Warning, this podcast contained spoilers for Spider Man Across the Spider Verse in theaters now go see it, plus some MCU Spider spoilers. Hello, my name is Jason can Stepsi and I'm Rosy Night and welcome next Revision, the Crooked Media podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics of pop culture.
In this episode, on the Airlock, it's a spider bag, a spider male bag bag them and tag I'm the Bombastic bag Man.
We're here.
We here to answer your spider questions. Omnibus, Jason's doing a delightful deep dive discussing Spider Man twenty ninety nine, and in the Hive Mind it's an interview with Nick ash Shukla, the writer on the New Spider Man India comic. So if you're a fan of pav In Across the Spider Verse, make sure to listen to that one.
Coming up.
Your questions, Rosie, do you feel that it's our spider sense is tingling and we're stepping out of the airlock to some very very dangerous Spider Man themed mailbag questions straight from the nefarious laboratories of Alchemax.
Question one from Dewan.
What's your favorite oh shit or well damned Peter Parker Spider Man comic moment? One of mine is when May was shot in Peter rolled in jail and humiliated the Kingpin. Oh wow, that's good. What's yours?
Mine is probably this is like less of Peter being a bad ass, because that's not really how I see him.
But it did make me say, oh shit.
Is when Peter is really broke so he tries to join the Fantastic Four because he wants to get a paycheck.
That's like one of the funniest.
Peter Parker moments in comics in my opinion, and I think about.
It a lot.
Okay, so my original answer, this is the real answer, and it's not that cool, but it's the answer that like twelve year old me would give, and that is black suit Peter Parker Spider Man crawling out of the grave in Craven's Last Hunt. Oh now, Craven's Last Hunt. Incredible art by Mike Zeck. Does the story hold up? I would say kind of.
Not really.
It's not my favorite Spider Man story, but at the time everything about it just floored me, including that like iconic cover where you know, Craven is like searching throughout his hunting lodge, you know for Spider Man, and Spider Man's like in the ceiling rafters like looking down at him, Like I remember looking at that on the Spinneract and being, holy shit, I gotta get that.
Yeah, that's definitely one of those most influential story ocs. I think, even like you said, no matter how it holds up, I think a lot of us like that was a Spider Man story that we always remember.
Yeah, and then this is going to be a unoriginal answer, but it's you know, this early Steve Ditgo. They've retcon this moment so many times, both in shows and in other iterations of Spider Man comics, but it's that moment where he doesn't really know how strong he is yet early in the days of Spider Man. Right, this weight of like all this like rubble and stuff has collapsed and it's fallen down on him.
Right.
Oh, yeah, that's such a great panel.
You see this moment in the Spider Man movie, you see it in other things, and water is filling up the space and like the concrete is crushing him and it's like pushing him down and he doesn't know if he's gonna make it, and he's thinking, oh god, I just might give up. I can't do it, and then he finds the strength somewhere inside of himself to be like, no, no, I'm going to escape.
I'm going to push all this stuff off me.
And that is just such an iconic Spider Man moment because Peter Parker figured it out on his own.
Like you know, the X Men all have a school, Tony has billions of dollars.
Tony has billions of dollars. They all do regular training at the mansion. Like Daredevil got ninja training and boxing training from his dad. Peter Berger had none of that. He did like one amateur wrestling match and then was a superhero. So this is him really understanding how strong he is for the first time and letting loose.
Yeah.
And it's just an iconic Spider Man moment that has been recreated again and again and again.
Yeah. And that panel is like still just as powerful every time you see it.
Yeah.
Just to add to this in case you didn't know about this ridiculous after Jason gave that incredibly good, sincere coherent answer, here is more of my chaotic facts about why this works, sure, so it happened. In the first issue of Amazing Spider Man, Peter goes to try and join this Fantastic Four because he needs a paycheck, right and they say no. But the issue I was actually thinking of is number one, what if Spider Man joined
the Fantastic Four where they say yes? And because of this, because they let him into the group because he is broke, Sue ends up leaving Reed to go and be with the submarner nay More and ends up like dating him and finding solace in his arms because she gets left behind him favor of Peter. So that is another oh shit moment. Peter joining the Fantastic Four because he's broke leads to Sue cheating on read just iconic stuff. I love that weird shit, And for me Spider Man, I'm
always just here to laugh about how he's broke. But yeah, those two moments are really great. Jason Joshua asks lots of discourse on how people are divided, on how they feel about how most of the Spider Force in across the Spider Verse react to the canon events and accepting that they need to happen. We'd love to hear Jason
and Rosy's thoughts on this. Is it acceptable or out of characters for the Spiders or do we just chalk it up to the right as poking fun at how the comics editor's office won't seem to let Peter grow.
I think what makes that movie so good is that everybody has a point.
Mm hmm.
That's why it's a great, great conflict. Like I think we all would disagree with Miguel Spiderman twenty.
Ninety nine's tactics.
Yeah, but I think it's also fair to say that keeping to the cannon in a multiverse sense has kept a lot of bad slash chaotic time stream events from happening like he's I think also clearly held the universe together. And to speak more to that, the Spider Force, the Spider Society, all of these Spider people that are helping the girl, they are all the heroes of their dimension and they look at McGall and go, this guy's right. So clearly there is something there that is worth doing.
And what's so perfect about the conflict is that from Miles's perspective, now knowing what the outcome is going to be, that's the thing that flips it. If you knew Uncle Ben or police captain close to Spider Man was going to die, you know, much like Uncle Ben's words. You know, then you have the responsibility to do something about it.
But looking from the you know, multiversal fifty thousand foot view where the hero doesn't know and the Spider society do know, and you're just letting events take their course.
Yeah, I think they have a point as well.
So I think that's why it's a great story is because you can see that both sides have an authentic perspective.
Yeah.
No, I absolutely agree with you.
And I think the other thing about it is it plays into that ultimate moral ethical question, which is like the good of the many versus the good of the few. Yeah, Like if you could save the life of your loved one, but it would kill an entire universe, what would you do? And that is the position that Miguel puts people in,
with the binary choice he's asking them to make. I also think Joshua makes a great point here where he says the thing about the writers kind of poking fun at how comics editors won't let Peter grow, you know, things like Peter can't stay married, but he can't get divorced, so he has to make a deal with Mephisto. I
think that Josh makes a great point. I don't necessarily know if it's poking fun at I think it is done in a tongue in cheap way, but I do think has Kemp Powers said on our show, I do think that it is a acknowledgement of how Canon can force writers and creatives and characters to be put through the same kind of stories again and again and again.
