Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Friends, the MCU
decided to give us a Valentine's Day gift and we want to pass that on
to you. As many of you already know, the official casting for the
upcoming Fantastic Four movie has been announced, the movie that will bring the Fantastic
Four into the MCU as a whole. And I have got myself and Jessica
Plummer, who many of you may know as the person we return to when
there's comic book news and news about comic books translating to on screen. A
dedicated Superman fan and a lover of so many comics and so much we have
to educate us so much, and someone who I know has a lot of
passionate feelings about the Fantastic Four and their casting. So let me. Actually,
I want you to introduce yourself, but I'll just start out by saying
this. The thing is finally Jewish, Yes, and I'm very happy about
that. Hi, thank you for having me. I love the Fantastic for
very much and I'm really excited to talk about them. Awesome, awesome,
And for those who don't know, we just referenced the thing. Ben Grimm
is a character in The Fantastic Four and will talk more about it. We're
not going to dive into it right now, but just to give the quick
summary because I think in many ways this is one of the biggest parts of
the announcement. News was always very Jewish coded in the comics, and from
the beginning was also very much a Jack Kirby stand in character, and eventually
was made canonically Jewish insomuch as even going so far as having a even going
so far as having a bar mitzvah on comic books on comic page, if
I remember correctly, and at one point having a satyr or something like that
or no, it's a Hanika celebration. But till now it has not been
played by a Jewish actor, and so this actor is Jewish, and that's
something we're going to talk about. But there's a lot of other great news
because certainly for me, Pedro Pascal and anything makes me very happy. I
don't know about the Fantastic Four having a magical baby that he has to take
across the galaxy or the planet or the city. No that, but yeah,
yes, actually, yeah, he has two kids. They're pretty magical.
They spend a lot of time crossing the galaxy. It checks out.
It works perfectly. Okay, cool, cool, cool, Paedro Pascal continues
to Patro Pascal as well as the rest of the cast being really awesome.
So, Jessica, let me just start with this. I think a lot
of people, especially if they're not hardcore comic people, don't know much about
the Fantastic Four. Maybe they watched one of the Chris Evans movies or one
of the newer movies, which are all I think generally regarded as not the
shining high point of comic book movies nor the best adaptation of those stories.
This is an utterly beloved story for comic book fans that most people who watch
on screen don't know much about. Tell us about the Fantastic Four. Yeah,
so the Fantastic Four are great. You are right. They may have
been in many movies and not never really been shown in their best light,
but they're referred to as the first Family of Marvel among you know, by
Marvel and among comic book fans because they were actually the first characters who were
created by Stanley and Jack Kirby when they sort of revolutionized comics in the sixties.
So the Fantastic Four showed up in nineteen sixty one. They predate the
Hulk, they predate the X Men, and they predate Spider Man, who
of course was not Jack Kirby, but still all those characters that like change
the face of comics. It started with the Fantastic Four, so there are
four of them. Obviously, Read Richards, who is a genius is he
was for a long time the smartest person in the Marvel universe. Now that
title officially goes to Moon Girl, so I guess he's probably second smartest.
So Read initially in nineteen sixty one created a rocket to beat the Russians to
space. That they change that a little, and it's probably gonna be different
in the movie. And for some reason, he brings along his best friend,
his girlfriend, and her teenage brother in his rocket crew. As you
do, as you do. So the purpose of their journey is to study
cosmic rays, and they are affected by the rays and they are given powers.
So Reid gains the ability to stretch, and he becomes mister Fantastic.
His girlfriend, Sue Storm, initially just gains the ability to become invisible.
Later she's able to create invisible force fields. She's initially called the Invisible Girl
and later the Invisible Woman. Her younger brother Johnny gains the ability to set
himself on fire and also fly. He's the human Torch, and then finally
reads best friend Ben Grimm becomes an orange rock monster and reads like We'll call
you the thing because he's not always the best friend. And Ben is like
sort of a tragic figure because unlike the others, he can't turn it off.
They're very much a family, even though you know, Reid and su
do eventually get married. Ben is not officially quote unquote or biologically related,
but they are. They are family, and they were revolutionary at the time
that they were introduced because they were flawed and they bickered a lot, particularly
reading John or I'm sorry. Ben and Johnny were always like kind of sniping
at each other. They kind of the two younger brothers in a way of
the uncle. Yeah Ben. Ben doesn't really have an excuse because he's like
twenty years older than Johnny, but yeah, yeah, there's a lot of
like the two of them playing pranks on each other, and Ben they both
have very short tempers, so a lot of bickering, a lot of the
characters not being perfect shining paragons the way that like Superman and Batman were,
but underneath that there's this real core of love and loyalty between them, right,
and this sort of set the tone for what the Marvel Age of comics
is it's called would become. You have these other characters who have sort of
a tragedy inherent in their nature, like the Hulk, like the X Men,
or who have these not even necessarily flaws, but who struggle with things
the way the Spider Man does. All of that kind of stems from the
Fantastic Four, and they really are the reason that modern superheroes are what they
are. Yeah, and that's really interesting I think to think about and I
you know, we've talked. I think a lot of people understand that Marvel
is the one that started doing relatable superheroes, not kind of like the demigod
figures and who had, you know, girlfriend troubles and high school troubles the
way Peter Parker does, But they don't really think about the fact that these
were really the first ones of them. And I appreciate what you said about
the whole like it's cosmic rays because to me, what that also says,
is this seems like it's very grounded in like to our modern years. I
think that sounds rather silly as someone who's been reading recently a lot more older
science fiction. That sounds very grounded in nineteen fifties science fiction world, you
know, And is that accurate in terms of also where that's drawing some inspiration
from. Probably I have not done the reading on nineteen fifties science fiction.
But they are like absolutely a science fiction franchise, The Fantastic Four. You
know, they have a home on Earth, they live in the backs you're
building in Manhattan, but they are very much you're constantly going to outer space
or the negative zone or alternate dimensions or traveling through time. Their stories are
very are extremely cosmic and grandiose, and they're like really imaginative. I mean
there, you know, it was a Fantastic Four story where Galactus first showed
up. Who is a villain who eats planets? Right? That sort of
they have this quality of nothing is too over the top, nothing is too
silly, nothing is too outlandish. Like there there's a real core of like
letting your imagination kind of do whatever it wants. And certainly Jack Kirby was
absolutely doing that with the Fantastic Four until he got to the point where he
couldn't handle Stanley anymore and left and went to DC. But for a while
there his imagination was absolutely flourishing. And it's with the Fantastic Four that he
created so many of the importance well, I was going to say important supporting
characters of the Marvel universe, but that's not They became protagonists in their own
right, like Black Panther, for showed up in a Fantastic Four comic The
Inhumans, like all these other really key characters. And Jia also has kind
of grounded in time. You know, we're talking about this as like to
us today in which people go into space with not regularity, but it has
become somewhat scientifically, you know, understood how this happens. When this was
made, Juriga Garin the first human being ever in space as we understand it,
April nineteen sixty one, Alan Sheppard the first American is May. This
comic comes out November of that same year, so very clearly this is when
humans going into space, and this is when they're going into like low medium
Earth orbits. So it's still very very new and so imagine that's where a
lot of science stuff comes up from. It's actually a little newer than that.
It probably would have come out in September because at the time, cover
dates were a couple months ahead, so that the comic didn't look dated on
the stand so it was even closer. Oh that's interesting how it does that
and what would have been the normal time? Like, does it seem then
that it's a crazy coincidence because of the how long it takes to produce a
comic, or does it seem like Yuri Gagarion goes into space, Alan Shepherd
goes into space. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are in part inspired by that
literally happening. They sit down and write, and then within two or three
months it's on the newsstands. I mean, I think there probably would have
been time from April to September. I'm not super familiar with exactly how long
it would have taken, but they were both very aware of these sorts of
things, Like they paid attention to what was going on, and they were
interested in outer space and technological developments and science. Like a lot of the
stuff that they just in their careers was they were often very current or almost
prophetic, and you do get weird coincidences, like soon after that they would
introduce the Brotherhood of Evil mutants in an X Men comic, which was like
within a month of DC introducing the Brotherhood of Evil in a Doom Patrol comic.
