A Geek History of Time - Episode 16- The Fantastic Four as Grotesque Nuclear Family

Episode Date: June 22, 2019

Damian makes the case that the Fantastic Four was actually deeply subversive, a grotesquerie committed by the writers despite themselves, reinforcing the recurring theme of irrelevant authorial intent. Ed marvels (heh- get it?) at how early pages from the series wouldn't get printed today, and they both rhapsodize about Ben Grimm being good people.

And we begin with good day sir! Geeks come in all shapes and sizes and that they come into all kinds of things that I told you. I was thinking more about the satanic panic. Buy the scholar Gary Guy-Gak's. Well wait, hold on. I said good day sir, not defending Roman slavery by any stretch. No, but that's bad. Let him vote.

Fuck off. When historians, especially British historians, want to get cute, but it's in there. It is not worth the journey. No. This is a geek history in time. Where we connect history, where we connect Geekery

rather to the real world Geekery 2 history yeah it's okay I call it a Geek history in time so we're gonna keep it going yeah we are raw and uncut yeah so I have been a who are you my name is Ed Lay. I've been a nerd since birth really. I Come by it genetically my father was a highline fan and had geekery been a thing when in his youth He would have been playing Dungeons and Dragons like I was nice later on. Have you gotten him to play with you? No No, he was too set in his Naval officer ways by the time I got to that age, but he would sit around and watch us play and he did think it was pretty cool neat I love you. Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I have been a geek most of my life as well Was pulled into it by Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s, but also was really into

things like G.I. Joe, less so the Transformers actually, and no robot tech or anything like that. I know, but it was a style choice, I guess. But I was a real nerd into history. I remember one of the first books I can remember reading when I moved to Florida, when I was a young lad was the biography of Eleanor Roosevelt's early life and held for you at that point. Ten. Yeah. Well, you know, it's cool that I see that.

That's yeah. Well, you know, when you're living in that part of Florida. Exactly. I've been a teacher for at least 16 years now on a Latin teacher. Currently, I used to be a social science teacher. I've got a Master's degree in Women's History. What about you? Well, I don't have a Master's degree in anything yet,

but I did get a Bachelor's degree in history, focusing primarily in Western Europe, secondarily in East Asia, and then a little bit in American history, which basically drew me perfectly for my current job, which is teaching middle school world history. And yeah, so that's my background. Yeah, and I had a friend.

I had a friend who's a biologist who became a chemist. Well, yeah, you know, and I'm a Latinist now. See, yeah, see, the sciences are like that. The sciences, that's like normal. Yeah. It's like, well, what'd you get your degree in? Well, geology, what are you doing now? I'm a lab tech working in genetics. Yeah, yeah, wow. So yeah, so what what have you brought? I want us to talk about today. I want to talk about something really, really gross. All right. Yeah. I'm down with it. Yeah.

So you know your comic books. I had packed like a Venezuelan ballot box as I said earlier We'll get that joke in here because I think it's funny. Yeah, yeah, so gross. I'm good with yes comics. Yeah, good. Okay, so Who is the grossest superhero you've ever seen? Oh Lord in Marvel keep it keep it Marvel superhero or villain either Just I'm gonna preclude that with the fact that you're wrong. Oh really? Yeah. Really? So who's the grossest? The grossest. Yeah. Grossest? I'm going to go with... I'm going to go with blob. Nope. No. Fantastic four. Really? Fantastic four. Gross. Yeah. They're gross. And that's... No. I'm sorry. They are so gross. That's a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very Fantastic Four is gross y'all and that's why it worked as one of the most subversive comic books of the 1960s accidentally, okay, so

Never thought of it as being particularly subversive it incredibly it's one of the most subversive comics there was yeah Well, lay it on okay, you have my undivided attention all right So Sherman set the way back machine for 1961 Alright, so Sherman set the way back machine for 1961. We should do an episode on Rocky and Bullwinkle. We really need to. Talk about some Versive. Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, you've yet no argument for me. So it's 1961. Yes. Alright, superheroes are back. As you all might recall, from why my dad hates Adley Stevenson. Indeed. The Common Code Authority. DC has cool thing going with its teams. Got justice sleek. recall from why my dad hates Adley Stevenson. Indeed. Become a code authority. DC has cool thing going with its teams.

Got justice sleek. Oh yeah. At this point, where it combines all sorts of really top notch heroes. Yeah. To the best of the best. Yeah, for instance. It's a really bad man wonder woman.

I don't know if Aquaman was part of it at that point in history. Aquaman. Yeah, well, the list I've got is Green Lantern. Green Lantern. Flash. Flash. Martian manhunter oh yeah John Jones John Jones which just fell here yeah wonder woman who was originally their secretary she originally signed on as their secretary boy what a artifact of the time boy now and now the current justice league uh-huh franchise she's like the hardest badass in all of it. She's Sigourney Weaver.

Yes. She's the working girl who worked her way up. There you go. I like it. That works. Batman, Aquaman, and Superman. Okay. Okay. So they had them and they fought bad guys. Yeah. They all had their own identities. They all had their own comic books still so And so they're just kind of tossed together as kind of the all-star team, you know like so and baseball You had all-star teams by the way, yeah, and and guys would come together like We all had started doing all-star games. No, they don't get the pro ball going for a while and even even so it There's no point to it but in baseball it decides who gets home field advantage.

Like they've built stuff into it. Originally the baseball all-star team, I don't know if you know this, was to raise money for Ty Cobb who got suspended for beating up a fan because the fan compared him to a black person. And all the players were like, okay, he made it gone too far, but the fan had no business putting that kind of a dis on him. Wow. So it's like 18 layers of horrible.

Yeah, it really is. So, yeah, when the commissioner is actually the good guy. Yeah. But it's because most of the players from Detroit were from Georgia and they're playing Detroit. Wow. Yeah, we might do an episode on baseball. Yeah, we're going to have to. So, we're two. And they're playing in Detroit. We might do an episode on baseball. We're going to have to.

We're two. I'd say nine. Stretch the seven-and-a-half episode out. I will play. I like it. But, and we'll bring someone in to do one of the episodes as a designated. That's a little leaf. Yeah, it does again.

Yeah, so, because we'll do American League. But anyway, these players, they're all kind of just tossed together on this All Star team to sell one more mag, one more comic, and people love that, but it wasn't a team like a team. Like it's similar to baseball All Star teams where it's like, oh, they all played on the field in the same way, but they didn't have chemistry.

They, well, and they don't really spend a lot of time at all practicing together, and all the time they're busy playing against each other. Same thing with these heroes. Yeah, and then when you get them all together everyone wants to be the star. And you end up with all kinds of interesting. So Marvel's behind the curve on this one. They've got cool superheroes too, they do. But they don't have any big teams

and they don't have any superheroes really with their own issues yet. And they've got Journey into Mystery. And they've got a few other things like that Thor and Ant-Man show up on. So they're behind the curve, Stanley. And I'm going to probably reference Stanley more than anyone else just because in the popular zeitgeist and I fully recognize that all of the other

creators in the list. Right and I fully recognize that his history is problematic with other comic book writers and creators and stuff but just for for shorthand we're gonna say Stanley when we talk about them and Jack Kirby. So Stanley was told by the head of Marvel to come up with the team since the JLA was selling so well for DC. Stanley gave a set of ideas to Jack Kirby and Kirby ran with it. Now this is according to multiple sources and different sources have different stories. It depends on whose side you take. Okay. I've heard it once said that Stan Lee made Marvel Comics with a capital M and a capital C and Jack Kirby made Marvel Comics

with a capital M and a little C. And it's probably right. That's a pretty good analogy. Yeah, so at the very creation, you got the Fantastic Four. And they... Yeah, so that the very creation you got the fantastic for right and they Well, I mean you look at them right and it's four white folk one guy with slightly graying temples a a woman with a bob cut her little brother also a blonde and Their their squat short friend who then become squatter and shorter, but orange.

And I'll get into that and Rocky. If you look at them all, they're actually really grotesque. Most of them present as normal, but they're grotesque. And this is what I'm talking about. They're gross. They are grotesque characters. So the very creation of the FF was the first strike for this idea of grotesqueness. Or I guess grotesque. Grotesquitude. Yeah, grotesquitude.

So yeah, I think it's grotesquery. Oh, really? Yeah, the French do weird stuff. That's where we get the word from. So yeah, look at the, but also look at the heroes in the Fantastic Four. None of them are Steve Reeves look likes. None of them are these incredible bodies. These bodies. These bodies, right. They're skinny or they're squat.

Or she's kinda pretty, but pinched faced, you know? Like there's, yeah. Yeah, none of them are these idealized figures. Like we see Captain America being like, see. Well like we see in the JLA. Yeah, just the America that's filled with classically handsome bodies. Superman and Wonder Woman being the most obvious.

But if you look at any of the heroes there, they're all good looking, even John Jones. Like his body is amazing, you know, but the Fantastic Four They don't look heroic read was skinny Sue was curvy, but not particularly skin showing You know Johnny was covered in flames. Well, and even in his in his human form He was you know good enough looking kid, but it was really clear. He was you know a kid a kid a kid Yeah, you know late late teenager. Yeah, but it was really clear he was, you know, a kid. A kid. Yeah. You know, late teenager. Yeah.

And then Ben Grimm. He's a big ugly mask. He was, yeah. Even when he was human. He was so many ways. So, and so if you look at them as their hero forms, Sue is covered pretty much neck to toes. Yes.

So not shown off skin. Read is skinny, not muscular. Ben is made of orange rocks and Johnny is covered in flames. Okay, so that's there. That's how they present. I would also point out actually that Ben the thing is covered in orange rocks. A secondary color, which actually is important and I'll kind of get into that in a little bit. So, it's probably a good idea to define grotesque and classical first. And I'm going to circle back around to why grotesque is how I describe them in a little bit. So, grotesque is defined usually as comically or repulsively ugly or distorted. Okay. So a very ugly or

comically distorted figure. Yes, is a grotesque. Right. The bizarre, distorted, unnatural, incongruous, fantastic, too physically unreal to be anywhere near the ideal. Okay. Classical is a nod to the ancients, who depicted the human form in its ideal state, which is interesting because the Romans didn't do that. They were like, no, no, put me on warts and all, but the Greeks were all about that. Oh, idealization, Plato's cave.

