle. At just the right time, the Four’s powers return, due to the ingenuity of Reed Richards, and they are able to best Dr. Doom and reclaim their headquarters. The Thing pushes them over the finish line, and they let Doom escape. And at the very end of the issue, the Thing decides that he has had it, and quits the team.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are wondering if the team should be called the Fantastic Five.

This episode takes place:

After the Fantastic Four/Five have defeated Dr. Doom and reclaimed the Baxter Building.

Full Transcript

Edward: Mike, there is a lot to talk about.

Michael: No kidding.

Edward: We could talk about the fact there's a tornado rampaging through the city destroying buildings. We can talk about Dr. Doom using Reed Richards technology against him and against all of us. We could talk about Doom. Taking over the Baxter, Building again, and threatening the Fantastic Four.

 These are all things we can talk about, but we're not gonna talk about any of those things.

Michael: No man. We're talking about teams. We're talking about teams. Eddie, this is exciting news.

Edward: Yeah. Not just teams. We're talking about The Thing. After all this stuff happening. The Thing announcement that he is leaving the Fantastic four.

The Fantastic four have always had a challenge with their brand name in that they needed four people. Now they have to deal with that problem in a real way because the Fantastic Three doesn't have the same ring to it.

Michael: No. So let's look at who's leaving, right? It's the strong man of the group and he's leaving.

And first of all, we don't know why. And I'd be curious about that because branding alone, you're right, you need to have four people. But we should speculate cuz it's interesting. But why would he leave? It sounds like a sweet gig. I mean, the fantastic war, they went through their hard times in the beginning of their partnership, but they've been making some good money they own the Baxter Building. And through Reed's inventions, they must make still SCDs of money. And they go on these amazing adventures

Edward: And it's the status perspective. They're loved, right? They're invited to the White House and they're doing pretty well for themselves.

Michael: They're the only team where we know who they are in real life too.

They don't have secreted s I mean, it's an incredible thing that they have,

Edward: but they also, they're close-knit group. There's only four of them. And we all know, there's rock bands that break up all the time, and you're like, why did they break up? They should never have broken up. They were so good together.

But the truth is you have four people. And they're human as much as they have superpowers, they're human. And so it's not surprising that sooner or later somebody's not gonna get along. The Avengers recently broke up. We don't know why they broke up either, but I imagine personality conflicts came into it.

Michael: I think you're right. And the Fantastic Forum or a special case, because they work together and they live together. They function really as a family. And you're right, just like much like rock bands break up, familiarity does breed contempt.

Edward: And hey, if you're talking about family, Ben Grimm was already the odd man out. Right? Sue Storm and Johney Storm are brother and sister, and Sue is getting married to Reed. They're engaged like that. Mm-hmm. That's a legit family and well, who's Ben? Ben's a good friend.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. He's good old. Ben is hanging out with the fam and it's, yeah,

Edward: college roommate or something. They're college roommates from, but like college roommates aren't the same as husband and wife or brother and sister?

Michael: No, and I'm sure your wife appreciates you hearing that, talking to me, roommates, but

Edward: as my college roommate, I will tell you that you do not, you're not the same as my wife.

Michael: That's fair. That's fair. But in a way it seems unfair to speculate on what happened because I think we know what must have happened there. There's some kind of grievance that must have blown up and so he's leaving so, Now that he's leaving the fantastic bar. The question is where does a one ton Orange Rock monster super powerful. Super strong? Where does he go? And you mentioned it earlier where I think he's gonna go, he must be going to the Avengers. Clearly this makes sense. Total sense, right? Yeah.

Edward: He's probably not gonna go and start a law firm.

Not Ben Grimm thing. So security. What was Ben Grimm before he was an airplane pilot, right? I also don't think, American Airlines is looking for a new pilot Ben is not the guy. Meanwhile the Avengers have lost Thor. They lost giant man and they lost Iron Man.

And they didn't, they replaced them with, we talked about this. They replaced them with a witch and a guy who runs fast and a guy who shoot bows and arrows, they have no strong man on the team. Right. It seems like a very natural fit. If they are calling up Ben Grimm and trying to recruit him right now, then they don't deserve to be in hr.

Michael: You know what's funny? I would imagine that there would be some kind of between these groups have worked together before, right? And so I would imagine there would be some communication. So it almost looks like there's almost a trade going on. Not a formal trade, but, in a lot of ways, Ben has, The Thing has been a bit of an odd person to have on the Fantastic Four team, whereas in he seems like a natural fit with the Avengers.

 It's sort of like how so the fantastic, how so? What do you mean? Well, the Fantastic Four are kinda like these, what I would consider to be science adventures, right? They're not there brought in to, to feed the heavy physical hitters, they're actually there to solve, more challenging problems like, dealing with outer space and other dimensions, like science type problems require science type heroes. And that's why they're led by the scientists being Reed Richards. So they're more than math club.

Edward: And if again, you're, you're like, if you look at the battles the Fantastic Four has have fought. They've been won not from Bran, but because Reed Richards came up with some master plan.

Michael: That's right. And I think that it doesn't hurt to have a very strong person on the team, but you're right, it's more brain over bra. So they're like the math club, if we're using high school analogies. Whereas the adventures have always been kind of the football team, you know what I mean? Like, like they're more the jocks.

Like they're not the nerds like the Fantastic four doing with science problems and coming up with science solutions. The adventures are more like the bruisers who are going in just going in and fighting the Hulk, you know? And, and

Edward: I'm picturing Captain America, giving, Reed Richards a wedgie.

Is that what you're saying?

Michael: Yeah, but that's, that's what it seems to be. And so

Edward: you can stretch, sir, but can your underwear stretch?

Michael: So you think about it , it kind of makes sense that the Avengers need someone like Ben, like The Thing, number one and number two, it does make sense that someone like, say, Iron Man, who's a science hero when you think about it, invented his own suit or has this mechanical suit that allows him to fly through.

Edward: Oh, we don't know that. Maybe there's some dude in there, someone else made the suit. He's just along for the ride.

Michael: He might be, but if he isn't Ed, he might be another science genius that belongs on the science team. Just like giant man. I mean, maybe it's a fantastic five. We're looking at, you know, or Fantastic Six, where you get like Iron Man, giant man and the was, we were all kind of science-y kind of heroes I would say because they have science-y type costumes.

They probably could add to the bench strength of the Fantastic Four. Just like Ben, The, Thing. Could add to the physical strength of the Avengers, which they've historically needed.

Edward: Yeah, Reed, Richards scientist mind, he could probably improve on the shrinking and the growing technology and, I dunno, make them shrink even more. Make them grow even more. But we'll have giant man the size of a building next.

Michael: Yeah. So while I'm disappointed that, something clearly happened within the Fantastic Four, I'm kind of excited about the idea of having a new shake up amongst the teams because, and especially if the shake up is along the lines that I think they will do, which makes a lot of sense to me. You know, when I think of the high school dynamics that I've articulated, Kind of exciting, isn't it?

Edward: So who are the X-men then? Are the X-men the goths? Are they the weirdos, the outsiders? The guys smoking?

Michael: That's right. They're the ones cut in class and out the smoking doors at recess.

You know, they're not bad kids. They just misunderstood.

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss the shocking loss of scientific skill among the country’s top scientists. It clearly seems purposeful, but what is the purpose? Aliens trying to keep humanity from developing new technologies? A domestic test to take away targeted abilities from exceptional people? Will they be able to take away superpowers next? And if so, is it ethical? If we can’t keep someone in prison, is the choice really between lobotomizing their abilities or capital punishment? What is the ethical choice? Ed and Mike disagree!

Behind the issue:

The after-effects of this issue result in Giant-Man unable to shrink smaller than a normal human for the remainder of his time in this title (which is ending soon and will be replaced with Namor. More on that when it happens!). Otherwise, nothing special here.