And like even the introduction of the Doom Patrol, which is a team
of quote unquote freaks led by a guy in a wheelchair, was within like
a month of the introduction of the X Men. So there were coincidences,
and this could have been one, but I'm sure that they were at least
paying attention, very close attention to the space race, even if they maybe
had started the issue before. And actually everyone knew that the Russians of the
Americans were trying hard to get into space, right, and that's a big
part of what fuels like read Ridge Richards's decision in that first issue. But
also they worked incredibly fast. Jack Kirby once drew an entire comic in a
weekend. So the man was in you the marble pun he was in human,
but like he he was a miracle of a human being. Like I
don't know how he did anything he did. And we're going to get to
the characters themselves and the casting in a moment of promise. But I was
one of these issues so interesting to really look at the history of it.
You know, you and I have talked about how there's always been political undertones
to these messages, and sometimes much more overtones in reading the original Fantastic Four.
Is there from read Richards kind of a like raw raw America, I
want to help us beat the Russians, Or is it more of a I'm
from science. I want to do this for science, not for you know,
this cold war mentality. I wouldn't say. I guess there's there's an
underlying like pro America anti Soviet attitude, but it doesn't feel pointed. It's
just it just feels sort of like the background radiation of being an American in
the early nineteen sixties. Like it just it doesn't obviously everything's political, like
there's no such thing as a neutral statement, but I don't think that it's
not. It's not like chest thumping patriotism, but there is an understanding that
like right America good, Soviet's bad, and there are definitely like one of
their earliest villains is the Red Ghost, who is a Soviet scientist who goes
into space with three apes and they all develop superpowers and then you like,
I don't know, Robs Banks or whatever with his you know chimpanzee they can
walk through walls or I don't. I'm a nerd, but I'm not enough
of a nerd to remember the separate superpowers of the Red Ghost three different monkeys.
But he's definitely like, that's a Soviet villain. But there's not like
deliberately political storytelling, right that makes sense? And the main villain I think
today is understood is Doctor Doom. Is Doctor Doom someone who's found in those
very early books or does he come along later? Oh? Yes, I
think he first appears in the second issue and now I have to look it
up because it's gonna bother me. He I mean, doctor Doom is quite
frankly, no, I was way off number five. Doctor Doom is without
quo, like I just I will accept no other arguments. The greatest supervillain
in comics like bar none, I'm a DC girl, but interesting, okay,
Joker, who, like doctor Doom, is incredible. He talks about
himself in the third person. He's an evil science wizard. Every time you
think you've defeated him. It's actually a robot. In his very very first
appearance, he shows up, he kidnaps Sue, and we should probably talk
about how Sue is treated in those early days, because it is not great.
But he kidnaps Sue and he sends the three boys on a mission if
they want to get her back back in time, to steal Blackbeard's treasure so
that he can do an evil ritual with it. And so they go back
in time to pirate times, and then they can't find Blackbeard anywhere. But
the thing becomes a pirate captain and he has the disguise that includes a black
Beard, and they eventually realize that the thing is the historical Blackbeard. It's
and that's like, again there's this sort of quality of like, it doesn't
like, there's no level of ridiculous you cannot do. And it's that that
makes The Fantastic Four so great, And it's that that makes Doctor Doom so
great. Like he's absolutely a very evil villain and he will do terrible,
terrible things, but he will also like send them into the past steel Blackbeard's
treasure. I've watched enough. Our flag means death. That now I'm having
images of Taiko Wati, who is Jewish, playing the thing, playing black
Beard. That would be incredible. I would like that. I would like
that. So why do you think it is that this property has had so
much trouble being translated to film, Because obviously, in more like we've had
up periods and down periods of superhero movies, but even long before, like
the Snider Verse and the Figy Verse and all this kind of stuff, we've
had at least, like, you know, pretty decent superhero movies. You
know, the the Richard Donner Superman. I know you don't think that they're
like the best representation of Superman himself, but they're well regarded movies. The
Toby Maguire Spider Man, you know, the even going back to the original
Chris carp and Tarthic X Men movies like Chris Carpenter, but the end of
the director was but you know where Hugh Jackman first got started. Yeah,
there're two thousands ones. Yeah, the Black Leather Why And my understanding is
like the I watched half of one of the Fantastic Four movies. Uh,
I think I've watched all of one of the Christopher Evans movies. And all
of the newest version I remember nothing about them because they were just pretty darn
bad. Why do you think we've had so much trouble translating this beloved story
into on screen. Well, I appreciate that you mentioned Superman because I think
they have the same problem, which is that both of these franchises are fundamentally
optimistic and positive and bright and sunshiny, and that's not a thing that Hollywood
really likes with superhero movies. And there are definitely occasionally we do get something
now that the MCU exists, we do get something a little bit brighter.
But certainly when the Chris Evans Fantastic Boar movies were made, there was that
was part of an era that was quite self conscious about being superhero movies.
Like yeah, I mean, I said the Black Leather X Men, because
there is actively a line in that first movie where what are you expecting?
Yellow spandex exactly like they're embarrassed about being superhero movies. You cannot be embarrassed
to be making a superhero movie and make a Fantastic Four movie like you cannot
do that. They are the first superheroes of the Marvel universe. As a
collective universe, Like obviously they're predated by Captain America and Naymar and some other
Golden Age heroes, but the Marvel universe as it exists, they are the
first superheroes again, just like Superman is the first superhero of the DC universe.
If you're embarrassed by the material, you're not going to make a good
movie with it. And then I actually haven't seen the more recent Fantastic Four
movie, but that one, very it was very clear from the get go
went way further in the totally wrong direction. Like the first couple of Fantastic
Four movies were bad, but they at least tried to have some humor in
them, and they just went full grim dark with the more recent one,
which is like you don't understand the material in the slightest because very much like
Superman, these are not vigilantes who have to hide from the government, right
they are. They're not the X men the government. They're like they're heroes
to the people. They're barely superheroes. They don't really fight crime. I
mean they do, like if they see a bank robbery, they'll stop it,
but they're explorers fundamentally, which is also I mean if you really want
to get deep into things, like at the time that they were created,
superheroes had been out of fashion for some time, and what you saw both
DCS and Marvel doing was sort of veering away from the more traditional superhero with
the secret identity and having adventurers instead. And so actually at DC Jack Kirby
had co created the Challengers of the Unknown. Who I'm sorry, I I'm
this pedantic. I have to look up. This is this level of pedantry
is why you're on the podcast We Love It. Okay, First of all,
forgive me. He did not co create them. He created them.
He was the writer to possibly with Joe Simon or Dave Wood maybe, says
Wikipedia. They debuted in nineteen fifty seven, and if you look them up,
they're very, very similar to the Fantastic Four in that there's five of
them, but they're in these matching jumpsuits, purple instead of blue, and
they go on adventures like exploring weird stuff. And even the characters there's like
a science guy and like a kid brother and kind of a gruff muscle guy.
Like it's Jack Herby had like one cast of characters and he was going
to use them over and over and over again. Like you know, they
the Warriors three in four, they're in DC two, but they're furries.
They're like he had, he had character types that he really liked. Anyway,
that was beside the point. The Fantastic Four very much come out of
that. They're not exactly superheroes thing. And that's why even though they have
code names, they don't have secret identities. Like from the very first issue,
everybody knows who they are. They don't bother to hide it, and
they're much less focused on fighting crime than they are on exploring and going on
adventures and expanding like human knowledge. I mean, in some ways I'm looking
forward to the movie, but in some ways it sounds like this would fit
better as TV show, you know, where, yes, either a modern
one, but also just like you know, a kind of like New Adventures
of Lewis and Clark or Quantum Leap or something like that, where you have
like an Adventure of the week, but it's much more about just the fun
shenanigans of the crew. That's the dream. Actually. So Becky Allen,
who I know has been on this show, had a brilliant idea years ago
when we were discussing this, and their idea was that The Fantastic Four should
be not actually a reality show. It would be scripted. But like,
the reason that they have powers is because they were supposed to be a reality
show in space and it went wrong. Oh I love that. Isn't that
amazing? Yeah? I am very curious about how they're going to do this,
especially because the I try not to watch trailers much and things like that.