Exactly, you know. And we like that in our statuary as well. We took all the pockmarks out of George Washington and most of his statues Well developed upper torso strong arms heroic posing Too physically ideal to be anywhere near real The Fantastic Four they wear simple costumes. Yes, there's body suits which they don't even appear particularly skin type No, but they do show off very little skin too. They don't wear masks,

which they don't have hidden identities. And they don't get along. Which is a very big major part of the writing development, especially that phase, because the JLA was a little long but it got long that was I mean the very roots of the whole idea of Batman and Superman being best buds right which you know carried on forever yeah hitting a deer point when Frank Miller wrote decided to go dark decided to go way dark and then you know has been reintroduced in in more recent storylines where the two of them are presented I like the depth in the other storylines because they're presented as being each other's Freudian mirrors yes and I think there's something really

meaningful and really great to that they both represent each other's ideals and the deers. Yeah, yeah. And however, when we're talking about the early JLA, it was just, well, you know, we're all good guys. We're all good guys. We're all good guys. We all wear primary colors. We all wear primary colors.

Well, gray, don't know. But the rest of us, he's doing the blue and yellow. Yeah, he's mostly blue and yellow. The, the cave, the mass, the mass that you looked at at, mostly the cape and the cow, which was blue and then this logo, which was yellow. Right. And soups had all three. Wonder Woman had all three.

Marshall Manhunter was a little different, but he still had the red and the yellow. Flash, of course. Flash, very red and yellow. But the DC version of Iron Man. Yeah. Well, no, I'd say Batman is conceptually. Flash, very red and yellow. The DC version of Iron Man. Yep. Well, I'd say Batman is conceptually. Well, conceptually doesn't have the alcoholism. It's aesthetically.

Oh, yeah, aesthetically, absolutely. Yeah. So, actually talking about that, let's delve into just for a minute the colors of superheroes. So I'm talking about the colors that they wear. So superheroes, the good guys tend to be primary colored. The bad guys tend to be secondary colors. So the good guys are almost always some combination of red, yellow, and blue, or some combination thereof, two of the three usually. Bad guys are almost always some combination of green, purple, and orange. Now there's reasons for these colors. For instance, if you were wearing lots of red and blue, you have a nobility to you, you have a heroism to you, but there's also sacrifice that you are committing for

you know, for the greater good. If you wear yellow and yellow can stand in for gold by the way, but if you wear yellow and blue, you still have that sacrifice and also you're somewhat misunderstood. Okay. Perhaps a reluctant hero or at least a hero who has to explain his way out of normal problems. If you wear red and yellow, you tend to be very much the alpha hero in general. If you wear all three, you are kind of like the super, super girl. Yeah. If you are a bad guy, you're wearing your secondary colors.

If you have purple, you tend to be the leader of men in some way. Either the mastermind or what have you. The purple man. Yeah. The most obvious. The greatest example. If you're wearing orange, you're insane in some way. Your values are out of step with the status quo values.

OK. I have a thought on that, but I don't care which is say about green. Green is you are mentally and morally corrupted in some way. And the green is almost always a sickly green, because there are some superheroes who wear green, but it's a richer green, it's a healthier green. They're typically tied into some sort of spiritual

or natural capabilities. Or they're bad guys who turned good guy. So that's often what you see. That's the example of purple. Exactly. He started as a bad guy. Yeah. And, you know, his DC,

equivalent greener. Right. looking like Robin Hood. Yeah, you know, so but it's a richer green It's yeah, it's a forest great a hunter green if you will yes as if Now so talking about the orange yes Orange indicating being out of step being crazy insanity of some sort. Yeah What I find interesting to say is that's, if orange is the code for insanity, we see the or example of a supervillain and secondary colors to me anyway, is the Joker,

who's in green, purple, and white. And part of his old backstory is that he is pardon my French, batshit crazy. And he's wearing white and what is Batman wear? Black. Right. So they're mirrors of each other. They're both chaotic evil.

All right, yeah, we'll be able to get that. Batman's lawful evil, but we can have that discussion in another episode about assigning. But actually, the best example I like to point out, there's two. There is, I was gonna say Norman Maylor. Yeah. No. But actually the best example I like to point out there's there's two there is I was gonna say Norman Maylar. Yeah, no Norman Rockwell now

There is Norman Osborne. Oh, yeah the Green Goblin. Yeah Green Goblin green and orange No, that's hobgoblin. That's his his son's therapist Who went crazy? Okay green goblin is green and purple. He is a leader of a corporation. The other, my other favorite example is, and I've got a whole episode for this, is Magneto. He wears orange with purple piping and a purple cape. He is the leader of mutants, but his idea of separatism. I only saw that color as being more red than orange. Yeah, it's because the four color comics. Maybe he said something about me.

No, no, no, it's four color comics. That's how it was. But it is orange. It's meant to be orange. And it's because his idea of separatism, and I'm going to get to that in that episode, is out of step with the status quo. OK. And therefore, the status quo. Okay.

And therefore he is insane. Okay. It's just a couple steps away. So you hardly ever see good guys wearing orange. This is true. Sometimes there's a little bit of purple. Not much. In the 90s, everybody wore purple.

Yeah. Because it was the 90s. Yeah. And it's usually purple and turquoise or something. Yeah. But and and there are some good guys who wear green, but again, it's a healthier green. Yeah. And if a good guy ever puts on brown, it's because he's trying to retire. Okay.

Kind of an odd. All right. So and if a bad guy wears silver, it's the same as a good guy wearing gold. Okay. I'm very wealthy and I'm an exemplar of whatever. Or whatever. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, he wears a green cape. Which is interesting.

Corrupt and incredibly wealthy. Yep. Which is a really interesting thing because if you look at Fantastic Four now, they were blue, but it's a slightly muted blue. So, they're heroes, and they're in the public sphere. They don't have a public and private persona distinction.

And they, yeah, their costumes don't matter that much. They all match. They don't matter that much. They're kind of bland. They have a team uniform. Right. And this... A delivery.

Yeah. uniform. Right. And this, yeah. And this presentation of them allows for a grotesque exploration. It's almost a blank canvas for that. So everything they do is hyperbolic. The Fantastic Four. They're very first issue. They go into outer space in 1961. Yeah. Just to let you know we have barely gotten a guy into orbit by that point. They go into outer space. Read Richards is canonically the smartest guy in the world. Right. So, you know, this is long since been established. True. A fact. So, anybody can do it. He's the one. He's the dude. But it is hyperbole to the extreme. They meet and they defeat a god about five years after that. Galactus.

Galactus. They get to the moon before anyone else does. And then they fight a Russian who shows up just a few seconds later. Because it was the cold you were looking at. What else were you going to do? Right. They use technology that's literally at the bleeding edge of an adination, which in the 60s is like lots of things stacked onto each other in modules.

Oh Kirby. Yeah. Oh he loved doing that. Love just taking shapes and lumping them together. And some of that stuff is amazing and into a modern eye after 40, 50 years since he did that. Some of it you look at, you're like, was he actually smoking something?

Right. You know, this is right around the time when transistors were a thing, but nobody knew what they were. Yeah, so. And so you look at a transistor and you'd be like, well, okay, I can do something with that. Right. And you know, you don't need to know what the hell it is

to use it as an aesthetic. Yeah. And by the way, this't need to know what the hell it is to use it as an aesthetic. Yeah. And by the way, this is the time where a few years later, Iron Man would literally pull a cord out of his chest plate and plug it into the wall. Yes. Without even a grounding. No. Yeah, I don't know.

No, because, yeah. To charge up his heart. So, my very next note is actually Kirby Draws such fantastic technology. So, yeah. actually Kirby draws such fantastic technology. So yeah, so their very natures are actually cast onto this blue bland canvas and their very natures, who they are, is a grotesque depiction of life in America in 1961. So in 1961, John F. Kennedy is in office. Yes. The Cold War is at a fever pitch.

Yes. Imagination and fear are at a zenith unseen up until that point, right? Superlatives are happening. Yeah. Like everything is a superlative. Oh, yeah. I imagine anybody living through that time period probably had a similar level of emotional WTF to the events of the day that we have on a daily basis now. Yeah. Like I genuinely because I know for a fact like

it grown up as we did in the late 70s, 80s, into the 90s. By that time, the fever pitched the cold war had died down, and it was background noise. It was a low grade fever at best. Yeah, yeah, it was just... You were running around at a temperature of 99.5 all the time. Yeah, you know, yeah. You walk into the morning, you come to work. Yeah, exactly.

And, and I mean, that certainly warped our world view in ways that sometimes come up to a starkly now and a post-war world. But, you know, now, just in the last several years, and I mean, this predates our current president, but sure, you know, really in the last two years, the sheer level of, this is what that Chinese curse means. Yeah, may you live in interesting times? Yeah, I mean, it's a daily thing.

It's every new headline. And I can only imagine that with, you know, Kennedy on one end and Khrushchev on the other. Both of whom wanted to not die by the way. Oh yeah, but like it's really important to note that both of them wanted to bring it down. Oh really? And Khrushchev definitely wanted to bring it down. Oh yeah, no, Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and Ike and I and Ike andke and Ike and Ike andke and Ike and Ike and Ike and I and Ike and I and Ike and I andke and Ike and Ike and I and Ike and Ike and I operating fully, it's so many bushels of grain, it's a fully staffed hospital.

Yeah. Republican. Yeah. That's what Republicans sounded like. I just as somebody you know who is still coming to grips with being a liberal as an adult, that's what Republicans used to sound like. I'd like to go back there, please. Anyway, we can move on now. I'd need a derand. Sure. So I would say though in 1961, they had something we didn't have. They had a very clear existential threat.

That was, the wolf was in the driveway, if not at the door sometimes. We have wolves on the street, but we haven't seen them, we just hear them at night. I actually literally wolves on the street. You know what I have heard about hybrid wolf dog? Yes. I literally have wolf dog. But that's side issue.

Just goes to show, has surreal thing. Actually, it really is. But I would actually go so far as to say that, and I'm trying to get my dates right, He'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be,. Yes, and I'll get to that. Yeah, okay, because we're talking about Cuban Missile Crisis. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, talk about existential threats. It's, we got as close as ever to dying as a species, as we've ever gotten. And now it's, it's like then that was a huge spike.

Oh my God, what you're talking about now is like a 40% of that, but it's constant. Yeah. Like at least they spiked and then went back down to 20. Yeah, we're covering at 40 the whole time. Yeah. And somebody might accidentally sneeze and hit the button kind of thing. Or might just like decide to hit the button instead of send on their tweet.

Yeah. You know, God knows. So, but in 1961, superlatives are happening. Roger Maris breaks Babe Ruth's record while these comic books are on the shelf. That's a big thing. Yes. Pat Robertson is televanjalizing for the first time while these comics are on the shelf. People were escaping East Berlin in huge numbers by using sewers and underground tunnels while these comics are on the shelf. The Communist Party of the United States of America was forced by law to register as an agent of the USSR.