In this issue:

A guy is driving around town while being directed by a man in a hidden laboratory in a funny costume named the Supreme One. When the driver sees Giant-Man, he decides to zap him in a green ray, which causes Giant-Man to grow weak. This is because the ray is designed to steal power. The Supreme One becomes obsessed with stealing Giant-Man’s power, as he was unable to do that the first time he had someone try. To that end, he has his minion drive around town bathing scientific geniuses in the green ray, stealing their next-level scientific abilities, i.e. a top physicists forgets everything he knows about physics, etc. Giant-Man and the Wasp investigate, eventually tracking down the Supreme One, who escapes in a spaceship (turns out he is an alien).

In the second story in this issue, the Hulk fights the army in a foreign nation, and when he turns to Bruce Banner, he is captured by some locals. Major Talbot is sent in to rescue Bruce Banner, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger - will Talbot and Banner fall to their deaths as they escape? Tune in next week!

Assumed before the next episode:

People are wondering what is happening to all the smart people. They are getting … less smart? How does that make any sense?

This episode takes place:

After people learn of the de-smartening that is happening.

Complete transcript:

Edward: All right, Mike, we're gonna change it up this week. We're gonna change it up a little bit because I have a story I think we should be talking about that's not, well, maybe it is superhuman. The scientists around the world are losing their scientific abilities

Michael: right?

Edward: So these are top physicists who are losing the ability to do physics or top geneticists who can't do genetics anymore. Top chemists who can't do chemistry anymore. And their brains can still do everything else. They can still have conversations, they can still love their families, but they're losing their scientific abilities. And so I think this is a super thing. We don't know who's doing it or why, but it sounds superhuman.

Michael: Okay, before we get to this superhuman, if they're superhuman. Not saying that what you're saying is that

Edward: No, I'm not saying human. It's a superhuman, some sort of superhuman thing. I don't think we know any scientific way to remove parts of knowledge from someone's brain like that feels like a superhuman thing.

Michael: Right. So you're saying that there must be a purpose to it. This phenomena that's only targeting extremely intelligent and highly accomplished and specialized people like physicists. They're being targeted and their abilities are removed, which. Yeah, it doesn't sound normal.

Edward: Um, well, it's never happened before, so therefore it is by definition, abnormal. Although it's abnormal, it's happening more and more now. So is it becoming normal? It's becoming normal. It was not normal, but now it is.

Michael: It's normalized almost, and so normalized.

So I guess the first question is, what's the purpose of it? So your first thing is that you're thinking that there's a super villain possibly, or an alien or something that is doing this for a reason. Right. In that it's making humanity weaker. It's making our ability to defend ourselves worse. Worse. Is that where you're kind of going on it,

Edward: it sounds that way. Like, oh, you're right. Maybe it's a villain who's doing blackmail, but it seems purposeful. If it was a virus, That was just spreading around, right? And causing brain damage to people. First of all, that'd be terrifying, but secondly, it feels like that viruses don't work that way. The viruses wouldn't go and attack just the most intelligent top scientists in the world and just attack their scientific knowledge and leave everything else untouched. So you're right, it seems purposeful.

Michael: And that's alarming because we know that in the last few years, in addition to what appears to be naturally occurring superhuman abilities and extraterrestrial or, paranormal, superhuman abilities, we have seen that there's been greater advances in technology, in science that have allowed humanity to reach new levels. So Iron, Man and other, you know, giant. Giant man have been able To create things that are just impossible they're fantastical. It's basically modern magic, the science that they've been able to wield so is this a preemptive attack, a taking away the ability of other people to create such modern miracles?

Edward: Oh, you're right. Yeah, it could be stopping the creation of new superheroes. We know, if you look at the superheroes that are out there, a handful of them, like the X-Men seem to be that this people who are born with this weird gene that's being activated by something.

But for most superheroes out there, or, super villain for that matter. It seems to be either, Some sort of science that science is doing it. That's right. Captain America is experimented on and turned into Captain America, like the Reed. Richards took fantastic four up into space and space stuff turned them into the Fantastic four. Sandman was like atomic research, whatever turned him into Sandman. So it feels, or to your point, Iron, Man and Giant Man was actually, or the porcupine, they're actually building technological wonders. And so if our top minds, the people who can like do the engineering, the people who can understand the atomic science are losing their ability to do that.

Hey, maybe it is aliens. Maybe aliens are trying to put humans in their place and say, Hey, stay on the planet Earth. Stop leaving and stop developing powers.

Michael: It's wild. It sounds paranoid, but at the same time it's starting to make a lot of sense. This will fundamentally weaken humanity. By taking our top scientists off the board. That's right. Quite frightening. That's right. But then the other part of it is leaving side the motivation which is alarming and I'm hopeful that say the Avengers or the various federal agencies are on top of this, you gotta wonder how they're doing it. Like how is it that they're doing almost micro lobotomies. Is it a technological basis for it or is it magical? How exactly are they doing it at all.

Edward: You're right. Clearly, it's not something that anyone has done before, but someone has found a way to go and do, lobotomy is a good word. It's a very, it's like a targeted lobotomy. Because what's fascinating about this is it's not like these scientists are coming in with other brain damage. They're able to continue on their lives. Normally. They are still able to, whole jobs. Not even like they can't do normal stuff. They can do all the normal things. They just, it's like this piece of knowledge. They're cutting edge brain power and I don't even know if their intelligence was affected so much as their knowledge was affected. So if you're a scientist who's like really brilliant and spend 40 years of your life diving deep into physics, you're not gonna be able to spend another 40 years we just don't live long enough.

Michael: It's quite a violation of their autonomy too. I don't want to discount that, but, however they're doing it, it's wild. And you gotta wonder if it's not some extraterrestrial kind of thing or some kind of super thing. What if it's actually a, just, it's something more domestic? We talked before about, What do you do with these super villains that you capture and have these amazing abilities? Like say, let's say Sue Storm turned into be a bad person and she has force fields and can turn Invisible. Like how do you deal with that and make, and IM prisoner if she was a villain, is this. Some technology that somehow got into the world where they've been experimenting on how to turn off abilities and it's got into the wrong hands and they're using it to turn off the abilities, for lack of a better term, of regular humans.

Edward: If you're right, maybe it is just an experiment then, and they're testing to see if they can turn it on and off before they say, Hey, let's turn off the superpowers of. Sue Storm or Reed richards. Let's turn off the brain power of some physicists and you're right, if it doesn't work and they can't turn it back on again, that would be really bad. But not as bad as if we like turn off the superpowers of the Avengers because hey, that's irreplaceable.

Michael: It does lead into to a consideration of like, how if this is like a deliberate thing that might be done by people on our side, say a government kind of project that got the wrong hands, that tells us I guess I've ever thought about the idea that turning off, say, superpowers is akin to a pure violation of a person's autonomy, right? It's more relatable in a way to basically make a very intelligent person, less intelligent in a particular area that is actually, it's so remarkably unethical, cuz it is effectively targeted Phlebotomy.

Edward: Clearly whether it's just happening to Random intelligent people, it's unethical. But if we did this to get against the guy who was building the porcupine suit or the wizard who is like notoriously committing crimes and breaking outta prison and committing the frightful fore attacking the Fantastic four, if we just reduced his intelligence and stopped his ability to go and create these fantastic suits, I dunno, is that still unethical?

Michael: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. It, definitely is it is a version of lobotomizing those intelligent people. We don't do that right now. There have been super intelligent people in history and if the choice is to build a better prison or to lobotomize somebody, you would choose you should choose to build a better prison.