You know, we did a chat with Nick Kesh, yeah, talking about how the original Spider Man India was basically them redoing the Uncle Ben origin story, but in India with this new character Pav And that's really interesting because again somebody else has to die. Somebody else has to die.
So I think it's a really smart, cool way of building in a conversation with your audience as well as an interesting conflict that we're going to have conversations about this for years, because it does play into these big moral and ethical questions about being a hero and what
that really means. Nobody can say Miles is wrong, but you also can't say that the Spider Society doesn't have a point when you see what happens in Pav's universe where this you know, black hole into the multiverse opens up.
Nobody can say that. Jack w asks which Disney MCU care do you think will next appear in Tom Holan live action Spider Man movies and ek Spider Man four could be more street based, and since they tease Daredevil's run in No Way Home, it seems like the obvious choice any dark horses on your mind's rosy any thoughts. I think Jack is absolutely right, and I think the cash in our conversation is absolute right.
It's going to be more of a street level og experience Spider Man.
Yeah, I totally agree. My gut says, Look, this isn't fully MCU. But I also think we could see Miles. That's always been my thought about Spider Man four. You set it up so you have Peter as a street level hero, Spider Man gains more of that reputation, and near the end you meet Miles, and you set it up so that rather than Peter being dead, people just don't know Peter ever existed, and then you can have that mentorship. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a
little Miles cameo a live action Miles cameo. But I think you're right. I think any dead evil characters are up for play. I think that we could see someone like Kate Bishop Hawkay. I feel like that is a very natural space.
Oh, that would be cool.
And she didn't know Peter Parker before, so you can also establish a world where she does know him. Does the spell keep going though? Does any time anyone learns that he's Peter Parker they forget? I don't know if it's like an ongoing, like Invisible Life of Addie LaRue type spell, But I think a Kate Bishop Porkeye, someone young and fun could be like that Kamala and Peter.
That could be really great.
Oh that's a good one.
I would like to see it.
Also, we know that they like to take things from Miles's comic and kind of transplant them onto Tom Holland, and Miles and Kamala have an ongoing friendship, so those would be the ones. I think that street level vibe with maybe a few young kids. And let's be real, I mean, Kamala is only a like, she's not very far from New York City, so that to me really seems like the most obvious choice.
What about you, Gosh, taking a king from you. I think it can make a lot of sense to see that kingpin.
Oh god, I'd love to see it.
Kind of an examination of the underlying organized crime forces in New York City. I know that, you know, Born Again is probably going to delve into that greatly. We haven't really seen anything like that on the big screen. It's been kind of, you know, much much larger scale threats than that Venom has been teased. So what about some sort of symbiote battle.
Oh, I think you're right.
I think the Symbia suit could be a big call for four.
Yeah.
What if the Symbia crawls over some big, muscle bound guy who already has a problem with Peter Parker And now all of a sudden you've got a built in antagonist. And then we've done the Green Goblin. What about the hob Goblin? M what about the hob I.
Just want to say, I've talked about this a lot.
Yeah, but you know, there is a version of the world where a certain Ned.
Leads, and so I'm saying.
Is the Hobgoblin. I would love to see it.
I've talked to Jacob Alin about that before he plays Ned. I've said, like, is that something you would want to do? Imagine that friendship at torn apart, you know, Spider Man three style, the emotion, that would be extremely cool. Okay, what about this? What do you think the reality?
You know, something I.
Love about she Yock and that I loved about Hawkeye was that they reintroduced the dead evil characters in like a slightly new tone.
Yeah.
Do you imagine a world where we could see the MCU Netflix Punisher join the MCU again but in Spider Man.
I think we could see it mm hmm. But of course, you know, for one, the character has been, through no fault of anyone's politicized by the fact that the Thin Blue Line movement has co opted the Punisher skull as like one of their pieces of iconography. I feel like this iteration of Disney, or really any iteration of Disney would be like, we don't need it. It's not like he's a major well, I mean, the people that like
the Punisher, it's like a religion. Yeah, it's like licorice, you know, like, not a lot of people like the Punisher, but those who like it, like really really like it. And so I think that there's a way to do it you make the more of like a special forces guy and it maybe not so much like a vigilante.
He was just like guns people down. And they've done that in the comics A little bit X did that, and Civil War did that where it's like the Punisher was involved and all the heroes were like, this guy's working with this. This guy's like a fucking mass murderer. But the stuff that he did was kind of like splinter Cell type activities where he's like sneaking into the Baxter building and.
Stuff like that.
Mm hmmm.
So I think that there's a world in which they could do it, but I think they would have to necessarily tone it down. There's a guy in a country racked by gun violence.
Mm hmm.
Here is a guy who unapologetically just like guns mafia dudes down in their hundreds like all the time.
Yeah.
I actually just saw so John Burnhallpe is coming back in Dead Devil Born Again, So that could be our place where they reimagine him, because I feel like, if you're gonna put him back into the MCU, the version they did in the Marvel Netflix show.
Was so dark.
It was incredibly dark.
You're gonna have to put him in a Spandex costume and have him with like a paintball gun, Like you're really gonna have to go the other way with it.
And I will say I kind of liked it.
I get why they did it, but it doesn't fit into the Spider Man of it.
All that said, I think that there is a way because you know, again, like Maral, comics is made up of characters with different tones, like oftentimes when Frank Castle gets in a room with Spider Man or whoever, they're.
Just roasting the guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so I think that there is a world where he becomes, while still a very very dangerous individual, the butt of a lot of jokes.
Oh, that could be fun. I think that that is a really fun, interesting way to do it. You make him the butt of the jokes and you take away the seriousness that he's been afforded by certain groups. I think that could be very good. Chauncey asks, it's controversial, but I like it. Which was the better series, nineties X Men animated series or nineties Spider Man animated series.
I mean, listen, they're both really really good. But the nineties X Men was iconic, and part of it is that it had a great theme. It was taking incredible, already legendary arcs from the X Men comics and like boiling them down into really really punchy, half hour animated episodes. And it had so much more interpersonal drama because you have this big team of heroes. It was just better. And this is no shots to anybody who likes the animated Spider Man, because we're.
