Warning, we're gonna be talking about Eternals today. This movie just came out. Have you seen Eternals? If the answer is no, stop right now, what are you doing? You cannot listen to this because we're gonna spoil the entire movie, the first credit scene and the second credit scene, and lots of other shit I wanna do. Hello, my name is Jason Concepcion. Welcome to episode eleven of X Ray Vision. We're gonna count them all the way up and see
how far we get. This is the Crooked Podcast where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture in general. On today's Previously on we will talk about the Marvel film each Journals, out now in theaters near you. We'll dive into the film with the help of co host Rosie Knight. I will explore the worlds and work of the celebrated comics creator Jack Kirby. And then we will talk to Abraham Riasman, great comics journalist, and talk about Jack Kirby and a creator writes with
regards to the comics industry in general. But first, let's recap Marvel's Eternals, which is a film.
We're Tournals we came here seven thousand years ago.
To protect humans from the Deviants.
Okay, So I saw the movie for a second time last night, and I took notes on my phone as best I could, trying to do so surreptitiously in a way that would not get me kicked out of the theater for, you know, being suspected of videotaping the movie. So bear with me, and I hope that these are right. And also, if you haven't seen the movie yet, obviously probably wait on this because I'm gonna spoil a bunch
of stuff that happens. Okay, So we open with a title card that tells us about the Eternals and tells us about the Deviants, and tells us of how those two creatures, two species, were created by the Celestials, the giant space gods which you have learned about in movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy and others. The Celestials created the Deviants to hunt intelligent life, but something went wrong, and so they needed to create the Eternals, who are
these immortal superheroes to basically kill off the Deviants. We opened five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and there is there are some villagers. They're fishing by the shore, and then all of a sudden, deviant comes out of the water and eats this kid's dad and he's like, son, get the fuck out of here. And just as the devian is about to eat the boy, the Eternal show up and they just start whooping major ass. Present day, we meet Circe played by Jemma Chan and Dane Whitman
played by Kit Harrington. Kit Harrington has to say the name Circe lovingly multiple times in this movie, and it's pretty funny, but maybe not consciously funny. Maybe they didn't know that it was actually funny. Anyway. They're teachers, they're dating. Circe teaches some kind of art class, and there's like this major earthquake across the globe, across the globe, like a five point something or to six I would estimate from just like seeing it, And we see that Circe
has the power to change matter into other matters. She turns like a large piece of art stone art into just sand and saves a child's life. Later on, while Circe and Dane Whitman are just kind of like walking around enjoying the town, a deviant shows up and comes out of the would I would guess is the River Thames, but I'm not sure and attacks. We meet another eternal named Sprite, who who is played by Leah mq. Sprite can apparently create illusions and with the help of Icarus
played by Richard Madden. Yes, that's right. This movie has both two heirs to the Stark throne and both of them have to say circe numerous times. Icarus shows up and he is very powerful, basically like an eternal superman, and with his help they fight off the deviant. They then decide, gosh, something is going on here. What with the earthquake that shook the entire globe. That's a clue. Plus the deviants. We thought we had taken care of that,
but guess what, they're back. We need to contact the other eternals because apparently, after thousands of years of fighting deviants, once that was accomplished, all these turnals had gone their separate ways separate ways, so they go to find Ajak, who is their leader played by us the wonderful Somahayak. They arrive at Ajax like Dorothy farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, and the unfortunately Ajack has been killed. They think, right, it's gotta be because the Devians are back.
The Devians killed Ajak.
That's what everybody thinks, and everybody's very sad about it. They go around and find other eternals. Where are the rest of the eternals? We meet Kingo played by Kumille Nanjohnny, the Eternal King Goo. He can shoot beams of energy from his fingers and hands, and he is a Bollywood actor, and he has been undercover as a Bollywood actor, playing basically like four generations of a Bollywood actor, pretending to
be his own great grandfather, grandfather father. Let's go to you know, somewhere in the outback and there they find Theena and Gilgamesh played by Angelina Julie and Don Lee respectively. They are in some kind of relationship that's a little hard to discern, clearly a warm and loving one, a romantic relationship, a very close platonic relationship, unclear, whatever the case. Theena is experiencing some kind of like memory problems and she will go in and out of funks.
And then we meet.
Druid played by Barry Kyogan.
He is like a professor X.
He can take over people's minds, implant implant thoughts, make people do as he wishes. He's living in the rainforest in you know what I would describe as the kind of place that like Nazis probably went to go hide after World War Two, and Druig is running this utopian kind of like farm in the middle of the rainforest. And it's a little troubling the way Druig is just extremely comfortable with taking over people's minds. Later we find Fastos played by Brian Tyree Henry, and he's wonderful and
his husband. They live with their child somewhere in the US, I think outside of Chicago, and Fastos has the power to create technology, but he doesn't want to do anything anymore. He doesn't want to help anymore because he's got his kid and he's got his husband and they're very much in love and they don't want to do shit anymore. Also spoiler, Fastos also was instrumental apparently in creating the atomic bomb that was then detonated over Hiroshima and Nick Nagasaki.
And so he's just kind of like.
You know what, I don't want to do technology stuff anymore. They go back to the Eternals, go back to their ship, and there they find the speedster McCary played by Lauren Ridloff, who is our first deaf superhero in the MCU. So maccary's just been living on the ship all these years and like stealing art and stuff because she can run extremely fast.
She's just been chilling out, I should add.
In a scene that has haunted me ever since I saw this movie earlier, in Bagdad, like around I want to say, like five hundred BC, McCary again, who is deaf, is communicating using sign language, and she makes the sign for time, which is which she signs by tapping her wrist like a wristwatch. Wristwatches would not be invented for another two thousand years or something that has haunted me.
Around about the time that McCary makes the extremely anachronistic sign for time, we get the very very first sex scene on camera in an MCU movie. Of course, we understand that Steve Rogers and Natalia Romanov fucked many, many many times off off screen, at least in my head canon. In Captain American Winter Soldier, the vibes are very clear
they fucked a lot. But in Baghdad around five hundred BC, the first on camera sex scene happens in which Icarus and Circe just pounded out on the sands in Mesopotamia blows that back out. Circe played by Gemma Chan not feeling at all. No orgasm has been had, so we're still waiting for that pivotal moment in MCU history.
Just sex, very very tame.
Later, Circe learns that the celestials have been keeping a secret from them over They've been over the years communicating with a celestial who's been giving them their missions.
It hasn't happened for some time.
Ajac usually was the one who would take care of that, but now Circe is able to do it, and she learns that actually Earth, planet Earth, is like an egg for a baby celestial, and that intelligent life feeds the celestial in the egg and allows it to grow, and then eventually the celestial hatches from the egg being planet Earth, killing everything on the planet, and then the celestial goes
off and lives its life. Circe is like, we can't let this happen because for various reasons, namely that it would kill the billions of people that live on this planet, and we should probably not do that. So they go off and they try to figure out a way to stop it, but they find out that Icarus actually wants it to happen.
In fact, he was the.
One that killed the Ajac, and now they have to fight him while also fighting the deviants who are evolving into higher forms of deviants, while also stopping the celestial from hatching out of the earth egg. They do manage to stop this by joining together in something called a unimnd, which Fastos figures out that they can do if they all kind of like bond together with their energies, they can create this uni mind that does something and then circe.
Because of earlier fight with the deviants over in Druig's village, she had managed to turn a deviant like into a tree. She's not sure how, but she thinks, maybe if I do something similar with the celestial, I can stop the celestial hatching by like touching it and turning it into something.