But the initial indications are that this is going to be based in the
nineteen sixties, so I mean, curiously how this all plays out and things
like that. Let's talk Let's start talking about the casting itself though, and
my thought was, let's talk about what you know about what you think is
kind of the essential version of each character, because granted, like each of
these characters has been written for I don't like thinking about how long ago that
was, but you know, one sixty years now and like you know,
saying, what is Batman? Well we have, you know, ninety years
of Batman. We have sixty years of these characters. They've changed quite a
bit. But let's start with mister Fantastic And let me ask you to start
by because so from the little that I know of him, he is super
genius, super aware of it, not a playboy like a I want to
say, Robert Downey Junior, Chylie Stark Iron It's that, you know,
Robert Downey Junior would be so happy to hear you say that. Yeah,
No, very true, very true. Which is funnycause I saw have An
Oppenheimer a very different role but well sort of, but you know he has
that same like super arrogance, but it annoys everyone because he's often very right.
Tell me more about Rick Reed d Well read Richard. Sorry, I'm
where I got that, And let me actually start by does he give himself
the name mister Fantastic? He does, He absolutely does. Okay, So
here's the thing, and this is I think, out of all the casting,
this is why I think this is the most interesting casting. Obviously,
Pedro Pascal is the most famous person in this movie. It is also the
only example in this particular movie of race bending. We've seen it before Jessica
Alba in the first two movies and Michael B. Jordan in the more recent
one. So it's there's precedent for The Fantastic Four. And you want to
argue we've seen it previously with Ben grimm because, like you said, he's
never been Jewish before. But Read is as you say, he is a
super genius. He knows perfectly well how smart he is. He's very aware
of it. He does have a tendency to towards arrogance and over confidence,
and you could argue that over confidence is his defining characteristic because he believed that
the shields he had created on their spaceship would hold and protect them from the
cosmic rays, and obviously he was very wrong about that, and for him,
that's fine, and for Sue that's fine. Johnny's powers are a bit
traumatic, actually, if you dig into it, like I would like to
fly, I don't really want to burst into flames and be a danger to
others. But obviously it's Ben, who Read's best friend, who he loves
like a brother, whose life was in many ways destroyed by this. And
there's actually a really wonderful issue from a few years ago where it's revealed that
the reason that they don't have secret identities was because it was a calculation by
Reid because he thought he could make them celebrities, he could make up for
what he had done to them. So he is he's absolutely arrogant. He's
absolutely overconfident. He's absolutely very aware of how smart he is. He also
loves his family so deeply and he wants to do the right thing by them.
He and Sue have two children, Franklin and Valeria. He struggles to
be a good father, but he tries, and like I would say,
if you compare him to somebody like Batman, he has a much higher success
rate. He is very very clear with both of his children how much he
loves them. And like Valeria is even smarter than he is, Franklin is
not. Franklin has like cosmic powers. He's kind of a demigod, but
he's only regular and like he's smart, but like Sue level smart, not
Read level smart, and Read makes it very clear to him like he does
not love him any less because he is not as smart as well. Like
so he definitely has the good good parent thing that Petrovoscal has on absolute lockdown
right now. Yeah, And the thing about Read is he is he's a
divisive character, and I think people who are Fantastic four fans do love him,
and people who are Marvel fans who haven't read a lot of Fantastic four
tend to not like him because when he shows up, if you only see
out of context moments especially, I mean, there's a lot of stuff from
the sixties and you can find this for every character where he is an asshole
or he's really sexist towards Sue. Like that stuff absolutely exists, and there's
actually some interesting analysis of like how much of that came from stan as opposed
to Jack, because the way that Marvel comics were created at the time was
what's known as the Marvel method. Sorry, I'm like, this is so
far what you asked. That's exactly what I want to hear. So the
Marvel So traditionally, when a comic is the more common way that a comic
is made is a writer writes a script, they give it to the artist
the penciler, and they draw it and then the anchor inks at the color
is colors it, the letter or letters it the Marvel method. The writer,
usually Stanley in those days, always Stanley in those days, comes up
with a pitch a story. They're like, this is what's going to happen.
It's like a treatment. It may be more or less detailed, depending
on who how much he knows and who he's collaborating with If it's Jack Kirby,
he could have been like, I don't know. They go to space
and Jack would handle the rest, you know. Then the artist draws the
comic, which, as I mean, you can tell listening to that,
how much actual writing the artist is doing. They're deciding so much of the
story if they're only working with a pitch or like a one page treatment or
whatever it is. Then Stan goes back in and he writes all the dialogue,
and we actually we have some extant art of Jack Kirby's where we can
see that like, for example, Sue is making a decision to like attack
a bad guy, and in the final art, Stan has changed the dialogue
to have Reid be like Sue attack that bad guy, and so her decisions
become Reid's orders. Which is not to say that Jack Kirby was not sexist,
as you know any man of the sixties. Yeah, right, But
it's it's interesting to kind of see how much we can unpack how much of
Reed and Sue's dynamic comes from Jack and how much comes from Stan. Anyway,
back to read, there's many many images you can take out of context
and be like this guy's terrible, especially older issues. During Civil War the
comics event he was fully on the wrong side of his like he was pro
registration. He and Sue actually separated because she was anti registration. He was
involved with Tony Stark in cloning Thor and the Thor clone like killed people.
It was he made some very very bad decisions, and a lot of people
have never forgiven him. I love Read. I think that he's He's a
deeply flawed character, but he is trying to do the right thing. And
I think it will be really interesting to see an actor who is so beloved
in that role, because so many people are predisposed to dislike Read, and
I think this is a really interesting way to combat that. Well. In
that way, I think you're having a very well beloved actor and one who
is very clearly not white. I think can be very useful because from the
outside, part of what I saw with Read Richard was I think in the
last five to ten years longer in some circles, but especially in the last
ten years or so, there's been a general sort of like, can we
look at the fact that so many comic book heroes are super smart, super
rich, often straight white CIS men, who always seem to know the answers,
and maybe that's not great. And I think that is an incredibly needed
critique and incredibly valid for a lot of these people, including my beloved Bruce
Wayne and Tony Stark and some others. And I wonder also up to something
Saint read Richard's got caught up because I certainly often hear him listed as one
more you know, the super smart white guy who knows everythingiz. He is
a very patriarchal character. I will he is usually wealthy. The money comes
from patents. He's not like old money or anything. He has earned that
money from selling his patents. But I'm sorry, I just have to mention
this early issue because it's incredible. There is an issue where he loses all
of their money in the stock market. This is from the sixties. This
is uh Standing Jack comic. He loses all of their money in the stock
market and they're like, what do we do? We don't have any money.
And then they get a mysterious offer from a movie studio to go out
to Hollywood and film a movie about themselves, and they're like, they're going
to get paid one million dollars, which is really Austin power is he now
and they have to hitchhike to get there, that's how broke they are.
And then when they get there, it turns out that the movie studio is
owned by nay More and he's like dressed himself up in a little like movie
producer costume with like a cigarette holder, And of course it's an elaborate plot
to kill the three guys and Mary Sue, and it's it's so ludicrous.
I have an article about it on Book Riot because it's my favorite Fantastic four
issue. But but yes, your your overall point, Abbs stands aside from
that one issue where Reid went broke for stupid reasons. I love it.