Which, by the way, turns out historically was not the injustice necessarily that we think it was. Uh-huh. But, well... A party with an ideology that they claim specifically? Mm-hmm. I think it's an injustice to go after them. People who are acting for their own benefit and for the benefit of another government and not saying that they're agents and then running for office and then being placed into office, I think that's a different thing. Yeah. So, but they were also ordered to give over their

roll sheets to the US government. They refused. They actually had moral Compunctions while these comics were on the shelf. Okay, major Robert White set the record for the highest flight with an airplane All right at 215,000 feet while these comics are on the shelves Was that the X-1? I think so. Yeah Norad conducted a test which grounded all air travel for over 12 hours. Even then, it was unheard of to do that. A B-52 went missing forever during this exercise, by the way. Like never found while these comics are on the shelves.

We don't know what happened to it. We don't know. It's a big ocean out there though. Chris Jeff takes control of the polyurethane on the USSR. He gives a six hour speech. I presume in Russian. He promised a 50 megaton nuclear bomb by November and total victory of communism by 1980. Not a total victory of Russia, which now we're seeing, but But of communism. Yeah, while these comics were on the shelf yeah the

uss are test launch the submarine based nuclear missile while these comics are on the shelves the us responded a few days later by saying there was no missile gap while these comics are on the shelf because actually there wasn't right there never never actually yeah the US and Soviet tanks are literally pointed at each other in Berlin over a minor traffic dispute with a car Okay, wait wait. Yeah, so there's a minor traffic dispute You bumped into me, you know, you got your chocolate in my in my peanut butter kind of thing in East Berlin

like right near the the spot you checked with Charlie yeah, and and It like right near the spot. Oh, here, check when Charlie is. Yeah, and it escalated because they were two soldiers. Oh, no. And then more soldiers, and then the tanks came in. And they're literally pointing at each other. Oh my god. Yeah. Over a fender bender.

While these comics are on the shelves. I just also want to point out. Yes. While these comics are also on the shelves, 30 October 1961, the Soviet RDS 220 Hydrogen Bomb. Oh, I was getting there, yeah. Yeah, it's our bomba. Yeah. So you've got the notes there already.

Yeah, so I might have, I might be mentioning another, but there are really cool experiments being made and failing regarding X-rays and the moon. Okay. While these comics are on the shelf, we're sending X-rays to the moon and trying to figure out stuff, right? The Saturn I rocket booster was successfully tested in Cape Canaveral and got up to 85

miles high while these comics are on the shelf. We're getting off the planet and into space, blue is turning into black. The USSR identified a 58 megaton nuclear bomb as a test. And I think that's the one you're talking about while these comics are on the shelf. Largest nuclear test in history. They made, if I remember the history correctly, they essentially made a rounding error. Yeah. They had not intended for it to be anywhere near as big as it was. Yeah. And it stunned everybody. Yep.

Yeah. So while these comics are on the shelves, a lot, there's a theme here. I don't know if you noticed. There's a lot of science and there's a lot of cold war. Yes. And really there's a lot of firsts or a lot of breaking barriers, right? Yes. So people's imaginations and fears are just running wild with this stuff, right?

Every day, it's, we are running into a similar thing. We're like, we think we're at rock bottom and we just find out how much more give it has. Well, no, we realize that the barrel is a lot deeper. Yes, the muck is a lot deeper. The muck keeps going. Yeah, we thought it was solid, but... The swamp is in fact bottomless. Yeah, we're not in a swamp, we're in a

sarlac pit. We're our texts. Yes. And we're shocked. Yeah. So imagine that, but going upward and having these existential threats though. Superheroes, classically depicted, don't really answer to superlative

realities though, because they're already superlative. The fantastic for however are able to answer to these realities for people because they're living in grotesque times. The times that they're living in are, and I will come back to that, right? Let's see. Comically or repulsively ugly. Distorted. Very ugly or comically distorted figure of what you expect.

Bizarre distorted, unnatural, in Congress with what you know, or fantastic. Too physically unreal to be anywhere near ideal. That's what we're living in in the 1960s. So now we're gonna take a look at the nuclear family because that's that was the thing that was gonna save us all is if we like all do the same thing at the same time and live in the same places No Jews allowed That's gonna save us. Right Serbia. Yeah. Leave it to be her. Right. By the way, yeah, dirtiest TV ever. Yeah, I want to point out that my father and my uncle who are four four years apart in age. Okay, my father's 44 my father's 48

Technically, my father is not a baby boomer But I want to point out that my dad my uncle nicknamed one another Wally and the beef My grandmother Vacuumed in her pearls. Oh Lord Wow, my grandmother was the living embodiment of June Cleaver. I mean, no kidding. That is what my dad grew up in. My parents, my mom grew up in a three three child household. Two parents, Papa owned a collision shop for a while. Nana, my grandma, Papa owned a collision shop for a while. Nana my grandma was a stay-at-home mom. They prescribed amphetamines for her so she can keep up with her chores.

Mother's little helper. Yes, she didn't like how it felt. It's just like the Beatles song. It stones. You're right. Yeah, yeah. Beatles didn't sing about substance until they found drugs. Yeah. So. And. Yeah, yeah. Beatles didn't sing about no of substance until they found drugs.

Yeah. So. And yeah. Mata Rishi. Yeah. Right, Shogi. So. Yeah.

You've got the nuclear family. Nuclear family. Mom, dad. Two point five children. Yeah. Yeah. Dog, cat, white picket fence, white picket neighbors. So.

So it's the nuclear family of superheroes. Okay. White picket neighbors. So So it's the nuclear family of superheroes Okay That's what the Fandesque for is and yes double-entandra is meant there They're not a family in the classic sense. So they're already a grotesque reflection of the family But their relationships end up being like that of what a nuclear family is supposed to be a grotesque version if you will And they are a nuclear powered in some way. They're cosmic rays. They're all science-dupped. They got their powers engaging in the space race of the 1960s, which itself was an outcropping of the nuclear cold war. The reason we're going to go to spaces so

we can outsmart the rescues. So we can build better incontinent, intercontinental ballistic missiles. I like the idea of incontinence all bullies Yeah, sorry, cold burns. We're just gonna piss all over them. Yeah, just let loose. So yeah, their powers and their grotesque slash normal appearances are also physical mannest fist station of the cold war anxieties and the advice that people followed to avoid it. Remember, duck and cover. Right.

Do this really mundane, pointless thing that will normalize the fear that you're feeling and you'll be safe from existential threats. Yeah. So cover yourself with a blanket, close your eyes, which is what they told people in the event of a nuclear war So huge fear yeah huge fear of all this stuff, but don't worry your picnic blanket will save you It cover your eyes though cover your eyes Yeah, which you know what you know who covers their eyes and pulls a blanket over them when they're scared. Little kids. Exactly. Yes. Well yeah because in the face of that kind of terror

you all go ativistic and go back to whatever our most primitive instinct is. Yeah. Well and then you add to that the fact that horror movies are kind of a big thing. The movie them giant ants irradiated ants scary as hell kids had nightmares and they pulled their head over or pulled their head over pulled the blanket over their head Huge scary problem. We're weirdly vanilla solution. Yeah um And that's that's kind of the fantastic four. A little bit.

They face a lot of weird scary problems. There's a lot of weird things in the family. A very vanilla family. Yeah. Weirdly vanilla. Weirdly vanilla. The emphasis on the weird. Yeah.

Real big emphasis. Yeah. And they're also a nuclear family. Yeah. Read his dad, Sue his mom, Johnny and Ben are the kids who always bigger and they need dad to step in and soothe everything out. Sue yells to read, stomp them. Yeah Ben is the older, um hmm, who belly is doesn't get along with dad. Yep and and Johnny is the irritating younger brother. And mama's boy. Yep. Read's in charge, Sue tends to the house and the kids break shit constantly. Yes. But there's a lot more. So this next part I titled their bodies, their selves. Oh nice.

So each character is grotesque in its own way. Yeah. In a way that pokes hard at American society in the 1960s. Okay. Okay. It becomes a mirror meant meant I think I don't think consciously, but I think subconsciously this is what Lee and Kirby were doing. They're holding up a mirror to show us where we were going and why it was a problem. Okay. I don't think they meant to. I don't think they're that smart, quite honestly, or that socially conscious of the time that they live in. They drew things for a living. It would be really hard for anybody to in the times that you're living in. To be that prescient. Yeah, well, yeah. Prision and for anybody to notice the water that they are swimming in as fish.

Right. You know, being able to separate yourself from the events that you're living through. And more than that, the zip-guys is a subconscious thing. We don't understand why it is when we're all in the 80s wearing big shoulder pads and our jackets. The mullet becomes a fucking thing. Nobody understands why. Yeah, no one went to to a meeting said, okay, from here on. So from here on out. Here till about 95. Business, business, the front

party back and you know, your shoulders need to stick out at least three inches, you know, outside. Male and female. Male and female. Yeah. And, and you know, I mean, nowadays we can look back at what was going on in the world and kind of go, well, okay, this is a reaction to this, that and the other thing. Right. The whole point of this fucking podcast, the whole point you had about this stuff, but in the time that it was happening, impossible to say what water is when you're swimming in. Yeah, yeah. So, but it did effectively do that on a very subconscious level, because then comics do shift and do change

and maybe they change with the culture but I really like that you have this weirdly vanilla group actually showing us what we're gonna become. The Phantastic Four was far more subversive than anyone would expect for very white very dull very conformist superheroes to be. So I am going to start with Susan Storm, partly because of my major, partly because yeah, because I think she's also one of the more obvious ones to point to. And so first off, she is subject to the same problem that most super heroes in Marvel were that Stanley named them, and he named them porn names by accident. So essentially he went with the alliteration.

Every time because it was easier for him to remember. So Susan Storm, later Susan Richards, her power is probably the most obvious metaphor of American grotesque nuclear family. She's the invisible role of the woman in suburban America. Yeah. And she's called the invisible girl. So she's infantilized. Not allowed.

Yeah. And she's just disappeared. Yeah. We don't know how this house runs. No. It just runs. It just you drop the laundry in the basket and it gets clean. Magically it's in your drawer.

And it has clean it's in your drawer. And as quickly it's in your drawer. Now her original power was only invisibility. Yes. Later on she figures out how to create force fields. Yes. To then act as a Yonic defending shielding feminine art type. Yeah. Yeah.

Later on she figures out the force fields and type. Yeah. Yeah. Later on, she figured out the force fields and bolts. Yeah. And she actually figured out how to make them offensive weapons as well. And I'll still get to that. But she had the power to not be seen. That was her power to disappear from view, like most women in history.

Yes. She still got things done. She just wasn't recognized for it. Yeah. And she always disappeared in the in the comic books from the legs up From the bottom up which if you think about that just that's her sexuality disappearing Oh, wow in the presence of her husband who cares more about his work than tending to his own relationship with her Yes, the first thing sacrificed for the good of the family is her lady bits.