Edward: That's fair. And I guess I feel like we haven't really. On that route, far enough. We still are building these terrible prisons and allowing these criminals to escape again and again. But I guess let's go further. Remember there was the vanish. Do you remember the vanish, right?

Yes, I did. So that's, yeah, so the vanger had the ability to teleport and, I'm not sure how he was dealt with, I assume, like we assumed at the time maybe that they just killed him. There was just a extra, judicial murder to take this guy out because otherwise what do you do?

You can't put in prison someone who can teleport outta prison. He was teleport into the Oval Office. He was threatening the president. You, can't stop someone like that. And so if we had, if for the vanish or. Let's say what they had this ability to turn off his power. Or, and along the way it also turned off his ability to do complicated differential equations. It feels like that's a better alternative than allowing him to go free or a better alternative than murdering him.

Michael: Yeah. But it's the same, you know, The Thing with ethics is that they're not relative. This goes to, the question I suppose, is the ability to have like a superhuman power, and you, if you remove that, is that the same as effectively doing a version of a targeted lobotomy? And I think the answer is yes. I mean, I think that the Vanger, even by basis of just looking at his name, He identifies, that's a core part of who he is.

Edward: He enjoys vanishes, and if he stops vanishing, then who is he anymore?

Michael: Well, exactly. And so to remove that from him,

Edward: it's, I'm the talker. If you take away my, if you make me mute, who am I?

I can't, I can't, I can't do The Thing that I do.

Michael: But it, but it's the same thing, like, so it is the same thing removing an ability for somebody to solve differential equations as a top physicist is the same as taking away a person's ability to, in this case, do a unique thing, which is the ability to,

Edward: so I'll grant you that, but the difference is, is that the guy doing the differential equations isn't trying to murder the president. It feels like that. Like that's the difference. You're right. I don't think we should go and find everybody who can teleport and then go and take away their abilities. That seems like a draconian a totalitarian government that would do something like that. But if there's somebody teleporting around murdering people, I think by all means we should stop that person. And if that means taking away their ability to teleport, I think so. Be it.

Michael: I guess the question is, what is a worse and more abominable crime towards an individual or harm that you could cause them? Is it one to give them effectively a brain injury so that they are not the same person as they were before, because that's what you're doing if you turn up abilities. I think it's similar to making somebody less, less intelligent to like solve differential equations either argues the same as turning off their ability to do what they're born to do, which is teleport. So it's a better term

Edward: to murder. I was born to murder precedents.

Michael: Wait, so you either give them effectively a brain injury, so you actually violate what they are as a human at who they're as a person. Their core being or you killed them, is what you're saying. Or you build a better prison. Yeah. Yeah. And you're saying you handled a better prison. It's only two choices.

Edward: That's right. That's right. So I think we are all agreed that if you can build a better prison, you build a better prison that feels like the right thing to do, I think. Mm-hmm. When you can't build a better prison, when you have someone like the vanish or the absorbing man who can, if you put him in a prison, whatever you. Put him in, he can absorb the strength of that thing and bust his way out. And so what do we do? The absorbing man, they set him into space to drift aimlessly for eternity. Like that seems worse. It feels like if you had a choice between, that's the worst one. Drifting through space for all eternity, or losing the ability to absorb the strength of materials around you. I think most of us would give up the ability to absorb, even if our name was the absorbing man. It feels like you can get a new name.

Michael: Hey. They sit him down and say, listen, here are the two alternatives. We've been up all night thinking about the options here, and one is that we turn you into a race that'll float through the empty space forever, or we give you, effectively we change your brain chemistry. And I think that, historically, it's a pretty slippery slope when you start messing around with people's brains and changing who they are. I don't know what the right answer is, ed, but I have to say you

Edward: really don't know the right answer. You really think that maybe the right answers to have 'em drift through space for all eternity.

Michael: I don't know. You're forcing me to say that. I think it'd be better. I think it would probably be better to actually like, uh, And I'm against a death penalty. But that seems to be preferable to actually really lobotomize against

Edward: sin. Bomb the ball. No, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, imagine. So let's put you in that, those shoes. Okay? Now, Mike, you now have the ability to fly. You are flying, man, and you could fly around and so on. But you know what? You used that, you used that flying power for evil, and you started killing presidents. And so now they're like, Mikey, you need to go to jail. Unfortunately. This metaphor is falling apart because we could put a flying guy in jail. You,

Michael: you put a, the ceiling solved the problem, ed.

Edward: Okay, Mike, you have the ability, we're gonna use this vanish again. You can teleport Mike, you can now teleport everywhere and you're murdering people left, right, and center. Because you know what, maybe the teleporting also meant your brain go, went crazy, and the government comes to you and says, Hey Mike, we have two choices.

We can take away your ability to teleport and you'll go back to being old Mike. Or we can murder you. Are you really, are you like, have you given that choice? Like you think the right choice is to murder you?

Michael: Uh, it's, it's just such a hard It, it is. It's not hard. Murder. Murder is a problem. The slippery slope stuff is terrible.

Eddie, you're actually,

Edward: yeah. But one of them, one of them has a slippery slope. The other one is a giant hole of death.

Michael: You know what I think because,

Edward: you can recover from a slippery slope, you can't recover from a murder.

Michael: Eddie, I'm a lawyer. I'm not a judge. I'm not making that call right now. But you're, but clearly I know where it goes with you. You'd be like, take away my ability. Give lobotomize me so that I don't go out and vanish anymore and I'll live the rest of my life.

Having you having fundamentally changed what, who I am as a person? Yes. Yes. How is that any different than Lobotomizing people that. The state didn't, consider to be, desirable?

Edward: Well, we've already, I think the difference is, is we've agreed that you are only doing this as a last ditch effort. We're not saying, Hey, you're a murderer, a normal murderer who like walks around with knives and guns. We'll just take the knives and guns away from you. Even though you call yourself gunman and you define yourself by using guns, we're gonna take away the guns. And then, and you're like, oh, but I can't be gunman without guns.

Well, too bad you're no longer gunman. You are now just man, and we're gonna put you in a jail. And that jail is not gonna give you access to guns and that's the preferred choice. But if you can't, but if you can't put them in the jail, you need another choice. And the second choice should not be killing them indiscriminately.

Michael: So I guess the problem and hear me out on the slippery slope, but like if the technology is developed and you can use it on these, in these extreme situations, my fear is that you use them. Even if you could rationalize that, you would use them in more mundane situations where all prisoners, all people convicted of violent crimes are now gonna get, effectively get a lobotomy because it's safer.

Because you can't keep them in prison forever. Or if you do, the prisons are unsafe, et cetera. There's gonna be a rationalization for actually using this technology to effectively lobotomize them too. So it won't be limited, I'm afraid to this very unique situation that. The teleporters of the world. I wish we know there's one. And it could extend and it could, it would extend what I consider to be an abomination throughout. Oh, again, you're worried Our society.

Edward: Well, maybe we just put in rules in place that the person needs to choose to have this. We just get to a certain point where it's like, Hey, you can choose to be lobotomized or murdered, and if you prefer murder, we can do that for you.

The state's really good at murdering people.

Michael: I think it's what, I think one of those, that's what they consider to be actually not a real choice. Ed, I think

Edward: know that's the point is, but like, we're stuck at this point where we have to choose the choice. We don't give them three choices if it's not like we can take away your powers, murder you or put you in a jail that you can escape from in two seconds. Which do you choose now? Well, clearly the guy just escapes from jail and so that's not an acceptable choice for our society. We need to stop the vanger and people like him from murdering people. And so far it seems like what we're doing is we're just murdering. We murdered the vanger and we sent the absorbing man into space. And this molecule, man, we don't know what happened to him. These people who are extremely powerful. They seem to just be disappearing and we're not talking about it. That is the slippery slope. And so this is a way to reduce the murdering this against villains.