I love it reminds me of Oliver Queen going broken Arrow, And yeah,
the understanding of the vicissitudes of the rish famous of comic book is not always
the best. Well. Going broke is a huge part of Oliver Queen's character
in the comics. But Arrow maybe didn't get some things right. Look,
when you need to spend that much time pointing a camera at those very beautiful
pectortals, you don't have time for character nuance, as we had transition into
Sue. But also finishing up with Reid. Am I right that it sounds
like they had some troubles, including the Civil War, but for the most
part, this is the thing you don't find in Marvel, especially the healthy
relationship that has lasted through most of comics. Yeah. I mean they have
been a couple since nineteen sixty one. They got married when it was still
the sixties, which is like shocking that was not common. There's a really
cute moment the wedding where Stanning Jack get kicked out because nobody knows who they
are. I like it. I like it. They there have been some
ups and downs. They've definitely separated a few times, not just Civil War.
I mean even early on there was, as I alluded to, there
was a love triangle with nay More, but it was never really like nobody
ever thought Sue was going to leave Read for nay More. There have definitely
been moments, often involving the children, like Franklin, as I've said,
has his really immense powers that as a very small child he could not control.
And there is this issue where Reid basically has to make him catatonic in
order to save all of the existence from being wiped out. Sue doesn't take
it well and like leaves Read. But again, I mean, that's an
example of Read making this very unilateral decision as extremely painful and destructive for a
really good reason, but still making it Like he tells Sue what's gonna happen.
He doesn't make the decision. He doesn't tell her what's gonna happen.
It just happens, and then she's like, what did you do to our
baby? Sue is she's very much initially initially, she's very much in the
mold of many other female Marvel characters from that era, like Jean Gray is
very similar. You'll see female characters tend to have powers that involve them kind
of touching their forehead and squinting and then fainting from the mental strain. So
you know, with Sue it's the invisibility, with Jeane, it's the telepathy
or telekinesis. They don't have physical powers, and gradually you see Sue kind
of coming into her own. And what's interesting is that there was pushback from
it very very early on. Like there's an issue where the Fantastic War are
reading their fan mail and Sue starts crying because people are writing in saying that
Sue is useless, and read looks at the camera and is like, Sue
is not useless. She does all of our emotional labor, which is like,
oh boy, that didn't help, or like there's an issue where they're
working with the US military and Sue's like, but what can I do?
And this general, like an old mustachioed walrus looking guy, is like,
it's always helpful to have a pretty woman along to for moral support, and
reads like that's how we all feel, general, and it's like, oh,
do they ever have her, Like she's the one who has to put
on a slinky dress and flirt with the person to sort of get the information
or do they at least avoid going that with her? Not really, And
when she does, it's usually like she will sometimes cozy up to name more
specifically because she knows how he feels about her and she does care about him,
but she's she doesn't really do the honeytrap thing. If anybody does,
it's Johnny's she and yeah, so gradually, like again, it was really
clear early on that there was pushback against how Sue is being treated, and
she is given more of an active power. She's given her force field power,
which these days many people would argue makes her, in fact the most
powerful member of the team because she can just put a little tiny force field
in your heart or your brain and you're dead. Like it wouldn't even be
hard for her. Do they ever take her? The Jean Gray rout of
she's more powerful than all of us, so we have to control her in
this kind of like patriarch don't let women have their power kind of a way.
Not really, which is funny because in the sixties read was constantly like,
if Johnny ever turned against us, the world would be in danger.
If Ben ever turned against us, the world would be in danger. But
he never really does that with Sue. It's just which I don't think is
meant to imply that she's not as strong. I think it's just like people
have that much faith in her, like she's of all of them, probably
the most unshakable. I can see that. And yeah, so like the
thing is, you know, I don't want to I don't want to be
like, oh, Sue sucked in the sixties, but then she got badass,
because I feel like that's really that's still looking at the character through this
really gendered like only masculine attributes or valued lens. And the thing is even
today, like Sue is very much defined by being feminine, by being a
mother, and even before she had her children, she was very motherly.
She's a lot older than Johnny and pretty much raised herself and him. She's
always had this maternal quality to her. She's always been the one who keeps
the team together. She does do all that emotional labor, Like she's the
one who can kind of rain ben in and get read to like come out
of the clouds and pay attention to them. And she's Johnny's parent and that
that is fine. Like there's so many female characters in the Marvel universe that
like this is how Sue is. This is not a commentary on how women
are. And it's a huge part of her strength. Like she is extremely
powerful. She's also like a badass hand to hand fighter. She's brilliant,
she does not stand for bull But she's also very very feminine. She's very
nurturing, she's very warm. She does do ninety percent of the emotional labor
for the team, and that is one of her strengths. And I don't
think there's anything wrong with that. Yeah, No, that's awesome. And
how is she portrayed in visually in terms of, like, you know,
obviously a lot of this is during the time of the gravity defying. You
know, there's somehow a bra in that tiny little outfit and you know,
massive amounts of cleavage or other kind of super heroine type things. Does she
get that kind of like very sexified portrayal or is she more in kind of
like mom of the group and so oh oh she does at one point.
So for the most part, her costume is really tame. She has literally
the same costume as read I was going to say, as the boys,
but Ben only wears panties. She has the same costume as reading Johnny.
It's a jumpsuit, like uh huh, it's skin tight, And it depends
on how the artist in like that particular artist draws her. And obviously,
like you can certainly draw her in that costume with like vacuum sealed breasts moving
independently of each other and like all the camera's always focusing on her butt or
whatever. But the actual costume itself is very neutral. However, there was
briefly a time I can't even describe it. Really there is briefly a time
where she changed her costume to like basically a bathing suit with the stomach cutout,
and then she has like a four cutout over her cleavage and it's completely
ridiculous. I'm sorry. I know that the listeners cannot see this, but
I do want you to see it. So I think I have found it.
Is it? I found a picture that's her with blue hair, and
she's got like blue thigh high garters on blue hair, blonde hair. So
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one. It's it sure
is something that was thankfully very short lived. So there have been times in
you know, in the eighties and nineties where they really tried to make her
sexy because she's not. She's never been a particularly sexualized character because she has
those like really strong wife and mother vibes. Right, There's also this whole
storyline where she was like possessed, she became like this evil version of herself
called Malice, and she's wearing this like really skimpy, bondagey like black costume
and she's evil but in a really sexy way. But those storylines are pretty
few and far between. Okay, that makes sense, And so what do
you think of Vanessa Kirby as her. I don't know too much about Vanessa
Kirby, but I did see her in the early seasons of The Crown where
she played Poincess Margaret, and I thought she was and great Prince's Margaret is
a very dark character who's really wrestling with a lot of family, you know,
her own demons and things like that, and very much a party girl
with a sort of like darkness inside her of all the horrible things she's had
to go through, which which doesn't they sound like su storm at all,
but you does sound like like she's a strong actress for sure. What do
you know of Kirby? And like, how do you feel like she fits?
I? Actually I don't think I've seen her in anything. Actually,
when you texted me about recording this episode, I was like, oh,
I have not done my homework. Like you know how You're always like,
hey, have you seen this new superhero movie or TV show? And I'm
like, no, I haven't. But I'm almost done with Batman Beyond,
so I have not seen The Mandalorian, The Last of Us, The Crown,
the Bear or Stranger things Like I'm that's fair, So yeah, I
I you know what, I have seen something with her. I've seen Jupiter
Ascending. Okay, she has a very small role in that. I mean
she looks the part. She's a beautiful blonde woman. I'm for me,
for me. My concern is always going to be about the writing with Sue
and not necessarily like I have faith in the actor if they are given the
space and ability to like, if they're the support that they need to play
the role correctly. I will never forget reading a quote from Jessica Alba.