Okay. Now, funnily enough, you can't draw on invisible person. No, you can't. Unless you make them visible in some way. So she was visible in order to be invisible. So her power didn't exist in a way that we could understand it. But how it was, in fact, that we could understand it. But how was in fact invisible? Right. True.

Yeah. You couldn't see her power, so we had to draw it in to stand in for it. So her invisibility is grotesque. It's bizarre. Well, one of the interesting things, going back and reading some of the comics from that time period, in which we see Sue interacting with the other characters. Yep. Is there's also an interesting Freudian element of the fact that she is remarkably insecure. Yes.

Like, I mean, you look at her character now, and you look at any other female superhero in today. And then you look at Sue Richards or Sue Storm at the beginning. And you're like, you're one good on you for growing. But the initial reaction is you kind of want to grab her by her pearls and like lady figure it out. Right. To us having grown up in a world where, yeah, generational views of gender rules had started to shift. Sure. You know, it's a lot of fun.

Well, and I mean, she even swings far to the other way to become malice at one point, which is like writers and artists going, look at these, you know, third wave feminist, I know. Oh my God, yeah. And then she, you know, it was often has repeated affairs with name work. Yeah, well, and wave feminist, I, you know, but then she, you know, has repeated affairs with name work.

Yeah. Well, and that's the thing she's like, she doesn't know who she loves more. And she really does love read more, but he never pays attention to her. And then she's got this guy who totally pays attention to her. By the way, he's more classically handsome, except for his pointy ass ears and his widows peak, which is normally a bad guy thing and his green shorts. Also normally a bad guy thing. He's an anti-hero. Yeah, from much farther.

So, yeah, well, it's about right under water, flying fish. Yeah. So, in her invisibility, she's grotesque, and she is at once invisible to men's appreciation, and yet still visible to us the audience as being unavailable. Whoa yeah. Now her forcefields point to obviously like you said a protective

role the Yonik defender the major in defender she keeps people safe as a good mother should. She stays unseen as a good mother should she keeps things together as a good mother should in the 1960s. Funny thing, she's an amazing scientist in her own right, but she cares so much more about fashion and womany things, probably because this was men writing a woman. But she takes much more of a backseat role any time her husband is around. She tends to be the peacemaker amongst the other two members of the team. She's the mother. Hence, your invisible force fields eventually. Even her ability to protect you is unseen. Total mom of the 1960s superpower. She's invisible still, but very effective and very protective. Some would say she ends up being

the most powerful of the group, but she's also the least expected to use her power. And she also ends up being damseled so many times. Oh, left, right, center, backward, forward. Boy, howdy. Now she's not particularly gorgeous either. No. She is attractive, but in a matronly way, a fairly sexless way. Yeah, you do.

Certainly compared to anybody else. Compared to Wonder Woman, for instance. Yeah. She's an admiring and doting fiance and wife. Well, it's interesting to talk about them being grotesques. Physically, they're grotesques. When we're talking about their roles in this subconscious allegory for the nuclear family, their roles are idealized. She is certainly what the writers and artists of the comic book

would consider an ideal fiance in 1961, 1962, et cetera. Oh yeah. When I'm sure a great many of them were, you know, not yet married Mm-hmm, you know, we're looking at you know young adult men 20 somethings, you know writing these characters. Oh, yeah You know wishful film and was certainly part of that. Yes Now I'm going to show you and sorry for all of our listeners I'm going to show you a page where they're fighting Dr. Doom. Okay. And it's Sue and Reed for the most part. Okay. And I will describe

what... Well, actually, I will have you describe what you're saying. Feel free to quote what you want. Okay. And just tell us who's talking. All right. So we open with the narration that that moment all personal problems and conflicts are forgotten as Sue Storm returns to visibility of the man whose heart she possessed. Possesses, rather leaps into galvanized action to protect her. We see her with her back turned running away. Read is trying to block a doorway. He's all twisted up like he does, bendy. Then in the next frame, time itself seems to hang suspended. We have doom standing there. He's got a ray gun. Doom then it was US suspected. Richards we meet too soon. This needs my plans must change, but the result would be the same. Reed tells Sue to run.

He doesn't say, come on, help me out here. Because she has a badass power. And Dr. Doom has a gun. Yeah, he tells her to run away while I'm gonna stand here as the heroic sacrificing father figure, the Lingam Protective. And she then immediately leaps to his defense, protective, wifely, motherly figure, puts up the force field, and then reads as your invisible force field. Of course, now project it, Sue, push it back quickly

towards doom. I'm going to come back to that bit of dialogue. Yeah. Well, I just like to point out he's mansplaining her own power to her. Well there's that. Oh you're doing a thing. Let me tell you how to do it. Yeah then she manages to push doom out the window. Someone's seen for us pushed me through the window. Nearly a temporary setback and he's got out of the street. I wish I had the optimism. Okay, well, it's here's the deal. For him, it's not optimism. For doom, it is confidence run. Oh, yeah. Madly a mock. That's the reason I'd like that feeling though. Like if I get a parking ticket. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Don't get a temporary setback. I'm like, oh, shit. This means no meat for the month. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. So then the two of them staring out the window, I'm soon saying I don't understand any of this. Him in tones of somewhat exasperated, it seems like telling her I tried to explain, we were drugged. Man, just imagine the worst about each other, the two of them in a pose where she is consoling him, telling Reed Dearest, I've been such a fool

Mind they were both dragged presumably both acting like assholes. Yeah, then oh my god Here it is Not a fool Sue merely a female you couldn't have reacted differently But we have in time did we have in time to talk not with Dr. Doom on the loose? Okay, so what I want to point out about that, about, there's so much... I'm sorry, wait, I'm not... merely a female. merely a female.

A female, not a woman! Not a woman. A female. Yeah, so point out what you're gonna point out. Take a woman who'd away from her and stop everything else. So, so, you're invisible for shield of course. Like, right, I had completely forgotten. You had that power.

I forgot the thing that makes you special. I am the smartest, I am the smartest, some bitch in like literally, there is a certificate hanging on the wall of my office, Hank then said you got this. Hank Pim, Tony Stark ain't got nothing on none of those people they come to me they come to me yeah cut read Rich's a check it's a trope for a reason you know and and I'm the smartest dude on earth I am married to or engaged. I don't know whether they're- No, they're not married yet. Yeah, I'm engaged to a telekinetic.

Yeah. And I forget that. Yeah, I'm the leader of the Fantastic Core. I'm the leader of this team. I know what each person can do, because they basically only have one power each. And I totally forgot your power. I, well, no, I have your second power.

Yeah. Because the one I always remember is the fact that you can become invisible because I'm a 1960s male and that's ideally what all women would do. Right. Because, oh my God, merely a female. What the f- You can't every act differently. You emotional slut.

So there's more. Oh my God. Here's one from a different one and it's just a single panel read Richards is such a dick so he's laying on the ground looks like he's been injured Ben is on the right hand side of the frame Sue is bending down over him in another comforting semi-protected kind of pose and reads remark is if I'm the leader of this group you've got to trust me Oh baby implicitly and

her response Baby you can do so better and she's not even saying it out loud. She's not even saying it out loud It's a thought bubble. She says I've never seen him so upset so annoyed with me. Mm-hmm. Not oh my god Yeah, what a pompous ass.'s being. Yes. No, no. Oh my god. He's so upset with me. What have I done? Uh-huh? You know Yep, I don't know if that was curvy writing that if that was Lee writing that I don't know who that was, but I kind of want to go back. Uh-huh I want to find a way back machine just to go back and give slap because

but I kind of want to go back. I want to find a way back machine just to go back and give slap because it's holy crap. Nowadays we call that an abusive relationship. Yes. Oh, and there's others. And I haven't. These are from the ones that I've read

because I'm starting from the beginning and working my own board. There's other ones that I have pulled from the internet are things like stop being such a female and get over and help me. And stuff like this, I mean, it's just insane. Or stop thinking like a scientist and start thinking like my wife. By that point, they're married. Yeah. So never, never mind the fact that you can't think like her husband to save your god damn life. Right. Or her or her or her. And she is damseled all the time she is always

captured yeah and she's the love interest of a disinterested man yeah a man consumed by his work yeah I'm gonna come back to that in a little bit she is the also the love interest of Namor a man whose own morality is questionable hence the green and she's torn between the two of them. He being name more represents your foreign lethario type, because he is old. And he's a foreigner, he's Valentino. Yeah, I was gonna say Italian,

because dark hair, widow's pig, widow's pig, yeah, Valentino. The ears, the weird ears, all Italians have those weird ears. Yeah, sorry. Hold on. What? I don't see... Sorry, what?

Yeah. The French have tails. I don't see what the... No? The Germans just have to compulsion to march. Yeah, it's so... Well, they have goose legs. Oh, that's what it is.

Okay, that's what they were. That's why they were brooched all the time. They got us together actually got that from the bridge. Yeah, I don't know. So, uh, I have goose legs. Oh, that's why that's okay. So that's why they were brooched all the time. Not us together actually got that from the brits, but I don't know. So, read though represents the American man. Yeah. Her dilemma isn't really a dilemma. We all know she's going to end up doing the right thing

and marrying the man who put her life in danger for her own ambitions and is treated reportedly ever since. Because he did. He totally did. He's like, we have to beat the Russians. We shall go up without spacesuits really into my rocket that I built privately somehow. And we need to break in, go fly it and go. Honey, come with me. Well, can my brother come along? Yeah, sure. It's fine. Who cares about weight allowance? Let's go. Yeah. Everybody's physics involved. It's because, well, you know, combat parts, but so of course she's gonna end up with him But it is the 1960s so she does and Namor does show another person possibility

Sexual attraction. He is lusting after Sue. Oh, that's why it ain't gonna work Susan doesn't have the any ambition of her own either. No. So it would appear as she disappears. She reacts to what's going on. Her power itself is a reactive power. Yes. When she gets stressed, she goes disappearing.

Yeah. When an attack is happening is when she brings up the foreshield. That's how these things work. Yeah. She wants the safety and security that her fiance and later husband promises, but she never does anything more than wanting it. She never does much besides fretting about it or like cleaning up a vase that Ben and Johnny break.

She rarely affects her own escapes, or the rescues of other people. And later on she will, but I'm talking in the 1960s when they first come up Yeah, the early the early formative period she's when when she agreed have kids Right, he is a trope yes codifier or maybe not codify but she's she's a strong example of Yeah, yeah, when you know their children get kidnapped over and over and over and over and over again. Oh, oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, 90s and their children get kidnapped over and over and over and over and over again. Oh, oh yeah.