Fair and balanced here. I'm going to make the argument for the nineties Spider Man. I agree with everything you just said. I do believe that the X Men cartoon is iconic. I love the way that it takes those iconic classic arcs and truncates them and makes them accessible. I will say I do rewatch the Spider Man show more, and it is because of that same device that they use. You can watch that Spider Man show and you can
find out the origin of any supervillain. You want to find out what happened to Venom, you can watch that story on there. You want to see this character, you can do it in the tradition of Spider Man as well. Wow, there are so many good villains in that show, Like every out there weird villain is around. So I will say that's the underrated gem. But obviously X Men ninety two everybody knows it. There's a reason that's getting a sequel.
That shit's iconic. But Spider Man, I'm glad you brought up Chauncey because I don't think it gets the love it deserves.
Should we do a rewatch of the original nineties X Men animated series in preparation for the upcoming X Men animated series on Disney Plus?
Oh my god, Yes, And let's do Pride of the X Men two, you know, the one they made before.
Yeah, yeah, because that's like that shit.
I will tell you the real truth when you watch that. You gotta watch it after you watch ninety two, because ninety two doesn't hold up to Pride. Oh wow, Pride is actually like you want to see that story. You want to see that story? Okay, yeah, it's so good.
Ian asks, is the real hidden theme of our film that actual reality sucks ass because there's no Spider person in it. I think that might be to make it serious for a second, I think that part of the theme is that our reality actually success because they're you know,
what are these stories? Generally speaking? They are like incredible wish fulfillment where we want to live in a world in which people with tremendous power and tremendous resources, who are geniuses and are rich and are incredibly talented and powerful, don't just like sit up in their skyscraper penthouses and like a crew capital and like build bunkers on islands off the coast of New Zealand waiting for the apocalypse. They go out and they try and save the world.
We want that to be the case. It's clearly not the case in our world, but we want it to be. That's why these stories have so much staying power. That's why people still engage with them. That's why kids and adults and everybody are in a comic store anytime you walk in there. So, yeah, I think that you're right Ian in a certain kind of sense. You're correct.
Nothing well to add that was perfect. I totally agree up.
Next, return to the Omnibus to discuss Spider Man twenty ninety nine.
We've got exciting news.
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Welcome to another chapter in the Omnibus where lore, analysis and understanding come together. This week Miguel O'Hara Spider Man twenty ninety nine. Reboots and retcons are, of course a necessary part of serialized storytelling. That's particularly true in comics, right where you're trying to continuously engage a new audience. A new person whose next comics is their first comic.
Talked a lot about the Marvel's Ultimate Universe, the two thousand's era line of books featuring Marvel's most popular heroes in a modern setting. Miles Morales, of course, makes his first appearance in twenty eleven's Ultimate Universe, number four and offshoot of Marvel's Ultimate Spider Man. The Ultimate Universe has
been incredibly influential to all of the MCU properties. Fallout explored the repercussions of the shocking, tragic, and incredibly sorrow filled death of Peter Parker in the pages of Ultimate Spider Man. I won't spoil how and there's a long, long runway to get to that moment, but it's an
incredible moment in comic storytelling, and it also acts. Fallout does as a kind of like soft reboot itself, like a reboot of a retcon, essentially of the Ultimate Universe, but before Ultimate Marvel, way back in the nineties, there was Marvel twenty ninety nine. The twenty ninety nine initiative, if we can call it, that launched with four titles in the Year of Our Lord nineteen ninety two, Ravage
twenty ninety nine. Ravage was a new superhero, and really the marketing behind Ravage was that, Hey, stan Lee's got a new superhero, kids, and it's Ravage. You gotta love it. He is twenty ninety nine, his Ravage, stan Lee Excelsia. Do you know anything about Ravage? No, because nobody cares about Ravage anymore. This is also like they tried this in like I want to say, eighty six with Speedball and a bunch of new heroes too. Oh, Stanley's back
with a new hair on. He Speedball. He bounceles around like a Speedball. Doom twenty ninety nine, Victor Ron Doom in the Year twenty ninety nine. Punish Shirt twenty ninety nine. Because if there's one thing that's for sure now, and one hundred years in the future, there's gonna be dudes killing dudes with guns. And of course Spider Man twenty
ninety nine. Spider Man twenty ninety nine is the only one of those original four offerings that has any kind of staying power, has a real fan base of its own.
Now.
The tone, as you can kind of guess just by the selection here, was very very nineties, kind of proto nineties to what it became. This is pre all the pockets and all the belts and guns and stuff, but the weird hairstyles were there, and the violent grittiness which had kind of been developing over the course of the mid eighties into the nineties with the offerings of Frank Miller and others, was here to see.
Now.
The twenty ninety nine line didn't run all that line, like six years and change, seven years ish, but it acted as a launch pad for Miguel O'Hara aka Spider Man twenty ninety nine, who, as we have seen from across the Spider Verse and in other comics recent comic offerings, continues to be a character who is engaged with the stuff that's going on in story today and is a really fun character to explore. So how did Miguel O'Hara
get the Spider powers? Well, created by legends Peter David and Rick learn Ardi, Miguel's origin is kind of the most original non clone Spider Man origin. The rest of them are, you know, Miles got his powers in a very similar way to Peter Parker and the rest of the Spider Society same thing. They got bit by the radioactive Spider. Some of them are just straight off clones of Peter Parker. Not so with Miguel. Miguel is a
in the year twenty ninety nine. Is a brilliant genetic research brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, And you know where do you work if you're a brilliant genetic researcher, you work for the evil corporation alchem X, because I guess there's no other places than he could have possibly worked, but he decided to work at alcam X, and his work involved, you know, working on DNA, altering DNA, splicing different DNAs
together to create hybrids. One inspiration of Miguel's is a mysterious figure from the Heroic Age aka the late twentieth century spider Man. Just imagine he's telling his supervisor Aaron, think of what we could do with the proportional powers of a spider. This guy would be quote an ideal corporate raider, meaning like he could like climb into our competitors' buildings and steal files and stuff.
So maybe Miguel is.