She does this, and she turns it into like.
A huge rock, like a big there's just like a celestial popping part way out of the ocean. Now, readers of Marvel comics will probably think of the Avengers headquarters the most recent Avengers headquarters, which is the kind of
like corpse of a celestial that is half frozen. Icarus, in what can only be described as the most on the nose scene in movie history, flies into the sun because he has failed to stop the his colleagues, his friends, the Eternals, from stopping from stopping the celestial from hatching. Disgusted with all of this, he goes and flies.
Into the sun.
His name is Icarus, and he goes into the sun. Circe is able to make Sprite, who is in the form of a child, into a regular person that will now age and is no longer immortal like the rest of the Eternals, and then we get our credit scenes. Credit scene number one, Dane Whitman is hearing a voice.
He goes to a very very old looking case which has very like old inscriptions on it, and he opens it and he pulls out a sword which is the Emony Blade, which was introduced earlier in the film when we meet McCary on the Eternal Ship and being bamboom, we realize this is Dane Whitman, the Black Knight from Marvel Comics, a member of the Avengers and other teams, just as he is gazing upon this sword. We hear the voice of maherschel Ali, who plays Blade. We're back
on the eternal ship. There is a flash of light. Some figures have teleported onto the ship. It is Pit Patrol voiced by the very funny Patton Oswald and Eros aka Starfox, the brother of Thanos from Titan played by Harry Styles.
And that was a thing that happened.
By the way, this kind of, I guess confirms that Thanos is an eternal. In the comics, Thanos is like an eternal with like deviant mutations. Eros slash star Fox also is an eternal, and I guess this kind of proves that Thanos is a eternal Slash TV And that's our movie, folks. Currently Rotten Tomatoes score forty nine percent critics score and seeming to be trending down. The audience score is just in as that the movie has just
opened eighty six percent initial audience score. This is the at this point lowest rated Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Let's get a overview of some representative reviews Mick Leasal and the SF Chronicle. It takes a special kind of movie anti magic to make an entire audience in different to the potential destruction of Earth and every living thing on it, Eternal manages it, Dana Stevens and Slat Eternals is as sociologically inconclusive and as picturely beautiful as any
movie in the franchise. Was Seen after Seen, bathed in the warm light of Jao's favorite time of day, the pre dust Golden Hour. But it is also one of the weakest Marvel movies I've seen meandering and Wan shots. Using Wan in a review, I would add that Icarus and Icarus and Circe's love scene also takes place in that pre dust Golden Hour. Shirley Lee in the Atlantic in shot after shot show Mind's a quiet and poignant humanity from her characters.
I think this is.
A bottom tier Marvel movie, not a bad movie at like graded, not on the scale of Marvel movies. It's just like a normal boring movie with some cinematography. Is beautiful, the fights are pretty good, and Kumail Nan Johnny is hilarious and really the best part of the movie for me.
As Kingo.
The movie depends a lot on emotional space and emotional plot. Some really interesting decisions made here to like finally have true romance and you know, physical longing. We get love triangles, we get jealous see. But unfortunately with that is a really strangely.
Like cold depiction.
Jemmy shann and Richard Madden just kind of like have no chemistry and they are former lovers. It's it's better with with Kit Harrington's Dane Whitman, but he's like barely in the movie Sprite and Icarus, kind of Sprite has a crush on Icarus, I guess you could say.
And that is probably.
The most like true like emotion and longing that is conveyed on the screen in a real way. Unfortunately, like Sprite is like a child character, which is super weird although like obviously thousands of years old, but in the physical form of a child, and it could have just used more plot.
It's fine.
Too many characters is part of the problem too, I think. Really for me, the sad part of this movie is you get the first real on screen representation of a gay character in Fastos who's married with a wonderful child.
You get the first representation of a hearing disabled character, of a deaf character in Macary, And really part of the problem is you just have too many of these characters, like really interesting moments like with Druig in the rainforest and King Goo living his life as like a celebrity, but in the end the movie can't focus on any of them. And the reason why I think I would probably put this below say thor The Dark World or even Iron Man two is those movies like understood who
the hero of the movie was. It's unclear, like who
the central character of this movie is. Theoretically it is Circe, but she's like super weirdly inactive throughout the film, doesn't know how she turns the Deviant into a tree, never really figures it out, at least in a way that is conveyed to the audience, and then when she beats the Celestial is similarly as like doesn't really know what she did and spends the whole movie basically having like imposter syndrome and not knowing why she was picked to
lead the team by Ajax. So disappointing in that regard. Post credit scenes were fun. I could have used more Dane Whitman, and I think we'll see it and I'm
interested to see where this goes. That said, the strength of the MCU like as a structure, is that you can brick Thor the first Thor movie not great really, but and then Thor The Dark World, arguably up until now, the worst movie in the entire MCU, and then all of a sudden you get the third movie Thor Ragnarok, which is for my money, a top three Marvel movie, maybe the best, depending on what mood I'm in. So
is this like devastating? Is this the end of the m c U. No, they'll bounce back from this, but it's still disappointing. Onto the airlock, the Turtles assemble, bomb bomb bom bom. On my left, who is that?
It's Rosy Night, the number one in Turtles.
Lover the.
Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun Rosie uh Eternals is out.
It's out.
We've seen it several times. It is getting panned. Let's just be honest about it's hit thee ever worst reviewed mc movie MCU movie ever, I would have truthfully, I would have it near the bottom of my list of MCU movies. If not at the bottom, I would need to process it.
A little more.
Not a terrible movie by any means, because I would argue MCU the mc has really not made any like truly awful movies.
But you love this movie, yeah that so.
Bring bring me like Druig, like take with your powers.
Okay, so then make.
Me and everyone else love it. Tell us why this.
Is a movie that truly understands the weirdness of Jack Kirby.
This is it is.
Ruling strange, experimental, ambitious movie that mixes the humanity of Jack Kirby with the absolute sci fi wildness that he's known for. To me, it has a character in Fastos who I think is like a love letter to Jack Kirby, an inventor who's all about the machinery and the mechanics, which is so much about what we love about Jack Kirby.
I love Chloe Jaw the writer is such an incredible film and this brings Obviously, it is not Chloe Jao getting to make her own incredible art house vision because it's an MCU movie, but there is so much humanity. I feel like one of the biggest things that work for me about this movie is every there's ten Eternals and eleven new characters if you count Dane, and every single one has a nuanced, interesting relationship with the others which I've never felt in The Avengers.
There's no like Cirsa again.
Yeah, there's no you know.
This is here is there are a lot of really really interesting and good choices that and I would argue that, you know, all together it didn't make okay heese so.
Whole that said.
Yeah, the kind of like a emotional spaces that this movie went to, I think are super interesting. The fact that we get love triangles, that we get romantic relationships, we get breakups within a team is a thing that we haven't really seen before. Yes, like Vision and Scarlet, which that's.
The closest I think if you get, if you like that aspect of wonder Vision, the grief, the forever romance that kind of can go from zombies in what If to kind of the past and the future in one division that aspect of this. This is definitely the most romantic MCU movie. And as someone who grew up as in avowed romance hater but has as an adult realized I actually love romance, that.
Was a big thing for me.
I wrote a piece that was like ranking all the ships in Eternal because every Eternal ship is good, Like there are some I'm a Dane Whitman, Circe OTP Like I love that Avengers run where Black Knight and Circe are together and they're in the Avengers, the Jacket Avengers as we as we like to call.
Me, the Monica Ramboau Avengers. That was my introduction to the event. That was my era of the event. Roger Stern, Roger.