Michael: Well, if I had to guess. I suppose the murder's been working out. At least that's what's been happening and I think it's unfortunate. I think it's horrific. And so what I hope will happen is that maybe if the government is secretly funding this research into this technology, maybe they should direct their attention. Towards better prisons that would solve the problem and avoid these thorny issues. That, that you're pushing on me.

Edward: Teleportation proof prisons. That's the next scientific achievement. Read Richards. Go do it.

Michael: Send them to Asgard Ed. We know that they must have their, they're superpowered.

God's like Thor. They must have the technology up there to deal with strange, unique powers. Let's, let's, let's start talking about that.

Edward: Vanisher, get off Earth. Go murder Odin.

When episode 200 was first published we push the wrong audio (audio for episode 199). It has now been fixed. Apologies for the error (Thursday, April 27, 2023)

In this episode:

Mike and Ed continue to dive into the shocking changes to the Avengers line-up. It has now been announced that in addition to Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch will be joining the team, and all of the founding members will be leaving. Is it still the Avengers is none of the founding members are on the team? Are we concerned that 75% of the team is made up of former villains. Are they really FORMER? And even if morality was not an issue, can we expect these new members to replace the missing firepower of Iron Man, Thor, Giant Man and the Wasp?

Behind the issue:

There was so much to discuss in this issue we broke it into two. And we still never covered the death of Baron Zemo given it was unclear if it was ever made public. Surprisingly for the comics Baron Zemo, the archenemy of Captain America at this point in the continuity, remains dead until the present day. However his son takes on the title and continues to battle Captain America and the Avengers on an ongoing basis.

In this issue:

(This is a repeat of the last episode) The issue opens with the Avengers once again emerging victorious over the Masters of Evil in New York, with Captain America defeating Baron Zemo in South America. It continues with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp in New York having a team meeting and deciding to take a break from being on the team. At the same time they are having the meeting, Hawkeye breaks into their headquarters and asks to join the Avengers. His beloved Black Widow has been murdered by her employers behind the iron curtain, and he has had a change of heart on his line of work. The team decide to take him up on the offer, and on top of that, seek out new potential teammates, with the papers reporting this initiative. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver decide to apply to join the team, and they are admitted to the ranks as well. By the time Captain America returns, the team has been completed reconstituted, with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp out, and Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch in as their replacements.

This episode takes place:

After Cap’s kooky quartet has been announced.

Full transcript:

Edward: Mike, never believe the rumors. Never believe the rumors. The rumors are total bs. Can't trust those people,

Micheal: even if we're the ones that are spreading the rumors in.

Edward: Even that we need to stop, stop with the speculation, I think last we heard captain America and Thor were off the team. Hawkeye and someone else were on the team and now that's all been thrown for Loop. Thor is off the team, but now Iron Man and Wasp and Giant man are off the team as well. Captain America is back. It's just nothing makes sense anymore.

Micheal: Well, not really, no. So our speculation before was that we found it suspicious that Hawkeye, a former villain, was on the team when the remaining three Avengers were people with power suits, basically, who could be swapped in and out, but now it's Hawkeye's off. Two more villains. Rick Silver and the Scarlet Witch are on the team. And Captain America's in charge. I mean is it really the Avengers? You know what I mean? They said isn't.

Edward: There's no original ventures left. What's that? That's it. Thesis' ship You're talking about Thesis' ship. That's what I was gonna say. Yeah. Yeah. They've replaced every board and brought on new boards. Is it still the same ship when none of the boards are left.

Micheal: Well, what's funny is like, I think about law firms where law firms start out with a name of like, Smith and Jones, and then, eventually there's no Smith and there's no Jones. It's just a name and

Edward: It's an overhand,

Micheal: people treated as I think that it has the risk of being Smith and Jones in name only. And being not the same as it used to be. And maybe that's what the Avengers are. Is that

Edward: the Avengers innate only?

Micheal: That's Well, they are until they do something right. It does strike me. So leaving aside the fact that now it's Captain America and three former villains and going through the whole discussion of. We can skip the discussion now cause we had it last time. We spoke about, well, how do those, how does a villain get on the team? But they did apparently.

Edward: Yeah. No, remember last, so last time we speculated. Okay, well maybe the other hero they're gonna bring on is a former villain we talked about Radioactive man or the Wizard, or, yeah. Mr. Hyde. It can never occurred to us that they bring on. The former Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, people like, well, I guess we talked about that before too, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants so they're all kind of they're all dead now or captive or whatever, except for two of retired, well, they didn't stay in retirement very long.

Micheal: No. And they thought, you know what? Like, uh, we're good now. And, uh, and that was good enough, I guess for the federal security agency. Good enough for Captain America.

Edward: Yeah. Like, they're like, we were never immoral. We were just amoral. We're joiners, we're joiners.

Micheal: We just, you know, if you've got a good pitch, we'll listen. But, uh, it does seem as, it does seem quite odd and I guess, I think the best way to look at it. So leaving aside the points that we've discussed about how it's challenging to bring on villains, um, maybe give 'em a chance, but they do seem severely underpowered compared to the original Avengers team, right? Correct. Or the former Avengers team.

Edward: Yeah. In terms of Ross Strength, Thor, giant man. Iron man, all three super strong. Yeah. And now like their strongest members, captain America, who is the weakling on the old team.

Micheal: I know. And then, Hawkeye, good aim. Okay. And, um, I don't, we don't know much about Scarlet Witch, her powers. They seem to be kind of just,

Edward: I think they're very witchy. They're like witch powers,

Micheal: witchy. I don't, I mean, I don't really know. And then Chris Silver Fast.

Edward: It's in the name Mike. It's in the name.

Micheal: Yeah. They're both in the name, but I wonder, so with quick silver, I wonder

Edward: Red, red Magic, I think she has a lot of red magic.

Micheal: Well, red Magic. Oh, that's the best kind. But you think so Quicksilver, I mean, the only qualification I have is that I think being able to move at super speed could have enormous power of potential.

Edward: I think that's the best power.

Micheal: Yeah. If like,

Edward: oh, except, except for if, you know, it's a better power. Flying fast. Running fast. Really, really good. Better flying fast. Because if there was The Thing in Europe, can, he runs so fast, he runs on water. I don't think he runs that fast.

Micheal: I don't know. I don't know. But, you're the physicist. And so how does it work if Quicksilver can run, say as fast as a plane, right? Sure. Just say that. Sure. Would his body not to be super durable and super strong to withstand that pressure, like say he's running, like if I'm running really fast, fast for me, or I'm in a car going very fast and I put my hand out the window and I hit a mailbox, like think my arm will fly off, right? It's just, I'll break my arm.

Edward: But don't do that, Michael. Don't do that.

Micheal: Don't do that. All the listeners at home don't do that. But so quick.

Edward: I teach, I teach our kids not do that. Like, don't put your arm outside the window. Just don't, it's not a thing.

Micheal: Not a good idea. So if you are Quicksilver and you're running very fast, presumably he's running so fast, he's running into bugs or pounding off his face and it's probably next to impossible not to hit things. Is his body super durable result?

Edward: If it is durable, it must, must have some, it must, like if nothing else, his eyes are super D, durable. The guy's not wearing goggles, right? Like he's running along and if a bug gets in his eye at 400 miles an hour, that's like, that's his eye's gone.

It's a dead eye, dead eye. He's a pirate.

Micheal: Yeah, he's a pirate, like in both eyes. He's not, he's probably outta the pieing business too, unless, um, well, I guess he could find a way to accommodate that, I guess. But I guess that sounds more insensitive than, I mean, but like, anyways, hopefully he doesn't lose both his eyes, but, um,

Edward: he's not losing his eyes. He has some sort of super eyes. He has better eyes than Hawkeye.