Actually like at the right place, the exact right company for him to work out. Miguel is excited about his work, but he's getting a lot of pressure from Aaron, his supervisor, and from CEO Tyler Stone, who really want him to hurry up. We got to start human trials already with this research. And me Guy's like, no, it's too early. We're not ready to do human research. We can't go to human testing yet, and they're like wrong. I'm the CEO of this company, Tyler Stone, And guess what, I
already got a guy. His name is Sims. He is a prisoner, and in exchange for commuting his sentence, which I have somehow bargained for with I don't know the Justice Department or somebody, because I'm a fucking billionaire, I've made them agree that they will shorten his sentence if he will undergo your gene splicing process. Miguel is like, fuck, okay,
we'll do it. So they put him, you know, in the machinery and they splice him up in real time with the genes, and what bursts forth from the mechanized sarcophagus thingy is just like this melted horror. The origin story is clearly influenced by David Cronenberg's The fly By Blade Runner. All these kind of dark and mysterious and
shadowy and somewhat discomfitting like dystopian futuristic stories. Right, and Sims grabs Miguel around the neck after breaking his bonds and bursting out of the machinery, and before he can do too much damage, he just fucking drops dead because the process was extremely destructive to his body on a cellular level. And Aaron and CEO stal are like, fuck, yeah, that was fucking great. Look at that he broke out of all that metal and stone. He was tied down,
and this is awesome. And he goes like, what are you talking about?
This guy fucking died right away.
It's like yeah, but like in the five seconds before he died, he was super strong.
This is great. Let's keep going and Miguel is.
Like, no, I quit. He goes to the CEOs off was like, fuck this, I'm out. We just killed the guy. Like I can't, this is fucked up. Stone's like, I get it. You have a backbone, you have a moral compass.
That's great.
Here's a glass of wine. Have this glass of wine. It's not weird at all that we just watched a guy die. And now I'm offering you a glass which just drink the wine because all right. And so Miguel drinks the wine and immediately starts tripping balls. And that's because CEO Tyler Stone has slipped Rapture, a instantly addictive hallucinogen, into Mguel's wine. And why why would CEO Tylers don't do this?
Here's the reason.
Now you're fucking addicted to drugs and you're gonna need more.
And guess who makes rapture? Alchem X.
Why do they make this drug? No one fucking knows. It's like the Sacklers only if there was no medical use for this fucking drug. So ALCHEMX is the only people, the only corporation that makes this incredibly addictive, fucking street hallucinogen. And now Miguel is addicted to it, and if you want more, what do you have to do? You have to clock in and come back to work. Motherfucker. So Miguel home tripping, immediately attacks his girlfriend because he's hallucinating.
Then he kind of wears off a little bit, and he's what am.
I gonna do?
He tells his girlfriend everything and desperation, he figures, Okay, I'm gonna sneak back into my lab. I'm gonna put myself in the machinery, the other machinery that's not destroyed, right, I'm gonna splice my own clean DNA that I have, like in a computer bank somewhere into my currently addicted to rapture DNA, and I'm gonna cleanse myself. I'm gonna replace all my DNA and sells with original, clean Miguel cells. It's fucking brilliant. He goes in there. He's doing it. Well,
guess who's working late tonight, Aaron, the supervisor. Aaron walks in and sees mcguel in the machine AND's like, ohh, you don't wanna fucking push the human trials try to quit and all this stuff. I'm gonna kill you now would Aaron do this. If he understood that the CEO himself had just addicted Miguel to drugs in order to keep him working, he probably would not have done this, but he decided. He sabotages the machinery and just like because Miguel had earlier said, Hey, wouldn't it be great
if we like spliced someone with a spider. Wouldn't that be cool? He is like, watch this, I'm gonna spice you with a spider and he pulls up spider file on the computer. The machinery goes haywire and fucking explodes, but Miguel is like emerges like shaken, but he comes out of it, and Aaron's like, holy shit, you stroubed.
Not only did he.
Survive, he's got like white eyes, he's super strong. He's got like fucking claws in his hands and his feet, and he looks like a vampire with fangs and stuff. He tries to save Aaron's life, who almost like falls out of the building that goes sideways. An alchemic swat team arrives. Miguel is like, coh, this is too crazy. I'm gonna end it all. He jumps out of the
building as he's falling to his death. He's like, wait, wait, I don't want to die actually, and he reaches out and he grabs onto the side of the building and with his claws. This is how Spider Man twenty ninety nine climbs walls, his talents in his hands and feet, just goes sink right into the concrete and steal and he's able to scale the side of the building.
Now, superheroes from the heroic age in.
The twenty ninety nine universe had taken on kind of like a cult like mythology. There are people who are followers of all the Avengers and the Es Guardians. A Thorite who's basically a worships thor As like a cult figure, is flying random shit they have as in comics, is flying a hang glider across New York City dressed as thor doing thor stuff. When Miguel comes flying off the side of the building and jumps onto the paraglider and
they crash. But the Thorite actually gives Miguel a good bit of advice where he says, listen, Spider Man, you have to put on a mask. Spider Man is back. Spider Man was an ally of thor who I worship as a cult like figure. And you have to put on a mask now, because that's what Spider Man did. You have to hide your identity. And Miguel's like, that's actually, that's a good idea. So Stone then gets wind of Miguel's transformation, he hires like this cyborg to hunt him down.
By that time, Miguel has obtained a costume, the costume that we see in the movie that kind of very very nineties, slightly techno, kind of grungy, webbed under the arms costume. And this you would think, did Miguel make this out of unstable molecules? He does talk about, oh, I need unstable molecules now with my claws and stuff. No, this is a Day of the Dead costume that he
had just like in his closet somewhere. I guess they do Day of the Dead differently in twenty ninety nine and from there, Miguel of course defeats the cyborg with the help of the Asgardian cult followers, including the original Thorite and the legend of Miguel O'Hara. Spider Man twenty ninety nine is born. He is a spider but a lot of the weird parts of his power set, the fangs, the clause, et cetera, probably come from the interaction of the spider DNA plus the crazy crazy rapture drug that
was like circling around in his bloodstream. That, folks, is Miguel O'Hara Spider Man twenty ninety nine. Up next, Hive Mind with Spider Man India writer Nikesh Shukla.
Welcome to Hive Mind, where we explore a topic in more detail with an expert guest. This episode, we're thrilled to welcome Nikkesh Shukla, the writer of the brand new Spider Man India series for Marvel Comic and my friend Nikesh.
Thank you for joining us revision. Thank you, Nikesh, Thanks so much for having me.
Jason Hi, Rosie Hi.
So happy that you're here. My friend.