Sterne, Monica rambo Is Sellous era.
Yeah.
Actually, just on a tangential MC, you think Nia DaCosta has been talking a lot about how that is like an era she's really been looking at for Marvels, So I'm very excited about that.
But yeah, I think.
Eternals is worth it. I think it's weird.
The thing is, I don't the one thing, the one criticism I don't agree with this. I don't agree that it's a badly made film. I think that the pacing,
the way that it works, it works for me. I objectively disagree with the idea that Chloe made a bad film, But I do understand the critiques that people have about it being kind of too weird for them, or too dense or too esoteric, and in that way, I just think, you know, there's movies for everyone in the MCU, and this for me is definitely a my rotating top five. I don't know where it is, but I think this
is for me. This is the kind of after twenty six movies, I want to see someone doing something really weird and shooting for something different, whether it's tone, also like,
there are things in here. This is the big thing I think if I was trying to sell someone to go and see it, because this is what maps to tell me, you know, Jason, because you're going to see this movie anyway, if you like the MCU and you want to know what's going to happen next, and you want to learn about all the cool weird stuff that's probably going to impact us in Multiverse of Madness. How mutants are going to be involved, Yes, how you know
Thanos might come back. This is the movie to see because it sees so much cool, weird comic book stuff, and it takes very heavily from the comics, maybe more heavily than any other MCU movie.
Not that anyone has read the Eternal's comics.
So barely anyone will know. But if you do like it, a lot of Volume one and Volume two Eternals.
Yeah, and also as well like if you you know there was there's only been like four Well there's a fifth volume of Eternals now, but there's only four volumes of Eternals.
So something else that's cool about this is.
If you do like it, you can easily pick up some eternals and be like, oh, this is where, this is where this comes from, or this is where the emerging celestial, the dreaming celestial, this is you know, all.
This kind of weird stuff.
Yeah, and the cast as well, I think is just really good, Like they blew me up Barry Kona, who I love anyway. Actually, this is something I wanted to say to you because I was thinking about the biggest takeaway I had from this movie, aside from loving it, was they never should have recast Barry Kon in Why the Last Man. He would have been so perfect because Druig is like that perfect mix of like is he terrible?
Is he good? But I care about him? And then you get to go on that journey, which is what he should have been with you.
But you know, on the topic of interesting choices and interesting kind of like spaces and energies to explore Druig. You know, his power is essentially you know he can. He's a mentalist. He can project his will into other people. He can make them do what he wants, essentially like a Charles Xavier gen grep.
And it is unclear.
First of all, he has a code which makes him something of a great card. He carres deeply about about violence and about suffering, and unfortunately his answers to those problems is I will just control people's minds and make them not do that.
Which is actually quite a Charles Xavier move. Actually, if you think Charles treats it, but that those that's I think something. But it's interesting.
I wanted to just I found myself, you know, when we first go to the jungle and meet him, and I find I found myself just wanting to know more about what he's been up to. That was a very interesting thing. That was a very interesting moment of the film.
Yeah. I think that's another thing I can understand where people might not have been digging it so much. Is there's so many characters that there's probably a couple that you really want to know more about. And this movie is very much like I feel like it's peppering them in and they will be in the like at the end of the movie, it says you know Eternals will return.
That doesn't to me signal and Eternals too, that signals that you will see these characters in the wider MCU playing a part in whatever comes next, which is kind of teased in the post credit scenes.
Let me so, I gave some of my larger critiques in the previous segment.
But I'll give you.
One of my small.
Critiques that I think is.
I think it's a thing that Marvel has done well in the past, and that is like quietly very important. That is, especially when introducing new characters. And you saw this in Marvel's The Avengers. Any team up movie where all of a sudden you're seeing characters together in combinations that maybe you haven't seen before. In the past, Marvel has been really good at using fights two show how powers worked and how powerful the characters are in relations
to each other. And I would argue that they didn't do a great job of that this time. And because of that, I have no idea how tough it was or wasn't to beat Icarist at the end, Like how tough really was he? He seemed like he is, you know, in terms of strength it's like maybe on par with Gilgamesh, maybe Gilgamesh could have taken him, could thena have taken him like one on one, And that for me was was a quiet detail that is often overlooked in earlier
Marvel films. That is kind of like part of the secret sauce about like why it's so good all of their fights are beyond just being like spectacle and cool displays of choreography and fantastic destruction of entire building, But it also conveys information about like how strong the Hulk is, how strong the Hulk is in relation to Iron Man. You know, that kind of information is is actually kind of important, and I feel.
Like they didn't do it great this time.
I think that you adds a nitpick.
No, no, no, I think you actually tap into one of the hardest things about adapting the Eternals, which is in the original Eternal's comics by Jack Kirby, they all have the same power set and it just changes whoever you so somebody like everyone can shoot like laser beams out of their eyes, everybody's super strong, everybody's super fast, and it just depends on who's using the different skills at a different time.
So I think that.
In that way, the movie is like at a place that's harder than necessarily something like Captain America, where you know really clearly what his power set is, because they basically have to redefine that when you have ten characters, like you say, that can become kind of hard. Like the characters who stand out the most power wise is mccari, speed stuff, overpowered, always good. Druid can control people's minds, you know, Donley basically, I mean Gilgamesh basically one punch
man candy with both hairs exactly. And like, the thing that I found really interesting, which I guess we can get into later when we talk.
About theories, is give it.
They gave Circe this very specific set of transmuting matter, which occasionally pops up in the comics. She loves to turn people into pigs. That's like a regular thing. There's
like five times she did that throughout the comics. But I feel like that is really and this I agree with you here that this is if you can't sit here and say this, this, this, and this is the powers and here's how they work, then that is definitely something that differs and is less established than say your Avengers famous, you know the round shot where you get to know what everyone can do.
But I I.
Do think I think that the Circy powers are I think the reason those are the most specific is because I think they are essentially replacing. They are going to use her as their molecule man when they move into Secret Wars, is my guess, because I think it's very specific to make her powers. I know that when we talked before, you were saying, you know, you felt like that's a character who didn't have like motivations and was kind of in this space of imposter syndrome for most movie.
Yeah, basically like why did you know? Why was I chosen the lead? And I don't know if I can do it? How did I turn this dev into intrigue? I actually have no idea.
Et cetera.
Yeah, So I think that in that space, if I was looking at this as a the MCU as a whole.
What's an easter egg? What's important going forwards?
I think the most important takeaway with Circe is her power, which maybe is why to some people she feels like a less defined character, because I think the powers are the most important, and her amount of power that she could turn this you know, emerging celestial into stone by herself or whatever. That I think is that actually the meant to be the biggest takeaway if we're talking about what the MCU is doing going forward.
Let's talk a little bit about theories I think. So there's gonna be a lot of attention on the post credit scenes we get as you mentioned, the reveal of Dane Whitman Black Knight from the comics, one of my favorites. Yeah, the most really really fun character that gets you into you know, a lot of Marvel's British character lore is just simply the weirdest shit.
Yeah, Arthurian weird, Mulin weird.
And they had a little in the other post credit scene, you know, at some point in the movie, some you know, Theena mentions that Arthur always thought she was really attractive. So they're definitely leaning into the bringing that Arthurian law. Because in the comics the Ebony Blade was like created by Merlin, and the Ebony Blade is what we see Dane Whitman opening and kind of deciding whether or not he's going to use it at the end.
I love, I just love that this sets the stage for a possible like Captain Britaincore like all the super weird shit. So that's that's a credit scene number one. Credits scene number two, of course, is the reveal of Harry Styles as Eros. And well, now before we get into the the particular history of star Fox.