Micheal: Okay, so he must, so he must be powerful and if his body's durable, then I'd imagine that you're the physicist. If he hits something with that amount of speed, he just obliterates somebody, wouldn't he? Through a wall?

Edward: Yeah. Yeah. This is a mathematical equation for this. It's very simple equation. It's just mass times velocity. And so the amount of damage you're gonna do is mass times velocity. And so if you go twice as fast, you can weigh half as much and still do the same amount of damage. Right. The faster he goes. So if he's, yeah, so if I charge into you and like, I dunno was making up a number, I weigh 200 pounds and I charge into you. I don't even know how fast one runs. Like I run 10 miles an hour into you. That's gonna do 10 times 200 or like 400 pounds per second image or something. But if he runs at 200 miles an hour, he can be. Much smaller than me, it would still do a lot more damage. But your point, your point, he's probably heavier than that. He's probably, he's durable and strong to begin with. Cause if he runs into something, the damage that he receives is the same damage as The Thing receives it's equal and parallel. Yeah. And usually what happens is The, Thing that's moving really fast is much bigger and stronger and runs into the other thing. So he must be like, he must have some sort of like super durability if he runs into anything otherwise he's squished.

Micheal: Exactly. So, he must have super durability and therefore with the super durability and the strength, it means he's super strong basically.

Edward: Do we know that he's strong? Oh, he's, his legs must be strong to move it fast.

Micheal: They would be, but like again, like if he's going, if he's super durable and he's like running in it to you with his fist and his fist hits you, that would effectively be super strong.

It would cause serious damage. Not to his fist if it's durable. Yeah, fair enough. The. Thing, he said it,

Edward: it would do. Damn. But it doesn't mean he can lift things. He's not strong. Strong. He can't lift a car.

Micheal: Well, no, you're right. He's powerful. Yeah.

Edward: Powerful. Not strong.

Micheal: I like that we're getting to these distinctions.

Like this is strength. Strength is not so great. Power powers lots of charts.

It's like, anyway,

Edward: Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee can punch really strong, but he's not necessarily strong, but he can like, he's powerful.

Micheal: He's powerful. He's not necessarily strong. He couldn't lift somebody, if they fell off a building, he grabs his hand. I could pull you up, you know, or something. He'd be like, uh, no. But I could punch, punch. I could punch you. So he won't feel it when you hit the ground. No, I think that it's a challenge, a challenge to suggest that he's, that's not a challenge. Sorry, I, that's a totally wrong point that I was trying to make there.

Let me rewind that. I think that if we're getting back to the original point, I think that the closest that you get to replacing Thor. Or Giant man or Iron. Man in the function would have to be quicksilver. That's the only way,

Edward: and I guess you could argue that most of the time, what does Thor and Iron Man and Giant Man use their strength for? They use it for punching people. Mm-hmm. They use it for damaging villains and like they don't spend a lot of their time like lifting villains up in the air.

Micheal: No. And so that they effectively, they're doing their job. Yeah. So that's

Edward: Okay. All right. So maybe quick silver's, the replacement. I still think it's a sketchy team.

 I think they're in for, in for a wake up call.

Micheal: Yeah. And we'll be there to chronicle it. Yes.

Edward: But you talked about, Hawkeye replacing Captain America, and so that's not true. So we, if we do like a one-to-one comparisons here, Hawkeye did not replace Captain America.

Hawkeye I think replaced Iron Man. My original argument. Mm-hmm. They're both technologically people and they do all sorts crazy things. So that's the replacement. And then I think you're saying Quicksilver is basically replacing Thor, Thor taking out the strength ring, which I guess, hey, it's a different versatile power and he's powerful, maybe, seems weak. And that leaves Scarlet Witch who basically takes on the role of Giant Man and the WASP and takes on two of them at the same time. And, I don't know. That seems also there's a gap. There's a gap

Micheal: maybe, but maybe I'm kind of stretching a bit. But maybe the Scarlet Witch,

Edward: there's, well, we, Richard not on the team, so there's, there's no stretching involved, Michael.

Micheal: No, but like this is Trace, but The Scarlet Witch. The Scarlet Witch, she's got an unpredictability to her power and in a way like, This is a bit of stretch, but chime in and, and was, have always been unpredictable. It's just sort of weird, the idea that super small, it's counterintuitive like that being super small leads to some benefit to the team, but it clearly did. So maybe that's to some degree she kind of functions in that capacity.

Edward: She's the surprise, the, you know, surprise factor, like giant man in the wasp can surprise you because they're little small things and they pop up in the really big. Yeah. And so now she's using her magic to be like surprising her red magic. Cause you never know what it's gonna do.

Micheal: Alright, let, we figured it out. Good luck to the new Captain America LED team. Uh, there you go.

Edward: Well, hey, there's more to it than that though, because they're talking about, about potentially bringing Hulk onto the team. That's the new rumor. Although, Hey, can we, can we listen to any rumors? Can we listen to any rumors at this point?

Micheal: No, even though we are a show that speculates. I like, we have to be careful about spreading rumors because, maybe it wouldn't be fair at this moment to speculate about other people joining the team because Cap did come out and introduce his three teammates as being this is our team so before we start saying, yeah, but maybe you should get. Like a crazy green monster in your team. We should probably just give 'em a chance at showing us how this is gonna work.

Edward: Yeah, just do working with what they have. I think the one other point I think we need to get in before we wrap this up is that Tony Stark is clearly back involved. We talked before about how maybe this is a more of a government organization now the FSA is taking charge of things and approving all these people and letting them on the team. We thought maybe it's shifted a little bit from being part of Stark Corp to being part of the federal government. But when Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were flown into the country, it wasn't someone from the Pentagon that met with them. It was Tony Stark who was there at the airport greeting them and bringing them on, taking them to the Avengers Mansion.

Micheal: That's what you're saying is that it's the military industrial complex.

Edward: It's the military industrial complex. It's all connected, Michael, it's all connected.

Micheal: It's all the same apparently.

Next week is our 200th episode! It was fortunate timing that it ended up landing right on our episodes about Avengers #16, which was one of the most important issues of the era. If you are enjoying What If Marvel was Real?, now would be a great time to spread the word! Thanks for your help in getting our little show out there, and for all the listeners who have been here from the beginning.

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss the surprise announcement that Hawkeye, the supervillain, will be joining the Avengers as a new member. The Federal Security Agency has given Hawkeye a thumbs up, but how is that possible? What do they know that we do not? Do we need to talk conspiracies again? The rumors are that Captain America and Thor are out of the organization. If true, we will only be left with heroes with technological powers - have the people behind the technology (and masks) been replaced? Is this the end of an era?

Behind the issue:

This is one of the key issues of the mid-60s. The Avengers were originally Marvel’s answer to the Justice League, whereby the publisher put all the heroes from different titles into one book to get the readers excited and turning over their hard-earned cash for tales of camaraderie and adventure. But the individual hero titles continued, and Stan had to keep his developing Marvel universe consistent. He had to juggle the storylines in, say, the individual title Tales of Suspense with what was happening in the team title Avengers. If Thor had been called away to Asgard, then how would be be around for an Avengers adventure that same month? Making it all make sense every month was challenging for Stan, and he wanted a solution.

The answer was to take most of the heroes with their own titles off the team. He kept Captain America, and maybe rationalized it by knowing that the Captain America stand-alone stories could be set back in World War II whenever he wanted them to be. Then he filled in the rest of the team with supporting characters from other titles - characters who did not have their own books (and would not get their own books for many years, i.e. Hawkeye did not get his first solo title until 1983; Scarlet Witch, with Vision, until 1982; and Quicksilver until 1997).