She's talking about filming the second movie Rise of the Silver Surfer, and you
know, out of everybody in those movies, Jessica Alba got dunked on the
most and like criticized the most for being a terrible actress. But she was
talking about the scene in that movie where her character dies and like Johnny is
like we over her and she's crying because she's dying, and she said that
the director kept telling her, cry pretty, Jessica, cry pretty, don't
scrunch up your face like that. And there's no actress on the planet who
can make that work if you're supposed to look pretty while you're dying. So
I know that that phrase is often now used as a like example of the
kind of horrific things that women actresses have to go through. Yeah, and
the cry pretty and so I know that, you know, I'm sure there
are other times where it has happened that phrase, but it comes apart from
here. Yeah. So I'm much more concerned with, like, are they
going to make is somebody going to be saying cry pretty Vanessa or like all
the gags in the first Fantastic Four movie about like, you know, her
turning invisible and then her clothing isn't there, and then she's visible again and
she's naked, ha ha. Like if we steer away from that, I
have I have faith in this actress. At least one of the movies I
remember, I think the Micha wil B Jordan one, which we'll talk about
later, that we remember these two based on who played Johnny Storm. But
one of the sort of reasons why doctor Doctor Doom character who my understanding is
this was a very bad version of Doctor Doom. But it's sort of like
that he saw himself as a rival for Reid Richards in many things, including
for the heart of Sue Storm. Is that something that's from the comics or
is that kind of something that was It's not not from the comics, but
it always kind of feels like he's going through the motions, like he doesn't
really seem that into her. It's more like, this is what you do
when you're a villain, you know. He's like, it's just it's kind
of half asked. Yeah. His history with Reid they were they went to
college together and Doom was like, I'm the smartest person on the planet and
Reid was like okay, and Doom was like, I'm going to do this
experiment and Reid was like, okay, you've done your math wrong and that's
going to go really horribly. And Doom was like, don't tell me what
to do. And then he did it and it went horribly and his face
was horribly scarred. We've never seen his face in the comics as far as
I'm aware, and it's been sixty years, we've never seen it post scarring.
And so he has hated Richard's ever since. And like that's really the
pivotal right, Like they have this really really intense relationship, to the point
that a couple of years ago he Doom got married and he asked Reid to
be his best man because that Reid was the person he was closest to.
It was so funny. I mean that's very much Batman and Joker, you
know. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, So Sue is sort of when
she's used by Doom, it's much more as like kind of a prop And
then as the decades on, he just started hating all of them because they
like thwart him and he like knows that he should not mess with her unless
he's prepared to deal with it. But yeah, I've just I've never gotten
the feeling that he was like particularly into her. It's I just want to
take everything from him, and so perspectively in the sixties and seventies, that's
often going to be I'm going to take his woman kind of. Yeah,
he actually so Doom. If there's one member of Reid's family that he would
want to take from Reid, it's Reid's daughter Valeria, Like she calls him
Uncle Doom because he saved her life like when she was being delivered. They're
actually really close. So we can spend so much, so much time on
all these characters, but I want to keep going. Yeah, let's talk
about the thing. Ben Graham, who is a very pop character. I
know, one that is very close to your heart, and that Jessica,
know you've talked before about the lack of Jewish representation, in that there is
a number of good Jewish characters, and that that's important in part because there
are so many these characters written by Jewish authors, or and so talk about
the thing and he is Judaism and why that's important, and sort of how
you felt about Evans casting. Yeah, so Ben is Ben's the best one.
Like, objectively speaking, Johnny is my favorite member of the Fantastic Four,
but I am aware that Ben is the best character. Ben is arguably
the best Marvel character. Like it's like Ben and Spider Man, like they're
the ones. He is one of the greatest characters in comic book history,
bar none. And it's because he has such a powerful and interesting and really
unique blend of like h and sort of brashness and like roughness and really deep
pathos, because he is trapped in this in this body that has given him
so much, but also that has so deeply alienated him from other people.
Like he can't sit on normal furniture, he obviously can't wear normal clothing.
He has to be so so careful all the time. He can never you
know, the others, they're all celebrities, but the others could like put
on a baseball cap in sunglasses and you know, hand them on tanna their
way around the world. He can't do that. Ever. He always has
to be the thing. And in the early years, i mean nowadays,
if you live in the Marvel universe and you see the Thing, you're like,
wow, cool, it's the thing. In the early years, when
people were not as familiar with him, he was often people would act like
he was a monster, because he is a monster. He but even though
he again there are so many stories about the pathos of his situation. He's
also a very funny character. His dialogue is so funny. He's always cracking
jokes. He's he has all these like cute catch phrases, like he'll constantly
refer to himself as like the ever love and blue eyed thing, or his
aunt Petunia's favorite nephew, Like obviously, there's his it's clobren time catch phrase,
Like he's he's this really like sort of earthy, entertaining character who you
want to hang out with because he is fun and funny, and he is
also deeply, deeply loyal and deeply sensitive and just really like his reaction when
he finds out that Read and So gave their Franklin the middle name Benjamin is
like, he's, he's He's just he's got it all right now. It
sounds really beautiful. And don't think how to get into this because I feel
like as important as it is, I think to me and I know to
you and to many others that the characters Judaism become a part of how he's
presented. I also don't want that to be the whole conversation about either him
or or or we're having today. But it's funny because as you're describing that,
I don't think this is exclusive to to you know, the Jews I've
known both personally and and in general. But I think I associate very much
with Judaism is a kind of like the world is broken and sad, but
let's laugh about it, you know, that kind of like the the finding
humor in the sadness and in the pathos. And so say something about like
how how that aspect of the character has been portrayed in the journey from it
being kind of like coded to explicitly named and I could I just start with
that before you even get into the actor. Yeah, so I would absolutely
agree with you, like humor out of tragedy is a very Jewish value.
And also fetching, like he's a confetcher, he fetches all the time.
She's extremely Jewish of him. Like for those who do not know Yiddish or
just New York City language, define covech for those America complaining whining but not
Yeah, it's not in a like it's it's like a humorous like like there's
it's not a negative word and it's a way of sort of processing the negative
so that you can let it go. Yeah. My spouse when she first
came, who's from uh Minnesota, when she first came to meet most of
the Jewish side hamilely for my sister's wedding, at one point said why is
everybody so unhappy with everything? And I'd explained, like, no, that's
not this is just how we express each other, you know, express things
to each other and the like, it's not it to me. It's very
different than like an actual I can tell when like someone in my family is
upset or bothered by something versus when they're just like Look, the good days
I had don't make good stories. But the days when something went wrong on
the train or someone was an idiot, but when crossing the street in front
of me, those make better stories. So that's what I'm gonna tell you
the story. Right, There's something about fetching that's like you're it's it's a
little it's performative, not in the sense that you don't feel it, but
like in the sense that like you're you're telling a story, like you said,
like you're kind of going through it and putting like a humorous spin on
the like annoying thing that happened to you. Let me tell you about airline
Let me tell you about airline food is like the right cavetch sentence I can
hear. Go. Yeah, it's absolutely something that comes like that cadence comes
out of like the borsch belt or you see it reflect in Borschvelt comedy in
a lot of stand up pattern, which is a good segue to like talking
about Ben's jewishness as it's been depicted in the comics. Because yeah, like
you said, initially it was coded, and I don't know how intentional it
was, it was very much something It wasn't even necessarily that he was written
to sound Jewish so much that he was written to sound like he came from
the Lower East Side, and most of the people who came from the Lower
East Side, at least not even so much during the sixties, but during
the time that Jack Kirby grew up that he was drawing on most of those
people were Jewish. Like Jack Kirby was reflecting his own speech patterns in the
speech patterns that he grew up with. And of course the sort of connection
and you mentioned this at the beginning, like the thing is a very is
understood to be a very autobiographical character for Jack Kirby, and that is to
a certain like I don't know what Kirby would say if he were here right
now. In a lot of ways, that's you know, readers and fans
putting that on him. But many people have sort of drawn that line,
that that line of blanking on the word empathizing with and self representation. Yeah,
representation, I mean between the idea of Ben Grimm being this talented person
in his own right, but who's always in the shadow of his extremely talented
and thus the new you know, the media pays a lot of attention to
partner with Rie Richards is very much a Jack Kirby and stan Lee kind of
a story. I mean absolutely, And there's people talk a lot about One
of the recurring gags, which stems from the Lee and Kirby era of the
Fantastic Four and has continued to this day, is the Yancey Street Gang.