Interesting choice there.
So star Fox is the brother of Thanos, and this seems like it confirms that Thanos is an eternal, right, so in the comics.
An eternal and a deviant and.
A deviant, right like a mutated eternal and so it and that was not clear that that was the case in the MC. Now it seems like that is definitely the case.
I'm guessing they're gonna say he's an eternal rather than a deviant because they weren't allowed to help anything that wasn't to do with deviance, and if Thanos was a deviant, surely they could have helped with the Danas thing. But anyway, Yeah, that is some I didn't see that coming at all. Aros is Danas's brother Aeros slash star Fox. We will probably hear him called Aeros in this because of Nintendo.
Yeah, I mean, wonderful y starfucks and a video game series of My favorite thing about this is like Eros and Thanos were both introducing the first issue the same issue, which was Iman fifty five from nineteen seventy three.
Jim Stalin, Mike Friedrich, ma Quesposito, John Castanerza, and I just love that because it has nothing to do with anything cosmic. And that's just Jim Stalin. He just used to be He'd be like, I'm doing Iron Man. Now here's two cosmic brothers. So they appear in the same first issue. So if you have that first issue, you're a collector well done because that's a key issue. That's a very very key issue. And yeah, Thanos's brother, he's like very what's the polite way to say.
He begins he's a Latharia.
I mean ifore plightly, okay, so beg He begins as Althario and ends as like a sexual assaulter, which is the fact that they introduced him.
I still can't believe it when I when I heard this rumor, I was like, this is made up.
I was like, who wants to get.
In to the world? So fuck spent a lot of years, you know, flying around space having adventures. He's got like this. They kind of did it with Harry Styles with this kind of like foxy ear hair, and he's you know, kind of like this dashing, charming guy. Now his powers, you say, what are his powers? Like, okay, he can fly, he can kind of right, he has some level of
super strengths. And crucially, he can essentially like target the parts of the person's brain where arousal lives and he can so he can basically make.
Is that is.
And so we should add that this is obviously a very troubling power to use on people. And one and two the che Hulk, Yeah, five or six actually put him on trial sexual assault.
But the funniest thing is, like, so in that series that was one of those good reconsiderations where everyone was like, wait a minute, this is like creepy, like why a manipulating and seducing people?
So they put him on trial and then Jennifer Sheehock.
Is actually defending him, but then she realizes he's being using the powers on her to make her like and she's like, what the heck?
And then I think at the end he wasn't.
But yeah, basically this guy has so badly behaved that they literally put him on trial for sexual assault.
So oh yeah, baby, do I have your consent exactly.
I'm assuming we're not gonna see that element here. I think they've introduced.
I think they've.
Introduced like a hot young actor who people find attractive, who has like a certain amount of kind of like gender present gender fluidity in the way they present themselves as a pop star, in the way that they kind of behave, And I think that they'll just you know, he started, he got introduced by basically saying how hot Angelina Joli's Tina was so, which is true, she looks
incredible in that movie. But like, I think that that it's gonna he's going to be more of like a safely flirtatious guy who probably has a lot of connections with important women throughout the universe who he's had consensual relationships with.
Oh yeah, And you know, the one thing.
That we forgot from the first post credits scene is that so at the end, Dame Whitman's going to pick up this spooky sword that basically like possesses you, And the idea of the sword is it's cursed, so the only people who can wield it properly are people who lose themselves to the sword and they become like murderous berserkers.
So he's looking at the spooky.
Sword and then Blade a voice comes and he says, like, are you sure you're ready for that, mister Whitman? And we thought maybe it was Blade, and then Chloe Jao in an interview with Fandom confirmed it was than you, Chloe, Thank you Chloe. It was Mahershler Ali as Blade, which is super cool. And I love that they introduced him in London because in the comics, Blade is a character who comes from London.
He was born in Soho.
He was raised in a brothel and then he was trained to fight vampires by a cool trumpets a called Jamal Afari.
I will say, we forget this is doesn't really get mentioned enough.
Blade is like one hundred and twenty.
Thirty or something like that, Like he was hanging around we have logan.
He's like the jazz.
He was born in like nineteen hundred or something, and like in early.
Twentieth century London, British guy turned into a vampire, which is super cool.
I so.
I think that you're right in the kind of in the hypothesis you laid out about how Blade connects will be the kind of like connecting.
Darkneck fury, dark adventage person.
The thing that I initially thought of when I was like, is that Blade? And then if that's Blade, it felt like a reference to the Heroes Reborn storyline, which is which is you know, very recent storyline, which is about a world in which reality has been altered, so the Avengers never formed, it never took place, they don't exist, and in their place is the Squadron Supreme.
But crucially, as always.
Happens with stories like this, as with House of m there's always one person.
Who remembers what the real world is supposed to.
Be like, and in this reality it is Blade then goes around contacting like getting Steve Rogers out of the ice and being like, hey, do you remember what the world was like before? And assembling a team to try and put the world back the way it was. Well, that's initially what I thought, And with the multiverse stuff, maybe there's I think, maybe there's something like that.
I am a true believer law in.
That in the absolute corporate synergy that Marvel loves to do, and I read a lot of the comics and one of the things that I truly believe in.
This has helped me a lot of theories that I've got right, a lot of theories I've got wrong.
But like, they love to see stuff, so it makes sense to me, even if this is not necessarily going to be a exact Heroes Reborn story, because we know they like to pick and choose from what they take, it is unlikely that it's a coincidence that they had a story that saw Blade going around and helping heroes come together in the time that they really needed him,
when there was some kind of multiversal threat. That to me is you're setting up an idea so that people can watch that movie and go, oh, is this like Heroes Reborn? Not the nineties Heroes Reborn, by the way, guys, just not the sexy Captain America boob Heroes Reborn?
Now, this is the.
New re the Dark Avengers. I think that I think that you're onto something. I think that we're gonna see in a post Avengers world's post Tony Stark, you know, where heroes may or may not have the actual backing of the US government as the Avengers kind of did in this Tony Stark era. I think we're gonna see
two teams. We're gonna see the Blade team, which is either Dark Avengers or Midnight can bend this era New Avengers, you know, like a new heroes that take up the mantle but don't necessarily have the resources that like Tony Starging,
you know, living like closer to the ground. And then we're going to see the Contessa's team, which is the US Agent USA Alena, and they're gonna be like the Thunderbolts kind of gray slash bad guy Avengers that are more closely hued to the US government, which is probably going to be more overtly the bad guys as we go forward.
Yeah, yeah, I think you're totally right.
And I think that they'll do the same thing that Thunderbolts Comics did originally, where they basically just introduce analogs
for each characters. So there will be the government saying, here's our Captain America, which we also how people reacted to with in Falcon Instldiers, Here's our Black Widow, Here's our you know, whoever else they're going to introduce in maybe an apt Man or something, and and then the reality will be that the Dark Avengers, the New Avengers, the Midnight Sunds, whoever this there's gonna be another team of kind of Blade and Wang are probably putting them together, you know, this team.
We might even see multiple teams.
I do think that is kind of where we're headed with the Multiverse, that you're gonna need these kind of different heroes for different universes and different spaces. So yeah, I think that that's we're definitely going to get to see. And obviously we have like young Avengers forming already.
I legitimately can because and then we're almost there.
We're so close. We're so close.
I know.
The one thing I love. I actually they did a Babysitters Club reboot on Netflix.
It was amazing.