In this issue:

The issue opens with the Avengers once again emerging victorious over the Masters of Evil in New York, with Captain America defeating Baron Zemo in South America. It continues with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp in New York having a team meeting and deciding to take a break from being on the team. At the same time they are having the meeting, Hawkeye breaks into their headquarters and asks to join the Avengers. His beloved Black Widow has been murdered by her employers behind the iron curtain, and he has had a change of heart on his line of work. The team decide to take him up on the offer, and on top of that, seek out new potential teammates, with the papers reporting this initiative. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver decide to apply to join the team, and they are admitted to the ranks as well. By the time Captain America returns, the team has been completed reconstituted, with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp out, and Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch in as their replacements.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are excited, and a little nervous, that the Avengers roster has been changed so completely.

This episode takes place:

After the announcement that Hawkeye will be on the team, but before Captain America returns from South America.

Full transcript:

Edward: Mike, I told you that Hawkeye was a superhero. I told you. I told you. You were like, oh no, he's not that good. He can't even fight anybody just as Arrows. Oh, go back to the 14th century. But no. Now Hawkeye is an Avenger. Mike. He's an avenger.

Michael: Yeah. I guess the Avengers, they already had a man who's basically a one man rocket and can shoot energy from his fists as an Iron man. They needed to get somebody who could. Arrows on the team.

Edward: Hey. The last time Hawkeye faced Iron Man, first of all, last time he faced Iron Man, he was a villain. We should talk about that. But when he did, yes, he defeated Iron Man, right? He blasted him with his energy discharge arrow and took him out. So, hey, this guy is versatile. We've had this debate. We don't need to debate it again. I think you are against Team Hawkeye. I am on Team Hawkeye. I think that it's absolutely fine from a power perspective that he's on the team. I'm not sure from a, ethics perspective, he's the red venture.

Michael: Well, okay, let's break into, those two points then. So from a powerless perspective there must be something to him that he brings into the team, right? I can't imagine that it's solely just really good aim. There must be some other, maybe he's got some other ability that like he's, um, some kind of like

Edward: oh, maybe his really, maybe his really good eyesight. Hawkeye

Michael: In the name, I mean alone, but he's got, there's some kind of, maybe, I'm just thinking maybe this is a signal that the Avengers are going from less, overt action to be more in the shadows.

Edward: And nothing says sneaky like a purple costume carrying a bow and arrow.

Michael: It's a dark purple ed. It's a dark, dark purple. No, but there must be something to it. Like he did take on Iron Man. He did seem to defeat him. So in a skills-based contest and maybe he's. Like you notice that Captain America wasn't at the press conference when they announced Hawkeye, so maybe he's a replacement for Captain America's, who's also similarly strategic and stealth based in a lot ways.

Edward: There you go. There you go. Cause the rumors are right now that Captain America and Thor are being replaced and Hawkeye is the first edition to the team, but there will be,

Michael: and your second point was the ethics. It does strike me as being a little odd that there's a guy who's worked with a known terrorist. The Black Widow. Correct. A Russian agent and he's fought Iron Man a few times. And, I would imagine in the course, Committed some crimes may, maybe he did, maybe technically he didn't commit any crime.

He's just

Edward: He did. No, I just did. I think they were doing something robbed. They were robbing Stark Corp or something. Yeah. They kidnapping somebody he was doing bad stuff.

Michael: They kidnapped, they kidnap people. Yeah. Yeah. That seems a bit much to sweep under the rug.

Edward: That's right. Where I come from, kidnapping is a crime, Mike. It's a crime. But come from planet, but not according to the federal security Agency. The federal security agency has approved Hawkeye as a member of the Avengers, says that his record is clean, that he is totally allowed to be on the team.

Michael: Well, I know when I became a lawyer there is a requirement of good character to become a lawyer and. I think that there's a lot of lawyers, so

Edward: I think the bar should be higher for the Avengers. Shouldn't the bar be higher than the lawyers?

Michael: I think it should be. I think it should be. It should be higher than the bar for lawyers. The bar for superhero should be much higher and it turns out that it isn't. And let's be honest, the Avengers are the super team that people are in, are interested in, and it that are called in as the heavy hitters. So this seems like. Quite a promotion for somebody who, as you say, committed the crime of kidnapping

Edward: That's interesting. Let's go back and talk about your issue with, Hey, lawyers have a high bar. I think part of the reason why we can hold lawyers to a high bar is that the supply of lawyers is really high. We're graduating more lawyers every year, and if there's an unethical lawyer, we can say, no thank you. We don't need you. We can replace you with an ethical lawyer. I wonder if the problem is, People who are powerful enough, superheroes who are powerful, super people who are powerful enough to be Avengers. There's not an excess supply. There's a handful of these people. Mm-hmm. There's like a few dozen maybe on the planet. And so if you're looking to augment that team and your bar is high from a power perspective, maybe you have to bend a little bit on the ethics perspective.

Michael: Or maybe, if you believe in rehabilitation, which I do, maybe there's a steep rehabilitation curve? Because as you say, demand exceeds supply. And so if we need to have, Superpowered or super skilled people either we're willing to turn a blind eye or we're willing to go through the process that hopefully allows him to achieve rehabilitation. So behind the scenes there's been this sped up process. Yeah. Because we need to have this person. I know what you're saying. It does seem a little fu but

Edward: it does. I'm stretching a little bit, trying to make sense of the fact that we have a known super villain on the team. And not just on the team, but specifically signed off by the federal government, the federal security agency has come on and said, Hey, this guy is clean. He's totally, totally legit. Now, and maybe the other possibilities that maybe the whole villain thing that Hawkeye was doing before was a misunderstanding, like the, the Avengers declared martial law on America. Turns out it was a mistake. Right? It wasn't actually them maybe and we're okay with that because Avengers do good, Avengers do. We'd say, oh, the bad was a mistake. We're all good. And Hawkeye just didn't do the good part at the beginning. He was just doing much of bad, but then like, oh, nope, we are okay with it. It was a, it was kind of a mistake. It was a misunderstanding. He's actually a good guy and maybe we just have to accept that.

Michael: I guess, and the fact that it's Iron Man who he's fought, who's come forward and vouched for him, must mean there's something to the idea there

Edward: that's assuming Iron. Man is Iron Man.

Michael: I know it's the Iron Man with whomever that person is has come forward and voast for him? For, for Hawkeye, and

Edward: well, no, no. Let's say a Iron Man has come forward and Vos for Hawkeye. Yeah. But that's a whole other point. We've talked about this conspiracy. Do we know that the Iron Man inside the Iron Man suit is the same as the Iron Man who was in the Iron Man suit fighting Hawkeye. Maybe the Iron Man inside the suit. The individual inside the suit has been replaced and now he's like, I was an enemy with the old guy in the suit. Let's bring on some more of the people who are also his enemy onto the main team.

Michael: So a hostile takeover, Eddie, like you got. This Iron Man. That's not real. Who's recruiting a villain and who's left on the team? Who are the other people on the team? Ed?

Edward: Well, we know that I think giant man in the WASP are still people on the team, and so, hey, we, know that giant man in the wasps, their powers come from technology, right?

 We know this now too, right? There's some sort of helmet or pills or something they take and they wear masks. We don't know who they are. Maybe they've been replaced at the same.

Michael: It's Wild Day, so the three members of the team of the Avengers, who are technology based, Iron Man, giant men in the Wasp are still on there and they could be swapped in. And interchangeable. For all we know. Thor isn't exactly interchangeable.

Edward: That's right too. So the two people that are not, that looks like they're being replaced are Captain American Thor and Thor is, that's right. Clear. Like whatever. Thor is magical, powered, mutant. We don't know exactly what he is. We know that he is not an armored suit. He's not taking a pill. And turning to Thor and Captain America we know is some experiment from like the 1940s during World War ii, who is Un aging and like super strong. And he's a super powerful individual. He's physically fit and he's not replaceable either. He's not like, you can just put someone else, put the,

Michael: there's footage of him going back to the forties as well, so maybe hard to just replace him. Whereas you have the, you're right, you have the only three members of the Avengers left are one second, easily be swapped out, and now they're. Pac a villain, or at least a criminal.