Before we get into the Spider Man of it all, how do you all know each other?
Well, there was like a moment in the London poetry scene where you'd go to gigs and you'd have me and Rosie and amazing people like Musa Rock Gwango and Chimensu Leiman. Oh Wow, Beadles have Ed Sheeran and Sabrina, Mattheus, and Ahmed. Yeah, there are other people who ended up being massive as well. Wills and I think was around at the time as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we just became firm friends being the only two people who liked.
Comic books basically yeah.
And meant it. Yeah, because we actually went to the comic bookshop and bought comic books and now we're here.
What a journey and now we're here.
Yeah.
Have you seen Spider Verse? I have your thoughts on Spider Man India.
My global thoughts on Spider Verse is going into it. Into the Spider Verse is a top ten movie for me of.
All time, absolutely no question.
So you're already going in going the bar is very very high. Yes, And I fucking loved it. I absolutely loved it.
It's unbelievable.
Two hours twenty minutes went by very quickly. I even sat through the credits when they flipped from the good credits to the weird the screen has slightly broken and you've got that purple hue credits. I just thought it was brilliant. Spider Man India was a lot of fun. Spider Punk was awesome. When Daniel Khala shouted man like Miles. I wanted to jump up in my seat and go.
Yeah, yes, bruh, yeah, I screamed.
It was so perfect.
Okay, let's talk more about before we get to you writing Spider Man India and stuff. What's your origin story with comics, like with Spider Man in particular and comics, which I know for you is like really intertwined.
Yeah. So, when I was six years old, I went to India for an extended period of time, and my cousins, who are all a lot older than me, they were all reading Archie comics and they all felt that a six year old probably didn't need to learn about jeloppies and double dates and and all the rest of it, probably too young to understand, you know, weird innuendos about
making out and stuff. So they bought me a Spider Man comic and a Batman comic, and that Spider Man comic was just the one that I re read and reread and reread for the entire time I was there. I just absolutely fell in love with that comic. So weirdly,
my comics journey started in India. And then in the mid nineties, me and my best friend Janade, we used to go to the comic shop every week and we would sit at the back of the comic shop and read all of the comics for free, and then whatever little money we had we would buy all those number ones, all those Yeah it was a mid nineties, so all those foil variant covers, and we were like, this is it. This is how we're going to make our fortune.
We're going to buy a house.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, this is how we make our fortune. And we never did. And then years later, when I thought I was the only person left in my friendship with reading comic books, I started going to Orbital Comics in London, which Rosie was later worked out when they moved locations.
I did.
But when it was in the original top of Totta Cook Road location basement, Yeah, in the basement it was me and in Ellam's the poet. We used to sit in there and read comics at the back. Turns out, twenty years after the fact, I was still a cheap.
Skape thinking of those foil variant years and the collectible comic and the bag. Did you ever come up with this is my problem? Did you ever come up with a solution to getting the comic home without bending the pages. This was the issue I had coming from the shop with the super collectible comic. I thought that I had saved all my money for.
It's in the bag.
It's got the little extra sheet, it's got the little sticker pack, it's got.
The foil thing.
But how do you get it home on a bicycle in a backpack without bending the corners?
How do you do it? How did you do it?
Jason? Please don't let me tell the story because I'm going to lose so many cool creds.
Oh my gosh, Please tell us now, you have to tell.
Us we had a briefcase.
That's cool, that's a good idea.
That's like you're in pulp fiction, like the goal is yellowing when you put the hologram covers in there.
No, you're putting twenty twenty three nostalgia onto the eighties briefcase that I was still using in the early nineties and the early nineties. That made me a preg and in the midnight when all this was happening, it made me somewhat of an odd ball Mede. We'd have the briefcase. It had all of the comics in the main cabin. Yeah, I don't know what.
The compartment the first class comic book cabin in the suitcase.
Yeah, and because we were teenage boys, you lifted up the compartment for the secret compartment and there was some naughty magazines.
That was the most important briefcase in the world.
I know exactly. Like I don't think my dad is going to listen to this podcast. Sorry, guys, I don't think he listens. Story vision.
It's all right, heartbroken.
So I feel like I can get away with confessing.
That, Wow, who could have ever known there would have been such a good, unique story. Yeah, So sticking to that nineties kind of like because we don't really get to talk about these crazy speculation boom times. Do you remember like this single comic that you bought, you were like, this is the one, Like I remember getting Sporn number one. Like when I got a copy of that, I was like, I'm gonna be rich. I didn't know they printed like five million copies of it.
It was a comic called Legionnaires. Oh yeah, I don't think it lasted more than ten issues. And then we upsold that so we could buy profit issue for which had the misprint in it. And that was the one where we were like this is the one, guys, this is the one we lived in a pre eBay world. What we were going to do just I was going to say the end of that story, and then I was like, dude, you already tell them about the briefcase.
You're like, the briefcase has already come up, Guys.
Don't tell them that you kept meaning to go to the various cons and sell profit issue for but you couldn't afford the drain fare.
That's relatable.
Much like Spider Man, he was always broke.
I never even went to a proper comic book convention till I moved to America. They have an English comic convention MCM, but I went there like once or twice, and it was mostly just like because I could get there on the tube.
The ones we went to, it was basically a bunch of people like us trying to sell things, trying to buy their house, and no one to buy because we just didn't realize that all of those comics were in abundance at the time.
So how did you find yourself writing Spider Man?
Because of the wonderful Jamie McKelvey basically icon on Twitter for years, I would just try and manifest that I wanted to write a Spider Man because like, I've had a long and varied career writing novels, working on TV shows and stuff, and I feel like I've done everything
that I wanted to do. And then a couple of years ago, I turned down a major award in the UK called an MBE because it stands for Member of the British Empire, and I was like, I don't really want those letters after my name, and so when I did that, I kind of felt like maybe I should try and do something for myself. So one day I just wrote on Twitter one day, I want to write
a Spider Man comic. I still filed it as you know when you're a kid and you're like, I want to be a fireman, I want to be a traffic warden, I want to be an astronaut. I want to write comic books. It still felt like one of those careers. And Jamie McKelvey, I think he still follows me. Yeah, he follows me on what a way to find out? Yeah, Jamie just DMed me and said, do you want me to introduce you to some people in Marvel if you're serious?