The girl who played Dawn social Gomez. She ended up being cast as America Chavez. She's amazing. But that did tip me to the idea that I think they're gonna at least have some of them be a lot younger, because to me, America is like always twenty twenty one. But you know, we have Kate Bishop, who is like more adult age, so I think you can have We're gonna have Patriot on that team. I think you can. We hopefully gonna get see some of that romance, some
of that fun. Uh, And I just I can't wait for them.
And obviously you.
Know, uh Wonder's kids. They can kind of be aged up throughout the.
Right because you know, they come back from whatever dimension they do. They have a demon dimension, you know what, other part of Mephisto that you know, realm they were in and they come back older up next to the omnibus. Welcome to another chapter in the Oonymous where lore, analysis an understanding come together. Today, let's talk about the career of Jack Kirby, who created much of the mythology on
display on the screen in Eternals. The Eternals made their common debut in Eternals number one, cover Day of July nineteen seventy six.
Small aside here.
A later retcon places McCary of the Eternals in the story Mercury in the twentieth Century, which is written and drawn by Jack Kirby, which appears in nineteen forty's Red Raven number one. So technically speaking, that retcon, if you choose to read it in a certain way, that retcon makes it so the first appearance of the Eternals is actually nineteen forty, but let's leave that aside for now.
Eternals number one tells the story of the origin of the Eternals, a race of alien warrior gods, and their endless struggle against their twisted cousins, the Deviants. The issue was written and penciled by the creator of the Eternals, Jack Kirby, and it marked his return to Marvel Comics after a half decade run at the company's chief competitor,
DC Comics. Marvel's nickname for itself is the House of Ideas, and Jack Kirby has provided more of that grand mansions for then probably anyone besides stan Lee himself, certainly when it comes to Marvel's look and feel, the art style, the costuming, everything about the aesthetic appearance of many of the characters that have now become iconic. There's Kirby, Steve Ditko, co creative Spider Man and Doctor Strange, and Joe Simon who co created Captain America with Jack.
And that's it.
And of those three, Jack Kirby absolutely stands alone. Beginning in nineteen sixty one, when the Marvel Comics era started in proper fashion, up to about nineteen sixty four five, Kirby in a burst of creativity that is essentially unmatched in American popular culture. Created or co created the Fantastic Four, Galactus, the original X Men. That's Cyclops, gene Iceman, Angel Beast plus Professor X Menneto and the rest of the Brotherhood.
Of Evil Mutants Thor Loki as Guard.
All the characters within Asgard, the Rainbow Bridge, Hulk, Doctor Doom, Black Panther, were Katta, and many, many, many, many many more. On top of that, Kirby helped create the visual language of superhero comics, with effects like the Kirby Crackle, which are masses of dark circles contrasted with lighter shaded spaces used to convey surges of energy. But by the end of the sixties, the long creative partnership with Stanley Head
frayed beyond repair, and the issue was credit. It's an issue that in any collaborative endeavor, be it a school project or a song or a movie or improv team or a comic book creative team, is it's emotionally fraught, and of course it is financially crucial. It's a Gordian knot that is almost impossible to unwind with any kind of accuracy because of the subjective nature of individual recollections.
It's simply impossible to with any kind of accuracy unwind who is responsible for what, even in projects with defined roles like the like the content created by Marvel Comics, in which Stanley was the writer, editor and Jack was the artist, and creative work is inherently frustrating anyway, ideas come from intimate, personal, psychological, and emotional spaces. Rejecting ideas is a necessary part of ideating, but that doesn't make the rejection hurt any less for the person whose idea.
Was pitched and then rejected.
To make things even stickier, the famous Marvel method, the loose improvisational system by which Marvel generated story over the first.
Several decades of its.
Existence, gave artists wide latitude to unleash their imaginations, and this ironically made the apportioning of credit a kind of rashamonic exercise in the nature of truth. The method worked like this, the writer and the artist, in this case Stanley and Jack Kirby, we get together and hammer out a plot, loose plot, which was usually based on an initial notion of stands, but not necessarily. Jack would then go off and draw the book based not on a script or even an outline, but on his own innate
sense of pacing and story. The panels then would go back to Stan, who would fill in the dialogue balloons and the narration boxes is needed. This method worked extremely well during Marvel's early years. It allowed the maximum of creative freedom for the writer and artist and allowed each party to work quickly and efficiently. And that's really what it was about, you know, this system such that it was.
Was really one of necessity.
How do we Marvel Comics pump out enough product at scale with the limited creative resources that we have. And it's a great system right up until the point that creators begin to want to benefit from the success that they helped achieve by taking credit for what was created. As the sixties slouch toward the seventies, Stand increasingly became
the Carnival Barker like face of the company. As the editor and writer of the stories, he naturally was the point person for interviews, and in those interviews, when naturally he was asked about Marvel's magic formula, Lee invariably started with heaping helpings of it was mostly me. Stan the Manly, a nineteen sixty six piece in the New York Herold Tribune, is often seen as the Fork in the Road of the relationship between Stan and Jack. Writer Nat Friedland opens
with a scene Lea giving artist Saul Brodsky directions. It then compares Stan to the actor Rex Harrison, who, by the way, was once nicknamed Sexy Rexi by the Hollywood press because he was so handsome, mentions that director Fredriko Felini is a fan. He's my buddy now, Stan says in the piece, and notes that Stan's appearance at Bardie University drew a larger audience at President Eisenhower, also known as the guy who beat Adolf Hitler in real life.
And it goes on like that.
For about a dozen paragraphs before ever mentioning another artist at length. I don't plot spider An anymore, Lee is quoted saying in the piece, Steve Ditko, the artist, has been doing the stories. I guess I'll leave him alone until sales start to slip since Spidey got so popular. Ditko thinks he's the genius of the world. And this is the kind of passive, aggressive shots that Stanley would
often take it interviews now. To be fair to him, he was often also very generous and saying, oh, Jack and Steve are so creative, and they're amazing artists.
But these kind of digs certainly didn't go unnoticed.
The article then goes on to describe Jack King Kirby as quote a man who created many of the visions of your childhood in mind.
Okay, good, so far.
He is sucking on a huge green cigar, and if you stood next him on the subway, you would peg him for the assistant foreman in a girdle factory. Quite a contrast from from the comparison of Stanley to one of the most handsome actors of the age.
Anyway. Mark Evigner, a.
Former assistant of Kirby's, recalls, quote Jack's wife Roz read the article early this Sunday morning. It came out, woke Jack up to read it. Jack phones stand at home to wake him up and complain. Both men later recalled that the collaboration was never the same after that day. End quote, along with these kind of petty or not so petty. If you're Jack Kirby injustices, Jack surely must have noticed how the industry treated his contemporaries when they
tried to get paid. In nineteen sixty six, DC Comics froze out Superman co creator Jerry Siegel after learning the artists plan to contest for the Kryptonians copyrights. Quote. DC writing veterans such as Gardner, Fox, John Broom, Bill Finger, co creator Batman, Arnold Drake, and Otto Binder had seen their assignments dry up in what some believed was retaliation for their lobbying for things like better pay and health insurance,
writes Jason Sachson. The nineteen seventy seventy nine volume of American Comic Book Chronicles, Fingers example certainly must have raised Kirby's alarm. Quote Finger had co created Batman with Bob Kane, but he was always Kane's employee, reads American Comic Book Chronicles. While Caine made millions from Batman, Finger scrape by financially, Kirby naturally wanted to escape that fate. He wanted a profit from the success that he helped build. Quite naturally,
quite fairly. Quote Jack's plots and designs were on TV shows, his art was on toys, and he wasn't seeing a nickel from any of it, writes Mark Evianner in his biography of his former boss, Kirby, King of Comics in nineteen seventy, after negotiations over a new contract with Marvel stalled, and after two years of secretly preparing to do so, Kirby made the fateful call informing Saneley that he was leaving.