Edward: I think somebody should be taking photos of the lower half of Giant Man's face and matching that up to previous photos. I guess you could still replace him with someone who's lower Jaw looks the same, but maybe they didn't go to that much trouble. I think someone should at least investigate.

Michael: Or get his dental records, or photos to get a sense of his teeth and then compare them to old photos and say, aha, aha, I can see that that front tooth is shifted over quite a bit. That's not the same giant man.

Edward: He's like, but I was punched in the face. I'm an avenger. I can punch in the face a lot.

Michael: Uh, maybe wouldn't be the best one. But the nose, even like noses are pretty distinctive. Or even ears that they pot. Well, I don't think ears pot though, but

Edward: his ears are covered. We don't, we don't know what his ears look like,

Michael: but this all goes through our fundamental problem is that we, as a public and as the fifth, the state, have a hard time, Getting a sense of who these people are or possibly being fooled because they wear masks. And I guess, if we see that the Avengers as basically a very public facing, paramilitary organization that's to some degree manage or governed by the government say the Federal security agency in this case, then I guess there must be some safeguards. I good, good guess, but it's hard to say.

Edward: And even if there are, it feels like, it's not the first time that you can imagine some corruption within the government, right? Maybe it's not even, a giant corrupt thing that we're talking about, but maybe that giant man in the wasp, our agents of the government, Iron Man is an agent of the government and somebody in charge. Whoever we don't know who that is. Someone in charge decides to bring on Hawkeye, and let's say all five members of the team are. Forget it. We don't want this guy on the team and the government guy's like, no, no, no, no, no. We've done the checkup. He's totally fine. He's totally legit. But they're like, no, we, we all quit. And so Captain American Thor are gone. You can't replace them, but you're like, oh, well hey, you three, you can't quit. You can quit if you want, but whatever. Tom Jones and Bob Smith can quit, but a giant man and the Iron Man in the was, they don't quit. They just get replace.

Michael: Yeah, this deserves investigation. This deserves further inquiry. There's too many moving parts of the story to just let it sit. It's easy to be distracted by a new member of the adventures for the public, it's the first new member that they've added since they formed,

Edward: no, no, no. That's not true. That's not Captain America came on. They, and he joined the team. Wonderman came on and he joined the team. Now, Wonderman died almost before we knew he was on the team. But he was an official Avenger for Okay. Some period of time. So this is the third new member of the team.

Michael: Okay. It's still relatively unique though, let's just say that it's a big deal. Like Captain America is a new Yeah, it's a big deal. So it's, but it's distractingly. Interesting. And so other people, other journalists, and if I don't think we would consider ourselves journalists, but maybe we should, in this instance, should be asking these tough questions. And then I would think if they are truly a paramilitary organization, there is an interest, a public interest in perhaps knowing their identities in the same way that you would of any kind of, Government agents, unless they're spies, which the adventures aren't.

Edward: Okay. Can we talk a little bit about speculation? We've done this conspiracy stuff, but now we have so it's true the Captain American Thor are off the team. I think your argument is that Hawkeye kind of replaces Captain America and I can buy that, right? Like they're both extremely talented individuals in some way, shape, or form. Both of them have projectiles that they incorporate one arrow and one a shield. I would argue arrows. More effective than shields start in terms of projectiles. But so that leads Thor. How do you replace an as guardian thunder God?

Michael: Maybe with a Hulk. I don't know. Like, I mean, like what?

Edward: Yeah, that went well last time.

Michael: Maybe. The Thing, maybe.

Edward: Oh, maybe The. Thing. Oh my gosh. That's a great call. Great call. Maybe it's time to shift things up.

Michael: Yeah, I mean like maybe he's tired of being I wouldn't say that the fantastic four second tier, cause they aren't, but they do serve a different niche right, than the Avengers. And maybe that's true. Maybe Ben Grimm who was in the military. His interest might align better with a paramilitary organization rather than a more adventuring kind of organization. Fantastic.

Edward: That's a great idea. Now, here's another theory is that Hawkeye was a villain that they got over to the hero side. Why don't we look at the list of villains out there? Radioactive man. Radioactive man from China. They decide to he's gonna defect and join America and join the Avengers. Because I would argue radioactive then wasn't evil. He was just serving the wrong master. And people have defected from China to America all the time.

Michael: I mean, it'd be hard to get notice to him over in China, but Sure. He does have a skillset. He is extremely powerful. Similar to, I don't think he's the same strength level as Thor, but

Edward: hasn't he battled Thor? Isn't Thor and radioactive man, aren't they arch.

Michael: It's hard to tell. How many battles do you have to be an Archie enemy?

 I think you need a few, but,

Edward: Just a regular enemy.

Michael: Yeah, he's an enemy. Well, how about, okay, there's two. I'd say if you wanna go straight on, as guardian to as guardian, it would be the executioner. Executioner, yeah. Or Loki. Are the, oh Loki. If you could rehabilitate in the way that they rehabilitated, Hawkeye presumably, but I'd imagine rehabilitating an ancient immortal being that it might be a little tough. Tougher it. A little tougher to serve the interests of America or the world.

Edward: No. You've been focus, we've been focused on like strength though too. Mr. Hyde is another strength strong guy. Yeah. Right. Maybe Mr. Hyde. But I wonder Thor is more than just a strong guy. He's more than. Pure muscle, the guy can fly. Remember we talked about how fast he can fly across the ocean?

Yep. So do we need a guy who can fly? Like how about the wizard? Can we bring the wizard back?

Michael: Yeah. But it's not like he's made a couple mistakes. Like you suggested maybe hot guy. He's a career criminal now. He just broke bad. How about, how about that guy with the, the wings from the x.

Edward: Oh, angel Fly. Angel could fly Fly Angel. Yeah. Angel. Angel could fly. Yeah. You know, I think the point is it's gonna be hard to replace Thor cuz there's people who are strong that we could find. There are people who can fly. We could find, but trying to find somebody who can do both, that's a pretty unique spot. I think maybe there, there were, they made a mistake to let Thor go.

Michael: Like I say, it's a developing story and I'm still distracted by the idea for lack of a better term, a super villain. Hawkeye is now in the Avengers, seems kind of funny. For a couple reasons. And then longstanding Avengers are just, I just disappeared. The only ones that remain are ones who are basically, are suits, where power suits seems kind of strange. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder what's happening. You know, we gotta get into this.

Edward: There's also the point that we, this is all speculation too, because they did not say the Captain American Thor off the team. There was questions asked, and it was all just no comment. No comment, no comment. We're not gonna talk about it. What did he, he said something about the lives of Avengers are private citizens. We can't comment on them. Like, it was a definitely a very sketchy statement of we're not gonna go there.

And so, hey, I guess stay tuned is the answer. More to come. More to come.

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss the latest Daily Bugle claims against Spider-Man. Does he really want to be a spider? Is he going crazy? Why do we think we can trust this psychiatrist - just because he is European? As the Daily Bugle makes more and more mistakes, at what point do we start to ignore all of its claims? Its disinformation week on Super Serious!

Behind the issue:

This is the second appearance of Mysterio. Stan uses him to good effect, creating a very different type of story. The reader is meant to believe that perhaps Spider-Man really is going crazy. You only discover at the end of the issue that Mysterio has been manipulating things with his illusions.