And I was like, yeah, I'm serious. Sure In that way that like someone has just gone, oh, you know that pipe dream you have, I can definitely make it a reality if you want, And then you suddenly freak out because you're like, oh God, I've actually got to try and do this properly. So Jamie put me in
touch with the people at Marvel. It was the pandemic times, so you know, they were busy trying to get comic books out and they had I was one of probably many people going hey, can I write a Spider Man comic? And I was starting to feel like maybe I should just pitch them something properly rather than just going, hey, can we have a chat and we can fling some ideas around. Let me just go in with a pitch.
And around the time I had that realization, that first teaser trailer for Across the Spider Verse came out and I was talking to Rosie about it. I think you guys even discussed it on the podcast at the time, but there's a moment where it kind of you hear a tablet on it and I thought, oh, I wonder if Puvito Probacco is going to be in this, that would be pretty cool. And then I thought, why has there not been another mini series since the original one
that came out in two thousand and five. He's such a fun character and actually, whenever he's cropped up in all the Spider Versal adventures, he's always sort of in the background. He gets a call action shot, maybe a couple of quips, but we don't really actually know much about him. They haven't explored enough about him. Fuck it, I'm going to pitch Spider Man India. So I wrote them an idea, send it through, and they came back
and said, you know what. Funnily enough, we were thinking about doing another mini series and I don't know if you know this, but he's going to be in the next across the Spider Verse, and so that's yeah, that's
pretty much how it happened. Yeah, I got to write a new Spider Man and I got to like put my own stamp on it, which was the fun thing because there wasn't much about Bubvito that was sort of cannon and I hadn't seen the movie and read the script or anything, so I've got to just do what I wanted to do, which was great.
So, like for people who haven't read that two thousand and five mini series, which I'm sure has been reprinted and is probably available to buy seeing as the movie is out. Who is pav Like, what's the story of Spider Man India?
Correct me if I'm wrong, Rosie, I'm sure you will. He was one of the first sort of multiversal spiders to exist. I mean, it wasn't sort of clarified until later on that he was what earth he was in. Yeah, but that first forest you ark is very much like a retelling of the Spider Man origin story, with the death of Uncle Ben uncle be him in this case, and the introduction of like an Indian demon who is the Green Goblin and a doctor Octopus type villain. Yeah,
it's pretty much an origin story. That's pretty much it, and it's fun and it's interesting, like recontextualizing Spider Man and that iconic sort of New York skyline to somewhere like Bombay, which is you know, the skyline is very was very different in twenty and five, and in twenty twenty three is even more different because you know, there are so many more high rises now they were springing
up then. So yeah, that was pretty much it. It was very much like a retelling of the origin story and sort of remixing it with sort of Indian mysticism and bits of Hinduism and just imbuing it with like Spider Man isn't bitten by radioactive Spider He's sort of chosen and given this sort of mystical power.
I was reading through a bunch of your interviews and there's a quote in one of them that jumped out at me. You said, you know, telling I think the story that you told us about your comics origin story that reading Spider Man made you feel less alone. Could you explain that?
Yeah, like the character of Peter Parker and to an exten Miles Morales, they're both such brilliant teenagers. They've got the weight of the world on their shoulders, They've got everything against them. They are so racked with guilt and shame, which as the child of immigrant parents, I grew up racked with guilt and shame all the time. And so whenever I read those comics, I just like, this superhero kid got me because he put on a mask to
become his cocky, most powerful best. And so there was always this interesting thing of like, who is the real person Spider Man or Peter Parker? You know, that whole thing that's exploreding Issue thirty one, the sort of the duality of the selves, and it just really resonated with me. I think it's really hard to nail writing teenagers, and writing teenagers who feel like the world is against them, but also make them fun. That's the thing about Spider Man.
He's a fun character. Theirs, even when they get dark, even when they get heavy, they're still fun. There's still a lightness to them that you don't often get all that the balance is always off in other books.
I think, what's it like for you then, to come from loving Spider Man Peter Parker and that being such an influential kind of story in your life, to then getting to reintroduce readers to pav and to this, like you said, a story that hasn't been seen for almost twenty years, and to just get to kind of go wild and put your own stamp on it.
I'm not gonna lie. The expectation of it was terrifying.
Yeah, I feel you.
I feel you, not just of like anyone else reading it, but like I'm still a reader, I'm still a comic book reader, so like it had to be something that I would read first and foremost and One of the things that I really loved about the end Beats of No Way Home was we get a street level Spidery back, and the first half of Homecoming when he is street level Spidy. That is my favorite Spider Man. I love writing that Spider Man, and that's what I decided to
do with Pav. I just wanted to root him in his city and sort of make that background, that new setting just really feel like it's a character as much as he is. What was really fun was I got to write a small introductory like cold open adventure with Peter Parker and Mars Rylis Wow, which sets up the book, which is like absolute dream come true. And then you just roote him back in five oh one oh one in that Bombay where he is the only Spider Man.
So Spider Man India. It's kind of a weird title, just saying I did a short backup story in Edge of Spider Verse last year called average reluctant teenage Superhero where he basically sort of questions the concept of him being called Spider Man India.
It's very good, Go and read it.
This comic book does well. Hopefully I'll get to bring him back or someone else will get to bring him back and we can kind of have that conversation about you know, him being not an Indian Spider Man, but being the Spider Man of verse five h one oh one. But yeah, writing a street level Spidery, I'm going to confess something here. When I was workshopping the idea of what my Spider Man story was gonna be, I workshopped it with a certain Rosie Night.
I was me.
Who was very very helpful. I had loads of thoughts. Nick Burno really helped me out with some thoughts and just to help me frame what I wanted to do, because my thing was I want him to be on the ground. I want him to be doing community based stuff. And that whole thing of like, with great power comes great responsibility is wonderful. It's like it's obviously set the tone for you know, all of Spider Man Cannon, but the thing that it has the potential to be is
feel quite individualistic. And so when you have a street level hero who stands up for community, you kind of have to talk about what that community means to him and what he means to that community. And so I thought about the idea of this thing called Seva which is like this Hindu thing of like selfless community service, which to me like when one has great power and great responsibility and one decides to be a mass superhero,
they might do selfless community service. And so the book's called Seva and it's basically about you know, it's that classic Why am I doing this storyline? But with some core fights and stuff.