Kirby's next stop was Marvel's main competitor, DC Comics. DC trumpeted Kirby's arrival from the mountain top the word from high is the great One is coming blaired DC's house ads. A longtime fan of science fiction, Kirby followed his creative
moves to the farthest fringes of outer space. Quote you would occasionally reach back and pick a science fiction paperback up and riff through it to get an idea, Evianner says in the two thousand and seven documentary Jack Kirby's Storyteller that would generate an entire new concept somehow and quote. Kirby's vision, which found its full expression by nineteen seventy one, was collectively known as Kirby's Fourth World at DC Comics. His most impactful creation for DC is truly the archvillain
New God dark Side. Dark Side, hailing from the planet Apocalypse, is one of the most powerful beings in existence, and he's driven by a fanatical obsession with the anti life equation, with which dark Side hopes to enslave the entire universe. Since twenty eleven's linewide reboot, The New fifty two, DC has positioned dark Side as its universe's primary antagonist, and the character recently made its DC cinematic universe debut in
Zack Snyder's Justice League aka The Snyder Cut. He is DC's answer to the MCU's Thanos, which is an ironic twist, as comics fans surely are yelling at me right now, considering that Thanos was conspicuously modeled after some MTE say shamelessly from dark Side. IGN has dark Side sixth on its Top one hundred Comic book Villains countdown.
Jack Kirby Done it again.
Kirby's psychedelic Explosion was in perfect harmony with the pop culture zeitgeist of the late sixties early seventies. In nineteen sixty eight, Eric von Danikin's book Chariot of the Gods, which posited that human technological development was influenced by visitors from alien worlds, was a surprise bestseller. In spring of that same year, Sanley Kubrick's adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey melted brains in
movie theaters throughout the world. One of my friend's moms used to talk about how she tripped acid watching two thousand and one A Space Odyssey and that she was never the same, which is not a thing that she should have been telling us anyway. In nineteen sixty nine, Kurt Vonagets break through time travel anti war novelist slaughter House five was published, as was Frank Herbert's sequel to Dune, Dune Massage. Kirby's work at DC expanded on the visual
language of science fiction. It is incredible, it is powerful, it is intricate, and it was met with a thunderous shrug. Kirby's Fourth World had only slim connections to DC's ongoing continuity, which was a point of criticism from fans at the time. It met middling sales and very respectfully negative reviews, and it was canceled after three years. Fast forward to nineteen
seventy five. At New York's Hotel Commodore, Stanley announces to a rapturous Marvel con crowd during the Fantastic four panel that Kirby was returning home. Back at Marvel, Jack had complete creative freedom. He wrote his own stories, he edited them, and of course he did his own pencil work. He also had the leeway to select who inked his artwork, who lettered it. Kirby can speak aqueously, steered clear of the books and the characters that he collaborated on with Lee.
He took over Captain America, the character he co created with Joe Simon. He did a ten issue adaptation to two thousand and one Space Odyssey, He did Black Panther, and he launched The Eternals. The Eternals ran for nineteen issues from nineteen seventy six to nineteen seventy eight. In the series kind of sums up this period of Kirby's career, this kind of second act, this middle act. It is
bursting with unbelievable artwork and sci fi imagery. It contains visionary panels that conveyed heady concepts much better than the pedestrian story and forest of Wooden dialogue. Does Kirby seemingly eager, not such as to throw off any kind of link to Lee, but to prove in fact that he was better than stan Lee.
Just lays in the words like fu and bricks.
Icarus posing as Ike Harris in Eternals number one and apparently a human tourist who somehow just ends up tagging along with an archaeologist and his daughter who are exploring the Nascal lines in Peru. You know, just kind of like by chance, is like, hey, I'm going to tagle on with you, and the archaeologist is like, yeah, sure, that's not weird at all.
Come.
Ike seemingly by accident, leads the archaeologist and his daughter to a chamber filled with a bunch of alien shit and staring at a display screen showing some area of outer space, Ike exclaims, quote.
There they roam.
There they live in this great reflector, which the gods left when they last departed. The devoted Inca people kept watch for their next arrival, but the gods never returned, and the Inca's vanished from history. Keep going, Ike, says the archaeologist.
Tell us more, but first tell.
Us who you really are.
You're not really one.
Of us, are you, says the archaeologist's daughter, and the narration box reads Ike Harris seems to project the silent power of the god chamber itself. Both Margo and her father realize that he's somehow part of the awesome truths unfolding here, smeare is nothing, says the archaeologist. We've got to know begin with your name. It's not Ike Harris, is it not? Exactly? This is the kind of writing that is everywhere in the Eternals, and it's not good.
And that's even judging on the scale of comic writing at the time. It's very stilted, awkward and not great. The cover of Eternals number two, which introduces the Celestials, reads quote more fantastic than Chariots of the Gods. Now, we don't know whether Kirby actually read Danakin's very, very weird book or whether he watched the nineteen seventy pseudo doctor Mentory film adaptation of Chariot of the Gods, but it's clear the book had a profound impact on the Eternals.
As one would expect, Jack's art in Eternals is a tour de force. All of the kind of trademark Kirby's stuff is there. The dark light contrasts the power bomb splash pages, the characters and the vehicles that seem to burst out of the page. The story those, as we mentioned above, is just basically a massive exposition dump and so high concept that you basically need an oxygen tank to kind of like make any sense out of it.
And the characters display none of the kind of grounded feet of clay traits that are invariably part of the best Marvel stories. This is this is the thing that made Marvel such a revolutionary pop culture force in comics at the time.
You know, DC. It's it's an old critique, but it's one that holds true.
DC's characters are all gods you know, and aliens, where where as Marvel's characters.
Are you know, human beings with human problems.
Even the gods like Thor has to turn into a human being and he ends up having human problems and dating issues and things of the like. And that's all the best Marvel stories are like that. None of that is here in the internals, and the critical response was poor and the sales were poor. Within Marvel. Shockingly, Kirby's
peers even mocked him. You know, here they are following in the path that he laid out, and this kind of like new generation of comics creator was you know, snickering that Kirby lost it.
He was out of step with what was going on.
Quote. The editorial staff up at Marvel had no respect for what Kirby was doing, Jim Starlin says in an interview in Comic Book Artists Collection, all these editors had things on the walls making fun of Jack's books. They'd cut out things saying stupidest comic of the year as
brutal stuff. Additionally, Kirby's work on Captain America and Black Panther ignored the canon that had been established by the creators that preceded Kirby, which was a thing that annoyed comics fans and is still a critique that you'll read from comics fans today if they feel that once a new creative team takes over a book, there are invariably fans that go, this isn't what the character was previously,
this is not what we established as a character. It's always a critique, and it was a particularly trenchant one
for Kirby. By nineteen seventy seven, Archie Goodwin, Marvel's then editor intrief, tried to convince Kirby that he needed a dialogue punch up writer, you know, someone to help him make this stuff sing a little more, and Kirby said no. Captain America two fourteen cover data October seventy seven is usually mentioned as the last Captain America that Kirby did a few months later in January, the Eternals was canceled, and in nineteen seventy eight, fed up once again with
life at Marvel Comics, Kirby decamped for the fatter paychecks and lighter workload in animation, accepting a position at Hannah Barbera. Though the nineteen seventies were a tough decade for Jack Kin Kirby, he ended the era with one of the more interesting footnotes in comics history. Forty two years ago this month, Iridian revolutionaries stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran, seizing diplomats and various US citizens who were inside the buildings.