You're on in the 80s, 90s. She is the part of our country, whom science was trying to and supposed to protect from foreign threats in the 1960s. Okay. All right. Now let's talk Reed Richards. Let's. Reed Richards. His powers are indicative of the America's stretching and

contorting morality. Okay. He's stretchy. He's bendy. Okay. Science keeps finding new ways around and through problems in the 1960s. Yes. Read Richards bodily does that. Okay. Scientists continue to bend and twist themselves to avoid the ethics of what they did. Okay. Who cares if I come down? Operation paperclip. Right.

Ron Brown. Yeah. He is apolitical, you know. In order to push the frontiers of what they could do, uh, hey, let's find out what Seflis does. Oh, how are we going to do that? Let's just inject a whole bunch of black guys with it. Cool.

Hey, let's find out if we can turn LSD into a truth serum. How we're going to dose people's drinks and then take them and kidnap them for a little bit. It's cool. Yeah. Like, no ethics. Yeah, no, no. But got to find out. Got to know. Yeah, got to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that we can beat the Russians. Yeah. That's all that reads about. Yeah. That's how he gets them. They're fantastic powers. Right. Well, beating the Russians first. Then do the scrolls. Right.

It was a scrolls first. Scrolls first. Okay. Yeah. Also want to point out scrolls. Mm-hmm. Cold, or menace, shape shifters. Oh, absolutely. Don't lose an alien. Oh, yeah. See something. See something. Yeah. And at the same time, Captain America, or not Captain America, Superman is saying, hey, that's, it's not American to turn your friends in by the way. Yeah. Like, there was a weird version there. Yeah. So his ambition knows no limits. He endangered his, his best friend from college, his girlfriend, and her brother. He hasn't his best friend from college his girlfriend and her brother He hasn't even asked her to marry him yet. No In order to realize his dream of superiority in space and science. Yeah, well to prove his

Prove himself right. No price too high to pay for his ambition. He's also a father figure So here's your nuclear family again. She's the mother, he's the father. He continues to find ways to maintain his role as father with increasing flexibility and stretching. So he doesn't go and get drunk. He physically can move stuff around and make it happen. The the the dad of the 60s was going and getting drunk and and escaping the family because the pressure was too great. I'm painting with a broad brush because it's time uh... some would say that he stretches himself to thin but

but regardless he maintains his own sense of ex exceptionalism and composure he names himself mister fantastic uh... and the group takes on his Cognoman. Fantastic form. Which I got to tell you, my spell checker turned it to Abdomen. I was like, no, it doesn't take on his Abdomen.

Nice. In addition to his own powers, he's a brilliant scientist who never has time for his relationship with his fiancee and wife. He rarely is involved with his family dynamic at all except to come in and be an authority figure. Yeah, and tell everybody else what to do. Right. Other than that, he's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me without question. He's not going to obey me, anyway. He's utterly consumed by his work and in the 1960s,

America was consumed with the Cold War and the space race, especially its father figures, the government. Okay. I would also argue that the model for the nuclear family in the 1960s, the whole of the father, and this is mirrored even in the generation, even in our generation, the parents of our generation. My father-in-law held that same kind of outlook

on his job. His job was to go out and make the money to support the family. And the idea of being home to be nurturing supportive. Yeah. Being around you know well you know I've got to go out and do this thing with the guys from the office because I've got to build those relationships because that's work and that's important and that's this you know and so that's that didn't that didn't go away with just that generation.

And it wasn't just the scientists and the engineers, it was any father figure during that time period. Oh yeah, and it's still like, I have a friend who is a stay-at-home parent and he still gets looked at a little sideways from people who are other words very, very accepting of all things. So like yeah, kind of looking at him like he's not doing his job. It's like no she makes more money.

I must stay home. Yeah. Our kid is always taking care of him. Like wow that must be nice. Yeah. And you know, you know, teachers in the summertime were full-time dads. Yes. You know, she's amazing and fun. Yeah, it was great. But, you know, we have to deal with the same thing. Yes we do. I mean, it's only for, you know, two and a half months out of the room. Right. And we can just say, oh, I'm a teacher and people are like,

oh, okay, that's a reason. That's a reason. That's a reason. You get a free pass and say, you know what? If I wasn't in two, it would still be okay. If my wife wasn't in a turning, like a judge, whatever, and making enough money that she could be the one, so it could be a single income household.

We'd do it. Yeah. Yeah. You know. Oh, absolutely. Dude. So, read Richards. Yeah.

If you look at him, he's not actually classically exceptional in any way. That was really not. He's not ugly. He really got a really square head. Yep. But he's not stacked either. He's skinny. He's bland. He's he's not ugly. He's got a really square head. Yep, but he's not stacked either He's skinny. He's bland. Yeah, I'm getting at the temples. Yeah, not what heroes look like no But he is what fathers looks like He is what the father of our nation at that time looked like this is true only hey Jack Kennedy was a good looking dude

He was read Richards wasn't terrible looking. No, it was a two-dimensional version of Jack Kennedy was a good looking dude he was read Richards wasn't terrible looking no Was a two dimensional version of Jack Kennedy all right Yeah, okay, it's a scratch. I see what you're saying. The parallel is definitely there. Yeah, but yeah It's a strange heat of head movie start good looks if he was really yeah, but anyway, it's a stretch I know thank you God God damn good day, sir It's a stretch. Oh, you oh, thank you. God. God, damn it. Good day, sir. So he's trying to sort of.

All right. So he's trying to provide a middle class lifestyle to their families, right, to his family. And fathers were trying to do the same thing. And they too were always at work, like you were saying. Their work pulled them away from the family, like you said. And Reed's science experiments did the same thing and they too were always at work like you were saying. Their work pulled them away from the family like you said and read science experiments did the same thing for him. The difference was that no matter how far you pulled him, it was stretchy. And the way he fights

incidentally is also very 1960s America. Think about it. He wraps himself around the evil with his arms until they're totally restrained What policy does that sound like oh well containment yeah Domino dominant fighting against dominant metaphorically science and reason are going to restrain our base or emotions and keep us all safe He's always got advanced warning Radar sonar hopes of American satellite usage. He's got these warnings on any new threats due to his technological exceptionalism, and yet the house that he built, the headquarters that he built, is under constant threat of intrusion. So despite all of this, is a constant man and he, they become a target for it, you know, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Despite all of this is a constant man and he they become a target for it.

Yeah. A self fulfilling prophecy. Despite all of his efforts at maintaining order and security, this techno empire read Richards. The techno empire that he built is too porous. He needs a wall. But he fails. He fails no matter. But he fails. No matter how far he stretches.

It's almost as though his very policy of containment is at odds with reality. And so no matter how much he stretches, he can't get around the chaos that is inherent in the world. It's almost like he is a physical embodiment of NSC 68 and NSC 10, where it says chaos and disorder in the world are a threat to American security and therefore we have the means and the tools and the capabilities and the duty to contain chaos. You can't contain chaos. There have been myths written about this. Yeah. Since the dawn time.

So his power is obviously grotesque, but his ambition is grotesque. Okay, yeah, overblown, massive caricature-like. Now here's the thing, he and his wife, later wife, his fiancee, they're both able to pass for normal people. Yes. Similar to most father figures in the 60s. Similar to most father figures in the 60s. Similar to most mother figures in the 60s. You didn't know that still waters ran so deep.

No. It just went without saying. Yeah. And, you know, nobody talked about how much dad drank. Right. Nobody talked about the pill's mom took. Right. You know.

Yeah. Nobody talked about the mistress that dad had. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody talked about the two-week vacation that mom took Because they couldn't afford another child. No, we talked about those things. No, and everybody had that so under the surface There's all kinds of dysfunction. Oh, yeah Read Richards embodies that dichotomy in a way that enables the comic books to offer a light critique of society at the time and they're not even doing it on purpose. So which sibling do you want to hear about next? I want to hear about Ben Grimm. Alright, Ben Grimm.

Now, I'm going to probably refer back to Johnny a little bit because I don't think you can separate one from the other. It's tough. Benjamin J. Grimm. Yes. Later retconned to be of Jewish extraction by the way. Yes. But it was a non-issue which I was talking to a friend of mine recently and she said that that was actually a very common thing.

Yeah, we're Jewish but we're not Jewish. Is that kind of thing? Yeah. So it kind of fits in with that. All lovable blue eyes. One of the... Love and blue eyes. Yep. Amppetunia's Little Darling.

One of the few characters to be a secondary color. Yes. And the one and only member of the Fantastic Four who's not related to the others in some way. Yes. He is a man of part. He was read-richards as incredibly unlikely way. Yes. He is a man apart. He was Reed Richards' incredibly unlikely roommate. Yeah. And they become friends despite having nothing at all in common. He's the only one with actual military training. And the only one actually trained to fly things. Yes. Okay, so Reed Richards represents a modern professional man. Yeah, Susan

Storm represents the modern stay-at-home mom. Yeah. The room is the working man. Exactly. Blue collar. Crusty. Blue eyes, blue collar. Stuck in his ways. Short tempered, cranky. Constantly antagonized by kids. Johnny, the Yancy Street gang, feels marginalized despite drawing all the focus to himself. That's where I get a little uncomfortable because I used to like the thing a lot, and now I'm like, oh, I know which way he might have voted. He wouldn't have. He wouldn't, but the way you're describing it, yeah, that definitely.

He's the vet who came home from World War two and Feels like the world passed him by 15 years later. Yeah His training in the military doesn't really apply to his current life But it did get him to where he is. Yeah, he's somewhat isolated Read his brilliant scientist Susan is some sort of model half the time Read is brilliant scientist Susan is some sort of model half the time and a scientist the other half Johnny is a teen heartthrob and a race car guy Ben is just the every man. Yeah, he's our Winston Zedmore There's a steady paycheck in it. I'll do whatever you tell me every cell. Yeah, you know I have seen shit that will turn you white. you know, that kind of stuff like he is just

Those are and those are you can hear those lines modified into his particular Uh-huh style Uh-huh things he would say so yeah despite the fact that he's an amazing analogy Despite the fact that he looks nothing like us. He is the one who is most like us He is the normal guy whose reactions we can relate to the most. He's the straight man. Yes. He's at once the most and least super of them all. He's also prone to depression. Yes. His powers, he's a giant and made of rocks. He's strong and durable. That's really about it. Yeah. Okay. When the fantastic four come onto the scene, his strength is totally unparalleled, except for the Hulk.

But even the thing that he's best at is actually being bested by a product of modern science. Mmm. Anything you can do, science can figure out a way to do better. He's invulnerable, but also because of his appearance, he's repulsive and untouchable. He's the only member of the team who can't control when he's seen his grotesque or not. Everyone else can pass. Yeah, he can't. He can't pass for white.