So the Thing grew up on Yancey Street, which is fictional, it doesn't
exist, but it's in the Marvel universe. It's on the Lower East Side,
and he is now as an adult, constantly be deviled by the Yancey
Street Gang, who are always playing pranks on him. But they are good
people, Like they're not villains, they're just mischievous and they will help the
Fantastic Four when you know, push comes to shove. And I've seen people
talk about like Kirby was expressing a certain alienation from his background with that,
like the Thing can't go home again because he's battling the Yancey Street Gang.
He doesn't live on Yancy Street anymore, lived in the Baxter Building, but
yeah, for a very for decades. The the sort of Jewishness and Judaism
of which are not necessarily the same thing of Ben Grimm was very much coated
or it was just sort of something that you could like pick up from his
speech patterns. But maybe right, wasn't I don't want to say wasn't intentional,
but wasn't ever necessarily something that was intended to be made explicit. But
we do have like a holiday card that Kirby drew one year for Hanukkah,
that is the thing, wearing Yamica and Talie prayer shawl and saying happy Hanukkah.
Like it's certainly it's clear that whether that was Kirby identifying himself, like
whether he was essentially drawing himself in that card, or whether he was saying,
here's a Jewish character wishing you a happy Honikah, or whether he was
just going, here's a character I'm famous for drawing happy Honkah. We don't
know, but that has been seen as sort of the earliest confirmation, although
not actually in a comic. And then Ben was finally explicitly made Jewish many
decades after, after Kirby was no longer with us in or the early two
thousands, I want to say, two thousand and one, But there is
an issue where he goes back to Yancey Street and basically saves a pawnbroker who
he knew as a child from a criminal. And when the pawnbroker almost dies,
Ben praise the shama, he praise in Hebrew over him, and the
guy's fine. But when the pawnbroker recovers, he's like, you know,
you're always in the news and they never mentioned that you're Jewish. I thought
maybe you were ashamed of it. And Ben says, no, I just
didn't want He basically says he was private about it, and he he views
himself as a monster and he didn't want people to connect that monstrosity with Judaism,
and the pawnbroker is like, you're an idiot. It's a really beautiful,
beautiful story. It's a basically a young Kipoor story, even though it
explicitly does not like Ben thinks it's young Kapor and he's like several months off
and it was published in June. But it's a really really lovely issue that
sounds like it. Yeah, and so why was it important for you?
I think for many people. Well, let you pphrase that. So,
why do you think it's important that the actor be Jewish? Because I remember
bringing this up to someone when one of the last conversations happened, and the
first thought was, well, who cares if he looks Jewish? The characters
look Jewish, the character looks like a rock. But especially as you talk
about like the speech patterns and the like the attitudes, talk about why it's
been important to you, well, you know it's important. It's funny because
I fully admit to being a bit of a hypocrite here, because I actually
have said many times and will say again that I don't actually think that Jewish
characters need to be played by Jewish actors, similar to the way that I
don't think that queer characters need to be played by queer actors, or vice
versa. I don't think because I think that that leads to a vice versa
trap where Jewish actors are pigeonholed into playing Jewish characters, and it leads to
certain assumptions about who does and does not look Jewish, Like there were rumors
that David Diggs was going to be cast as the thing David dis is Jewish,
but a lot of people would not know that looking at him because he's
also black. I also think that there is an element again parallels between Jewish
actors and queer actors of sort of forced outing. Unfortunately, we have never
lived in a world where it is all that safe to be publicly Jewish,
and right now for you know, obviously really horrible real world reasons anti Semitism
as well as Islamophobia are on the rise, and I just feel like it's
acting, you know, like it's not like it's not like blackface or something
where like that you're using a prop to change your physical features, unless you're
Bradley Cooper, and then you are all that said and that I really I've
said that many times. I really believe that. And yet when I saw
the cast thing, I was like, oh, thank god, Ben is
Jewish. Again. I fully admit that I'm a hypocrite, But for me,
it's different with Ben than it is with like, like I think we
talked about this, when we talked about Moonnight. I was not upset by
the oscar is is at casting at all, even though arguably Judaism is much
more central to that character in his story. But for Ben, because he
was in a lot, he wasn't the earliest canonically Jewish character because it took
him a long time to be canonically Jewish. But in a lot of ways
he was right, and it's just it's just maybe, I mean, it
could be entirely personal. I identify so strongly with Ben and his Jewishness,
like he literally reminds me of my grandpa. So and it's very interesting.
There's the copping that I want to comment on. First part of I think
is and this is probably unfair to any individual context of cast, but it
does it does matter to the overall, like how our Jewish characters or whatever
the group is being represented. And I'll speak to all the examples you talked
about. Ten years ago, I would have said I don't ever want to
see a queer character not played by a queer actor, and even two years
ago I probably would have still said that. And then I saw one of
the strongest embodiments of masculine masculinity, Nick Offerman, play a that yeah,
Nick Offerman play a beautiful depiction of a gay man in the Last of Us,
and his character utterly broke my heart and I loved it, and in
part because it felt so representative to have this character, this actor who isn't
gay. But it is very much an embodiment of a lot of things that
gayness is often not associated with and be able to say no, this person
too can be this. But in part that's because there are a lot more
queer actors playing queer roles and queer actors playing straight roles and in the same
kind of a way. And you know, we'll probably talk about this character
more at some point. Echo the TV show is not necessarily my favorite TV
show in terms of like I think it is the best made. It does
give me a lot of hope for the Netflix Daredevil universe coming back in a
real way. Yeah, and you're wearing the shirt, but I mean Echo
is the character who I feel most represented by on screen, and that's odds
and them talking about a deaf Native woman none of those things are related to
but she uses as a prosthetic And in that case, they specifically wanted a
native deaf actress because I think both of those things are fundamental to the a
or fundamental of the character, but be or often have often been played by
people who are not of those communities. Did start doing it, so happened
that the best person for the role was also a prosthetic user, and so
they said, let's write an into the character, which is to me the
ultimate kind of like the non pigeonholing, because not only was it a well,
she has a prosthetic, so she can't play this role, but it's
a because she has a prosthetic, Let's make the character have a prosthetic as
well. All kind of a dialog a tangent, but echo affected me that
much that I'm just gonna bring it up whenever i can for the next six
months because it was It was amazing. Matthew. Yeah, I know,
I hate tangents and would never go on one exactly exactly, especially things related
to Daredevil, but I really like the way you described that because it does
seem like from the little I know of this character, that is very essential.
And I also really liked how you said Jewishness and Judaism as two separate
things, because there's an extent to which a lot of times when people want
to couch anti Semitism, they won't say, oh, I hate those Jewish
attitudes. They'll say I hate those New York attitudes or I hate that New
York humor. And it's one of those times where it is absolutely used as
a slur and as a coded kind of anti Semitism, but there's also a
lot of truth to it. And to be honest, I would expect and
have encountered, a higher level of like the conversational Yiddish that is used by
many New Yorkers covech schmuck like words like this. I would expect a Catholic
New Yorker to know those better than a Jewish person who grew up not in
a Jewish community in the Midwest somewhere, you know, and like so in
those regards, yeah, I think it's not I need the character to be
a New Yorker, you know, and that is very much a New Yorker
of that time and place, and that is very associated with Judaism. Yeah,
and I also really appreciate it. Go ahead, no, you go
first. I was gonna go in a new direction to oeh me too.
Well that that also speaks there's sort of something in that. Ben doesn't just
represent Judaism and Jewishness. He represents a historical New York that is vanishing.
He represents the New York cadence of a century ago. Because again Jack Kirby
was drawing on not New York of the sixties for Ben's language, but New
York of the twenties, and do you know I live in Manhattan. Do
you know how rare it is for me to hear a New York accent?