Unbeknownst to the.
Burseoning revolutionary movement and other group of Americans were hiding nearby in the Canadian Embassy. May have seen the film Argo, which dramaticizes these events. A CIA team, using the cover of a film crew working on a movie adaptation of the Hugo Award winning science fiction novel Lord of Light managed to enter Iran and exfiltrate the Americans from the Canadian embassy using the cover of scouting locations for said film.
The artist contracted by film producer Barry Geller to create the costumes and designs for A Lord of Light one. Jack Kirby up next, The Hive Mind. Welcome to the Hive Mind, where we dive deeper into a specific topic with the help of a guest panelist. Today, x ray Vision is pleased to welcome journalist and author Abraham Reaesman, whose book True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee chronicles the life of the iconic Stan Lee, the
spokesman essentially for Marvel Comics for many years. Released in February twenty twenty one, this book is available wherever you get books.
Abraham, Welcome to the show.
It's great to be here, Thank you so much.
So. The eternals were created by Jack Kirby. The comic was drawn, written edited by Jack Kirby. Jack Kirby was able to pick the letter, the colorists, the inkor on the on this and this was you know, part of the deal that he forged after coming back from from leaving Marvel for DC Comics. The Marvel's main competitor. What were the issues that that that Jack was dealing with at the time.
The career issues or his weird political.
Beliefs, both of which played into what was going on with the eternals.
Let's talk about let's talk about his his career issues as a creator in comics.
You know, it's.
Happy to do that.
So the thumbmail version of a very complicated, fractal story is in the superhero comic book industry, there has never been a culture of creator ownership, or of creator unionization and collective bargaining. Creators as in the writers and artists and you know inker as all. That's kind of a dying industry because of digitization and colorists. All of these people they work as independent contractors. They're not staffers. They don't get insurance, they don't have any job security. They're
paid to pittance. And this has been true throughout pretty much the entire history of comics. It was built on a very bad foundation. So flash forward to the sixties. You have Jack Kirby, this writer artist, operating at Marvel, and he's already famous in the comics industry. The nascent still somewhat like teenage comics industry. I guess was invented in the thirties, he'd already had a great deal of success.
He was a writer, like I say, a writer and an artist, which is crucial because Stan was just a writer. Stan did not not a draw I mean, you could draw a little doodle a little bit. But Jack therefore was sort of the by really, by any reasonable estimation, this shouldn't be a controversial point.
Jack was the main creative engine of early Marvel.
I just I want to emphasize that, Like, these were weird guys with weird ideas, and none got weirder than Jack, and that really produced some great work. But also it produced the Eternals, which is not a good comic. It's beautiful, but like as a comic, it's.
Not an interesting story. I don't know, I think.
So let's be fair to Jack. It's pretty impenetrable and with stilted, super weird dialogue. You know, for whatever the relationship between Jack and Stan was, it's clear that what Stan added to it was a certain kind of textual dialogues, script writing polish that Jack.
Just didn't have.
Let's talk about the issue of credit and the issue of the creators creators trying to benefit from the success creations within comics. Now, this is a this is a fraught space in any kind of creative space, whether you're writing whatever, but in comics it's particularly as a fringe industry for most of its life, in which the big money only came in very recently, at a time when
creators basically had no leverage. It's a space where union is we're only just now seeing the unionization, uh kind of momentum that is sweeping a lot of other industries happening comics with the recent unionization. It was it was it was last week, which is in a way ironic because the image itself was you know, created by disaffected creators who were looking to more adequately.
Better from the things.
And so tell me, tell me a little bit about these kind of like frustrated efforts over the years for creators within this industry trying to somehow, you know, make money off the things that they had created.
Yeah, it's it's an eternal struggle. You go back in the history of comics. Jeremy Douber is just putting out a book called American Comics, a History, which most of its stuff I already know, but it's an excellent like introductory text for people who don't know the history of
American comics. And you should know the history of comics because it ended up being very consequential and you get all these little granular stories about people being again from the very beginning, from dawn of comics and dawn of superhero comics.
With Superman, you have creators getting exploited.
Well, I think you've hit on something that's important, which is whether it's songwriting, you know, like the film industry, popular music, is writing for magazines, whatever, any creative space. There is a lot of exploitation of creators that was happening, and in that sense, comics was really no different.
It was no different.
But it's just that there's billions of dollars in.
Yes, yes, and also but it's not just that it's no different, it's worse in some ways.
The number one reason being work for hire.
Like.
It's insane they work for hire. And lack of unionization. Those are the two things.
You know, you talk about screenwriting, and lord knows, screenwriters are very much an abused class in a lot of ways.
I am not please, I'm not diminishing that at least.
There's a WGA comics, comics doesn't have you have no shot at getting unionized in comics.
Now there is this.
Previously you had no shot in getting unionized in comics. Now we have just in the past few days, this initial effort on the behalf of staffers, which means not creators.
These are people who work at on staff at you.
Not the pencilers, not the right Yes, that would be right.
Hopefully you know, that might be something that we see in the future, but right now it's but it's a very important start because the comics industry is basically no experience with any kind of union, whether it's for you know, editorial staffers or the.
People creating the stuff.
And I don't know where it's gonna go, but I'm watching it with great interest because, yeah, there have been these attempts in the past, I mean, most notably Neil Adams, this legendary right a ACBA. Yes he started ABA, which was the well he he didn't dig. Giardano and Stan Lee created the Academy of Comic Book Arts and Sciences in nineteen sixty nine, and Stan's original idea, it was a classic stand take on it was.
This is a hard to have an awards show. We want to have an awards show.
That was it.
He wanted to have a society so they could have the Oscars for comics every year. And he wanted to be the president of the organization, which is crazy because as it was getting formulated, like it became clear that like if the bosses are the head of the organization, then like, well the point was. Neil Adams decided he wanted to run as well, and Stan was like, we should run together, and Neil said, but you're not like a workwriter, you know, like the point here is supposed
to be her management. What I would like this to be is an actual like coalition of people, which was how it was getting pitched. It's just that Stan in his head knew all he wanted was was the org show ceremony. So at one of the first meetings, not an ords show, but one of the first meetings of the ACBA, according to Stan, Neil gets up and starts or and stands telling of it. Neil gets up and starts talking about how creators are being abused and we
should form a union. And Stan was furious and was like, that's not what this is for, Like, that's not why we're doing this, and sure enough, there are a bunch
of other instances. I mean, just a few years later, you have when work for hires starts to be formalized in national law with this Copyright Act of nineteen seventy six that comes into fact in nineteen seventy eight, You all of a sudden have all these companies scrambling to come up with paperwork where people are retroactively signing away all of their rights and then you know, signing away
any future rights. And Neil Adams writes, this takes the contract that you were supposed to sign, paints on it.
I can't rear the exact phrase. It was just a few words.
It was like, do not sign this, You'll be signing your life away, meeting address, you know time.
And it was all at Adams's studio.
All these comics creators meet at the studio and they're like fired up, and it's a lot of like.
We're gonna go all the way on this one. We're taking these screw you know, these screw jobs down.
And then all that had to happen was, well, Stan did nothing for one thing. He just stood off on the sidelines. And then Jim Shooter the e C informed everyone that if you were to.
A Titanic, Titanic figure who is also extremely divisive, was once burned an effigy by his own workers.
Yeah.
No, I loved character who is also very important in the evolution of the comic, the.