Yeah, I was going to say is there is there is there is there an analogy there a bit which is interesting because again we go back to the fact that it turns out he had he is from Jewish ancestry too. Yeah, and go back to Levittown. Yeah, stuff like that. It's really interesting. So he's he's a lot like the working man in the 1960s. He can't get out of his job. He can't retrain and retool in the 1960s. He can't get out of his job. He can't retrain and retool in the 1960s. He can't control how others see him. He doesn't have the ability to understand how to do it. He does his job and because he does his job, he feels marginalized as a result.

Now, previously I spoke of his orangeness. Like I said, orange just like now was often used to highlight mental or emotional instability or at least being mentally or emotionally handicapped Okay, in some significant way his worldview is he's a man out of time and not in the same way that Captain America is because Captain America actually adapted Yeah, Ben is always a crank He's out of stuff with reality Yeah, forever is yeah when in during civil war in during Civil War. He he fled to France. Canada. Well, there was there was a punchline. Oh, was there in one issue. I got a look at that. I got translated. It's clobberantime into French. Oh wow. Oh cool. The Bontomp relay. Okay. Got changed to it's Clobbering time oh neat and yeah he just said you know what I just thought he

Went to Quebec I don't I don't know I know I might be misremembered yeah I'd have been Quebec but he he was just you know what there's no way there's no I mean you Want me to register look at me right the hell do I have to do that that's you know and he had an almost cap like speech about how that was bullshit yep and unamerican and not the world he wanted to live in right and so so I'm out of here yeah and yeah so yes he's still cranking he remains he forever will be now I'm gonna point out something that's currently problematic for us. He is a

strange-handed squat, really wide, orange man who is cranky all the time, yells a lot from New York, who is completely out of step with the reality he's in. I have no idea what you're alluding to. Not a damn thing. Like at all. So here's my favorite thing about the thing.

I'm gonna just slide right over to that. We're gonna keep going. Yeah. Because you know what? Ben Grimm is okay people. Yes he is. So he is. So here's the thing about the thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Despite his constant self-pity, because it's there. Oh yeah. Oh my god. On. He really does. Yeah Don't know what you're talking. Yeah, yeah, he's he's actually He's actually the only member of the Fantastic Four to reach out to normal human beings for some sense of connection to the rest of the world Yes

Everyone else is insular. Yeah Despite being trapped in his grotesqueness, because he's trapped in it. He is the only one to reach beyond it to maintain his humanity on some normal level. Okay. Now the one he dates at first is blind, so you can get around that and etc. But he finds one and the thing is she's blind, so she can't see him. So she feels every bump and crack in his body to get a sense of who he is and she gets to know the real him Through that and accepts him for who he is. He's the only one who's acceptable truly acceptable to an outside person The only one in the relationship who cares how he's seen is him

Well, yeah, I think I think it's interesting because you know read is smartest guy in the world and unfortunately knows it So he's completely tied up in that aspect of his ego. Yes, so completely tied up in Erie Ferry win him Super science. Oh, yeah, that he he doesn't care about the connection. Sue has locked on to read. Yep. As the source of identity. So anything else outside of that, she's got Blender's on because of that. Oh, yeah. And Johnny is a Apollo. Yes, the Greek God. Yes. And everything is reflection reflected in his glory. Look how I should look at look at how I bring light to everything

Yeah, look at me look at me look at me. He is an egotist at least a narcissist at worst and so in that way he's the the part of the analogy to that individual we're not gonna mention right now That that is missing from Ben. Yes. And because of that, because of his insecurity, because of the split. Yeah, but yes, yeah, good, I like it.

Because of that insecurity, that is the reason that Ben has to be the one. Yes. Based on the archetype, he has to be the one to reach out to ordinary people. Oh yeah. And when you have the one who looks like a monster reaching out to ordinary people, it's kind of like when you grow up, and I know you and I grew up very differently,

partly just because of our height. Yeah. I grew up, I was always one of the tallest, right? And I'm not particularly tall, I'm only six feet tall. Yeah. But I've been six feet tall since I was 13. I learned to be a gentle giant pretty early on, you know, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm shot at, at how much bigger I am than people. Like, I'll see a picture.

I'm like, oh my God, I dwarf you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, he found a partner who valued him for the sweet and tender self that he keeps painfully locked away. Um, under the crusty, invulnerable exterior. He's a very vulnerable, loving person. Yeah. Uh, interesting thing about the thing, is that Reed Richards badgers him into using his training to fly them all into space?

Yes. When he does this, Ben Grimm ends up disfigured and freakish, way beyond anyone else. As a result of this, he is disabled from being able to do the things that he was once very skilled at. Yeah, because his big rock is Mickey Mouse Fingers, by the way. Yeah. is Mickey Mouse Fink by the way. Mickey Mouse, yeah. So, okay. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He is cartoonish, he is grotesque. Yes, he's the most obviously grotesque in the show.

And yet personality wise, he's the least. He's, yeah. He nurses a grudge against Reed for that, by the way. Rightly so, quite honestly. Forever. But their relationship is now trauma bonded in guilt yeah antagonism yeah patronism and a lack of acceptance read never stops trying to find a way to reverse what has happened to his friend and Ben never really accepts what's happened to him now

I'm just gonna point that out into the larger milieu of that and that the professional man feels a noblesso blees responsibility to the working man that he stepped on to get to where he is. For the manipulated or exploited. And the working man forever resents the egghead. Yeah. And they are locked in a struggle that is the foundation of their relationship.

Yeah. It's also not too different from Frankenstein's monster. No. In the book. In the book. In the book, who dresses the doctor down for creating him. Yeah. Flat out goes after him and tells the doctor, build me a woman. Yeah. Things grotesque. Grotesqueness is comical. Like I said, he has making

mouse hands, right? Overly size feet, giant brow. He's overly wide. He's squat. He dresses in a blue diaper. He's in fanatized and all sorts of ways. Johnny antagonizes him in the ways that a sibling would. He's the same age as Richards, but he's treated as a kid. He and Johnny absolutely represent opposing forces and I'll get to Johnny's second, squabbling siblings obviously. And the two parts of white America

who are the least important politically in the 1960s. The common working man and the teenager. And youth. Yes. The youths. The youths. Now, Johnny. Johnny Storm. Kid brother of Susan Storm. Later Susan Storm, Richards. The antagonist of Ben Grimm. The only minor to be shot into space to beat Commie's who wasn't a chimpanzee. Or a dog. Yeah, true. Well, no, the Soviets were the ones who shot dogs. So dog, the people who were strong.

The dog was shot to defeat the capitalist, but anyway. He is a hot-headed teenager, literally. Yes. He's the human torch. Yes. Now, he is not original, because what teenager is? He's borrowing from the 1940s Android character. Marvel redid it with a teenage hot rodder at the helm instead.

He is grotesque in the extreme when he activates his power. He is on fire. He's either a cute ladies man who represents the ideal 1960s teenager. Okay? Really into cars. Could have easily been a background character in American graffiti, or he's engulfed in flames. So you think there's an aspect of adult terror of teenagers involved there?

Yeah, well also the power of lust, which I don't think separates from that adult terror by the way. And the thing is Johnny in early early issues He has premature ejaculation issues with his fire Yes straight up does he gets too excited gets too worked out too hot Yes, and then it burns out quickly and he's exhausted afterwards and there's always like steam coming off of him Yeah, so wow. I mean, I don't know how you do it You're doing it wrong if there's not seeing coming off yet. So, eventually he controls it more finely.

He figures out how to edge. It's big at last longer. But in the beginning, it's an on and off switch. Yes. He gets the coolest, most powerful, seeming power for kids though. Like, he's the only one that flies on his own power. Classic superhero trope, right? He's the fastest.

He's obviously the most offense oriented, right? He can light shit on fire. And he's the light of the future. Talk about your Apollo. Simulism, right? He's also got the greatest potential for spreading disaster with his power wherever he goes Hence your yeah, like you're saying so oh Damn it which which is the myth of Apollo's son. I don't remember his name. I don't either but Apollo gave him the reins to the chariot

And he oh, and he fucked it up hard. Yes. H-shit. Yes. Set the world on fire. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that now. That's the archetype. Yeah. Yeah.

Also potentially Icarus. Yeah. You know, Icarus only got himself killed. Yeah. And Icarus wasn't just a tale of don't dream. It was, stay in the middle ground, son. Stay in the middle. Yeah.

And he didn't. He is the embodiment of teenage sexuality, like I said. Yeah. Whereas his sister is adult female sexuality. So the storms are sexual. They are sexual archetypes and Read and Ben are our working archetypes. So you have the Apollonian and Dionysus. Dionysian, okay, which you're a huge fan of and I want to throw that in their part. Now as he gets older and presumably wiser, Dionysian, okay. Which you're a huge fan of, and I wanna throw that in there for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, as he gets older and presumably wiser, but not really, it's a fairly incremental growth.

He learns control's flame. He sustains his flame, he tames his flame. Have it fun with that. Yeah, no, actually. He's unbridled passion, and then the wisdom that comes with age, but he, how to put this this he doesn't grow much beyond that He is the character in D&D that only cares about his combat abilities and never develops anything

He's a barbarian. Yeah He literally figures out how to avoid burning out as he steps out of his pure-I-L life. And into a life of heroics. So Johnny exhibits very little initiative on his own, by the way, unless it's short thrill seeking. He even then is short-lived. Yeah. Or if it's antagonizing Ben, he goes HF for that. Any time Reed needs something, Johnny is Johnny on the spot.

He's there to do whatever's asked him Even though like a good obedience exactly as opposed to the archetype of Ben who is the rebellious Older son first son who's trying to find an identity his own the protocol the protocol the second son who is Stickin around whatever daddy says right. Okay. I'll do what he says. I'm gonna go off and do haunted stuff, but I got you dead. But yeah. Yeah. I don't read the fifth, by the way.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very much Henry V. At least as depicted by Shakespeare. Or Hotspur. Prince Hattwell. Yeah, could be Hotspur. But I'm specifically thinking of

Prince Prince Hattwell into Henry V. Yes. You know, at the end of Henry IV, part two, the death of false death. Right. And his whole, you know, no, you understand my father is the king now. Right. I can't be hanging out with you people anymore. Right.

You know, that's the same thing. I have to go turn into Kenneth Rona. I have to go be the beautiful son. Yeah. Yeah. Very much that the beautiful son. Yeah. Yeah. Very much that kind of thing. Yeah. So there you go.