In this issue:

Reformed criminal Frederick Foswell (aka the Big Man) is back to reporting for the Daily Bugle. Meanwhile, renowned European psychiatrist Dr. Ludwig Rinehart visits the Bugle’s publisher J. Jonah Jameson and explains that Spider-Man has mental health issues. The Bugle then runs an article in which he explains Spider-Man’s alleged mental health issues. Spider-Man then fights what appear to be hallucinations of his past enemies, causing him to question his sanity, leading him to seeking out Dr. Rinhart for help. He experiences more hallucinations at Rinehart’s place, but ultimately Rinehart is exposed as a fraud, and more importantly, as the supervillain Mysterio!

Assumed before the next episode:

People yet again question their subscription to the Daily Bugle, which is more of a tabloid than a serious newspaper.

This episode takes place:

After Spider-Man has defeated Mysterio and reaffirmed his grasp on reality.

Full transcript:

Edward: So Mike, did the daily bugle know that the psychologist was an imposter and printed anyway, or were they hoodwinked?

Micheal: So I'm gonna say some pretty aggressive things about the daily bugle, but

Edward: do it, I think we come here for the strong opinions.

Micheal: That's right. I don't think that they purposely printed an op-ed from a fake psychiatrist with a fake opinion. I think that they were definitely hoodwinked, which I wouldn't say it's worse, but it's pretty bad. It's bad for a national newspaper such as a daily bugle to be fooled like that. And there's consequences for that type of,

Edward: Well, that's The thing is like, do you think they actually were fooled? To me the Daily Bugle has a definite bias against Spider-Man and they've been publishing all this stuff recently. They're these impartial surveys of New Yorkers and talking about how much they dislike Spider-Man and how angry they are at him for a variety of reasons they've been publish negatives about Spider-Man for a long time. And then they published a psychiatrist saying a bunch of these negative things about Spider-Man. I guess the question is did they commission it?

Micheal: So my read on it is that the bias of that newspaper and the publisher, Jay Jonah Jameson, is so strong that they were blinded by it so that they didn't follow their own journalistic principles and not vetting the fake psychiatrist and not. Fact checking things that he said in his article, at least following the process that is supposed to keep disinformation from being printed.

Edward: That makes sense. You're basically saying that they heard what they wanted to hear, and once they heard what they wanted, they didn't go and commission it, but once they were told something, it was what they wanted to hear. And so they didn't question it. They didn't go and, and Right. Looked three layers, Steve, they didn't do the investigative reporting necessary to make sure it was.

Micheal: And what's the point of the newspaper if they don't do any of that? Cause they couldn't have, from what I read from the reporting on this reporting is that this psychiatrist, wasn't he? His made up identity. And I don't know, maybe they're fooled by the fact that, Ooh, he's European. He's a European psychiatrist, if that makes any difference. It doesn't like, like did they check any of his publications?

Edward: I'm sure we know for a fact that European psychiatrists are better than American psychiatrists. You look at the famous psychiatrist out there, like, Sigmund Freud not an American. I rest my case.

Micheal: Period. Done. That's

Edward: He also had a European accent, like this psychiatrist who also had a European accent.

Micheal: You're showing why you don't write a newspaper. Um, but no, it was just so, it's so pathetic. You would think that before they would say they're, first of all, the newspaper is telling us that he's a world renowned psychiatrist. What did they do to check that? He told them he's a world renowned psychiatrist.

Edward: Maybe he had some papers, he had some documents,

Micheal: some documents he created. No, it's a fail all around and it's just pathetic and as you say, the bugle is making some points that you and I have raised before about the problem with Spider-Man. The problem with being a amassed vigilante who does seem to, get into fistfights with petty criminals more often than not.

Edward: Wait, this latest thing was about how he basically violently beat up some burglars, and I think from the two of us, I have less problem with that. I feel like if someone's committing, burglary, getting a little roughed up is probably the par for the course. But I know you get very upset when criminals get, hurt outside the, course of the law. And so, maybe you should side with the bugle. They're trying to take Spider-Man down for doing these things.

Micheal: But how do you believe? Who reported about the violent crimes of Spider-Man, the hug, you know what I mean? Like

Edward: Michael, who, who watches the Watchman Michael, who watches the Watchman,

Micheal: Are they really the honest broker they've lost all credibility. They've lost all credibility. And so they're basically just a tabloid by doing what they've done and you can't believe them.

And so it calls 'em to question all of our feelings towards Spider-Man. You and I, and I certainly do have a concern with a mass vigilante whose name we don't know. And maybe that's where it starts. That's objectively it's odd to me and it's problematic, but then we're, maybe because of that, we're more susceptible to believing almost anything you read about him. Maybe he isn't. Violently beating up criminals in the street. Perhaps he is on the side of the angels more than, and just, he's a shy person. I don't know. But you can't believe the reporting that we've had and the BU's been our source,

Edward: although we have pictures. Chris Spiderman, he's, he's doing something with these criminals. I think what's more interesting is some of the claims that the psychiatrist. Gave us about Spider-Man that people were believing. And I think to me, my favorite one is that he told us that, again, this is an outside in analysis, he didn't talk to Spider-Man, he was just looking at the way Spider-Man's behaving and his outside in analysis was that Spider-Man actually wanted to be a spider. And that he's forgetting his human side suffering. Going to suffer a severe breakdown and just try to actually be a spider. And people believe that people bought into it, and it just feels like so much hocus pocus to me.

Micheal: I think in the biz they would call that pretty soft analysis. You know what I mean? It's just like, it, it's just almost, it's almost a childlike, it's almost. Uh, like a child. I mean, these aren't, they're not fascinating observations. They're just, it's just guesswork.

Edward: It's just buzzwords. It's like, it's like buzzwords. Yeah. Like, does Antman want to be an, an, I feel like Antman probably more, is more likely to want to be an ant than Spider-Man. Be a spider. Just because Antman can shrink out the size of ans he is like ant pets. He hangs out with ants. As far as we know, spider-Man never shrinks to the size of a spider. Spider-Man does not have eight arms, so Spider-Man doesn't. I don't know, hang out with spiders. He's not like a friend of spiders. He just has a freaking spider on his shirt.

Micheal: Yeah, it's just such, so much nonsense. Although I will say this, I think that Reed Richards wants to be fantastic.

Edward: You think that the Human Torch has a pyromaniac fetish?

Micheal: Yeah, he wants to be a, he wants to just be on, he wants to be so hot, so hot right now.

Edward: Oh man. I feel like we could do an entire spinoff show of armchair psychology on these characters. Like, I feel like, uh, you know, like, um, Sue, Storm, Sue, Storm, just, you know what, she feels Invisible, she feels like she doesn't contribute enough to the organization, which is why she has mythical human superhuman. One leads to the other mic and The Thing just,

Micheal: that's right. And The Thing just he feels ugly on the inside maybe.

Edward: There you go. What's our analysis for Thor? He just really, himself, he's, yeah, just a, he, he gets his strength from his hair, and if he ever cut his hair, then that would be the end of.

Micheal: Well, I don't know. I think we know that it's been a trying week for the bugle and we can kind of laugh about it a little bit, but it's a dark day for journalism and, I'm gonna cancel my subscription.

Edward: We're well, but I don't think you can, Mike, I guess I think we need to keep following these guys. It's one thing to, to not pay them money, but I feel like the bugle is part of the conversation and we comment on the conversation, so I think. You can recommend that our listeners cancel the bugle, but you can't. You need to be informed. We need to be able to discuss these things and, but I just think you need to be, aware that there's some disinformation coming from these guys.

Micheal: Well, right, and I'm kind of kidding a little bit cuz you're right, we do need to keep on reading it, but it's just, I'm gonna apply my jaundice eye towards it with a little more jaundice, a little more cynicism because I just do not believe a single freaking thing that that newspaper is printing because what they've done is a crime against their own profession.

Period.