I wanted to go back to something you were talking about. You've written in a lot of different kinds of mediums. You've done journalism, you've written novels, you've written criticisms, you've written comic books. How do you because I'm sure there's a lot of people that listen to this that either want to create something or want to write something, want in some fashion put something in the world that is going to require them asking someone to let them do it.
What is your process for pitching something like you got to pitch Marvel Comics.
How do you go about it? What do you do?
It just kind of has some famous friends, Jason, right.
The terrible, the terrible truth comes out.
That really does help. Let's admit it, Yeah.
It does help. I do honestly think that when people pitch, they often pitch the wrong way round. They pitch what they think the magazine or the publisher or the comic book editor wants, or what they think that the audience wants, rather than the story that they want to tell. The very earnest way to say this is you could write anything. You know, we're all in the imagination business. Like, we
can make anything happen. We can make a meteorite crash towards Earth and the only people who can save humanity a ragtag group of industrial drillers. Or we can have a boy and a girl falling in out of love over three years at a prestigious Dublin college. Or we can have humanity try and put itself back together by watching a Shakespeare play following a global pandemic. I don't know,
Like you know, we can do absolutely anything. So the thing that you kind of have to do when you're pitching is go, what is my unique take on this world? What is the one thing that I want to say? Because your idea is your unique perspective, the perspective that you have, that's your currency. Ultimately, those editors and Marvel have seen every single person try and imitate stan Lee.
They've seen everyone try and imitate Tom McFarland. They've seen everyone trying to imitate all of the great They've seen all of that. So what do you want to say? When I was workshopping what I wanted to do with Rosie and a bunch of other friends, Like, the thing that I kept coming back to is what's the story I want to tell. I want to tell a street level spidery story. I want to tell a story that's about the pull between hustler culture, individualism, and standing up
for your community. I want to tell a story that's about gentrification. I want to tell a story about Andrew Tate that got softened a little in the editorial process because it turns out I was trying to say a lot in five issues, so you know, we can come back to that. So I guess that's my best advice. Before you go out and get yourself a famous friend, work out what you want to say first.
And when it came to writing this comic, like, was there something.
Process wise that surprised you?
Because you read comics your whole life, But when you read a book and when you write a book, the thing that you write, your manuscript looks a lot like the published book. When you write a TV show that is different, but you hear the words that you write on the page and you see the people doing the things you describe. When you write a script for a comic book, it essentially transforms completely when the artist gets
their hands on it. So what was the process like of kind of getting comfortable with writing comics.
Writing comics and working on TV shows are so collaborative, and when you've spent so long being the sole oteur writer, writing the literary great all by yourself, it becomes quite hard to work out the pie chart of collaboration. So working with Abishek Munsoni on this the artist, and working with the letters and the inkers and the colorizers, you can tell I've got the technical terms.
Down, everyone's favorite colorizers.
Color colorizers. It was really interesting because you know, there's a lot of collaboration going on, you know, between me and Ubbushek and the editors, and the way that the letterer might put everything in might make you review, like whether the panel just says it, or whether you need the dialogue, whether there's dialogue missing, whether dialogue just sort of is saying what's already happening in the panel. The whole thing is very iterative, and it's very flexible, and
it's very emergent, and I really love that. Like today, I've been working on the script for issue three, which I turned in like back in se Tember. But now that all the artwork's done and it's been inked, there's new stuff that I'm finding, and there's new stuff that I'm able to kind of push on. And actually having written the script for issue five, like a couple of weeks ago, I now know where this is heading, so I can you know, this is the midpoint issue. So
it is very iterative. But one hoping to do when that first issue dropped is go back to the first script that I wrote, the first draft of it, because I started writing the script not realizing that it would be helpful for me to draw out some pages with some stick figures and all the rest of it, and then write the script to that and then hand that script into the artist, and then talk with the artist about what I was hoping for and then give them like a visual palette from which to pull from and
all the rest of it. I hope I can show that journey, because that journey was really fun for me, Like I've never worked like that.
Before What did you think of Spiderman's costume in Across the Spider Verse.
I thought it was great when it first came out. It looked very specifically like there's a Bollywood actor called Mithun Chukra Buddy who in the eighties or nineties, there was a very famous film called Disco Dancer.
Oh, I love that movie.
I am a Discord Dancers.
Add you on Netflix. That's how I discovered it.
It's great Jimmy samples one of the songs in that. I thought the look was very sort of inspired by that era of Bollywood, and it's obviously so different from what I was working with. Yeah, and so it's interesting now sort of seeing what they've done with pav and also listening to Kemp on the pod last week talk about how the film is basically a warning shot across the bowels of Cannon. Yeah, I was watching it going, oh God, do I have to go back to the
drawing board. But actually, like my path and the path that's in the film, they come from the same essence, but you know, they are different characters. I don't want to ruin it too much, but there might be a meeting of minds when it comes to that outfit at some point.
Oh wonderful.
I haven't spoiled it too much. I hope my editors of Marvel don't mind me saying that.
I think that's a wonderful tease that a lot of people have been wondering about since the film.
And absolutely great teas.
Yeah.
And you know, for me, PEVs costume in the film is a revelation because my personal theory up until that point was that open top masks don't work. I don't like when the hair comes out the top, whether it's Hank Pim as Goliath. You can go on and on the number of times people have tried a hawkeye. I've never seen it work until pav Across the Spider Verse is the first time I was like, that works, that looks good.
It's because it's Bollywood hair.
Yeah, dream hair.
It's almost like, you know, Bollywood is famed for loads of slow motion shots of like people whipping their hair across their across their perfectly chiseled faces, and it just it just made me think when I was watching it, I wonder if they like slowed the frame rate of like the way his hair moves, and then put it back up to normal speed. Almost like time stretching his hair because it looks amazing.
I would believe it because I did learn this week thanks to all the other Hoby Brown fans out there, that they animated Hobie on that his body was animated on his on the threes, but his outline were always animated on the twos, and they had to create an entirely new animation device to do that. So I think that you're right about the hair.
I could absolutely see that.
Also, what I loved the way that Pav got to be He is like the carefree, non depressed, charming, everything goes right Spider Man. That feels very different than anything we've seen of any Spider Man. So did you like that kind of reinterpretation?