It's growing from teenage hood to draft age. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. Johnny blazes with frenetic energy. And he is the personification of a beautiful son. Like you said. And he knows that daddy knows best and that's how we get to him being idealized teenager right

because the end of the day whenever trouble he winds up getting into the will toe the line he will toe the line with told to by poppa whereas ben is likely to throw the finger since you know he's on the three and walk away uh... yet uh... he also recognizes that Reed is the force of order and he will help him corral the chaos. And ultimately he is Apollonian. Yeah. Nature. Who read? Well, his character. Yeah. His drives, Johnny. Oh, ultimately his drives are ultimately Apollononia. Yes, he strives to be Apolonia. Yes

Despite leaning in the direction of chaos Dionysus. He is when I was a child I had childish things. Yes, he is that. Oh perfect. He just does it all in one issue every issue. Every issue. So sometimes they don't focus on him enough Yeah, for him to do that. That's true and that's the thing is he can step off But then like when he shows up you're like oh, yeah guys on fire cool all right bitching and like the other three of the four He can be normal or he can use his power yeah That's thing in using their powers. Mm-hmm. They are grotesque Like his sister he uses his power. His self disappears

into the grotesque form. His face is no longer distinguishable. Exactly. His, I mean we can kind of sometimes you can see his fingers. Yeah, but he's substance. He's, he's a element. An artist's mannequin covered in flames. Yeah. And I'm going to get into the elements too. Okay. But yeah he like his sister and his eventual brother-in-law he passed it for normal like I said when he doesn't like the two of them he can hide with the rest of society if he exercises restraint against that which makes him different. Oh, oh, oh, man. Getting the hit in on 60s conformity. He is the one that the country would send off to fight in Vietnam shortly enough.

He is the brightest, the most hopeful, the youngest and the most beautiful. Wow. They do it to save Cold War anxious America from its own anxieties. Wow. There's your Johnny Storm. And there's not much on him because there's not much to him. Yeah.

Now let's talk about the number four. There are the fantastic four. This was not an accident. So many things revolve around the number four in our culture. Here's just a few. The four elements. Yeah. Obviously most of you can explain, right?

Look at your team exhibiting their powers. The thing is. Right, okay. Yeah. Earth for the thing. Fire, obviously, Johnny Storm. Yep. Water, read Richards.

Yep. Be water, my friends. Yep. And air, sewer, and invisible. There you go. Okay. As such, they take on those qualities and their personalities pretty quickly too.

Mr. Fantastic's ability to flow around a problem. Yes. Invisible woman's ability to be ever present but never seen. Yes. Human torches literally fire. Yes. And his end, his... But he also flares up with the temper.

Yes, his caloric character, caloric temper and Ben Grimm's, you know, Stalin crankish. He's the he's the conscience, too He's grounding them. Yes, he the number of times Ben Grimm has looked at Reed Richards and gone. No, that's that's one That's a bad idea. Yeah, too if it weren't a bad idea It's immoral unethical and probably fattening. Yeah. You know. And the three because I only have the third finger. Because I only have the third finger. Fuck you. Yeah. Um, so. So, okay. You know this better than I. They're the four humors. Yes. Which are tied to the four elements. Right. Johnny Storm is yellow by.

Johnny Storm is fire yellow bile color hot tempered tends toward impulsiveness extroverted ambitious has no direction just kind of no impulse control no direction sees what's in front of him all Michelangelo of the turtles yes there you go yeah Samantha of sex in the city Yes, you've watched that episode of the after hours. Yeah, that's a classic one. I'm gonna stick to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because that's my area of expertise. Yeah. And then Sue is a blood sanguine Sanguine Enthusiastic enthusiastic social Wants to be part of the crowd once be part of the crowd Everyone generally generally cheerful. Mm-hmm everyone wants to listen to her when she speaks up with passion. Yes

And then read is Flamatic. Yep, and boys. Yeah, ever and boys here The you know wet sweatark on a shower rod of any social situation. He is the drip. Yep. In any particular party. He's easy going, but so much in his own world. He's totally easy going because he doesn't care. Right. You know, so it's the dark side of the easy going. There. Doesn't show much emotion. It doesn't care. Right. You know, so it's the dark side of the easygoing there. Doesn't show much emotion. It doesn't show much emotion. Good analysis.

Good analysis. Good analysis. Very flexible. And then of course we have the melancholic temper. Black bile. Black bile. And grip. AKA saturnine.

Ben Grimm. Very set in his ways. Very solid. Very brooding. deep-feeler. Deep-feeler, melancholic. I mean, that's we use surprisingly to this day because he is struck by melancholic on a regular basis. Try civilized crowds.

Try civilized crowds, introverted, deep-thinker though. Surprisingly true. Very deep-thinker. introverted deep thinker though surprisingly very very deep thinker you know you wouldn't think it from his vocabulary or or his chosen idiom but a very deep thinker and actually read calls them out on that a few times I quit acting stupid you were an astronaut yeah you were an astronaut you know better than that yeah also interacts in an agitating manner toward flim yes so good point now again it's I mean the number four right? So here's the thing though, the real thesis of this podcast is that the fantastic four are a critique of the stayed

homogenous American middle class 1960s culture during the Cold War. Okay. They are what happens when you don't think, when you are just blindly loyal to a government and a society that is edging closer and closer to its own destruction. There are a grotesque version of America in the 1960s. Their very grotesqueness was a result of their insistence on having to beat their ideological enemy physically. Their formation as a nuclear family in the nuclear age is due largely to the fact that their trauma bonded together forever. Yeah, they can't get away from each other. There's no way I can't quit you. Yeah.

And really, they are the failure of America to honor its own promises. Okay. The number four? Yeah, for freedom speech. Oh, you're getting esoteric and okay, post war plans for the world and it was almost immediately reneged on domestically. Oh, well, yeah, due to racism and whitewashing and whitewashing and God knows what all else. So here's what FDR said in 1941 in the state of the Union address. Yes. See, he was allowed to have it there because he didn't shut down the government. We're not talking about that guy. And he also put people into camps.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms, the first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which translates into world terms, meaning economic understanding which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere

in the world. The fourth is a freedom from fear, which translated into world terms means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit and act of physical aggression toward any neighbor anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. To that order, to that new order,

we oppose the greater conception, the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear. That was 1941, 20 years later. Yeah, well, it was 1941, I think, what FDR didn't have in front of him when he drafted that. I don't know if in his defenses are right way to put this, but the freedom from fear apart, he could not have foreseen the extent to which the development and the use of nuclear weapons, like the truly super weapons, like truly, you know, Bhagavad Gita, you know, I am become death desire of worlds,

like we drop one bomb and we destroy a city with one bomb. Right. You know, that was not, I mean, the program was underway, but they were nowhere near actually building anything yet in 41. And so he could not have foreseen the extent to which that would completely change the dynamic between nation states. And especially between the United States and the Soviet Union Because what you know the way the way the course of the war operated Had a huge impact on the extent to which the Soviets were going to be perceived as any kind of a threat true

You know, yeah, and so it's it's a it's a beautiful speech. It's one of my favorite speeches out of American history. But I think the idealism expressed in it ran headlong into a brick wall of some realities that made that really hard to be achievable. It almost fits better after World War I. It's like he was thinking World War One terms. You know, what military historians always says everybody fights the last rule. That's true, that's true. You know, and that's exactly what happened

at the beginning of World War One. Oh, absolutely. Imagine a line was the perfect example of that. The French were like, oh, you want a trench line motherfucker? Yeah, trench line. Right, right. You know, the Germans went, yeah, that's great. We developed tanks to the end of the last war.

You may remember that. you used them on us. Hey, we figured out how to make them a lot faster. Well, and if you go back even further, you get World War One, it's like, oh my God, like what was their huge weapon there? It was gas, and the whole point of gas was to shorten the war, because it would be so terrible that no one would use it, which is exactly the same logic.

I want the same logic that I'll do. Every new weapon. Yeah, well, yes, and the same logic. The same logic, the whole stuff. Every new weapon. Yeah, well yes, and the machine gun. Yes. And the widespread use of the machine gun, everybody went into World War One with Napoleonic tactics. Right. They were fighting the US Civil War when they went into World War One

with cavalry charges and horse artillery, artillery all the same I mean the technology had and frankly digging in with trenches yeah and digging with trenches which which was the change from truly Napoleonic war from right happened during the Civil War which everybody we exported that oh wait hold on that works yeah so you know nobody almost nobody with, with the exception of Hideki Tocho, almost there, yeah, Admiral, no. Yamamoto. Yamamoto.

With the exception of Yamamoto, almost nobody ever sees what the next war is going to look like. Distro clearly. That's very true. They always wind up viewing it through the lens the last one, and that's not just generals, that's politicians. The humans. That's people. Yeah. And I think that's that's that's where I have to go. I was coming from with that speed. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and the thing is it's still set a tone. Oh yeah. And it made a promise.

Yes. That America reneged on. Yeah. And I think the fantastic four represent that re-negging that that we have this ideal Mm-hmm and this is and this is what we can't get it well Not just we can't get it in our in our attempt to get it We have proven ourselves in our attempts to get it We have we have not only fallen short of the mark but we have become something grotesque grotesque we have become something that is not in line with the goal we want to achieve you know Richard's is like I want to get in space I want to get to the moon right be the heroine you know space cock and look what

it is my family and look what it does to everybody yeah yeah look what it gets to my family. And look what it does to everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Look what it does to me. Well, and the fantastic for forever striving for those goals too, by the way. And they're often using the scrolls and Dr. Doom and others to serve as a foil to that. Yeah.

Ultimately, when they succeed in the first three for themselves, they feel miserably when it comes to freedom of fear, freedom of fear, and so is America. I mean, that really, your critique is dead on. The 1960s were a terrifying time for Americans. Talk to our parents. Yes, well, yeah, like you said in a previous episode,

your mom had nightmares. About the reds, who the hell were the reds and what were the reds? She didn't know and then we were watching shit to scare us more Yeah, and we're reading about like we're letting little streams out in our comic books Threats only got more and more existential for the Fantastic Four by the way They started by fighting the mole man. Yeah, who also were purple and green And then they moved on to dr. Doom and the scrolls and Namor and go lactose by fighting the mole man who also were purple and green. And then they moved on to Dr. Doom and the scrolls and Namor and Galactus.

Like they grew in their threat and the solutions became more and more frightening to match. Yes, the solutions became more and more frightening and technological. Yes, and the background tech of their everyday lives wound up jumping up and up and technological. Yes, and the background tech of their everyday lives, wound up jumping up and up and up. They have the flying cars, the pier, and then they never go away. Because we got these whizz-bang gadgets that we use, why would we ever not use them?

Right. Yeah. And I think additionally, there's an allegory there for the beginnings of Future Shock, which I think is a big part of what we are now dealing with in our generation now, is in the 1960s was when that acceleration curve of technological growth was beginning.