Comic and a lot of other things. But I don't remember where I was going with all of this. But it's I feel like I can go down any tangent when I talk about all this, But.
Well, I we should.
I should say that the thing that was really interesting to me about the ACBA and why why it failed clearly as a unionization effort, is that there was no even amongst you know, like a militant guy like Adams, who was who.
Really wanted to push for this these kind of protections.
There was not a broad agreement on who would be covered by this, who would be allowed do we let the colorist in? Who was in on this? And there was there was no agreement on that. And where I hope we go with, you know, with this current movement now is if we start drawing lines, it feels like we lose, right.
I mean, I don't know, I'm not a union expert.
Same here, but it feels like, you know, the way it failed in the past was they tried to draw a line and said, Okay, these people are not creators and these.
People are each other, and then all of a sudden, it's nothing.
Yeah, I mean, my hope is that it would be a broad ten.
I mean, I was part of the unionization drive at New York Magazine when I was still on staff there.
I didn't lead it.
I'm not going to take more credit than I deserve, but I did the secret networking to go talk to people and get them on board and get them in touch.
With the reps.
Went to a bunch of meetings, and you know, it's a real problem trying to figure out who gets covered in the bargaining unit. And the companies that you're trying to unionize will do everything they can to try to confuse people about who can count for the bargaining unit, just to keep some people from thinking, oh, well, you know,
keep them thinking this doesn't apply to me. But yeah, with comics it's really hard for a lot of reasons, As is true of any industry that is built on freelance labor that is not conducted in a centralized place. It's extremely difficult to get these people comments creators to stop fighting with each other for these few slots, and I don't I don't have a good solution to that. I'm just glad to see that somebody's even bothering to try,
and I would be following it very closely. I'm I'm, I'm working on trying to get some reporting done on it, but I'm like swamped with my Vince McMahon book. You want to talk about labor rights problems, wrestling makes commic look like a socialist utopia.
Abe, thank you so much for joining us. I you know I've read your stuff for years, big fan. Where can we Where can we get more of of where you're writing, whatever you're working on.
Next, go to Abraham Reisman dot com. Your one stop shop for all things Abraham Reesman. It's I before E. But if you misspell it with EI, I have that domain registered too, and it'll redirect you. If you want to follow me on Twitter, That's where I spend most of my day, and that.
Is at Abraham Joseph.
Abe, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Up Next, Endgame.
We're in the endgame now, baby, it is inevitable, and today we're playing another round of assembly required, in which Rosie and I will be randomly assigned a mission uh and then we have to assemble our character, our team to accomplish that mission. Today we are going to be picking characters from the eternals, and our producers have prepared the mission for us.
What is the mission, Christopher?
The mission this week is pick your favorite eternal for the best possible Hinge match A.
Match on Hinge. A match on Hinge.
Hinge the dating platform that uses your Facebook network to match you with people who they hope can can foster a love match. This has been a free promotion for Hinge. You're not a sponsor of this podcast.
I don't have Facebook, which is why I don't know.
What hin I don't have. I don't have it either. Well I know who I would, I know people. I know people who have had some success on Hinge.
And so we're going to use it now. Rosie, would you like to go first?
Who would like is your is the ideal eternal to Hinge match with is Gilgamesh?
Not only Isnley Donley is handsome, strong, iconic, one hundred plus movie Korean star icon, but Gilgamesh he cooks pies, He has a cute, delightful has a cute, delightful little apron that he wears. I want to see the fanat of that so much, with like the blushing cheeks and the apron and the pie. He makes delicious food. He makes his own meat. He makes it out of his spit. But sure, maybe you an. I think Gilgamesh is the one. I love him.
Rip Gilgamesh, man, I gotta say so.
That's a great pick.
And obviously the eternals are not equally quality. Hinge matches for various reasons. Gilgamesh is great. You know, Kingo is good, funny, Drewig scary, Like, I don't know that I would want to go on a date with him. If you're Marcary McCary, great sprite obvious problems there.
She's a child, don't.
She's a child. She's a yes, I know, and anybody out there is like, yeah, but she's actually like seven thousand you just stop it, stop it right now.
I don't her in my shipping lineup because she is a child.
Sina is working through some mental health issues and I want to make and so I think it could be rocky.
I like it.
You're going for consent there, You're like, I want to make.
Sure that we're all on the up and up. Circe would be fine. Ajac deceased and was keeping a lot of secrets from everybody, So I don't know if we want to go there. I am going to say, gosh, Now, let me ask you this. If I pick Fastos, does that mean I've broken up a marriage?
No?
No, this is this is a hypothetical because I would not break up yoga mash and tena, So this is a hypothetical if the Atitos were single.
I think Fastos is a good choice.
Okay, I'm gonna pick Fastos because number one monogamy, Like, if you're on Hinge, you're looking You're not looking for something quick, You're looking for something lasting. Fasts I think showed us through his through his actions in this movie that he's looking for something real. He's got a beautiful family and and a beautiful relationship with his husband.
He did build the the atom bomb.
I'm like, did he or did he just seemed I seemed pretty broken. I feel like he just I feel like he just like this.
He helped humans with technology and knew that humans was dumb.
So if he didn't help them.
It would have been they wouldn't.
Have been able to create.
I would argue it this way one.
He seemed very broken up about it, upset. He was actually like at ground zero, like he was there. He was in the ruins of Erosia.
Okay, so you on hinds, you want to match with the guy who split the arm, that's your open arms.
He feels bad about it again a long time ago.
He does different.
He's a high a healthy relationship in the MCU that we've seen so far.
So you know what say, even with the full crime, So yeah.
Mass murderer arguably, but but you know, like again, Tony Stark traffic weapons for years, gave nature, was friends, was very close friends with Ulysses Claw for reasons that are probably best not explored.
And child who is a wonderful guy.
Love fast, fast, Well done, Tim.
That's it for the endgame. Let us know who you think won this week's game. Hit us at hashtag XRVN game. Well listen Rosie as the number one Eternal's lover in the world. It was delightful to bathe in the warmth of your love for this movie.
Wow.
Thank you for letting us into your perspective on the movie. Whether people agree with it or not, it was useful and it was always a pleasure.
Where can we find you next?
Thank you for having me.
If you want to read more about my eternal I reviewed Journal's fanatists. I've written many, many Internals theories. A lot of what we touched on here, hit upnourdice dot com.
Yeah, that's it.
If you want to read a spooky comic, I know it's kind of where over Spooky season Now. I wrote a graphic novel called The Hornted High Tops with this amazing artist called Frambueno.
That's out now. So they're just a ton of cool stuff.
But yeah, if you if you like this conversation you want to know more about these theories, definitely check out Notice because that's where all my pieces are maybe and there's like ten of them already and the movie just came out.
Bump bump, bump, bump, bump bump. Dun Dun Dun, Dun, Dun Dun.
Rosie Knight.
Big thanks to Rosie Knight and Abriesman for joining us on another episode of X ray Vision. Please join us again every Wednesday for your weekly dose of the deepest dives. If you want to learn more about the stuff that we talk about in each episode. To find out the particular comics that we talked about, references, et cetera, check out the show notes on our website. You can find a full list of last week's comics corner picks on
the x ray page of Crooked Media's website. And don't forget, Please please don't make me use my Druig powers on you. Five stars only. If it's not five stars, if it's no stars, five star reviews only, Thank you very much. X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy Gerard. Caroline Ruston and Carlton Gillespie are our consulting producers that are editing
and sound design is by Facili's Photopoulos. Thank you to Brian Vasquez for our theme.
See you next time.