Yeah, I loved it. I'm really glad that he got to be happy, go lucky and just seemed like he was having a whale of the time because obviously a lot of the Spider society is having a miserable I've
had loads of messages from people in recent weeks. They know I'm writing a Spider Man Indian comic book, but I think they sometimes don't know the difference between a comic book and an animated film because this isn't a spoiler, but there's a couple of lines in it where he talks about chi t means te te and non bread means bread, bread and stuff. And I wrote an essay in a in a book that sort of blew up in a big way called The Good Immigrant, which sort of pokes fun at all of that sort of stuff.
And you know, it's not like it's an original thought, like people have said it. Those of people have said it over the years, but it's such a well worn diaspora complaint that obviously it would shut up in a Spider Man. But like, I've had lots of people go, I love those lines you wrote for that Spider Man. I was like, that's not sadly, that's that's not me.
Maybe the next movie maybe maybe and beyond.
Yeah, oh well, where can people find you? Where?
Can where can people find your stuff? Are you posting out there? Where on the internet? Can people find your material?
Yeah?
I'm so glad you said on the internet, because I was going to say, if you want to find me at my house, please don't. I'm a very private person, guys. Yeah, I'm at Nick Schukler writer on Instagram. I'm at Nick Schukla on Twitter. If that's still a thing by the time.
This appears to be still a thing today, who knows the tomorrow or in the future.
Yeah and yeah. Spider Man India Issue one is out fourteenth of June, and I've just hope you know, mind me plug And I've just had a new YA book come out called stand Up, which is a fun, fun, little, fun little story about about a young kid who wants to be a stand up comedian. And also how you should never meet heroes because they are always disappointing.
Important lessons, important life lesson.
Important life lessons to bum out. All of the teenagers who now are going to listen to this and go I need a famous friend. And I've read a book basically mitigating that, going don't find a thing. It will be terrible, exactly.
The ad Spider Man India through your pull list.
Who knows, maybe one day we'll just get a main title Spider Man and it will be about pav We can dream.
Yeah, buve do Probacus Spider Man. That's what I want to go for.
I think that's really cool.
Yeah, yeah, thanks so much for having me guys. I'm a big fan of the podcast. I love I've always loved your work, Jason and Rosie. You are one of my favorite people in the whole world.
Ah, thank you so much, so happy you can be here, and so excited for everyone to read this book. Also, the Edge of the Spider Verse story is like illustrated by.
Non Stop Bangers.
It was Nickash's first ever comic, so go out and finding a copy, Niggas's first ever comic, and it was like some of the artists who worked on his stories, like Mark Bagley, Adam Cuber like only the most famous Spider Man artists of all time on his first ever comic.
I mean, Adam Cuber has done all of my covers. It's absolutely crazy, so I cannot believe it. So please please buy the book. This has been so much fun. I want to do more. And also I'm just putting I'm just going to manifest this now. I really want to write a Dared Devil.
Love it. That's the next.
Yeah, I love Dared Devil. I feel like Dared Devil is consistently.
Yes, that is the correct opinion.
It has for forty ish years been mostly very very very good.
Maybe this okay, this is going to be outrageous Okay, let's take X Men out of the equation. But maybe the book without X Men, maybe the single superhero who has the most like iconic runs that you can just bring up because you have like Born Again, you have the Charles Sewell run. Zadarski just did a run that's already been seen as in the modern classic.
You've got the Bend this run.
You've got so many different people who've taken on that character, and each of those trades people will be buying them for like a really long I've.
Got them all. I've got here.
I've got like six omnibuses Bending the shelf online, my bookshelf. I think it's for this reason, now that we've been derailed, I'll say this is my theory, and you tell me whether you agree or disagree. It's one Daredevil has been mostly held aside from big events. He's in his own little world, running street level. He doesn't have to punch Thanos or anything. You know, it's not fucking around with the beyonder when you know world dimensional interactions happen. He's
really not involved in that. He's just like, hey, I'm keeping the streets of Hell's Kitchen clean.
That's it.
And then two that's the place where they put like the up and coming, really really good comics writer. Often it will put them there and say okay, let's see what you got, and then they.
Just turn out to always deliver.
Oh it sounds sound like that would be a good place for you.
I think you're right, Jason, up and coming new comic writer who needs to show that he can deliver.
It's time. I'm ready and he do.
He's written, he's written several several well regarded novels. He's already writing comics. But can he do it this time? Can he do it again?
Can he.
Turn He's turned out an m b E.
Who is this guy?
To be continued?
Just because you said you could write there, devil nick case doesn't mean you should look call me Marvel. You know where I live. Actually, Marvel, you can come over.
Marvel's the only people who turn up.
Well, thanks so much for joining.
Us, Thank you so much for having me.
Big thank you to Nikesha. And that's it for us. Rosie any plugs, Yes, you.
Can find me as always Rosie marks on Instagram and letterbox. I'm here twice a week and on Saturday, tenth of June I will be at Universal City Walk doing a signing for my Godzilla comic with Nick Marino, and we will be at T four, which is Things from Another World, a really fun comic shop owned by dark Horse Comics. So if you're in the Valley, if you've never come down to the South Bay for any of our signings, you can find us there. Also, if you're in the SGV,
you can go to Nostalgia Comics. We did a really fun Spider Verse inspired our exhibition, and I did a big piece of Hobie Brown. So spider Punk Forever.
X ray Vision is taking a week off for many similar vacations. There'll be no episodes next week on either June fourteenth or sixteenth. We'll be back rested and ready with more deep dives and theories on June twenty.
First subscribe on YouTube so you can keep up with us while you miss us. While we're on vacation. You can watch full episodes of the show.
There, and if you check out our discord, you.
Can hang out with loads of cool fans who love all the same stuff as you, same stuff as us.
I'm with us sometimes too.
Five star ratings, five star reviews, We need them.
You gotta give it to us.
Here's one from Naroho forty four, best pot out there. This pod, which has allowed me to fully embrace my Internet, has become my favorite to listen to by far. Jason and Rosie seem like genuinely great people. Well, thank you, thank you, and they cover all the movies and shows I watch, providing great fan level deep dives. They've also helped me rediscover my lovel comics and graphic novels. I
appreciate their suggestions for additional reading, viewing, and listening. Thank you so much, Narojo forty four, See you next time.
X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production.
The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rumin and executive produced by me Jason Concepcion. Our editing at sound design is by Facillis Fatopoulos. Video production by Delon Villanueva and Rachel Gaieski. Social media by Awa Oklatti and Caroline Dunfe. Thank you to Brian Basquez for our theme music.