So there's something and there is that, as you say, a really really
strong overlap between what people think of as a Jewish accent and what people think
of as a New York accent. But to me, Ben sounds like home
for for many reasons. And I I'm excited to hear. How I've been
in talks like I don't want to hear his pattern. When Mary, my
spouse, came to New York with me, she didn't. She was like,
I'm not hearing that New York accent. I don't really have much of
it. No, it sounds like bugs bunny. The taxi drivers certainly don't.
But then she met my father, who has you know, my father
was born in Row far Rockaway, Queens in nineteen forty one, and so
was most of his family, and most of them have much thicker accents.
And she was like, oh, that's a New York accent. I was
like, it's the Brooklyn Jewish Act. It's Queen's but it's Brooklyn Jewish.
You got to go to Staten Island. They got it in stanton Ion exactly
exactly, but then you'd have to be in Staten Island, so don't actually
yeah, And I will say I also love the point you made about how
sometimes when we as fans want to know that an actor is playing a character
and the actors had experienced as similar to the characters, that does mean they
were often demanding a level of information about the actor that maybe is not fair
to ask. And I remember when I first looked up so, uh,
make sure you get the name right. I had it written now and then
I look somewhere else for a second. And so, for example, when
I first found out that this person Evan Moss Backrock, who I've heard good
things about and I've seen him, but I don't I don't think I've ever
paid much attention to anything he's been in. I haven't seen the Bear,
which is the main thing he's known for. We did an episode on something
he's been in. He was micro and Punisher. Oh you're right, okay,
yuh, he's doubling up on mcu rolls. Good for him, Good
for him. But my first thought was is he Jewish? And I have
to say I think It's interesting that the Internet has decided he is Jewish enough.
He is Jewish, and so all the stories are about a Jewish actor
is being cast, which I'm very glad to see because but you know,
when I look his Wikipedia page says that he was born his father is Jewish.
And for those who don't know, within Judaism, there are some debates
and there are some perspectives, particularly more orthodox realms of Judaism, that say
that you're only Jewish if your mother is Jewish. And I actually commented to
another partner of mine who is also Jewish, and we were talking about that.
We were kind of bracing ourselves for is there going to be a debate
of is he Jewish enough? And you know, because he practiced Judaism,
is his white, are his children Jewish? Any of this kind of stuff,
particularly because it was his father who is Jewish, And I'm very glad
to see. I'm sure that exists somewhere on the internet. I have not
seen any of it, and I've not seen any like, you know,
here's the synagogue he goes to? Or does he go to synagogue? Or
that kind of a questions because yeah, like I think I know enough about
him to know that he's comfortable with people saying he's a Jewish actor, and
that's we'll see how he appears on screen. And I'm I'm glad to know
he's Jewish, but I also feel like I don't have a right to know
how Jewish he is, and I hope we don't go down that route.
Yeah, absolutely, And that well, And that's the other thing that Like
the reason I keep saying Jewishness and Judaism is because they are obviously related,
but they are not necessarily the same thing. And belonging to the Jewish people
as uh a culture and an ethno religion is not the same thing as your
actual religious beliefs. Like the fact that there are so many Jewish atheists speaks
to that, Like many of my loved ones are Jewish atheists. I would
consider myself agnostic, but I'm still Jewish, and so yeah, like that
that that is private again, like with the the analogy of queer actors,
Like I don't need to know what happens in somebody's private life, right,
Like did you know i Franco the musician? Yeah, yeah, she was
a favorite musician of mine when I was young, especially because like when I
was coming out as queer. She was one of the first openly queer musicians
that a lot of us knew about, and she was by and then she
eventually got married to a man, and a lot of people were like,
oh, so we need to know who was your girlfriend at some point to
kind of prove your biness and yeah, and I would just say, I
am I am bracing myself because I'm sure some of that will happen. I
am absolutely positive that it's some press junket. Someone's gonna ask him for his
opinion on Israel, Palestine, Gaza, which I think is completely A lot
of us should have very strong opinions of that. I certainly do. Would
have talked about them in other formats, the actor being Jewish like I did,
or ask all four of them. Yeah, I think every famous person
should be taking a stand on it. But I think, yeah, I
know that's gonna happen, and I'm dreading it, and I'm just I'm glad
that so far there's been very little of that kind of conversation, So we'll
see what happens. What do you know though, of him as an actor,
because I will say I don't remember micro and the slightest The Bear.
I also haven't seen The Bear, but I do remember him and The Punisher.
I really liked him. And actually, speaking of Jewish actors, it's
a perfect example because he was playing David Lieberman, obviously a Jewish character,
and John Burnhal, who is also Jewish, was playing an extremely Italian character.
So you know, it just goes to show that, like, it
can be helpful in conveying a character, but we don't need to pigeonhole anyway.
Yeah, I liked him a lot in The Punisher. He's very much
sort of he's a very different character. He's very much a non combatant and
he like he argues with Frank a lot, but he's not like a brawler
like Ben is. And obviously his actual physicality doesn't matter at all because presumably
he will be CGI. Like. I don't think they're going to put him
in a big, chunky suit. I mean, I would give my right
arm for practical effects with Ben, but we're not going to get them.
We're going to have. Yeah, everybody but Sue be CGI all the time,
which which may also help answer that question I asked a while ago of
why wasn't this made into a TV show in the Arrow era or something like
that, probably because the amount of CGI you need to represent these characters on
screen. I mean even like one of the reasons that they changed Ms.
Marvel's powers for her show was because her powers are supposed to be the same,
very similar to reads where she stretches, and that's a lot harder to
convey in CGI that looks good than the like sparkly powers that they gave her.
But yeah, I have heard really wonderful things about Evan from the Bear
and didn't he just win an Emmy? He did? Yeah, Yeah,
So I'm excited. And the thing, the thing is, and this will
be a good segue for us. The first two Fantastic Four movies are bad,
but the least bad things about them are Johnny and Ben. And what
I've heard about the Michael B. Jordan version is the same thing. The
least bad things about that movie are Johnny and Ben. For some reason,
they seem to be easier to get right. So my hopes are high in
this case. Well, and like I said, I do think it's interesting.
Jessica Alba is still a name that I recognize and cares weight, But
I think that I don't remember the names of any of the other casting of
the others, and certainly not the others of the more recent one. And
I would certainly say that like Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan are probably
the two most recognizable names from all of those. Yeah, so let's talk
about Joseph Quinn, who it's interesting this is the first time, Like he's
a perfectly good looking man, but they didn't pick the most beautiful human being
on the planet, which is what they did the last two times, which
is interesting. And like I said earlier, Johnny is my favorite. Like
Ben is the best character, objectively the best character, but Johnny is my
favorite. I'm just always going to love the like flashy, hot headed,
like kind of vain character who loves attention and loves flirting and like, you
know, it's sort of like the like I've said, I haven't seen the
Michael B. Jordan version. I do think Chris Evans did a pretty good
job. Like if you've seen that version of Johnny, Yeah, that's that's
that's Johnny. He's yeah, well he's like I'm trying to think of how
to describe Johnny as I understand him, and hearing you talk about your love
for him, I'm reminded of. It's not Barry Allen, it's the Flash,
who's very like if I remember, there's a version of the Flash who's
very much like this, Oh, Wally West. Wally West, Yeah,
similar, Yeah, I would say that Johnny is like further into that,
like Johnny. Johnny is a model. Johnny gets endorsement deals like Johnny.