Yeah, and so we see it here, and it didn't reach critical mass, and the point where we have all the problems we have today with people not knowing how to cope with social media, not knowing how to connect anymore with each other because of the stuff that we're doing. Right. And we're now dealing with having reached a critical mass.

I think the ever scaling up issue And we're now dealing with the heading of reach to critical mass. I think the ever scaling up issue that you talk about with the fantastic form is also prophetic of that. Absolutely. Simultaneous. Well, and there's a backdrop of fear that's increasing. Like the background temperature is just

cranking up, yeah. Yeah, like lobster. Always, yeah, there's always a grand and brand new threat, the likes of which we've never seen before. Because why else would you buy a comic book to see them beat the same guy again? No, he's got to have a cool weapon. Or he's got to go travel in time or something.

It echoes the growth of nuclear power, though. Yeah. First, it was the atomic bomb. Then a more powerful version of the atomic bomb. Then the hydrogen bomb. Then a more powerful version of that atomic bomb, then the hydrogen bomb, then a more powerful version of that, then on and on and on, different delivery system, different proximity to our shores, different spy attempts, etc.

The fear was such a part of our popular culture that in 1961, Twilight Zone had an episode titled The Shelter. Oh yeah. And my favorite part was the quote with Rod Surling at the end. No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact. For civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized. Tonight's very small exercise in logic from the Twilight Zone. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and one of the things he points out is there were times that Sirling was able to be really, really cutting. Yes.

And really, you know, it's really clear he's dropping an anvil. Yeah. But the way he pulls it off is like masterful. And then you're like, oh shit, that anvil's always been there? Holy crap, yeah. And then there are other episodes where it's still, I'm dropping an animal on this, but it's so ham-fisted.

Yes. It's a product of its times. Yeah. He had an episode that he wrote, it was one of the Sirling's episodes that was, the Sun Not Rising. The Sun didn't come up over the horizon. We don't know why, we don't know how,

whatever the world's going on, oh my God, and all the terror and everything comes from that. But you hear in a radio broadcast in the background that the darkness seems particularly thick in Alabama, Georgia. Oh, well, I mean, I gotta go watch that one again. Yeah, that's great. It is a, like, no, no, I'm not just gonna be on the nose,

grab your nose and rip it the fuck off your face. That's awesome. This is about racism and segregation. We're all living in darkness, but some of us are even worse than the rest. That's great. You know, and King in the textbook, which by the way, if you haven't read it, it's a wonderful treatise on writing and storytelling. It's where I first got the idea of Appalodian Diannaise.

Okay. Is how he describes the dynamic of any good horror story, conflict between those two forces. And so yeah, talking about, you know, those fears and those those issues. Yeah. Sirling was awesome. Yeah. And he always swung for the fences. Yes he did. And sometimes he knocked it out of the park and sometimes he went when he whiffed. He whiffed hard. This is true. So yeah. we should we've got episodes we could do Oh Lord yeah So in the late 1950s and early 1960s

40% of Americans were seriously considered building fallout shelters. Yeah Duck and cover drills and film rails were ubiquitous in schools. Yep The Cuban Missile Crisis, which served largely to depress everyone's psyche about the efficacy of fallout shelters. It killed the market. So then they turned them into swimming pools and rec rooms and sellers. And they just accepted that Galactus is going to come someday and eat the planet when he finally feels like it. And the fear turns into accepting dread. Which is, you know, what we grew up with. Yeah. One of my high school, well, I didn't have him as a

teacher in high school. He was one of my master teachers, Learon, graduate from college. He used to make a joke of the safety information that he was supposed to read to his classes at the beginning of the year. Yes. And, you know, in case of a nuclear attack, and he would always point out, by the way, we are mere miles from a known Soviet target, which was the Miramar Naval Air Station, which was five miles, if that, from my high school. And he said, so here's the deal. What the drill tells you to do is get

into your desk and ducking cover and all this. I know where this is going. What I'm going to do, and you can expect me to do is I'm going to stay out of the doorway and I'm going to do this. By the way, I'm flashing the finger. He says, how's that for a message to the future? That was, that was his. There you go. Because you know what, we're gonna die. If that happens, duck and cover all you want to, we're close enough that it's not gonna make any difference. My dad grew up in duck and cover days and he flat out said he's like, as eight year olds, and I think I talked about it some of these times.

As eight year olds, we even knew that putting your head between your knees was just so you could kiss your ass goodbye. Yeah. So. So. So. The fantastic four. Fantastic four. Not able to protect themselves. Or New York. And therefore that held up the mirror to us.

Accidentally. This was not what the authors had in mind. No. But they were not able to protect themselves from the cold wars, greatest disease, unrelenting fear. It corroded the family's very dynamic, turning suburban middle-class America into a grotesque exercise in frantic normality. Oh, I like that turn out to be nice. Yeah, that's good. And it never quite worked. No. And the Fantastic Four never quite worked. And that's the thesis. That's why the Fantastic Four is gross and it works. Yeah.

So what do you think? You have convinced me. Go ahead. You know, the thing I take away from all that is that when we talk about Tolkien, it's going to be interesting. Yeah. That in kind of a similar way, Tolkien said, and later in his life, that he had a cordial dislike of allegory.

Okay. Didn't like the term. He insisted to anybody who listened that he wrote the Lord of the Rings as a fairy story and a mythology for England. He didn't, you know, but I blame the Lord of the Rings for my Catholicism, because it is, and he admitted that when he looked at the story and then went back and did edits and rewrites, he consciously recognized that there was a he said it is a very Catholic story. He like looks back at it and goes oh shit I see where I see where I see where I'm from. Yeah, I see what I did, okay, you know, and and you know his definition of the nature of evil.

Right. I mean, you know, Samoized Gamji is the perfect Christian. Yeah. Okay. All these things. Yeah. He knew they were there. What he said was I don't like allegory.

I prefer to think of, and right now I'm blanking on the term because I've got cold brain, but it's essentially substitution that you can take one thing and substitute it for it. Oh, okay. And even though he didn't set out to write an allegory. That was not his goal or his intention. He couldn't help but do it. And Kirby and Lee and Ditko, when he came on, all the other writers and all the other creators that were involved, the things that we're talking about, about Reed Richards, just inherent blatant, oh my God, sexism, that to us is as plain

as the beards on our faces. Right. It was the water they swam in. It was just that was the way things were. And the archetypes that they were creating, when people create mythical archetypes, it's very rare for them to consciously be creating mythical archetypes. That is a product of the modern era and Joseph Campbell having said, oh hey look, this is how all this stuff works.

That's true. And writers look into that and go and, well crap, now I have an outline. Before that, they didn't know from the heroic journey, they didn't, you know, that hadn't been written yet. Right. But these things... But it always had been. But it always had been. Yeah.

And it hadn't, it hadn't, a mirror hadn't been held up to it. Right. And so they subconsciously were mirroring. Yeah. Everything that was going on in their own, in their own id. Yeah. You know, with, with all of these things. And, and so it's, it it's just it's fascinating to me

Because I could have read all these stories and I said oh my god read is such a fucking sexist. Yeah, oh my god Ben, you know step out of it go see a therapist figure it out. Yeah. Yeah You know Sue like I said I want to wake up lady come on paper wake up know, come on. Yeah. You can do so much better than this for God's sake. You know, you see a therapist too. Yeah. You know, and Johnny, just sit down, shut up. Yeah.

Kid, for God's sake, because I'm a teacher and teenagers do this. But, you know, you meet head, knock it off. Yeah. You know, but I wouldn't, until you pointed this out, and This is a reason I've been so excited to hear this one because you shared this thesis with me Months ago. Yeah, and I've been eager to hear about this because the moment you said it I went away and and so again It's an issue of now that this mirror has been held up to it, it's obvious. Right.

You can't unsee it. Where has that anvil been this whole time? Right. You know, it's been in the house, the whole time. And I think that for me gets to what's fun about doing these recordings. Yeah. And this is one of those brilliant examples of like, oh, Oh, hey, I hadn't seen it like that until now and now I won't ever be able to unsee it. Which is a case the fantastic

for will probably make me more interested in reading the comics. Yeah, they might actually be interesting. Yeah, I have never been a Fantastic Four fan, but now looking at it with this paradigm in mind. Mm-hmm. I could could go back and read them. Yeah they're actually kind of fun to read. I mean you know it's just it is. I must say that not all of these ideas were my own. I went out and did the research and found other people who said it way more organized and whatnot and and so there is a hodgepodge that happened there of various sources. I read someone's like, I don't know if it was like a master's thesis or just like an end of semester project or something, but it was a really good literally and literary analysis of it. I don't know the name of the person but thank you

whoever you were. It was excellent and it really helped me kind of just drill down on some central themes. The number four figured big into theirs. My abilities as an historian enabled me to dig deeper on other things but it is by no means a Damien Harmony original at all. Okay well thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Do you have any books that you want to recommend on our way out? Well, I'm currently reading how the Scots built the modern world, which is about as gingoistic, culturally gingoistic as you can catch, but it is also fascinating, and I think there's some interesting arguments to be made based on the fact that Scotland started out as the poorest nation in Western Europe

and as part of the United Kingdom, Scots went on to take a leadership role in the world's largest empire All over the world as engineers inventors right and you know trailblazers. It's why games do hand played Scotty Yeah, you know so nice So that's for me. What do you got going well? I'm currently reading Mary Beards SPQR? Yeah, I see that on the care It's fun. I and I have a stack there. There's that one in the Star Wars one Oh nice like now I'm gonna go Rome because you know, I'm teaching it all yeah see that on the camera. It's fun. And I have a stack there. There's that one in the Star Wars one. Oh nice. It's like, no, I'm going to go Rome because, you know, I'm teaching it and all. But it's fun.

She basically starts in the year 63 when Cicero goes after Catalan and she ends in the year 2012, not 2012, 2012, when Caracalla grants citizenship to everyone. And so, and she's making some really interesting arguments about it. Okay, so it's a lot of fun. In her, in her particular writing style, is very entertaining. It is. I've seen the stuff she's making on BBC, and she's a treasure. Yes, yes. Well, great.

Until next time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. You know what? Before we do that,'m in Blalock. Oh, you know what before we do that Yeah, she probably plug our Twitter. Oh, yes. Yes So if you have any questions if you have any critiques if you think that we were wrong on something or if you want to Post a link to any articles that you're like hey, that sounds familiar Hit us up at at geek history time or you could hit me up at at at geek history time or you could hit me up at at the harmony.

And you can hit me up at at E.H. Blaylock. There you go. So until next time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm at Blaylock and keep rolling 20s.