There's this one great panel that I don't even remember what comic gets from,
but like the Fantastic Four has arrived in like Antarctica or something, so three
of them are bundled up, and Johnny is wearing like swim trunks with flames
on them and sunglasses because he can like he's not bothered by the cold,
and he wants everybody to look at him. And Johnny is in fact a
deeply insecure character who is a lot of deep seated fears that he doesn't like
to talk about, and he uses the facade to hide all of that,
which of course just makes me love him even more. He's he's much more
similar to like Booster gold Thani, I mean, maybe Wally West in like
the late eighties, but like that kind of like flashy hot shot. Yeah,
well, it'd be very interesting because first of all, I will say,
look, he as IMDb page. I'm not positive about this, but
I'm reading this correctly. He is Joseph Quinn the eighth. Wow. Very
rarely see like someone beyond the second or third, so that's interesting. Oh
no, wait, never mind, that is a no wait okay, yeah,
yes, yes, it is Joseph Quinn born nineteen ninety four. God,
I feel old now. Oh God, and his listened. Joseph Quinn
the Eighth, the character he plays in Stranger Things, which is the main
thing I know him from, but which I would now watch anything he's ever
in because he was so amazing in It is a version of that, but
very different. You've not seen Stranger Things, you said, right, I
have not, but I am on the internet, so I'm aware of Eddie.
Yeah, he's Eddie Munson. He is the He's flashy, but in
a very like I know everyone in the school hates me, so I'm gonna
have fun being the weirdo because he's the guy. He he dms the Dungeons
and Dragons group in the nineteen eighties when people still think that's devil worship and
he oh yeah, no, Johnny is never the weirdo. Johnny is preppy,
the unbelief Johnny. Like I know, he's on fire, but even
so, he's wearing three polo shirts and all of the collars are popped,
like he is. He that's amazing. He's mainstream popularity. He is all
five members of a boy band. He actually did have, like try to
have a music career for a while. Like that's amazing, that's amazing.
Okay, he's well, actually the best singer of the group, because it'd
be very interesting because I mean, as Eddie, he's a very attractive character,
and I think a very good looking man, in large part because he
has gorgeous long hair, which does not strike me as Johnny at all.
It's gonna be interesting because I think he particularly because, like you know,
I grew up getting bullied from playing Tounches and Dragons and reading comic books.
I'm sure it still exists today, but my understanding is that being a geek
is much more socially acceptable among youth today. But Munson was really still a
hero to a lot of us because of that. So I'm there's a part
of me that very much wants to hold out. No, he like this
actor should play weirdos. No, but I will see the actor is incredibly
good at being charming, but also at having a lot of innervulnerability, which
sounds like he's very very good at like I'm scared, I don't understand what's
going on. I'm trying to do the right thing. I don't know what
that is, which sounds like it is a lot similar to Johnny. So
yeah, I mean, the thing you have to remember is in the com
and I don't know exactly how they're going to handle this in the movie.
I don't know if it's going to be an origin story or if they will
be established heroes. And like, I mean, you just said he's thirty
years old, so he won't be as young as he was in the comics.
But in the comics he was fifteen when they got their powers. Like
he was a teenager and all of a sudden, he was a superhero with
this incredibly dangerous superpower and he was world famous, right, and he had
to cope with that, Yeah, and he there is like for a while,
he kept going to high school and he thought that nobody knew that he
was the human Torch. And there's like a whole he was he was.
It was believed that he would be the most popular character when the characters were
created, because there was the main Fantastic Four comic book, and then there
was he had a backup feature in another comic book called Strange Tales, and
he was the first one that they spun off into something else. They were
like, obviously, like, he's young, he's attractive, he's charismatic,
He's going to be the most popular character. And they quickly realize no,
actually, Ben, it was then and remains and forever will be by far
the most popular character. And then Ben had his own book for Ages and
Ages. But in this this Strange Tales backup feature, Johnny was just like
living in the suburbs, even though he also lived in Manhattan at the same
time, living in the suburbs, going to high school, like you know,
ducking into closets to change into his costume and stuff. And at the
end, when they like finished, you know, they did like twenty issues
or whatever, and the last one he he like gets caught and he's like,
oh no, now you know, I'm the human Torch. And whoever
he's talking to is like, everybody always knew you were the human torture kidding,
and he's like, oh wait really, and they're like yeah, yeah,
well see, yeah, we'll say into the actor being thirty years old.
Two years ago, he very convincingly played a high schooler on a show
where some of the actors no longer can convincingly play high schoolers. So yeah,
I think they can definitely play him as that. Yeah, I mean
I don't I think that would be interesting. I don't think it's necessary.
Like I said, like, I would be really interested in a Fantastic four
movie that's not an origin story because we see so many origin stories, or
they could have him playing a fifteen year old, or they could not try
to find a reason a fifteen year old is going into outer space like with
the movies. You know, Chris Evans was obviously much younger when he made
those movies, but he was not playing a teenage er. He was playing
an actual astronaut, right right, That makes sense. Yeah, I'll be
curious to see. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation, Jessica.
Thank you as always so much. I want to go into so many more
parts of this, but we just don't have any time. And I do
have a bonus section with you. We're going to talk about some other things
that have come out on screen from the comic book pages, most especially Blue
Beetle, our favorite hime. But any other last things you want to wrap
up with. Yeah, I just that I'm I do fundamentally believe that there
will never be a what I consider a good Superman or a good Fantastic Four
movie. But I hope I'm wrong because I do think this is a good
cast. I do think that superhero movies are in a very different place than
they were when the last ones were made. The promo image of the characters
in the sixties really gives me a lot of hope because it seems to understand
fundamentally who these characters are. So yeah, you know, maybe they'll break
the streak. Maybe this will be the one. I hey, it's the
fourth one, so four times the charm could be. Yeah. I certainly
hope so too, because you know, I am mister grim dark. I
love the dark, and I think it's a lot of why I generally don't
like Superman, though I like your version of Superman quite a lot. The
wh do you tell me about? And it's funny though, because also,
as you said that story. It kept being like, oh, the father
figure feels guilty about the harm done to his friend, and grim has all
of this like reasonable resentment, and like here's this young man with all these
Wow, you could do so much grim Dark based on these stories. But
I also can see how you like you could and they did a bad job,
and it was a bad movie exactly. And I think I am especially
things like MS Marvel, which I think you know has some like seriousness,
but it's so fundamentally hopeful and happy, a show in a way that I
really found refreshing and I really loved because of it, And I really loved
also about Blue Beetle, which we'll talk about in our members only section that
Yeah, I'm really excited to see this, and when we do, of
course we'll get you back to talk about it. So J justic for those
who you mentioned book Riot. For those who want to find more of your
stuff, where can they find it? Yeah, I am a contributing editor
at book Riot. I write about comics over there. I can be found
on social media at formerly known as Twitter and blue Sky as at chess Plumber.
You can find my fiction. I have a short story in Swordstone Table
which is an Arthurian Retellings short story collection. And speaking of Superman, next
year, I will have a book about Superman coming out called Even Superman Has
Bad Days. It's nonfiction. I'll be out May twenty twenty five from Running
Press. So that is fantastic, you know, check that out in thirty
or fifteen months. Okay, okay, well, I definitely know. We
will definitely have you on for our book club at some point to discuss that
book and talk all about it. And of course if you want to send
in your thoughts, what do you think about the fantastic for I imagine most
of my fans know these characters better than I do. What do you think
of the discussion? What do you think of these castings? Let us know.
If you search for the Ethical Panda on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,
any of those places, you can reach us. You can email me at
Matthew at Theethicalpanda dot com, and of course you just go to the Ethical
Panda dot com website. There you find all the information about this and my
other podcast, star Wars Universe podcast, Star Wars Generations podcast, and of
course at all those places you can find ways to come a member for only
five dollars a month fifty five dollars a year. You can get access to
all of our content ad free, no ads. You get to listen to
the content often it comes out a few days earlier, so as you know,
in a week earlier, and we're now starting to do bonus content that
is remembers only, and plus once we start live streaming, we're we're going
to be doing fairly soon. We will be doing that with members having a
chance to participate and ask questions stuff like that during the live stream. So
please think about becoming a member. Please check about all the wonderful things that
Jessica is doing. And I especially personally want to recommend her story in a
Stone Sword Table, Sword Stone Table. It's a great story. I really
enjoyed it. Yeah, check it out and I hope you are a member,
will keep listening. But for everybody else, we have spoken